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Resistance Thinking Society
'Society' is a term used to describe a grouping of individuals and outlines the structures employed to ensure that the individuals within a society relate to each other in an appropriate fashion. Different societies may have distinctive cultural behaviours and different institutions. In this society section you will find news, articles and reviews that relate to Australian society, or more specifically, individuals who live in Australia.
Topics in this section will cover: science and technology - stem cell research, IVF, cloning, intelligent design, evolution etc.; politics - ideologies (communism, anarchism, totalitarianism, capitalism etc.), state and federal politics, the free market, the United Nations etc.; sociology - globalisation, prisons, welfare, government; environment - global warming, alternative energy etc.; and moral issues - poverty, homosexuality, euthanasia, abortion etc.
The role of the Christian within society is to stand for truth, for justice and most importantly, to represent God's agenda on the earth. As the Resistance Thinking journey continues, our aim is to stimulate engaging dialogue exploring the complexities of how followers of Jesus should engage with society in our day and age.
Please browse through the articles below
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Friday, 04 April 2008 20:51 |
Scientists have created human-cow embryos by injecting human DNA into eggs taken from cows' ovaries in the hope that they will be able to aid stem cell research. Debate this issue on the forum.
Human-cow embryos cause outrage
Herald Sun, Grant McArthur, April 03, 2008
HUMAN-cow embryos have been created in a world first at Newcastle University in England, hailed by the scientific community, but labelled "monstrous" by opponents. A team has grown hybrid embryos after injecting human DNA into eggs taken from cows' ovaries, which had most of their genetic material removed. The embryos survived for three days and are intended to provide a limitless supply of stem cells to develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries, overcoming a worldwide shortfall in human embryos. |
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Read more... [Human-cow embryos cause outrage]
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Friday, 16 March 2007 00:19 |
Memo to John Edwards: Jesus Was Not a Leftist
Front Page Magazine, Dennis Prager, March 13, 2007
Democratic presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards told an interviewer from the religious website beliefnet.com that Jesus "would be disappointed" at how little Americans help the destitute who live among them. Jesus, Mr. Edwards said, "would be appalled" at our selfishness.
In the view of John Edwards and other Christians on the Left, Jesus would raise taxes, promote single-payer, i.e., socialized, medicine, be pro-choice and advocate same-sex marriage. But most of all, Jesus would be anti-war, opposed to the military and essentially be a pacifist.
This is based largely on one of His most famous statements: "Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."
The flaw in interpreting such statements as policy statements on how a nation should behave is that Jesus was speaking about the life of the individual -- the micro -- not about nations and the macro.
This confusion of micro and macro morality not only afflicts the Left, it also afflicts the Right. One example is when religious conservatives equate public and private cursing. While ideally one should refrain from using expletives in private as well as in public, there is no moral comparison between using such words in private conversations and using them in public. One trusts that if a religious conservative overheard a teacher using an expletive in a quiet conversation with one other person, he would not compare such speech to the teacher's using that expletive while teaching a class. The first may be a personal sin, but the second is destructive of society.
Nevertheless it is the Left that is most oblivious to the distinction between the micro and the macro. Its understanding of Jesus is a good example. The Left would have us as a nation put this admonition of Jesus into practice: "If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."
But Jesus was clearly referring to interpersonal relations. It is critically important when trying to understand any portion of the Bible or any other text to read a passage within the context of the surrounding material. As biblical commentaries often put it, "Context is king."
Noting what precedes and what follows this verse shows that it deals with attitudes and behaviors of individuals in such matters as anger against another individual in one's personal life, adultery, divorce, oath-taking, giving to the poor, prayer, fasting, prioritizing, worrying, etc. Jesus was talking about interpersonal relations and noted that in our relations with people in our lives, it is not generally a good idea to hit back.
Now imagine applying this to nations: Should we have said to the Japanese after they attacked Pearl Harbor, "Now that you have attacked us in the West, please also bomb our cities in the East"?
The idea that a country should offer its other cheek to an aggressor is simply immoral, not to mention suicidal. Such thinking renders Jesus and the Christian Bible foolish.
It also shows how hypocritical are the Left's attacks on religious conservatives for taking the Bible literally. It is the Left that engages in a far more dangerous literalism when it applies Jesus' words to national policy. Those on the religious Right who believe that God created the world in six 24-hour days are engaged in, I believe, a completely unnecessary literalism. But it is hardly dangerous. The Left's biblical literalism, however, applying "turn the other cheek" to millions of its own citizens, is fatally dangerous.
Besides literalism, another point of hypocrisy: The Left attacks the religious Right for threatening to replace our democracy with a theocracy that will impose fundamentalist Christianity on the nation. Yet the people who loathe conservatives for using Scripture have no difficulty with those who cite Jesus' words when arguing their positions -- even when citing them incorrectly.
Jesus was no leftist. He was, among other things, a religious Jew who knew and believed his Hebrew Bible, which contains verses such as this one from Psalms: "Those of you who love God must hate evil." That, not offering another city for terrorists to bomb, is likely what Jesus believed.
