You are invited to the next MandM speaking engagement:

Apologetics: Answering Objections to the Christian Faith

Dr Matthew Flannagan BSocSci, MSocSci (Hons), PhD

When: Sunday 8 March
Time: 6.30 pm
Where: Massey Presbyterian Church - 510 Don Bucks Rd, Massey, West Auckland
Cost: Free
Event Format: Presentation followed by Q&A

In this presentation, Dr Flannagan will speak on the nature of Apologetics and will examine some common objections to the faith such as: Why does God allow evil? Isn’t it arrogant to believe your religion is the only true one? Isn’t faith in God irrational?

Dr Flannagan is an adjunct lecturer in Philosophy for Laidlaw College, he works with Thinking Matters and writes for the MandM blog.

Who is Welcome?
It’s open to Christian and non-Christian alike; anyone interested in apologetics, theology and Christian philosophy. It is lay-person friendly, you won't need a philosophy or a theology degree to be able to follow the talk.

RELATED POST: The Point of Intellectual Engagement: Why Thinking Matters

The official MandM Top 10 NZ Christian Blogs for January 09 (public discourse) are ranked by identifying Christian blogs then comparing Half Done's January 09 stats with Tumeke's January 09 stats and averaging them to obtain their overall January 09 ranking.

Rank. [previous top 10 rank] Blog Average (Half Done Tumeke)

1. [1.] NZ Conservative 17 (7 27 )
2. [2.] Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later 18.5 (14 23)
3. [N] Keeping Stock 29 (23 35)
4. [3.] The Briefing Room 29.5 (27 32)
5. [4.] MandM 39.5 (25 54)
6. [N] The Humanitarian Chronicle 58 ( - 58)
7. [8.] Samuel Dennis 69 (51 129)
8. [9.] Contra Celsum 73.5 (72 75)
9. [5.] Kiwi Polemicist 76.5 (89 64)
10. [7.] Put up Thy Sword 82 (52 112)

Other Christian blogs featuring in the top 200 NZ blogs on public discourse for January 09:

[6.] Say Hello to my Little Friend 82.5 (98 67)
[10.] Star Studded Super Step 93 ( - 93)
Blessed Economist 104.5 (127 82)
Gavin Knight 112 (104 120)
Section 59 Blog 157.5 (142 173)
Definitive 173 (175 171)
NZ Debate 174.5 (157 192)
Backchat Cafe 187 ( - 187)
The Voice of Reason NZ 200 ( - 200)

Note: This list does not include Christians who blog but whose blogs are not identifiably Christian and is based on Tumeke's classification methods.

If you think your blog should be on the rankings click here.

Here are the top 10 NZ Christian blogs based on Tumeke's NZ blog stats for January; these stats are used in the calculations for the MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for January 09:

1. Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (HalfDone) 23
2. NZ Conservative 27
3. The Briefing Room 32
4. Keeping Stock 35
5. MandM 54
6. The Humanitarian Chronicle 58
7. Kiwi Polemicist 64
8. Say Hello to my Little Friend (Beretta Blog) 67
9. Contra Celsum 75
10. Blessed Economist 82

Top 10 Tumeke. name of blog Tumeke rank

Of Note:

• A change in the number 1 spot - well done Scrubbone!
• All top 10 are within the top 100.
• Welcome to the top 10 The Humanitarian Chronicle and Blessed Economist.

Other Christian blogs making the top 200 NZ blogs on Public Discourse but outside the top 10:

Samuel Dennis 88
Star Studded Super Step 93
Put up Thy Sword 112
Gavin Knight 120
Stu's a-Musings (Definitive) 171
Section 59 Blog 173
Backchat Cafe 187
NZ Debate 192
The Voice of Reason NZ 200

Note: This list only includes Christian blogs that openly identify as Christian blogs on Tumeke's rankings. If you think your blog should be on the MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blogs rankings contact Tim Selwyn of Tumeke and ask him to change your blog description to include something identifiably Christian on his rankings. More here.

Now that Tumeke's January stats are out we will compare them with HalfDone's and average the two sets of results and publish the overall MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for Janurary 09.

My post about student association membership reminded me that just yesterday I stumbled accross this article that I wrote for Critic's diatribe column when we were at Otago.

Despite the fact that OUSA membership has probably increased since we were there, that NZUSA's annual budget is now almost certainly much more than the figure I quoted below and these days the student associations tend to promote Green party policy more than the Alliance's it is still very applicable so I have reproduced my article here.

They Just Want Your Money

Free education will never exist.

Even if the government funded 100% of tertiary study costs, students would still have to pay to get an education – even if it were a fact that ‘government money’ grew on trees.

Why? Because student association membership fees are compulsory.

Want a tertiary education? Then you have to join the student association. No choice, no argument; if you want to get your grades then cough up the best part of $100 to OUSA.

Apart from being a violation of the Bill of Rights – s17: “everyone has the right to freedom of association” – it smacks of hypocrisy.

The loudest campaigners for free education, the advocates for hard-up students, are funding their campaigns, national and international flights, their catered conferences, the very handcuffs they chain themselves to government architecture with, with a total budget estimated to be around $18 million annually.

This income is sourced entirely from the pockets of the very people they claim should not have to pay a single cent to get an education.

So long as student association membership remains compulsory, free education can never exist.

Effectively, NZUSA’s $400,000 annual budget – also taken entirely from students – is a total waste of money. And for what? To tell us to vote Alliance. Who? Over 90% of us did not vote for free education last election, demonstrating most of us think we should pay something substantial towards our education.

