issuevoter
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Australian Politics
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The Great State of Mind
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Its not good enough, to say you don't believe in God . . . or you do, and then walk away.
An important factor in any discussion of beliefs is that there is no definitive way to be sure a person actually believes something, or is merely paying lip-service to it. You will have to take my word that I believe many people throughout history have merely paid lip-service to religion to stay out of trouble.
At the same time, I acknowledge great achievements have often been the result of a sense of purpose created with, and by, a common belief. Social cohesion is another biproduct of belief and purpose. For examples: Sun worship predominently unified the Egyptians, and a loss of socialist belief predominently fueled the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Atheism gained wide spread credibility in the Western World due to the horrors of the First World War. And then World War Two only re-enforced this trend which continued up until the 1970s. A very telling indication of how far these social changes had gone was when it was thought advisable to remove “by the Grace of God” from British Commonwealth coinage.
At the time of the Whitlam government, there was a sense Atheism had manifested itself in a more secular state. I propose two unlikely reasons this attitude in Australia appears to have been far in advance of other Western societies. The first goes way back to the evils of the early convict system, whose horrible inhumanity molded the character of the convicts and their children. A sense that the Church was merely a part of institutional oppression, and an inescapable cast system, took hold of a fundemental part of Australian society. It was not that God fearing religion disappeared, but it was heavily eroded, and free settlers were never able to establish religion to the extent they had in North America, New Zealand, and South Africa, were a more bountiful earth could be interpreted as the Promised Land.
The second reason this new society was not antagonistic to Atheism was a general apathy in response to bigger, often unanswerable questions. Like the indigenous peoples before them, mere survival in Australia was hard enough. Had you asked the average Australian in 1955, what they thought about religion or politics, they were very likely to change the subject to boxing, football or horse racing. That type of apathy had already forced the Government to introduce compulsary voting during WW1, and after WW2 it would keep one political party in power for 25 years, a run almost unthinkable today in Western democracy.
But to return to WW1 Australia. Having seen what religion and politics was prepared to inflict on them, the grandchildren of the last convict generation joined a post war international skeptical view of authority, religious or political, that was already part of our national psyche. Most of these developments are parallel to the rise of public education, the labour unions, and racial tolerance, the corner stones of progressive humanism. So far, so good, if you are that way inclined.
Religious tolerance was not one of those cornerstones. When racial tolerance was extended to post war immigration, Leftist intellectuals viewed religion as a stale joke, or the drug Marx saw as a way of keeping the working class down were they belong. The new secular state (circa 1970) was a matter of social evolution, except that the children of 1940-50s Leftists, blessed with more freedom, began to expore religion – as long as it was not Christian. To be hip and groovy, it had to be Eastern, Asian, or at least Pagan. And so it was when the Beatles went to India.
Racial restriction on immigration was not removed under the aegis of Multiculturalism, it was simply a matter of fairness and the debunking of racial stigmas in a post colonial world. Leftist perspectives spread like wild fire after the so-called liberation movements of the 1960-70s, but so did religion. There were born again Christians, Hari Krishnas, Moonies, Budhists, Toaist, Mormans, Stoneage Dreamtimers and scads of lesser known cults. This new embrace of ancient beliefs did not come from the conservative side of society where it had long endured, it came from Liberalism when the Left, traditionally the most skeptical, abandoned their opposition to religion.
A recent survey suggested that religion was in decline in Australia. However, at a Citizenship ceremony last week, I noticed in the new pre-amble and oaths, a very pointed stipulation of religious tolerance, something that a secular and progressive society would never have deemed necessary prior to September 11th 2001, and the Muslim attack on the USA. The survey does not take Australia's new demographic direction into account, and the subject of religion is more in the Australian news than any period I know of. That does not indicate a decline in religion.
The secular outook in Australia goes back to when the rejects of Britain were dumped in Sydney Cove, where torture and starvation were overseen by Christian clergy. It is no surprise a merciful God did not seem believable to many. But now, the struggle to throw off centuries of hypocrisy is of little importance, and Leftists, humanists and other progressives are accepting any belief in the hope of universal tolerance. I don't believe that acceptance is wise, and here's why.
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It's not good enough. (Read 2391 times)
