Posts by Paul Litterick
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Don't they ever learn? It is obvious from the Hollow Men that Don Brash changed his mind on important issues in order to please his financial backers and to gain favour with the talkback callers. By inclinaton he is an economic and social liberal but became a born-again redneck in order to get votes. We all realised something odd was going on when he changed his mind on Civil Unions; now we know why.
John Key is trying the same tactic of moulding himself to public opinion. It seems that, when faced with a question of principle, he does not know what he should think. Perhaps he should have an adviser whispering in his ear; like Bush, or Othello.
Don't these people realise that the great tory leaders were respected because they had principles? We may not like Thatcher, Reagan and co, but at least they knew what they believed in and stuck to their beliefs. They did not trim their views to fit poll results and focus groups.
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Having worked for several Ministers in a UK Government Department, I can attest that there is no correlation between business success and governmental competence. Businesses exist solely to make profits. Despite everything the Rogergnomes claim, Governments cannot be run like businesses, since there is no profit motive. Appointing the CEO of Amalgamated Widgets to be Minister for Administration does not guarantee success.
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The story would not have so much heft if it were not for the cover, with its question about sending some of them back. Regardless of what Coddington has written, North and South could have presented the story in a different manner. Unfortunately, it is a magazine which thrives on scaring Middle New Zealand.
Middle NZ is scared because it hears stories like the contract killing that is in court at the moment or kidnappings. It is legitimate for the media to give these crimes attention, because they are remarkable, but such crimes give the impression of an Asian crime wave.
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I don't think the stadium is a good idea but the criticism of its design is unfair. Warren and Mahoney arguably is the best architectural practice in the country. Their stadia in Wellington and Waitakere are superb and this new design looks interesting. Unfortunately mocking new architecture seems to be a popular pastime and new designs do not get the analysis they deserve from the media.
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Re the Draft National Statement on Religious Diversity, the two secularist groups in NZ are the Humanist Society of NZ and the NZ Association of Rationalists and Humanists. Whether either is going to contribute to the discussion is anyone's guess. Getting non-believers to agree on anything is like herding cats.
I am going to blog about the Draft soon. My thoughts are not very positive.
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Satanism may be ridiculous but it is the only opportunity that IT engineers have to get sex, at least without having to dress up as furry animals.
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Even if God does exist, if he is outside nature and so outside space and time, then he does not matter.
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As an atheist (not an anti-theist or a Rationalist or, God forbid, a Humanist) I do not like all this talk of believing or not believing in God. Surely, God is impossible and so one could not ask reasonable questions about God's existence. It is not that I do not believe in God, just that there is nothing there in which to believe.
However, I do insist on proper nouns being capitalised.
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To be fair to Christians, most do not believe in Intelligent Design. The ID movement is only a few years old and is nothing more than a fraud perpetuated to discredit science. The Christians who do believe are generally those that once believed the world to be 5000 years old: hicks.
Most Christians have no problem with Evolution, although they do seem to want their god to be in charge of it all.
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Dawkins is right. Science does not deal with moral questions. Science is a means of describing nature, nothing more than that. Moral questions, if they are meaningful at all, are another matter.
The interesting aspect of the Collins/Dawkins debate is that Collins could only make conjectures about a god. The existence of such a god, any god, was not necessary to explain any aspect of nature or fill any holes left by science. God was simply an opinion of Collins.