OUSA use our money and voice for things political, controversial, environmental and occasionally student related. Maybe I would mind compulsion less if they steered clear of the political, did not comment on controversial topics, that those they allegedly represent have a diversity of views on, and provided good services. However, even if they did all this, their compulsory subscription would still be immoral.

It’s that pesky Bill of Rights again. OUSA could be the most wonderful, student advocate and service provider in the country but they would still have no right to hold my grades to ransom unless I forked out and joined them. No more right to do so than any workers’ union has a right to garnish pay-packets, a church to forcibly extract an offering, the Salvation Army to make a benefit deduction.

Student associations are kidding themselves if they think they are any better than any of these organisations – which, incidentally, all manage to stay afloat, be effective at what they do and who they serve by being voluntary. The only type of association that has anything to fear by giving its members a choice to join is one that knows it’s so irrelevant, unaccountable, ineffective and useless that no-one will choose to join it unless they are made to. Which begs the question; why should they be able to force you to prop it up if it is so useless? You’d join if it were good.

Voluntary membership fosters accountability, relevance and effectiveness, because if a union is not these things it will go under. Having cash flow contingent on performance is incentive, having thousands of cash cows you can simply burden further if you blow the budget on, say, ummm, a book store, gives you no incentive to perform relevantly at all. It leaves members totally reliant on the ethics of the student politicians (did I just use ethics and politicians in the same sentence?).

But, we’re told, students can conscientiously object (CO) so it’s not really compulsory, it’s not really a violation of your right to freedom of association. Really? Putting aside the fact that you have to first join or risk late fees and grades being withheld before you can even think about CO-ing, you have to apply to the student union for permission to be exempt from membership. If your evidence is not compelling, they don’t have to grant you a CO. Even if successful, they get to choose which charity to donate your $100 to; you don’t get it back.

I see. I don’t have to associate with anyone as long as I first associate with the student union so I can disassociate with them, assuming they let me, and then make a donation to an ‘appropriate’ charity of their choosing?

It’d make a good Tui billboard: “Student unions don’t violate civil rights. Yeah, right.”

They want you to believe a lie that voluntary membership is some kind of right wing conspiracy, championed by white middle class male members of ACT, when in fact outside of tertiary institutions it’s normal.

Student politicians want your money, they want to illegitimately use your voice to push their personal agendas – the ones they think you should hold. They want you to shut up, roll over and take it. The question is, will you?

We have just discovered Twitter. Twitter is the new thing that everyone online seems to be getting into. Its heaps of fun, free to sign up and you can communicate with a lot of people with very little effort which is always attractive with our busy lives. You can get your Twitter updates through your mobile phone and, as I discovered tonight (see the sidebar), you can install a live feed in your Blogger platform very easily.

Whenever I want to customize my blogs I always start with Amanda Fazani's Blogger Buster as her instructions are very clear and simple and you don't need a lot of tech knowledge to follow them. Amanda has written a Twitter Widget that self installs your Twitter updates into your blog - its really easy and customizable!

Create a Twitter account
Open this page on Blogger Buster
Scroll about halfway down the page to the heading "Add a Twitter Widget using this Widget Installer"
Enter your Twitter user name into the "Create Your Stylized Twitter Widget" box.
Click "Customize"
Click "Add to Blog"

Once it has been added to your blog you can drag it where you want it from within the Layout Page Elements area. Remember to save.

If you want to add a link such as "Follow Me on Twitter" you can just open it by clicking on edit, and then just copy and paste the following at the bottom of the text code:

[a href=http://twitter.com/USERNAME" target="0">Follow Me on TwitterReplace]

USERNAME with your Twitter user name.
Change the [] brackets on each end to < > (respectively).
Then save.

If you want to remove the picture that comes with the widget then open the widget as above and delete the following from the code:

style="background: url(http://bloggerbuster.com/images/twitter-icon.gif)
top left no-repeat;

Then click save. Happy Twittering and don't forget to sign up and follow MandM!

Cross Posted at Coping in a Technological World

On Monday a new University year begins for thousands of New Zealand students. If you are a student, you probably don't even realise that when you paid your fees to enrol at University, most of you joined a political organisation; a political organisation with strident viewpoints on all sorts of controversial hot potatoes that speaks out publicly, lobby's NZ and international governments and claims you share its views.

I am talking about your campus student association and the fact that in New Zealand membership of it at most universities is compulsory.

That "free" alcohol available during Orientation week, those free condoms and dental dams, that gay pride week, the feminist meetings promoting abortion, the of trashing Christianity, the trespassing and occupying of buildings, the protests and demands and all those posters and press releases that sound suspiciously like they were written by Green and Labour party members are all supported, paid for and made on behalf of you.

At Auckland University yesterday, whilst on a campus tour, I was urged to go and join the Auckland University Students Association (AUSA). (AUSA is the only university student association in New Zealand for which membership is voluntary as students there managed to navigate the impossibly difficult method available at law to get rid of forced subscription. However, funding is not voluntary; AUSA's funding is compulsory.)

The enthusiastic recruiter told me and the group I was with that we should join because "you'll get a free jelly-shot and it will cost you nothing." He looked really confused when I was clearly not tempted and seemed very unimpressed when I pointed out to the group that while they wouldn't have to hand over any cash because they had already paid, their membership enabled AUSA to 'legitimately' claim to speak on their behalf on any polarising political and ethical issue they choose to, such as, abortion, euthanasia, terrorism, war, environmentalism, the status of[insert terrorist/communist/liberation organisation], etc giving the false impression to the media and society that all students share their controversial viewpoint; the power they wield and its influence on society is staggering. Your membership also ensures that the University will continue to force all students to fund them if it perceived that AUSA had wide student support. The University is aware of how apathetic students are so it counts support as membership. (The recruiter was even more unimpressed when every member of the group, including those that had begun to eagerly step towards the sign-up table all immediately saw my point and refused to sign up.)

