Stephen Hawking, Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, retired last year after 30 years in the job.

Professor Hawking has been a larger-than-life figure in some ways – an expert in fields too tricky for most of us — like quantum theory, black holes and dark matter.

And his heroic courage, in battling on despite being crippled by muscular dystrophy, has been admirable.

Hawking has become a bit of a celebrity.

So if he decided to write a book with a catchy title, plus a hint of controversy, it couldn’t fail to sell — even if it was no good.

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Professor Hawking’s new book entitled “The Grand Design” goes on sale next week.

Some controversy has been engineered by leaking a few seemingly bold quotes, like:

“Because there is a law such as Gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing . . . It is not necessary to invoke God . . . .”

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Pretty simplistic stuff – but likely to appeal to TV-watchers and Dawkins-readers.

He’s asking us to choose between God and the Laws of Physics, as if they necessarily contradict each other. But do they?

Hawking’s argument rests on a dogma that there is a basic conflict between Science and Religion. But is there?

Science is handy for answering certain kinds of questions — about electricity and matter and energy and those black holes . . . .

Not very basic questions.

More fundamental questions are beyond science to answer.

Like, for example, why isn’t there nothing?

* * *

Believers in God believe that if there had ever been Nothing, there would still be Nothing.

(Real Nothing can never turn into Something)

Believers believe that there was always an original Something — Something whose existence needs no input from outside itself.

(We exist because of our parents. We didn’t make ourselves. They didn’t make themselves . . . .)

The Bible says, “Ask the beasts, they will teach you.  And the birds of the air, they will tell.  Speak to the earth and it will give answer . . . Who can be ignorant that the Lord made these things . . . ?”  (Job, chapter 12)

This blog recently recommended readers to consider voting DLP. * 

Many people did. Throw in a bit of apparent good luck with preferences — and it happened.

Now John Madigan is a Senator-elect.

What is the Democratic Labor Party all about?

* * *

(1) History

Those interested in Labor Party history know that a good case can be made for considering the DLP the genuine continuing Australian Labor Party.

The present so-called ALP being a (big) splinter-group that split off and took over through a series of dirty deeds at, and following, the party’s 1955 National Conference in Hobart.

On that occasion, a number of anti-Communist ALP members, mainly Catholics, were expelled from the party in a manner contrary to the ALP constitution.

The DLP was formed by those excluded — with policies of anti-Communism, more government funding for Catholic schools, increased defence spending, non-recognition of Communist China etc.

At its peak, the DLP got as many as 11 percent of the primary Senate vote.

But by the late 70s, the DLP hardly existed.

Recently there has been a come-back. Last Saturday the DLP obtained between 2 and 3 percent of the primary vote in Victoria.

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(2) Policies

The DLP is a pro-family party. It supports the freedom of families to decide their own pattern of early care of children and of the education they receive. This means freedom from financial punishment against stay-at-home full-time mums – and against those sending children to non-government schools, or home-schooling.

The DLP opposes abortion and euthanasia.

As the name suggests, the DLP advocates actual democracy – as opposed to today’s fake pseudo-democracy. This includes the setting up of a “Citizens Initiated Referendum” system, applying to all levels of government (federal, state and local).

The DLP supports re-establishing a Federal Development Bank, diversifying and resurrecting our export industries, encouraging import-replacing industries, building new dams for secure water supply and flood control etc.

Read more at their website at: www.dlp.org.au/index.php?page=alias

* * *

Don’t these sound like more sensible policies than those of the big two (or big three) parties?

(* See: www.marymackillop.org/a-spectre-is-haunting-australia-the-spectre-of-the-greens-party)

The Australian Federal Government in 2008 set up a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies.

The Centre has run workshops — and now published a booklet—on the theme of “Bringing Muslim Perspectives into Australian Schools”.

All paid for by you and me out of our taxes.

* * *

Their booklet complains that Australian school textbooks mostly have “a western or European perspective”.

Why not? Our system of government is based on ideas brought here from Christian countries in Europe — and Islamic refugees arrive here by the boatful seeking to escape the “benefits” of Muslim culture, hoping instead  to reside somewhere with a western, Christian-oriented, worldview or perspective.

The booklet does NOT mention that in many Muslim-majority nations women are stoned to death for adultery and young girls undergo female circumcision.

* * *

The booklet claims that Muslims worship “the same God that was worshipped by Abraham, Moses and Jesus.”

This is false. The God of Catholics is a Trinity. God, who is one and unique in his infinite nature is three really distinct persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This understanding is unacceptable to Muslims who dismiss it as blasphemy.

* * *

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the  Australian government to fund a Centre for Excellence in Catholic Studies.

When Mr Abbott yesterday merely said his coalition might enable parents of Catholic school children to claim school fees as a tax deduction, there was a “furious” response from the Australian Education Union, which called the plan ”regressive”.

Australians need to understand that any education not explaining our world in terms of being created by a Creator, who created us and all things out of love, and who has come to this world in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who is both God and man . . . .

Any education leaving out this foundation for all other knowledge is a form of child-neglect, cruelly unjust to the young.

