Indeed; despite the impression everyone has of the Labor and Liberal parties, it needs to remembered that a large part of Labor's base are the teachers and nurses unions, and these are people who want roads (for their jobs). The Liberals have neither ideological nor practical reason to oppose public transport, only to oppose publicly-owned public transport, but seeing as Melbourne's PT is already privatised under their model, the only risk from the Liberals is that once they leave it'll look the same as it did before. Which (modulo a handful of "better late than never" extensions and a disfunctional billion dollar plus "smart" card system) is what Labor's legacy looks like.

(I admit, I do Labor a disservice, but they other improvements they've made have entirely been reactive. They have put money into maintenance and other such features only after the system begins to break down. If Labor cared about having a functional PT system--desparately needed in Melbourne for our economy to work--they would be ordering trains that worked in Australian weather conditions...)

Yes, I've been in Kyrgyzstan in November before and it was much the same. Now I'm in Germany, and my office has a broken thermostat that can't be fixed until next summer, so I get the very same fun! (In principle I should be able to turn the radiator off for an hour or two and on again, acting as a manual thermostat. That would be fine. Except that in practice the freaking knob won't even turn to the off position.)

Mind you, I was at home in August, where it was winter, and I couldn't even close the window to keep what little body heat I generated in the room.

Thanks for your comments about Torricelli; I had never heard of that before. Considering your standard of proof, you'll have to excuse me if I don't take that point as demonstrated on your word alone; but neither can I challenge it at this point.

Concerning Gallileo, the point is that he was fully allowed to do research on helicentrism and publish his findings, so long as he didn't go beyond the science. He went beyond the science and made claims he could not back up; in doing so, he also very deliberately insulted his secular ruler and a man who thought they were friends. To use Gallileo as an example of unethical behavior by the Catholic Church (according to modern standards) is perfectly true; I don't think they should've acted the way they did. To use it as an example of Catholic opposition to learning is more than a little ironic.

The Catholic Church isn't arguing for 100% abstinence (well, except amongst people they reckon have been given the "Gift" of celibacy). They're arguing for sex only between married partners. The Catholic Church is not opposed to sex per se. (It's like alcohol. They actually require people to drink some. But they consider drunkness a sin because of the problems it can lead to. And likewise, they see that sex as safe only if it's inside marriage.) In any case, it's not really that relevant to the claim of whether or not the Catholic Church is opposed to learning. They don't accept the claim that contraception and sex outside of marriage are morally neutral; they think they're wrong. They have an extensive body of thought to argue the point. You might not agree with their conclusions—you probably disagree with their premises—but that doesn't mean they're opposed to learning. How many scientific findings have been the result of differences of opinion!

And likewise the Catholic Church doesn't accept that abortion is morally and ethical acceptable, and they certainly don't think it should be legal. You can perhaps introduce the claim that the US government is/was anti-learning because they have had a policy of not funding fetal stem cell research, while permitting abortion. But the Catholic Church's opposition to fetal stem cell research is completely compatible and in fact the only logical conclusion from the position on abortion. The Catholic Church is strong on "the ends don't justify the means", but as long as the means are fine, you can do whatever life-saving research you want.

If you want to continue this discussion, please drop the examples where the learning of the Catholic Church has resulted in them acting on a different opinion than you hold. Also remember that you'll need to indict the Eastern and Oriental orthodox churches and at the very least one of the larger protestant churches, rather than the relatively small and certainly recent phenomenon of American fundamentalism. If you can't do that, I won't have time to respond to your points because it'll be evident I'm just dealing with an ignorant anti-Catholic bigot. (Although I do intend to look up about Torricelli and vacuums, so this discussion hasn't been a complete waste.)

A lot of bigoted American evangelicals don't consider Catholics to be Christian, as amusing as that is. The same goes for Jehova's Witnesses and Mormons. I agree that Muslims aren't all that different from Christians, but Muslims do not believe Christ was divine. Cake please.

No cake for you. If Muslims were Christians, they wouldn't be the Christians who don't believe Jesus=Christ is divine. For instance, the Jehovah's Witnesses and Unitarians. Did you really think it'd be that easy?

And if you're trying to use a standard where Catholics aren't Christian, then there never was a thousand year period of Christendom, so the entire statement is meaningless.

Yes you can weasel out of the dark ages by picking a few minor advancements (mostly in warfare) and saying "look, that's *something*!", but really, there was a thousand years of not much.

Christendom != Western Europe and learning != science. Thank you, come again.

If you really think Christianity is a religion of learning, I'd invite you to remember Galileo, Torricelli, Darwin, the Vatican's stance on the efficacy of condoms in preventing AIDS and toward biotechnology in general.

Okay, I will.