Compulsory membership and compulsory funding of student associations is another issue that this government needs to address. It is not acceptable that these organisations can falsely claim legitimacy on behalf of all students, speak on their behalf on issues that have nothing to do with education that the rest of society is split on and violate the consciences of many they 'represent.' When their policies include campaigns to actively educate the student body that viewpoint X is right/wrong they are forcing some students to fund and endorse campaigns against their own beliefs.

Compulsory membership and funding of political organisations, regardless of how wonderful some of their non-political services might be, is a violation of freedom of conscience. Forced membership of a political organisation is a violation of freedom of association; both are rights protected under both New Zealand and international human rights legislation yet violated by the New Zealand government to this day.

From 2002-06 I had the pleasure of studying at Otago University. I also taught there in various roles as a researcher, tutor and fill-in lecturer for the Theology, Philosophy and Law schools. Otago was an intellectually rigorous and stimulating place; it’s reputation for being the one of the best Universities in New Zealand and the best in my own fields of Philosophy and Theology is well deserved.

One thing I discovered first hand, however, was the darker side of the student culture, particularly from undergraduates. At Otago my wife and I dared speak out against some of the actions and stances promoted by the Otago University Students Association (OUSA). The reprisal was merciless.

At the time Madeleine was battling obesity (a medical condition she has since overcome having lost around 55kg), the student newspaper, Critic (a subsidiary company of OUSA), found a link to her weight-loss support site that showed progress-pictures of her weight-loss (despite her name never featuring on it) and encouraged students to visit the site and laugh at her. They published pictures of fat women eating hamburgers on their website and said it was her and regularly permitted comments about her allegedly stuffing her face to be published.

Critic also published false comments about my wife flashing her “bush” in public. It also published discussions of what it would be like to have sex with someone as "hideous" as her. She was repeatedly referred to as “middle-aged” and a “mother” in a derogatory manner.

Then came the obsession with her breasts; someone in Critic claimed falsely that Madeleine had accused a Labour MP of fondling her breasts. I informed them this was false, offered to show them what Madeleine had actually said (they had originally reported it almost accurately) but it was to no avail. They continued to run with the breast story, making reference to it several more times throughout the year, culminating in nominating her breasts for an end of year award and published false claims that she deliberately thrust her breasts in front of people.

When Critic nominated Madeleine as the New Zealander of the Year they cited, as one of the reasons, her success at managing “to distance herself … and her young daughters from [Graham Capill’s] penis.”

When, as a student, I formally complained about all this to the University I was told it was not their jurisdiction as the student newspaper was not part of the University. Complaints to OUSA were dismissed on the grounds that this was just good humour; something I was apparently lacking. Of course it all ceased to be funny when later the same year an issue of Critic was banned by the chief censor for its infamous date-rape article, an article in which the author laughed at and mocked the rape of women who are overweight and Christian. I found the coincidence rather eerie.

Towards the end of my study the infamous riots broke out on Castle Street. Critic defended the students claiming it was the police getting out of hand. When the University suggested a code of conduct for students, OUSA threatened legal action if anyone was expelled under it.

I remember discussing the issue with a crowd of students that I regularly met with in the Union building. The response I got from one was telling, when it was suggested that maybe some of the ridiculous drunken antics shouldn’t be tolerated, there was a gasp followed by: “what’s the point of being a student then?” My response of “maybe to study and get a degree” seemed fairly novel to my interlocutor.

Living in this environment all the time perhaps dulled my perception. However, when I graduated PhD in 2006 the way many locals saw things became apparent. I had no immediate employment and so had taken a night-shift job stacking shelves at the local 24 hour supermarket. On my first night, I was ridiculed by drunken students in the wee hours of the morning. Some students approached me (a complete stranger) in the store and mocked me for being “so thick” that I had to work at the supermarket. I was informed that if I was smart as them then I could go to Uni and get a degree but I was obviously too stupid to do this. My supervisor informed me this sort of thing was common and he regularly issued trespass notices to students for this sort of behaviour. I later witnessed one student and his girl friend try and take a joy-ride with a forklift. Another of the staff was indecently propositioned. I only worked there for a few weeks before coming to Auckland yet the management told me that this sort of thing was common from students.

I recall a conversation I struck up once with a local. He told me how the streets around the University used to look when he was younger. He went on to tell me how gradually residents moved further away from the University due to the behaviour of their student neighbours and how now the area was a dump. He wasn’t wrong about the latter claim, the student quarter featured fifthly flats, beer bottles and pizza boxes and other rubbish littered all over the place. His story appeared to be one many locals could tell. During Orientation Week the town became full of smart-arsed, disrespectful jerks who had no respect for anyone.

Given all of the above, I was not at all surprised to see the news about Otago’s annual toga party getting out of control. I was even less surprised to hear the OUSA President on tonight’s TV3 news trying to convince the country that the problems were mostly caused, not by students, but by passers by throwing objects at students. Please spare me. One angry resident stated "Why should we tolerate this here? I don't think there would be anywhere that this would be tolerated." I often wondered this myself when I was studying there too. Let’s hope we don’t see more Otago University TV commercials telling us to “get over it.”

What do these two pictures have in common?

The Hand Mirror oppose both as forms of oppression against women. In the first one the woman is being "belittled", "denigrated", made the subject of "idiot chauvinism", in the second, the woman's clothing choice is "silly" and her "sexuality is being controlled by her father".

