ABORIGINAL Dreamtime stories, originally included in the Science Curriculum of Mr Rudd’s proposed National Curriculum, are to be removed.

Year 4 students were to hear “historical examples of different cultures, knowledge about the national environment and living things, for example, Aboriginal peoples’ Dreamtime Stories, that explain significant characteristics of the Earth’s surface and interactions between living things”.

Professor David McGaw, of the Curriculum Assessment Authority, says the Dreamtime stories must go — he hadn’t realised they were included in the science course until seeing media  reports last week:

“I’m a science graduate and a former science teacher. Dreamtime is a religious or spiritual interpretation of the beginnings of life. It shouldn’t be in the science curriculum, and we’re going to take it out. For the same reason, we wouldn’t let Intelligent Design or Creationism be included.”

* * *

Will Professor McGaw, in fairness, be deleting Evolution – another “religious or spiritual interpretation” – as well?

This blog has no beef with people wanting to believe in “evolution” . . . as explained on March 3.

In fact evolution is obvious – provided we stick to what the word “evolution” means in English — i.e. “a gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex form”, or more literally, “an opening out of what was rolled up”.

It’s some of the atheistic, agnostic, anti-God tit-bits, that evo-fans sneak in as part of the supposed meaning of “evolution”, which make the term suspect as part of a science course.

Professor McGaw said schools will be free to teach Dreamtime stories, Intelligent Design etc., in other classes, such as religion. Does not most of what usually passes as “Evolution” merit similar relegating?

* * *

Meanwhile it’s going to be hard to stop people doing what they’ve always done — to look at the night sky and say, “Yes, I believe in a Creator who made all this – and who is a rewarder of good and a punisher of evil.”

As the Bible says, going back 2500 years at least, “The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the skies announce what his hands have made. Day after day they tell the story. Night after night they tell it again.” (Psalm 19)

Professor Richard Dawkins is in Australia again.

He’s promoting his new book, “The Greatest Show on Earth”, which, he says, sums up the evidence for the fact of evolution.

His previous book, “The God Delusion”, sold well and the new one will doubtless be a clone of it.

Professor Dawkins will be addressing whoever turns up at Sydney Opera House next Sunday, 2pm.

* * *

Most Australians aren’t enthusiastic about evolution. They doubt whether intelligent human beings emerged from the mud of prehistoric swamps without some kind of a “guiding hand”.

Most Australians aren’t very enthusiastic about organised religion, either.

In this latter fact Dr Dawkins sees his chance of marketing yet another “pro-evolution, anti-God” book.

* * *

But both Dr Dawkins and the Aussie punter are making the same fundamental error of logic which renders any conversation between them worthless, logic-wise.

 *  the average evolution-skeptic probably doesn’t know that his/her thoughts are illogical

 *  Dr Dawkins probably does know – but he doesn’t care. He’s on a mission to stigmatise God and everybody who believes in God. He intends to succeed, no matter what tactics he must stoop to.

So what is this logical boo-boo that both sides of the debate (non-debate) have fallen into?

* * *

Both parties assume that if the evidence shows that we developed from the same ancestors as other animals (apes etc.) then there cannot be a God.

Once you put this down in simple words like that, it’s clearly nonsense.

* * *

A few days after the destruction of the New York World Trade Centre, this Professor Dawkins blamed the disaster on “religion” — calling religion “a ready-made system of mind control which teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end”.

He was referring to how young persons can be persuaded to blow themselves up if convinced it is a certain way to enter heaven.

Another dishonest argument:

What he says may or may not be true about the “religion” of Islam.

It is NOT true about the religion of Jesus Christ.

Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd, said last Wednesday that he personally favours a 21-year old minimum legal drinking age, quoting links between Australia’s high P-plater road deaths and alcohol-swallowing.

But is it not probable that most teenage drunks will vote Labor (if still alive when next election happens)?

And likewise most people who sell alcohol?

It is hard, under Australia’s present form of “democracy”, to imagine any major party – especially Rudd’s so-called “Labor” — doing anything real to upset either of those two interest groups.

* * *

Federal Opposition leader, Mr Abbott, commented that 18-year olds drinking is OK with him, because he is not a “wowser”.

Deep stuff, eh?

* * *

The scientific evidence about drinking ages and alcohol-related mayhem is, of course, well and truly in.

Professor Ian Hickie, at Sydney University’s Brain and Mind Research Institute, really does want legal alcohol drinking ages raised to 21 — on the basis of research showing that young people’s brains are particularly susceptible to alcohol damage.

Also the US experience, which provides further evidence –- in those states which have raised their drinking age to 21, accidents and violence involving youths having fallen . . . .

* * *

Both sides of Australian politics are carefully testing the water. Could it be that winning the next election is almost as important to both of them as is doing the right thing — i.e. preventing teenage deaths?

* * *

Once again, the Church isn’t much help.

