Interview with Chris Uhlmann, ABC AM | Prime Minister of Australia
“Over time, I would hope to see a world where the golden ethical rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you”, is better accepted. I would like to see, over time, an understanding by all people, and cultures, and religions, that there should be separation of church and state, that there is a sense of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
Mm, so Mr Abbott quotes the Bible twice in closing this interview. Now, I can see him following the one about Caesar and God. (Yes, I know that some of you lefties on this site will say only if you replace Caesar with Gina and God with Rupert. I’d suggest that all capitalist believers like me recognise Rupert as God anyway.)
But let’s give him a clear tick for this one. All his work to ensure that Church and State is separated can be seen with the way he’s ensured that the money meant for Chaplains doesn’t get mixed up with the State by allowing schools to give it to secular workers. Chaplaincy money needs to go to chaplains – the separation doesn’t get clearer than that.
As far as the golden, ethical rule goes, which was the new commandment that Jesus added to the ten (why couldn’t he have found an extra one to make it an even dozen?) – I find it strangely odd coming from our PM’s lips. Apart from the obvious problem that, while I consider “the golden ethical rule” a pretty reasonable sort of starting point for human interaction, suggesting that the problem with a group of radical Islamic Jihadists is that they’re not following the teachings of Christianity does strike me as rather like suggesting that Fred Nile would be a better person if he were to take part in the Mardi Gras parade wearing nothing but a g-string. Probably true, but it’s not going to happen and even suggesting it is likely to make ISIL/Fred even more angry and irrational.
Nevertheless, I too look forward to a world where we “do to others as we would like to have them do to us”. I can see that Abbott’s government is setting the agenda here.
I mean, Abbott’s descriptions of some of his candidates, clearly shows that he just wants to be called “feisty” and “sexy” and have all his other qualities ignored.
Although it does raise a few questions about some of his ministers.
For example, what makes Scott Morrison want to be kept in detention and told that he really doesn’t belong? Some sort of strange personal preference? Does Malcolm Turnbull actually want people to say that they really agree with him but they have to vote against him because all the people they hang out with do? Perhaps Joe Hockey believes that he really hasn’t earned his wealth, and wishes someone would make him appreciate how hard it is to struggle? But does Christopher Pyne really want people to call him names and stick out their tongue at him?
That is how they do unto others, so clearly that’s how they wish to be done unto! Mm, that’s so clumsy who uses a word like “unto” these days.
Oh that’s right, the PM did, when suggesting we should be “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”…
Rendering, that’s an interesting word…
It means to pay a tax or due. Apparently, the mining tax is not something that should be rendered to the government. Must be God’s.
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
Interesting article Rossleigh. Abbotts version of rendering is more like…render unto me, I don’t render to you low life serfs
Lol ” must be Gods”
god you can have Tones back, please take him back, I beg you god, take him back, we will be ok, but for shit sake Take him back, return to sender is what we will put on the envelope, so you know he is back 🙂
Well apart from the obvious hypocrisy that you have already highlighted, there is no evidence that God exists. Therefore I render nothing to him.
Tony is almost right about Christian ethics as practiced by his friends. The real new commandment is”Do others before they do you”.
“…there should be separation of church and state, that there is a sense of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
The clueless lumbering oaf can’t open his mouth without the shit gushing out!!!
In the ONE statement the says there should be separation of church and state then follows immediately with a line from the bible!! Who voted for this shameless buffoon????
We should all be very concerned that the man in charge of our nation believes in an imaginary friend who can supposedly read your thoughts and send you to hell for eternity on a whim, but can’t be bothered acting to stop atrocities.
Cutting Rossleigh. And so correct!!
Abbott’s Creed
1. I believe in Money the Provider, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:
2. And in Tony Abbott, its self-appointed defender, our Prime Minister:
3. Who was conceived by John Howard, born of the Speaker Bronwyn:
4. Suffered under Work Choices; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into Opposition:
5. The third election he rose again from the dead:
6. He ascended into leadership, and sits at the right hand of Money the Provider Almighty:
7. From thence he shall come to judge the poor and the sick:
8. He believes in the Holy Dollar:
9. He believes in the wholy corporate world: the communion of the rich:
10. The ignoring of sins:
11. The resurrection of the army:
12. And wealth everlasting. For a few.
Tony Ballony: Do unto others and then F… (piss) off.
<
I'm always surprised when I see the moron Abbott speaking ….. surprised he knows how to do up his own shoelaces.
<
A "Comment" from The Age :
"We also need more intelligent, considered analysis by knowledgeable, experienced people such as McGeough so Australians aren't left to simplistic, jingoistic parroting of government lines.
I nearly choked when hearing Abbott say we haven't seen this kind of barbarism since the Middle Ages! What a dolt!
Apparently hundreds of thousands being hacked to death with machetes in Rwanda wasn't barbarism enough to qualify, nor apparently was Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge 'killing fields or indeed the tortures, disappearances and murder carried out by some US allied Central and South American nations, which included the dropping of prisoners from helicopters into the sea.