Now look at this image featured in the sidebar of the Hand Mirror:

My body, my choice. Really? I have frequently found left-wing feminists of the ilk at the Hand Mirror to be inconsistent in their application of their feminist mantras, condescending and paternalistic towards women of my ilk. They talk about women's empowerment, equality, the right of women to make their own choices about their sexuality, their bodies, their lives but that's all it is; talk.

In the first image, a woman made a decision to accept a modelling job which involved almost baring her breasts and they wrote her off as a victim of male oppression, ignorant about the realities of the world.

In the second image they blast another woman's choice to cover her breasts with a t-shirt that states the woman agrees with her family's morals. In the comments section, the same author from the first case identifies this image as "Fathers controlling their daughters' sexuality;" implicit from the title is the claim that this woman is "silly". I am confused. Can women not choose their own t-shirts and their own reasons as to why they do not want their breasts ogled?

In the same blog piece the author writes:

Perhaps you can help me choose which is worse - the t-shirt above or the one I can't get a shot of which said "No trespassing. I'm waiting for my husband."

Again the search for an oppressor is sent into full swing in response to a woman making a choice about when and who she wants to have sex with.

Ironically, when Otago University's student rag, Critic, published unwanted comments about my breasts [link is to just one example], denigrated my appearance, etc because I was right-wing, some of the very same Hand Mirror feminists who were witness to this at the time said....

The internet blackout is at an end and the government has responded; s92a of the Copyright Act has been officially stalled and looks rather doomed. The Herald reports:

Section 92a was to have come into force this weekend, but Mr Key said it would be delayed a month while ISPs and copyright holders continued efforts to work out a voluntary agreement on how it would be enforced.

He said if they could not agree, the clause would be suspended.

If they did reach an agreement, it would be reviewed in six months.

So in other words, as written, it's dead. Yay.

Tumeke report that most of the NZ blogosphere has gotten behind the blackout, blacking out chunks of their pages and/or running banners highlighting the campaign. Tim made this mosaic showing the impact on the front pages of NZ's top 50 or so blogs - you can see MandM towards the bottom right corner.
The government really has to act on this one; it is not everyday you see so many people, commonly at odds with each other, representing pretty much the entire political spectrum, agreeing on one issue. I mean, when Not PC sings the same tune as The Standard surely the resulting blogosphere shockwave has to be able to reach the Beehive?

It has been for a very busy year for me so far.

In January, I gave a lecture on Locke, Hume and Descartes to Maxim Institute’s interns. I also preached two sermons, one at Massey Presbyterian Church, the other at Riverhead Presbytarian Church.

I have been asked to teach Critical Thinking to 11-16 year old members of a local home-schoolers group for the next couple of weeks which will help me try out some of the Critical Thinking course I have been writing for Thinking Matters.

I have been approached by Massey Presbyterian Church to talk on Apologetics in early March.

Also in March, as part of my Teaching Diploma, I am going on practicum at St Peters College where I will be working in their Religious Studies Department for around eight weeks. Almost immediately after this, I will be teaching a three-week block course in Philosophy at Laidlaw College.

I was informed by The Royal Institute of Philosophy that my article “Abortion and Capital Punishment,” has been published in Think, which is a philosophical journal for lay people.

The editorial board of Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review have informed me my article, “The Premature Dismissal of Voluntarism,” will be published later this year.

Just yesterday, I just received word from the Editor of Ethics and Medicine that my article “Boonin on the Sentience Criteria” will be published in Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics in their Summer 09 edition.

In addition to this, I have been informed that the proceedings from a conference on C S Lewis, at which I spoke last year, are being considered for publication so I may need to format my talk into publishable form.

In the last week Thinking Matters have asked me to write an article on Religion and Science for the next edition of their journal and I have to chase up what is happening/has happened with the Journal of Libertarian Studies who appear to have published my article "Peron on Religion and Public Life" but the link for it does not work and they have not communicated anything for ages.

Madeleine and I are also working with Thinking Matters and local Christian Apologists to look at setting up a regular apologetics group in Auckland and are working on organising an Apologetics conference.

We both have a small handful of speaking engagements, debates and seminars for various campus groups and community organisations around the country to prepare for as well, as well as some research projects to complete, studies to prepare for our bible study group and, of course, blogging, ongoing publication efforts and employment applications - all of this is in addition to our studies and parenting responsibilities.

All we need now is for one of these projects to turn into full-time, permanent, paid employment and we will be set!

Having said that, we still have a lot of space on our calendar so if you think of us...

It is a bit rich that one of the reasons the South African rugby council are citing as an obstacle for the Springboks to be able to play the New Zealand Maori Rugby team is that the Maori team are "selected along racial lines." Apparently "the council forbids South African rugby teams playing against opponents selected on racial lines."

Just as well the Springboks cannot play themselves then.

Tonight's TV3 report on the matter included a statement that the Springboks have a quota-policy that requires a minimum of 5 of their players to be non-white. At least five of the Springboks players are selected because of their race.

So let's get this straight. South Africa can refuse to play rugby teams with team members selected on the basis of race but they don't have to select their team to the same standard they hold everyone else to. There is a word for that.

Did the TV3 reporter pick up on this despite pointing it out? No of course not. Neither did the New Zealand rugby union who, if TV3 are reporting this correctly, are taking the tactic of trying to deny the New Zealand Maori team are selected on the basis of race.

New Zealand is fighting back against a South African suggestion that the Maori Rugby Team is racially selected.

Hello. Who do they think that is going to fool? What is the name of the NZ team again? Can non-maori play for it?

Apparently no one in New Zealand can reason so I guess everyone will fall for it.