Two generations ago, when young Catholics celebrated their Confirmation, they were encouraged to sign an undertaking not to drink before turning 21. Many adhered to that promise.

Will that excellent practice ever be re-introduced?

Or would Church leaders need to “test the water” too – so as not to offend anybody – pretty much like a bunch of politicians?

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Two recent news items regarding so-called “emergency contraception”:

(1) Researchers now claim that a new morning-after pill has been shown to prevent pregnancy when used up to five days after sex — longer than any “protection” developed so far.

(2) Pentagon officials have decided to require all U.S. military bases around the world to provide abortifacient (“morning-after” or “plan-B” or “emergency contraception”) pills for the troops.

* * *

These kinds of pills will abort a newly-conceived embryo by preventing its implantation into the wall of the mother’s womb.

Their manufacturers prefer to call what they do “contraception” rather than “abortion”, knowing that some people are a bit funny about abortion — even thinking it is wrong – which could be bad for sales. They try to claim that pregnancy begins at implantation, not at fertilisation of the egg.

Everybody knows, of course, that from the moment the DNA from the sperm and the egg unite, they form a new and unique human being — nothing further being added by implantation.

Other problems with “morning-after” pills include the fact that they are useless in preventing sexually-transmitted diseases . . . .

One might have hoped the military would focus on discipline and proper behaviour — because lives depend on it — rather than promoting risky activities.

* * *

In the earliest days of contraceptive and similar pills, Pope Paul VI warned that contraception leads inevitably to practical atheism and irresponsible deeds.

You cannot defy the natural law and still have a relationship with the Creator of that law.

In Pope Paul’s words:

“If we do not want the mission of procreating human life to be conceded to the arbitrary decisions of men, we need to recognise that there are some limits to the power of man over his own body and over the natural operations of the body, which ought not to be transgressed.”

Having decided to ignore that warning, modern man (and woman) are now badly bogged down in a morass of unnatural, bizarre and sub-human technologies — such as in-vitro fertilization, cloning, genetic manipulation, and destroying human embryos in cold blood for certain kinds of stem cell research.

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2010 is the 50^th anniversary of the “contraceptive” Pill coming onto the market.

The advent of the Pill changed human history.

It ended the era, dating from the beginning of time, during which matters relating to sex were spoken of mainly in private — even bashfully. The new epoch of discussing it boldly at every opportunity had arrived.

Likewise it ended the age of considering the principle of contraception (interfering with the act of sex so as to deliberately make it sterile) to be unnatural. From the 1960s, it became increasingly a matter of little moral consequence one way or the other.

The main motivation for one’s actions, sexual and otherwise, switched from being something to be accounted for to God and to others, especially one’s family, to being a matter of doing what turns one on, and the others could get used to it.

* * *

Yet the new age of self-indulgence turned out less of a triumph for carefree liberty and licence than some had hoped.

It was noticed that women and girls taking the Pill were more at risk, not only of behaviour-related sexually transmitted disease, but also of breast cancer, cervix cancer, blood clots and — now they are telling us — of weak bones (osteoporosis) as well.

* * *

And after the Pill became available, Pope Paul VI reiterated the Church’s opposition to artificial contraception, warning that the Pill would lead to “marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards.”  

This was in his famous encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae, published on 25 July 1968.

Humanae Vitae  is a good read. It can be found at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html

* * *

Pope Paul’s comments were initially pooh-poohed as scare-mongering. But, if anything, he under-stated the dangers. Hasn’t the whole concept of marriage as the institution keeping our families and our society stable, now been largely lost?

Even mentioning that marriage is better than de facto relationships or casual sex or same-sex coupling today risks accusations of “discrimination”, “hate-crime” etc.

Research published in this month’s Journal of the American Heart Association reveals that:

* the average Australian watches television three hours  per day

* every extra hour a day spent watching television increases one’s risk of death from heart disease by 18 percent

* those watching four hours a day have an 80 percent higher heart death risk than those watching two hours or less.

Most people wouldn’t be surprised by these figures — we know television is bad for us.

Why do we watch it then?

Are we addicted to it?

* * *

In a 1970s study, 182 German families agreed to stop watching television for a year and were offered money if they succeeded.

None lasted beyond six months. All suffered anxiety, depression etc., and had to start watching again, just to feel “normal”.

That’s true addiction — compulsive, self-harmful behaviour, without which the user can’t feel normal.

And there’s a side to every person which enjoys seeing human nature at its worst. Television brings this tendency to the surface.

Health problems and physical death aren’t the worst aspects of television.

* * *

The answer is never to watch television at all.

That would make your day three hours longer.

You could comfortably fit in an hour of praying, an hour of useful reading and an hour of silent contemplation in God’s presence.

If you could teach yourself to do that, you might increase your chances of being an unselfish and loving person here on earth by several hundred percent.

And improve your chances of being found fit to spend eternity with God by an infinite amount.