This is to name but a few instances of barbarism not quite so far back as the Middle Ages and makes me wonder if Abbott is channeling Bush and his Crusades analogy.
Seems as though 'look before you leap' didn't make it into Abbott's education. No surprise that he is now hyperventilating and beating his chest. Shame it's not him going into harms way."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/fools-rush-in-tony-abbott-joins-a-war-without-definition-20140914-10gtib.html#ixzz3DRuvjPJK
With thanks to North Coast Voices ( http://northcoastvoices.blogspot.com.au/ )
Nuremberg had some trials after the 1939-1945 killing fields.
By Abbott’s golden BS rule of slogans – Lock him up in a detention Centre,and LIE to him all the time.
Him ONLY being itnerviewed ON THE ABC by him chum Ulhmann is a joke too.Ulhmann is a BIASED joke,who should be tough on everyone,but of course takes it easy on Abbott.Plus Abbott too afraid to appear on Q & A again…
The ABC are weak for pandering to this bully 🙁
Oh, God, make it stop!
Perhaps, John East Gippsland, you should ask Caesar to make it stop!
Until Mr Abbott came along, I did not know how many cruel and unkind people we have in Australia, I had some idea by the fact that Australian Aborigines were hated to a degree and still are that has taken my breath away quite a few times. But now I know at least 49/50% of people like Tony Abbott and his party, very much, and are happy with the direction he is taking the people, if it had of been 10% maybe even 20%, of course he would not have been voted in.
But over 50%, close enough to 50% of the Nation, all I can say the Muslims and people that flee here on boats, have taken a little heat of the Aborigines, a people that were here well over 40 thousand years, that should have earned great respect for that alone. There is very little feelings of any compassion for anything in this country, more than well over 50% actually.
Do unto others as rednecks and bogans in marginal seats would have you do.
In politics these days, it is only a numbers game.
The duplicity of Abbott is that his politics are buried neck deep in his religious crap. In a single breath he argues the separation of church and state all the while drawing his church into the centre of the discussion. He’s a rabid god bothering crusader, and is likely also a dual citizen with allegiance to Britain and not Australia. These two matters cloud his thinking and make rational thought virtually impossible as evidenced by his bloody awful leadership.
@ mars08 and anyone else who has mentioned Caesar and God !!!
The Constitution of Australia prevents the Commonwealth from establishing any religion or requiring a religious test for any office:
—–
” Ch 5 § 116 The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.
The language is derived from the United States’ constitution, but has been altered “.
——
Admittedly, this comes from Wikipedia – which on some occasions is useful. !!
I am going to presume the above applies also to the opposite … that chaplaincy does NOT have to be imposed on students. And that qualified psychs. WILL be permitted to help students with their troubles, and that chaplaincy is NOT a pre-requisite in any situation ????
Was always suspicious of ‘separation of Church and State’ as applied in Australia . Always thought it was an ” Amarican thang “. Now I find it sure as hell COMES from an ‘amarican thang’.
If this baboon starts spruiking religion, on an every increasing score …… to this country, I just might personally do something … that would not be at all law abiding. There after all, many many people here whose observances of their religious pursuits has nothing remotely to do with Jesuit bellowing and Jesuit hard line tactics. One of the Jesuits purposes ” is the spread of the Catholic faith ‘ by any means possible ‘ “.
( No offence intended to Catholics here – I was baptised and confirmed in that Church, but no longer attend. )
Point is, I think we might hear further of the Jesuit mores, ‘ taught’ by the ex-seminarian-who-didn’t-make-it ‘.
Politics is politics – religion is religion …. and it should forever remain thus …….. never the twain to meet.
Abbott’s quote to note in the SMS yesterday: “Mr Abbott said any Australians fighting in Iraq and Syria with the group, which is also known as ISIL, had gone there to undertake evil acts knowing that they were breaking the law, adding that they were acting against God”
And it seems pedophile priests and their political protectors were not?
George Pell protector of church assets may be in convenient political Asylum in the Vatican but the Abbott and the politicians running the country are the same ones that covered his purple robed bottom for so long and planned taking money from the inquiry into sexual abuse in the church to use in the royal commission into the unions and until it became uncomfortable publicly supported the ‘International Congress of Families’ which is a recognised hate group which is anti single parent anti gay anti abortion anti feminist and worse and of which Kevin Andrews is still their international Ambassador! look it up. And these are their ‘Christian values’ and what they are sending us into war for? this is the real terror in our community and like with refugee hate fear campaign every one is being scared to looking out to see and miss the monsters behind us
http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/exposed-the-world-congress-of-families
http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/michaela-mcguire/2014/29/2014/1409270494/kevin-andrews-natural-family-man-year
Abbott’s quote to note in the SMS yesterday: “Mr Abbott said any Australians fighting in Iraq and Syria with the group, which is also known as ISIL, had gone there to undertake evil acts knowing that they were breaking the law, adding that they were acting against God”
And it seems pedophile priests and their political protectors were not?