I am surrounded by idiots.

UPDATE: It appears the double standard was not lost on TV1,

There is also what appears a contradictory situation given South African sides, including the Springboks, must include a quota of non-white players.

I am now occasionally posting over at Coping in a Technological World so just a warning there may be some cross-posting occurring going forward though I will refrain this time.

It is a great blog, full of all sorts of useful tips, so check it out sometime.

Over recent years [read: under the previous Labour government] we have been increasingly concerned at ill thought out, badly drafted legislation that removes power from the judiciary and confers it on other bodies within society that are not subject to the rules of evidence and due process.

The anti-smacking bill is an obvious example. The bill removed the defence of reasonable force for assault from the Crimes Act and instead placed discretion as to what is reasonable in the hands of the police as opposed to the court.

The Seabed and Foreshore Act prevented private citizens from taking a property dispute with the Crown to court and instead the legislature, in a massive conflict of interest, simply declared that the property belonged to them.

The weakening of due process is further evidenced by the abolition of an independent appeals court (The Privy Council) and the changes to double jeopardy and the requirement for jury unanimity.

The Copyright Amendment Act, due to come into force on 28 February 2009, is another example. The Labour government wanted to tighten up copyright law, particularly around internet copyright violations so far so good. Except that bits of it were not drafted so well and despite the Select Committee deciding, unanimously, to delete the questionable section from the proposed law the Labour government decided to keep it in.

The sections at the heart of the controversy are:

92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers

(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

At first glance this might seem a bit innocuous. However, as David Farrar points out:

The bill did not define “reasonably implement”, “appropriate circumstances” or who decides if someone “repeatedly infringes”. It also turned ISPs into an unpaid enforcement arm for copyright holders.

Farrar’s article explains the issue well citing intellectual property experts and is worth a read. Essentially, ISP’s will be subject to the threat of legal action if they allow a person who repeatedly offends to use their internet services. The problem is that without these terms being defined they simply will not know whether acting on or failing to act on a complaint subject them to legal action. Being on the wrong side of the law is costly so these providers will have to set in place fairly draconian policies to ensure they are indemnified. As the NZ Computer Society states, quoted by David Farrar, The law essentially places “ISPs in the position of potentially having to be the policeman, judge, jury and executioner in what are often vague and unclear situations”

For some people a website is a bit of fun, a creative outlet, for others it is their business, their livelihood; for all, regardless of whether it is a source of income or not, a website and its contents is the private property of its owner. When a law is passed that allows a single citizen the power to lawfully deprive or interfere with another citizen’s property on the basis of a single accusation, with no requirement for evidence and no opportunity for a hearing, a first year law student should be able to tell you there is something wrong with the law.

The National government needs to repeal this section. Like all governments they are more likely to do this if they feel there is wide spread community support (as lousy a reality as that is) so the internet community is banding together with an Internet Blackout from February 16-23 that calls the government to fix this legislation.

What is so "appalling" about tightening your belt and sorting out your own financial mess? Stuff reports:

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is tracking down the Work and Income staffer who wrote to beneficiaries telling them to take out loans to cover their debts.
After being tackled on it in Parliament, Ms Bennett said last night she was "appalled" by the "totally unacceptable" advice ...

So what was that advice? The NBR reports it as:

* Taking out loans to cover arrears;
* Pawning cellphone and children's PlayStation;
* Ringing debtors to reduce payments or refinance debt; and
* Seeking budgetary advice.

Of course spun well the advice becomes 'go to a loan shark and deprive your children of their toys' but the letter never said that, despite the headlines and the title of the Labour Party press release.

I think the advice is pretty reasonable.

As a family going through a rough financial patch, due to my recent job loss and the need for Matt to retrain this year, we have very quickly run into financial difficulties as our income has significantly dropped.

The first thing we did was take a good hard look at our budget and asked ourselves what we could live without - cell phone costs were an obvious first choice but there were a lot of other areas too. When too many things hit us in one week we pull out the credit card and then immediately make a plan to pay it off which includes an assessment of what we could sell on Trade Me and what additional things we could all go without until it was sorted.

We don't have any HP's or loans currently, but in the past when we have we have and they have gotten on top of us, we took out a debt consolidation loan and we exercised the other advice above by contacting those we owed money to and seeing what we could sort out.

None of this is of course easy or pleasant. Sherry is most peeved that we cannot buy her a new pair of jeans until we get a week without any extra costs (and even then it won't be the brand she wants) and the kids all complain that we now never take them out for hot chocolates or to places you have to pay an entry to get in anymore and that dinner is never takeaways. We are all sick of mince night after night too - though threatening them with lentils shuts them up. It is going to get worse the deeper into the year we go; we have survived it before when we spent Matt's PhD years living on a $20,000 p/a scholarship in Dunedin so we know what is coming - the lentil threat is not an idle one.

The case worker wrote the letter in question in the context of having granted the person financial assistance; it wasn't like the person was refused help. I mean, if you want a handout then I fail to see how you get to complain about getting a how-to-manage-your-money-better lecture.

Personally I wouldn't advise anyone to pawn their possessions because the money you get isn't great and the interest rates are steep but the general idea that you give up some of your less necessary items to get yourself out of the hole is not unreasonable. I am not saying sell the shirt off your back but then neither was the case worker.

Kids don't need PlayStations, adults don't need cellphones. I don't begrudge anyone on a low income having these items as we don't know the circumstances they got them in, they may have been gifts, bargains picked up on Trade Me or might have been purchased when the family was financial but you have to be able to recognise them for what they are - luxuries.