At: Frontpage magazine (click here) |
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Monday, 24 March 2008 00:11 |
A new study finds that depressed women have more sex regardless of whether they are in a relationship or not and that they have more sexually liberated attitudes. The researchers fail to question which causes the other, however, simply assuming that such behaviour and attitudes is a symptom not the problem.
Guys, sex won't make her happy
Brisbane Times, Tamara McLean, March 20,
Depressed women have more sex than those who are happier, regardless of whether they are in a relationship or not, a study of Australians has found. A survey of Melbourne women presented at an international mental health conference has concluded that females who suffer from mild to moderate depression have a third more sexual activity than those who are not. They also had more sexually liberated attitudes, a bigger variety of sexual experiences and, if single, were more likely to partake in casual sex, Dr Sabura Allen, a clinical psychologist at Monash University, said. |
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Read more... [Guys, sex won't make her happy]
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Thursday, 22 February 2007 00:18 |
The sexual revolution has taken its toll on an entire generation, but the biggest losers have been women. Despite all the feminist nonsense that men and women are identical, they are not. Women are as different in their sexuality as in any other area. By trying to be just like men, especially in terms of their sexuality, women have let themselves down big time.
Despite the hype and propaganda of shows like Sex and the City, women are not primarily free-wheeling sex machines. While many women may enjoy the one-night stand just as much as men, most long for something more: for relationship, for commitment, for intimacy.
(Saying all this in no way lets men off the hook. Male sexual predators are no role model, and promiscuity of any kind is to be condemned. But it does seem that women by nature are more likely to seek monogamy and committed relationships than men are. The anthropological and sociological research tends to confirm what we already know by common sense.)
Thus the sexual revolution of the sixties has unleashed untold damage on us all, but especially on women. At least that is how one former groupie and free-love addict tells it. Writing in the January 14, 2007 Sunday Times, Dawn Eden argues that morality, chastity and monogamy are far superior to causal sex, free love and unrestrained hedonism.
She begins with these thoughts: "The Sixties generation thought everything should be free. But only a few decades later the hippies were selling water at rock festivals for $5 a bottle. But for me the price of 'free love' was even higher. I sacrificed what should have been the best years of my life for the black lie of free love. All the sex I ever had - and I had more than my fair share - far from bringing me the lasting relationship I sought, only made marriage a more distant prospect. And I am not alone. Count me among the dissatisfied daughters of the sexual revolution, a new counterculture of women who are realising that casual sex is a con and are choosing to remain chaste instead."
She gives a bit of biographical background: "I am 37, and like millions of other girls, was born into a world which encouraged young women to explore their sexuality. It was almost presented to us as a feminist act. In the 1960s the future Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown famously asked: Can a woman have sex like a man? Yes, she answered because 'like a man, [a woman] is a sexual creature'. Her insight launched a million '100 new sex tricks' features in women's magazines. And then that sex-loving feminist icon Germaine Greer enthused that 'groupies are important because they demystify sex; they accept it as physical, and they aren't possessive about their conquests'. As a historian of pop music and daughter of the sexual revolution I embraced Greer's call to (men's) arms."
She describes her life as a groupie and a "liberated woman". But it was not all sweetness and light. "But in all that casual sex, there was one moment I learnt to dread more than any other. I dreaded it not out of fear that the sex would be bad, but out of fear that it would be good. If the sex was good, then, even if I knew in my heart that the relationship wouldn't work, I would still feel as though the act had bonded me with my sex partner in a deeper way than we had been bonded before. It's in the nature of sex to awaken deep emotions within us, emotions that are unwelcome when one is trying to keep it light."
The free sex philosophy is a lie, says Eden: "Whatever Greer and her ilk might say I've tried their philosophy - that a woman can shag like a man - and it doesn't work. We're not built like that. Women are built for bonding. We are vessels and we seek to be filled. For that reason, however much we try and convince ourselves that it isn't so, sex will always leave us feeling empty unless we are certain that we are loved, that the act is part of a bigger picture that we are loved for our whole selves not just our bodies."
"Our culture - both in the media via programmes such as Sex and the City and in everyday interactions - relentlessly puts forth the idea that lust is a way station on the road to love. It isn't. It left me with a brittle facade incapable of real intimacy. Occasionally a man would tell me I appeared hard, which surprised me as I thought I was so vulnerable. In truth, underneath my attempts to appear bubbly, I was hard - it was the only way I could cope with what I was doing to my self and my body."
She continues, "The misguided, hedonistic philosophy which urges young women into this kind of behaviour harms both men and women; but it is particularly damaging to women, as it pressures them to subvert their deepest emotional desires. The champions of the sexual revolution are cynical. They know in their tin hearts that casual sex doesn't make women happy. That's why they feel the need continually to promote it."
Part of her way out of the sexual wilderness was a conversion to Christianity, via the writings of G.K. Chesterton. She concludes with these words:
"One night last year I had dinner with a male friend, a charming English journalist I would have dated if he shared my faith (he didn't) and if he were interested in getting married (ditto). He peppered me with questions about chastity, even going so far as to suggest that maybe, given that I'd been looking for so long, I might not find the man I was looking for. 'That's not true,' I responded. 'My chances are better now than they've ever been, because before I was chaste, I was looking for love in all the wrong places. It's only now that I'm truly ready for marriage and have a clear vision of the kind of man I want. I may be 37, I concluded, 'but in husband-seeking years, I'm only 22'."