Galileo was a case of a socially incompetent engineer who came up with a brilliant way to fuck himself up in the complicated political situation of his day. Remember that heliocentrism was reintroduced to western thought by a Catholic clergyman and that Galileo had nowhere near the evidence he needed at the time to counter the perfectly rational objections to his theory; the Catholic Hierarchy was asking for that more than for him to "toe the line". If you really want, I could come up with examples when the general scientific community rejected theories that are now accepted and ostracised their promoters, because there wasn't the evidence. The first examples I can come up with are the Big Bang and continental drift.

Darwin, Lamarck, and all the other people who have derived theories of evolution have faced a certain degree of hostility from some Christians. But like I just pointed out, people who have proposed scientific theories have faced hostility from scientists, and on the other hand many people who promoted these ideas were members of the Church. Opposition to evolution of any sort has generally been limited to a small minority of Christians who simply happen to be very loud in America. I think everyone would be better off if they just ignored those idiots, instead of encouraging them by falsely pretending their ideas have any widespread currency in religion. (Darwin was a bit of an odd one out here, because the others are or presumably are referring to the Catholic Church. Of course, the Catholic Church has inherited a long tradition of non-literal interpretations of the creation story (including instantaneous and continuous), a position which is strictly speaking biblical beacause there are at least two contradictory creation stories, maning it is absolutely necessary if you believe in divine inspiration that at least one version is meant to be interpreted non-literally.)

I've never heard of Torricelli. I just checked up on Wikipedia, and it has no reference to his relationship with the Catholic Church. He apparently died at the age of 39, which is suspiciously young, but there's no explanation as to why. If he was executed for his scientific views though, why doesn't anyone talk about that? For him, I will reserve my judgement. (I have assumed you refer to the Italian physicist and contemporary of Gallileo.)

As to the Vatican's teaching on AIDS, I really can see no way that you can claim that you are more likely to get AIDS if you don't have sex, than if you have sex with condoms—which in practice let one or two women in ten have babies every year, mostly through improper use.

Concerning biotechnology, and I assume you refer to the Catholic Church's position in particular on stem cell research, to pretend that there is any sort of scientific conclusion about ethics and personhood demonstrates a distressing level of ignorance of science and ethics. In any case, the Catholic Church is certainly interested in promoting learning if it helps people live—but not if it requires killing what they reckon are people first.

There. Satisfied? Well, I guess not, because I have opinions that follow the evidence instead of knee-jerk anti-Catholicism.

The crusades, spanish inquisition etc were things we saw so inhumane that were done in the name of religion. Without religion or at least a one god religion there would have been a better chance people wouldn't have stood for it (or at least there would be more resistance than there was).

Absolute nonsense.

Australia (Christian, mix of Catholics and Protestants) went to war against Germany (Christian, mix of Catholics and Protestants) in 1938 for basically the same reasons as England and France fought the Muslims: Because We were already at war with Them. And millions of people died because of it. The fact that you don't agree with the moral premises of the people doesn't mean you can blame it on Christianity, because it's obviously the case that the moral premises behind the war aren't intrinsic to Christianity.

And you'll find that the Tamil Tigers conducted 168 suicide attacks between 1980 and 2000 (so says WP, quoting Jane's Information Group). Their ideology was nationalism (i.e. something intrinsically temporal) and socialism and Marxism i.e. an ideology that is in fact atheist. Suicide attacks! for absolutely no personal gain—because they'll be dead and they don't believe in the hereafter. (And, if it makes a difference, the Tamil Tigers killed over 24,000 people in 27 years. The Spanish Inquisition killed probably less than 5,000 people in two and a quarter centuries. That's 5,000 people too many, but to claim that without religion people wouldn't stand for it is nonsense because they stood for 40 times worse.)

Have you even looked at the human condition? Or do you just thoughtlessly regurgitate what you're told? Check it up. People are horrible. They're horrible with religion. They're horrible without religion. The only difference between religion and non-religion is that religious people have a religion, and non-religious people don't.

And in case you want to say that nationalism/socialism/Marxism is a religion, you will need to demonstrate how it is that you're not arguing in a circle and how you can distinguish between a set of opinions and a religion. In case you can't make such a distinction, then your statement reduces down to "if there were no conscious people, no-one would be commiting inhumane acts", which is of course true but vacuously so.

Go check out your history again; most people have got past knee-jerk anti-Catholicism. There was never a thousand year period in Christian history when they did anything like sitting in darkness—not even in western Europe. They didn't have modern civilisation and modern science, sure; but neither did the Muslims—or anyone—and Christianity has always been a religion of learning and accepted both the revelation of Jerusalem and the philosophy of Athens.