Sheridan knows that if she cannot pay for her horse this year, then she has to sell him as we cannot bail her out. Non-essentials can always be replaced no matter how attached to them we might be.

Before you put your hand in someone else's pocket would it really kill you to tighten your own belt first? People not on WINZ benefits do the sorts of things mentioned in the letter off their own bat to sort out their own messes so why shouldn't those on benefits.

The Electoral Finance Act is toast!

Shortly before 8pm tonight parliament passed the third reading of the bill to repeal it 112-9 (no prizes for guessing who voted against... how many Greens MP's are there in parliament again?).

Freedom of speech has won a significant victory. A shred of hope for the future of New Zealand looms on the horizon.

All it needs now is the Governor General's signature; David Farrar has kindly offered to give up his Tuesday night to drive it over to Vogel House.

A glass of wine is definitely in order!

Have you ever thought about those TV commercials that target drunk driving? You know, if you have had a few then take a taxi, sleepover, get a sober mate to drive you home.

Also those ones that the fire brigade do; don't drink and fry, if you are having a few drinks then order in takeaways as some huge percentage of house fires are caused by drunk cooks.

Don't drink and drive. Don't drink and fry.

Is it just me or is the problem not actually the driving or the cooking?

We have a fault on our phone line currently meaning our internet access is down, ditto our landline.

Due to being Telstra Clear customers, we cannot get this looked at until at least Monday. I am starting to seriously re-think switching back to Telecom who can get things done on weekends and who do not make you battle a computerised phone help system that misunderstands you, then refuse to allow your husband to make a faults complaint because you were the one who originally got the account set up (despite every bill being addressed to Dr and Mrs Flannagan) and then who repeatedly tells you that there is no fault, you just have left the phone off the hook (they can tell by testing the line) and you are imagining having checked every phone in your house and are mistaken when you assert this is not the case, that there must be a fault... Yes Telecom is looking very attractive right now.

Hopefully we will be back online early next week. In the mean time, our presence will be intermittent as we borrow friends computers or frequent internet cafes to maintain our sanity.

[For the benefit of our international readership: Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand; Pakeha is a term used to describe Caucasian New Zealanders; The Treaty of Waitangi is a significant founding document of our nation over which many historical and current differences have arisen around its role, interpretation and application.]

Recently I read a document that stated, “This institution seeks to honour the partnership between Pakeha and Maori that is laid down in The Treaty of Waitangi.” I have seen this type of statement numerous times before in the mission statements of many different kinds of New Zealand institutions. I think this claim is nonsense. Below I will argue why.

At the heart of this kind of statement is the notion that The Treaty of Waitangi (The Treaty) constitutes a partnership between Maori and Pakeha; Maori and Pakeha apparently entered into an agreement which contains mutual obligations.

The problem with this claim is that only persons can enter into contracts. Persons are either rational self-conscious agents, such as adult human beings or legal persons which are an organisation of rational agents into an institutional structure of some sort. One cannot enter into a contract with concrete objects that are not persons such as rocks or trees; nor can one enter into contracts with abstract objects such as the colour blue. One would have thought this was an obvious point which did not need pointing out.

‘Maori’ and ‘Pakeha,’ however, are not persons. Individual Maori people and individual Pakeha people are persons, and individuals of either race can organise themselves into an institution which will have a legal personhood separate from their own individual personhood, but the racial groups ‘Maori’ and ‘Pakeha are not persons.

The term Pakeha is an abstraction, it is simply a reference to an aggregate of individuals who share a particular genetic trait. It is false that everyone who has these genetic traits signed The Treaty. In fact, as The Treaty was signed in 1840, no individual alive today signed The Treaty. It is equally false that simply because someone with the same genetic traits as me at some point in history signed a treaty that it follows that all members of my race signed a treaty.

What is accurate is to say is that two institutions entered into an agreement, the Crown and various Maori tribes. No Pakeha individual can be identified as the crown and no Maori individual can be identified as a tribal group unless the individuals are acting in an official capacity as the agent of these institutions. Hence, no Maori or Pakeha individual is bound by The Treaty; no individual is responsible or culpable for breeches of The Treaty.

Someone might object that the Crown being the head of a representative government acts on behalf of all Pakeha and hence, Pakeha can be said to have entered into a partnership via The Treaty. I think this claim is mistaken. It assumes that whenever a government performs an action one can attribute the actions of the government to any and all private citizens of that government.

This error is precisely the error we condemn when terrorists target a civilian population. When terrorists target non-combatants they assume that because a government has unjustifiably committed aggression against them that it follows that the citizens of that government can be attacked. The principles of non-combatant immunity, however, deny this. If a state engages in aggression then the military personal who act as the state’s agents can be attacked but citizens who are not acting as agents for the state cannot be. They are innocent third parties.

Maori and Pakeha, therefore, did not enter into a partnership at the time of The Treaty was signed, and private individuals from either race have no obligations to each other under The Treaty. To suggest they do is to commit the error of attributing personhood to racial groups as opposed to individual members of that group. It suggests that the actions of one person who has a particular genetic trait can be attributed to everyone who has that trait. The implication of this is that whenever a Maori gang member commits a crime one could justly claim that ‘Maori’ committed the crime. This is of course racist and would justifiably be condemned in any other context. It should equally be condemned in the context of discussions over The Treaty of Waitangi.

Of course this is not to say that Pakeha and Maori individuals do not have duties to each other. The normal duties to not steal from each other or vandalise each others property, to refrain from rape and assault, etc still apply. These apply because these are general duties laid down by God. I am not bound to fulfil them because some other person signed a contract with a third party. Moreover these have nothing to do with race. I have a duty to not steal from a Maori individual because I have a duty to not steal from any human being. The duty would hold whether the person in question was Maori, Chinese, Persian or Tongan. The duty has nothing to do with a historical event in 1840.

