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Secularism Plus, Syria, and more.
Dec. 17th, 2016 11:55 pmToday was a policy meeting for the Victorian Secular Lobby with a presentation on Section 116 of the Australian Constitution by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saithkar. Not a heavily attended meeting but with a remarkable and genuine set of apologies which were graciously accepted. Secularism is, of course, one of my great loves - to develop public policy without a deliberate and willful non-consideration of metaphysical claims or applying special cases to religious institutions. Historically of course it has focussed on the separation of religious policy from public policy, and indeed there is plenty of work to be done there. But increasingly I am of the opinion that secularism should also mean use evidence-based research.
Case in point is this continuing conflict in Syria, which illustrates that secularism is necessary but not sufficient for a free and democratic society. The Baathist regime is more-or-less secular and even sometimes slips into fundamentalist atheism. When it comes to being responsible for causing the war crimes associated with civilian deaths, it is the secular fascists rather than the religious fascists (ISIL, Army of Conquest etc) that carry the overwhelming majority of the blame. Still, it should be clear by now that Russia and Syria are utterly indfferent to such things; they and their supporters have also been very indifferent to having a degree of veracity with two of their major public proponents, Bashar Jaafari lying to the UN, along with Lady Haw-Haw Eva Bartlett on war victims being "recycled". So whilst the Assadists are cheering on the carnage, Amnesty International has opened up for donations.
Other events of the week; Linux Users of Victoria on today with a report from the Internet Governance Forum, playtest sessions of Papers and Paycheckes on Wednesday night and Eclipse Phase on Friday night, along with sending interview questions to Rob Boyle for the next issue of RPG Review. Was supposed to go totxxxpxx's gala event tonight (and even made one of my amazing tiramisu for said occasion, but caseopaya has fallen ill, so we'll be missing that. In the work space, big events of the week included finally getting Gaussian and Julia installed, albeit the latter in not in the manner I would prefer. The great success (perhaps too successful) of Spartan apparently is reaching the ears of upper management who are open to the prospect of expansion - which would make sense for one of the world's top ranking universities (as they constantly remind us). Let us see what 2017 brings.
saithkar. Not a heavily attended meeting but with a remarkable and genuine set of apologies which were graciously accepted. Secularism is, of course, one of my great loves - to develop public policy without a deliberate and willful non-consideration of metaphysical claims or applying special cases to religious institutions. Historically of course it has focussed on the separation of religious policy from public policy, and indeed there is plenty of work to be done there. But increasingly I am of the opinion that secularism should also mean use evidence-based research.Case in point is this continuing conflict in Syria, which illustrates that secularism is necessary but not sufficient for a free and democratic society. The Baathist regime is more-or-less secular and even sometimes slips into fundamentalist atheism. When it comes to being responsible for causing the war crimes associated with civilian deaths, it is the secular fascists rather than the religious fascists (ISIL, Army of Conquest etc) that carry the overwhelming majority of the blame. Still, it should be clear by now that Russia and Syria are utterly indfferent to such things; they and their supporters have also been very indifferent to having a degree of veracity with two of their major public proponents, Bashar Jaafari lying to the UN, along with Lady Haw-Haw Eva Bartlett on war victims being "recycled". So whilst the Assadists are cheering on the carnage, Amnesty International has opened up for donations.
Other events of the week; Linux Users of Victoria on today with a report from the Internet Governance Forum, playtest sessions of Papers and Paycheckes on Wednesday night and Eclipse Phase on Friday night, along with sending interview questions to Rob Boyle for the next issue of RPG Review. Was supposed to go to
txxxpxx's gala event tonight (and even made one of my amazing tiramisu for said occasion, but caseopaya has fallen ill, so we'll be missing that. In the work space, big events of the week included finally getting Gaussian and Julia installed, albeit the latter in not in the manner I would prefer. The great success (perhaps too successful) of Spartan apparently is reaching the ears of upper management who are open to the prospect of expansion - which would make sense for one of the world's top ranking universities (as they constantly remind us). Let us see what 2017 brings.