George Pell protector of church assets may be in convenient political Asylum in the Vatican but Abbott and the politicians running the country are the same people that covered his purple robed bottom for so long and then planned taking money from the inquiry into sexual abuse in the church to use in the royal commission into the unions and until it became politically uncomfortable’
This government publicly supported the ‘International Congress of Families’ which is a recognised hate group, which is anti single parent, anti gay anti abortion, anti feminist and worse and of which Kevin Andrews, minister for Social Security is still their international Ambassador! Look it up. And these are their ‘Christian values’ and what they are sending us into war for? They are the real terror in our community and like with their ‘stop the boats’ refugee hate fear campaign we are all being scared into looking out to sea to stop us seeing the real monsters behind us
http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/exposed-the-world-congress-of-families
http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/michaela-mcguire/2014/29/2014/1409270494/kevin-andrews-natural-family-man-year
Dave Bradley:
I thoroughly concur. My feelings about all sorts of dogmatic assertibility, whether religious, atheist or agnostic, is that any form of closed truth is bound by particular prejudices and ignores several clear evolutionary propensities for meaning and purpose, in a so called purposeless universe. Yet that universe is underscored by underlying paradoxes, counterintuitives, uncertainties and incompleteness including implicit conceptual as well as necessary infinites in maths, geometry, calculus and perforce physics and cosmology. So the problem is to deconstruct analytically the irrationality and illogicality of religion while engendering sense of mystery awe and wonder in our children and young people.
Psychologist have demonstrated the positive attributes of some form of metaphysical hope and the negative affects of aesthetic nihilism for a large cohort of the population. Dogmatism preempts the vast matrix of unknown and, at the moment, unknowable potentialities nestled in the foundation of deep time. Relativity and block time supports the notion that every moment in time exists at every moment in time for all time in what is termed Minkowski space of which Einstein was a strong advocate. Time is the grand enigma.
My point is that I often aver to the many genuine people of religion who are there because they want a sense of meaning purpose and love and in my experience are genuinely decent people with unsustainable magical and mythical belief systems. So though I support tolerance of religion I am also a strong advocate for rational (not logical empirical determinism) science including the profound metaphysical (not religious) implications of physics and cosmology. There are several ways to interpret evolution however survival of the fittest is not one. Caring, sharing, reciprocity, empathy and compassion can be readily demonstrated to provide necessary selective advantages for communitarian societies that depend upon the broad range of participants with variety of skills and ideas. I do have an inkling how this can be effectively framed but space does not permit.
My point is that tolerance of religion is not acceptance of its dogmatic magical and mythical assertions as knowledge of science is not the be all and end all of insight and potentiality. The question then remains what is it that is neither religious or deterministic that allows for the clear application of science while retaining a cohesive sense of mystery, awe and wonder that gives young people a feeling of purpose and meaning? Sometimes questions are more important than preconditioned answers that lay claim to knowledge and truth.
In this respect it can be clearly demonstrated that the dogmatism of the likes of Abbott, Andrews and their ilk is illogical, irrational, magical mythological, bigoted, prejudicial, hateful and thoroughly dangerous. Yet to turn people from dogmatic magical and mythical ideology we need a coherent alternative that allows those who find it necessary to maintain a sense of mystery, awe, wonder and love to find a secure place within the overall cultural paradigm. Not to do so is to ignore the empirical evidence and the self-evident need of a vast cohort of the population.
We live in difficult and interesting times.
stephentardrew
Thank you for your comments, very good to read and reassuring, I would like to be able to express my thoughts on to paper as you do but I feel you have done it for me. I can fortunately put down a bit more than three word slogans, I am laughing. I feel as you do and thank you for your reassuring words.
Annie I share your concerns and am also a non practising Catholic but retain some elements of the Church’s teachings according to my conscience, not the Jesuits desired path but perfectly acceptable to me. Ones conscience can be a hard taskmaster without the bloody mindedness of the ‘baboon’.
I can not rid the feeling, much of his tunnel vision approach to life is repaying debts accrued many years ago. Debts that have nothing to do with his current situation but very personal and seen by the physco as a perfect avenue to repay. Debts that are not of a monetary nature.
Abbott conveniently forgets this one so guess he doesn’t really care what happens to his mates 🙂
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Abbott has also forgotten “For the love of money is the root of all evil.”
“Do to others as you would have them do to you”. It is sickening to hear this from a man like Tony Abbott who shows all the signs of a souless heathen who has no regard for average AUstralians (who he views as fair game) and who is the servant of the big end of town. Abbott is a hypochrite, nothing less.
@ Dave Bradley …… well said, and about time we are reminded of these double standards … inherent in our ignoble ‘leader’.
=========
@Dafid1 …. I too have my own ‘brand’ of belief these days, and conscience certainly plays a large part. Your comments about his repaying ‘debts’ from his past – his personal life. Some weird form of over-compensation ? Interesting thoughts you have there.
=========
@ rambotrader …… I totally agree. Those words should not be uttered by the Abbott, who is perhaps battling his own demons – and getting further into the quagmire as a result. ……. and dragging us and our country into it, with him.