Nor are my comments meant to deny that one party to The Treaty was treated unjustly and unfairly by the other. There is probably good historical evidence that they were. My comments simply point out who the parties in question are. They are not Maori and Pakeha. They were the Crown and certain Maori groups.

By all means let’s have a discussion about what the Crown should do to honour its obligations under The Treaty. I have no problem with the idea that a state should keep its obligations to other states and parties. I have no problem with the idea that government should both protect and respect the property rights of its citizens regardless of their race. I also have no problem with courts demanding the state compensate its victims if it can be proven in a court of law that the state has not done these things - one of the insidious features of the former government was its continual rejection of these principles. But stop suggesting that Maori and Pakeha are “partners” under The Treaty and that they and private individuals have obligations under it. They do not. As Dr Martin Luther King said, individuals should be judged by the content of their character not the colour of their skin.

This morning I heard the news about the fires in Victoria on the radio and I, like most people, was shocked and sobered. Like most Christians hearing the news, I stopped and prayed for the people affected.

Two years ago my parents moved from Torbay (Auckland) to Cairns after really enjoying their holidays and the people they met there. I thought of them on hearing the news but was I was immediately relieved that they do not live near the fires so I figured it would not be having a direct impact on them; however, my mother just emailed me the following:

We are all very upset here at the moment because of the dreadful fires in Victoria. Our neighbours are in the thick of it (the eleven people we had christmas dinner with, now living in Victoria). I phoned them last night and they were crying. The night before, they had their children on the floor with wet towels over them with the fire all around them. The little girl asked her father if she was going to die and he didnt know what to tell her. The fire singed their house and burned the shed of their business house and the other house was singed as well. There were 28 houses in their street and only 4 remain, (three of them our neighbours houses). They said there was a dead body in the street and it had been there all day. One of their houses was on fire but a water pipe burst and put out the fire. (We have been praying for them).

The television is giving reports up to the minute and it is all horrible; 150 confirmed dead and more to come. People burned in their cars.

Up here we have no food. There was a plane load last night into Cairns so we may get some vegies and friut up here if we are lucky. Today will be more rain and lightning.

NZ is a very safe place I am beginning to realise. Please pray for the people in Victoria.

It has been easy to forget how inhospitable Australia can be when we contemplate moving over the ditch to get away from NZ taxes and embrace the higher standard of living Australians have. These events remind us of how little money and the pursuit of material things really matter.

The Australian bush needs fire to renew itself. It is just how nature works. We live on fault lines, next to volcanoes, in flood zones, in areas prone to uncontrollable bush fires. We take risks every day when we cross the road. We think, we hope, we calculate that it won't happen to us. How terrible when it does.

My heart and prayers are with those suffering in Australia.

I just had a quick look at KiwiBlog and noted David's piece on the media not properly crediting stories broken by bloggers. This has happened to us on occaision, the Labour Moron sign springs to mind (which, since he put his head above the parapet, David himself failed to hat tip us properly on - it was our image that was published everywhere) and Matt's piece that referred to Victoria University's marketing strategy also made the news and was only properly credited back to us by one outlet.

Anyway, I thought of another recent occurance; we were recently asked to break a story by a fairly major news outlet in the US (it checked out, it was not a hoax). For some reason they wanted to be able to refer to a blog reporting it and they chose us. It was on a topic that we know very little about and would have required a lot of research to get right so we passed as we were too flat out - interesting, none the less, that a media outlet would take that strategy.

A regular reader complained over the weekend that MandM has been too quiet of late - not enough posts.

I had explained some of the reason for this in a comment, but I will do so here so it is not missed. Matt is away in Tauranga doing his teaching diploma for the next two weeks with no internet access (thought hopefully this will change as his student account gets set up). My eldest child, Sherry broke her right arm the day before Matt left (Troggy was the culprit); she is not left handed so she is unable to help much. My next oldest has Aspergers Syndrome so not much can be asked of him and the younger two are 8 and 7 - they generally make more mess than they help. So, I am taking care of 4 children and running the house and home educating 3 of them, whilst injured, pretty much single-handedly this week (and last week).

This is somewhat exhausting so finding time to think, energy and pain-free moments to blog is somewhat challenging especially as due to being sore and exhausted I am not keeping up with current events or entering the blogosphere.

In my last two posts, I have criticised David Brink's appeal to scripture in order to argue against the appeal to divine commands in ethics. Brink anticpates the kind of argument I have offered and states,

A common theistic response to these interpretative puzzles is to endorse the interpretation of tradition and scripture that yields the morally more defensible conception of divine will. This moralized approach to interpretation makes good sense for the theist ... God's omnscience and perfect goodness ensure that his will perfectly tracks all morally relevant facts. But, on this conception of interpretation, so far from our knowledge of God's will supplying evidence about the nature of morality, it is our beliefs about the nature of morality that are supplying evidence about God's will. The moralized interpretation of religious scripture and tradition shows religion to be dependent on morality, rather than morality dependent on religion.1

Brink raises several issues here. First, he refers to a “moralized” interpretation of scripture. As I noted in my previous posts, however, it was not primarily moral concerns that motivated this interpretation of The Torah, it was also such things as understanding the Genre, the context, the cultural milleniu into which The Torah speaks. That said, I do agree with Brink that if one interpretation of divine commands coheres better with our moral intiutions than another then that fact constitutes evidence for the former interpretation. All else being equal, an interpretation that coheres with out pre-theoritical moral intuitions is always preferable.