And anyway, it's surprisingly difficult to argue that Muslims are outside of the realm of Christianity when groups as diverse as Catholics, Jehova's Witnesses and Mormons are all considered Christian. Find me a Muslim belief which has no parallel in Christianity and I'll buy you a cake.

Well, that's just more of the same: as you say, there's plenty of people who argue against them today, and they're trying to move us into a new direction. But comparable to the holocaust? Maybe the first... Still, Imagine if we decided once again that even just one item from this list was evil, our descendents would find it difficult to forgive their anscestors:

1. Abortion
2. Fornication
3. Divorce
4. Contraception

I pick these items not because of any particular opinions I have on the subject, but because before the Holocaust it was considered unacceptable to kill people, and yet the people of Germany were convinced using emotive and rational arguments to wipe out their friends, family, neighbors, countrymen.

Likewise, all four of my items were considered to be evil in 19th century western countries and were restricted. Of course all of them happened, but people didn't think they were normal. In the future, people will judge us harshly for these if society's mind is changed. "How could they have ignored (some argument that seems so obvious)?", they will lament. (People from today will defend us: "Because (some other argument that seems to obvious)!" The fact is, there's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to weigh up evidence.

Contrast that with high APR credit lines or health care. That's just ignorance. If it turns out that either is evil (and I'm glad I'd already finished my Coke before I read "health care"—but I'm not an American). I don't think anyone will look at us like we look at Nazi Germany; they'll look at us like we look at urban deaths in early modern times, when so many people died because we didn't know how important hygiene is.

Animal farming might be a bit different; if we come some society-wide conclusion that it is evil to farm animals the way we do, or even at all, there will probably be a lot of people who find it difficult to understand how we were able to "dehumanise" them the way we have, similar to how people today find it hard to understand how people were able to "dehumanise" people from other races. On the other hand, we are living during the times when animals have begun to get rights; as they become public, so many practices are becoming illegal

Fwiw, if I really want to get on a soap box about this, I'd be saying something about how fun we find it to create superbacteria. That sort of thing is pure evil. Basic hygiene should come first, before antibacterials...

Or in less individual and more social terms: Religion starts by postulating a few facts, and then killing everyone who disagrees. Science starts by postulating a few axioms, and then trying as hard as possible to show that they're wrong

This is not true at all. Science starts by looking at evidence, coming up with an explanation for it, and then trying to disprove all other contemporary explanations. When some brand new PhD comes around with evidence that (apparently) disproves your explanation, you reformulate your explanation so that it keeps the main essence of your idea, but money and young people go to the shiny new idea and you retire or die, taking your ideas with you. Wish, rinse, repeat. On occasion, people do accept a radically different theory but this is less common than you might think and I'm a cynical person.

Science approximates an accurate description of the physical world over enough time, using money and egotism as its motivations. It doesn't at all work by having scientist try to prove themselves wrong; they're always trying to prove someone else wrong.

And you know, that's the crucial thing, because religion works in exactly the same way. In religion, people looked at evidence (e.g. we are here, society works better when we follow these rules[1]), came up with an explanation for it (e.g. God exists), and then try to disprove all other explanations (e.g. subjective experience can't exist without god[2]). When some brand new evidence comes up that (apparently) disproves your explanation, you reformulate your explanation so that it keeps the main essence of your idea. Because there will always be aspects to human experience that defy accessible scientific explanations, and because exactly the same procedures are operative in religion and science, just with different time frames, science will never completely oust religion, not even in the most advanced societies.

The really interesting bit, is that religion and science operate in the same way, precisely because science is an offshoot of western Christianity. That doesn't make Western Christianity true any more than it makes any scientific theory true, but it does mean that religion doesn't work by "postulating a few facts, and then killing everyone who disagrees". Otherwise, why aren't you dead?

Instead of regurigating uneducated bigotry, I suggest you learn a thing or two about the history and philosophy of science and religion.

[1]: The "society" and "we" in question here aren't our own except inasmuch as the contemporary mainstream liberal "live-and-let-live" philosophy can be described as a "religion". I'm not saying society works better when we kill all gay people or censor dissenters or whatever other criticism of contemporary or historical religious practices you want to name.
[2]: I am not putting forth this argument as my own or judging it in any way. Feel free to critque or complement it, but beware that it in doing so you are not engaging me or my point.

Other people must spend much longer on the loo than me. I'd only manage half a page a day.

If I only stayed on the loo for as long as it takes me to crap, that'd probably be true for me too...

As a cyclist and a pedestrian, I don't feel safe listening to things with headphones on while travelling. Obviously I can see that it's fine to listen to a radio (or a CD, or somesuch) playing back while driving a car, through speakers, but if you cut yourself off from external noises like headphones would ... well, my life is more important than an hour a day reading.

So I just read on the loo...