This article is part of a new book she has just penned, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On (Thomas Nelson, 2006).
Click here for article in the Times
This article written by Bill Muehlenberg |
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Thursday, 21 February 2008 20:54 |
The ABC (Abstinence, Be Faithful, use Condoms) program implemented in Africa has been 'unbelievably effective' announces US President George Bush.
Abstinence 'will stop AIDs in Africa'
Daily Telegraph, February 21, 2008
US President George W Bush signalled that he might drop his anti-HIV/AIDS strategy's insistence on sexual abstinence if he finds it is ineffective – but not now, because the program is working. "I monitor the results. And if it looks like it's not working, then we'll change. But thus far I can report, at least to our citizens, that the program has been unbelievably effective. And we're going to stay at it," he said. |
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Read more... [Abstinence 'will stop AIDs in Africa']
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Thursday, 22 February 2007 00:17 |
Author: Bill Muehlenberg
Source: www.billmuehlenberg.com
Category: Society
The G20 Summit in Melbourne is now history, as is the Australian tour of U2. Both tried to grapple with the issue of world poverty. One, it seems to me, will be more successful than the other. As for the Melbourne meeting of world finance ministers, the usual melodramatics were on display. Angry protestors hurled urine-filled balloons at police, and shouted anti-Bush and anti-Howard slogans. Just how all that is supposed to relieve global poverty remains unclear. But it apparently made some people feel good.
And feeling good is often seen as more important than sound economics. When Bono flies around in his private jet and charges people an arm and a leg to hear him perform, all the while denouncing capitalism and the West, he undoubtedly feels good as a result. Just how many poor people however are helped by such activities is another matter altogether.
Now Bono is genuinely concerned about helping the poor, and he deserves credit for that. But whether his rockenomics will in fact help anyone is a moot point. Past initiatives by celebrities and rock stars to combat global poverty have been less than convincing. But at least a lot of young people who participated in such events would be feeling good about themselves. But how will the world’s poor be feeling?
The G20 meeting also tried to deal seriously with the issue, but minus the rock music and bumper sticker ethics. And their strategies may well do more for the world’s poor. Helen Hughes, writing in today’s Australian (November 20, 2006), suggests that the emphasis of the G20 meeting – free trade and economic growth – is far preferable to the old worn-out appeals to socialism by the rock stars.
How successful, or otherwise, foreign aid has been, is part of her concern. “The Group of 20 Finance Ministers met at the weekend to discuss ways to maintain global prosperity so that China, India and the other Asian countries that are developing can trade their way out of backwardness and poverty. The emphasis was on what could actually be done to maintain monetary stability.”
She continues, “Is this a reason for bullying workers in banks or the Defence Department? Or for ageing rock stars who have run out of musical inspiration to attack Australia’s foreign policy? A policy, remember, that does much more to help developing countries get on their feet than pouring buckets of money into the maws of corrupt ‘Big Men’ who not only keep their countries poor but murder their own citizens by the hundreds of thousands can ever do. The evidence that aid has failed to help poor people or turn corrupt politicians toward growth is now mountainous. Has Bono become deaf listening to his own music?”
The history of foreign aid has not been impressive: “Governments that have been forgiven debt have incurred more and larger debts to fund their obscene lifestyles. Mercedes’ most lucrative market is for their armoured limousines in Africa and the Middle East. Aid was used to buy a jet plane so that an African potentate with 30 wives could fly around the world begging for food aid. Non-government aid workers and the World Food Program are being kept out of Darfur and other African hot spots. They are asked for huge bribes when they are given access. A great deal of food aid, despite aid workers’ best endeavours, finishes up being sold in souks.”
After examining some Asian economic success stories, she turns her attention to the South Pacific: “The Pacific receives more aid - dominantly Australian - per capita than any other region. But aid is not going to the 85 per cent of people who still live in villages. In Papua New Guinea, HIV/AIDS is reaching African levels because there is no education or healthcare. In the South Pacific as a whole after 30 years of aid there are 1.5 million, mostly male, unemployed or underemployed. There has been no growth. People are not starving because women work in gardens and orchards, but gangs of youths are roaming the streets of Port Moresby and Lae and spreading to other Pacific centers. Port Moresby repeatedly features among the most unliveable cities in the world. The government elites that absorb the aid live behind barbed wire and send their children to Australia to be educated.” She concludes: “Rockeconomics is no path to development. Compassionate Australians must take the trouble to understand why aid is not a panacea and often not even a help. We know that trade is more effective than aid and must avoid harming people in developing countries through aid.”
Global poverty is a complex and very real problem. It is good that those other than economists draw attention to it. But economic realism, not clichés from rock stars, is needed to turn things around. And there is nothing wrong with celebrities displaying a conscience. But their concerns need to be wedded to clear thinking and economic nous in order for them to be put to good use. |
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