Second, Brink assumes that his conception makes “religion to be dependent on morality, rather then morality to be dependent on religion.” By dependent here, Brink means epistemologically dependent, adopting it that “so far from our knowledge of God's will supplying evidence about the nature of morality, it is our beliefs about the nature of morality that are supplying evidence about God's will.” Brink's contention is that if I rely on my antecedant moral beliefs to test purported interpretations of God's will then religion is (epsitemically) dependent on morality. I think Brink is mistaken. in fact this claim contradicts the very method that he advocates in constructing a secular ethical theory.

In setting out his methodology, Brink draws a distinction between particular moral claims “as in the claim that it would be wrong for Ben to break his promise to Sam” and rules “as in the claim that one ought to keep one's promises.”2 Brink distinguishes rules from principles which are more general still.3 Brink suggests that there may be “a plurality” of basic principles or “there might be only one master principle, such as the principle of utilitity-which demands that one ought to perform actions that promote human happiness-or Kant's categorical imperative-which demands that one always treat rational agents as ends in themselves and never merely as means.”4 Brink goes on to note that there is an asymetrical dependence relationship between moral claims at these levels. Particular moral actions are made right or wrong in virtue of general rules, and general rules are made right and wrong in virtue of principles.

Brink goes on to note, correctly, that this does not entail that we always gain knowledge of what is wrong in the particular case from our knowledge of what is wrong in more general cases. Brink notes that “asymetrical metaphysical dependence does not imply asymetrical epsitemic dependence” this is of course entirely correct; I made the same point in my post, On a Common Equivocation. Brink states that in some instances he is more certain that “the holocaust was wicked” than he is “about the truth of utilitarianism or Kant's categorical imperative.” One way to determine which principles are correct is to test them against particular cases.

Brink affirms that “this conclusion suggests a methodology for secular moral theory”5 which is that,

We can try to resolve uncertainty or disagreement at more particular levels of moral thought by trying to find plausible or common ground at a more general level. But we can also try and resolve uncertainty or disagreement at a more general level by testing the implications of a potential moral principle for particular case against our own independent assesment of those cases.6

Brink refers to this method as “dialectical equilibrium,”7

If a principle has counter intuitive implications, this counts against it. But if this counter intuitive implication is fairly isolated, and the principle explains our views better than alternative principles, then this is reason to revise the particular moral judgment or moral rule that conflicted with the principle. Ideally, we modify our principle, considered moral convictions, and other views in response to conflicts, as coherence seems to require, until our ethical views are in dialectical equilibrium.... As such, we have some reasonable expectation that any acceptable theory should accommodate many of our considered moral convictions. On the other hand, dialectical equilibrium is an ideal that none of us now meets and we can at most approximate. Therefore, we should expect dialectical equilibrium to force some revisions in our moral beliefs, and its hard to say in advance just how revisionary the moral principles with the best dialectical fit would be.8 [Emphasis added]

Note that dialectical equilibrium allows our antecedant moral judgements to test, revise and correct theoritical beliefs about the nature of morality. But it also allows theoritical beliefs to correct one's moral judgements. Brink insists on this fact, a moral theory must accommodate many of our considered judgements but he also acknowledges that we would expect a moral theory to also force revisions of some of them. Moreover, one cannot say in advance “how revisionary the moral principles with the best dialectical fit would be.”

Now I think something like what Brink proposes here is probably correct and something like this method is widely accepted ethical methodology. What Brink seems to not notice, however, is that this methodology is inconsistent his contention of a “moralized interpretation of religious scripture and tradition shows religion to be dependent on morality, rather than morality to be dependent on religion.” Suppose, as Brink points out, people do rely on their antecedant moral beliefs to test and revise purported interpretations of what God commands. This is quite compatible with them also using beliefs about God's commands to “force revision” of their antecedant moral beliefs. In fact, on Brink's account, this is compatible with substantive revision of our antecedant moral beliefs on the basis of God's commands. In many instances then, one's knowledge of God's commands will be prior to and the basis for one's knowledge of right and wrong.

1 David O Brink “The Autonomy of Ethics” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, ed Michael Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 159.
2 Ibid 155.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid 156.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.

RELATED POSTS:
Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 1
Capital Punishment in the Old Testament: 2

Here are the top 10 NZ Christian blogs based on HalfDone's NZ blog stats for January; these stats are used in the calculations for the MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for January 09:

1. NZ Conservative 7
2. Something Should Go Here, Maybe Later (HalfDone)14
3. Keeping Stock 23
4. MandM 25
5. The Briefing Room 27
6. Samuel Dennis 50
7. Put up Thy Sword 52
8. Contra Celsum 72
9. Kiwi Polemicist 89
10. Say Hello to my Little Friend (Beretta Blog) 98

Top 10 Half Done. name of blog Half Done rank

Of Note:

• There are now 6 Christian blogs in the top 50.
• Welcome Keeping Stock.

Other Christian blogs making the top 200 NZ blogs on Public Discourse but outside the top 10:

Gavin Knight 104
Blessed Economist 127
Section 59 Blog 142
NZ Debate 157
Stu's a-Musings (Definitive) 175
The Voice of Reason NZ N/A

Note: This list only includes Christian blogs that openly identify as Christian blogs on Tumeke's rankings. If you think your blog should be on the MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blogs rankings contact Tim Selwyn of Tumeke and ask him to change your blog description to include something identifiably Christian on his rankings. More here.

Once Tumeke's January stats are out we will compare and average the two sets of results and publish the overall MandM top 10 NZ Christian Blog rankings for Janurary 09.