In 2008, more than 200 girls aged 15 and under had abortions in Victoria.

Some without the parents’ knowledge.

Some were aged 12.

One abortionist told reporters the biggest increase has been among 14-year-olds “copying what they see on television”.

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When asked by abortionists, ‘Did you agree to this?’ such girls tend to say, ‘. . . I didn’t really want to, but I didn’t know how to say no’.

The spokeswoman for one abortion business commented, “One third had their first experience at age 14 years or younger, yet almost one in 10 say they have not been taught sex ed at school.”

One shudders to think what kind of sex education such a person thinks they ought to have.

Can you imagine what kind of message would be in sex education approved of by organisations specialising in aborting babies?

* * *

The Federal Government is said to be planning a new national sex education curriculum for primary and secondary schools, but the package is some years away.

With Julia Gillard in charge, we can only hope it never happens at all.

Recall how, when Tony Abbott said last January that women should not give away their virginity too easily, Gillard said, “These comments will confirm the worst fears of Australian women about Tony Abbott.”

How could any sane human being say such a thing?

Or any insane one, for that matter?

* * *

It is embarrassing to live in a country which has this person as Prime Minister.

It will be doubly so if, after her being dumped on us without our having any choice, we are gormless enough to vote her back in.

It’s a worry to think that one lives in a country where people with her views can get pre-selected.

And to think that she would get even one vote — let alone enough votes to be elected.

J Gillard doesn’t believe in God.

With such an ostrich-like view of the created world in general, how could she have a balanced opinion about anything?

(Source: Herald Sun, 21/11/2009)

Australia’s new National History Curriculum has been criticised as being political propaganda in disguise.

It certainly pushes Aboriginal, anti-Catholic and/or environmentalist (“sustainability”) perspectives.

No harm in mentioning Aboriginal traditions, of course. They are nearly 3 percent of our population. Perhaps they should occupy about 3 percent of the history course.

But Aboriginal issues receive coverage at great length — their “struggles for recognition and equality” etc.

“Christianity” is mentioned just twice.

* * *

The website video * about this curriculum says there will be “less in it”, but it will be “more explicit”. Poor brainwashed kids.

One of the boffins on the video explains why the curriculum must ignore our Christian and European heritage.

The content must appeal, he says, to a student whose refugee family has just arrived from Sudan, or elsewhere, which may have a non-Christian background.

Perhaps it would interest such students to learn why they are safer here.

What it is about Australia that makes them less likely to be beheaded here, or for their mother/sister to be raped here, or why our next change of government may not be accompanied by shootings in the streets.

* * *

History classes should take a good look at mediaeval Europe.

Health, education and welfare workers then required no wages — they were religious brothers, priests and nuns. 

Unpaid: their life consisted of saying their prayers, tilling the soil to feed themselves — the rest being free for healing, teaching and helping.

Celibate: they didn’t have to divide their time between God’s work and family ties.

The day is overdue for the Church to again create a new God-centred society inside (and in competition with) the present crumbling, anti-God shambles we call contemporary society.

For starters, we would need lots of people becoming priests, brothers and nuns — traditional ones, not trendy ones.

It will happen – but not until young people realise that being in religious orders is an alternative lifestyle, different, unconventional — a full-time sharing the divine life of God. 

That isn’t the message they’re getting at present.

They’ll get it even less from the propaganda onslaught looming when the Gillardians take education over completely.

(* www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Home)

Years ago, when our family lived in Fiji, there was a tremendous mango tree at the back of our compound.

I estimated it to be roughly 60 feet tall. Later I discovered that it was exactly 80 feet.

How did I come to be so sure?

It fell over. Then it could be measured as it lay on the ground.

Impressive as it had outwardly appeared, the tree was white-anted inside.

That’s why during one hurricane season it bit the dust . . . .

* * *

With books it can be the other way round.

Inside the book may be great, but its outer cover can white-ant the message before the reader even gets inside.

A set of three books containing more or less everything surviving that Mary MacKillop wrote in her lifetime has just been published.

The cover of Volume One promises us an insight into “Mary MacKillop’s mission to set up a group of women . . . who could make a positive contribution to the world through education and support for human dignity”.

Sounds plausible . . . .

But in fact that was NOT Mary MacKillop’s mission.

* * *

The mission for which Mother Mary’s Order’s existed was stated in its original “Rule”, drafted by Father Julian Tenison Woods.

The first section, entitled “The Objects of the Institute” said (in part): “Since those persons who enter religion do so first of all for the salvation of their own souls, the Sisters of St Joseph must never forget that they come to give themselves wholly to God. They must belong completely to him. Their whole desire must be to love God and to love nothing else . . . .”

This hierarchy of priorities came to assume practical importance.

Sometimes priests and others made so many demands on the Sisters that it interfered with them finding time for their regular prayers.

Mother Mary challenged one such priest: “Are we not Religious first — Teachers second?”

* * *

Are today’s Josephite Sisters preoccupied, first and foremost, with worldly matters of schooling, human rights etc.?

If so, perhaps they should emulate their founder by putting those worthy issues second – and putting the defence of Catholic Tradition first.