Posts by WH
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What I originally said was that Orewa attracted a wave of popular support, reconfigured the NZ race relations debate and reinstated National as a serious force in NZ politics. I said I thought that Don Brash's academic public image played a role in this, and that the 20% jump in National's support that occurred post Orewa was historically unprecedented.
Russell Brown's blog entries around February 2004 provide a partial record of some of the more considered contributions for and against, but I don't want to rehash that here. This only came up because we were discussing Brash's legacy, and because Orewa is a big part of that.
But speaking of racial abuse, let me just say that i think the NZ Herald is sh*t (and yes, I am shamelessly changing the subject):
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=00043709-0942-1566-834083027AF1010F -
Che,
Brash's Orewa speech was a quantum leap backwards into colonialism and assimilation of 'the hories'. fostering racial dissent is not a reflection of democracy in action, i.e. tapping the 'national mood', it is demagoguery or the worst kind.
I can only agree that fostering racial dissent is unacceptable. I didn't mean to dive back into the crucible of the race relations debate.
Brash brought the National Party back from brink of irrelevance - that is all I meant to say. Had he succeeded in eliminating ACT from Parliament it may have served some useful purpose...
The ARC votes for Eden Park...
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Don Brash was as much responsible for increasing National's seats in the last elections as George Bush II was for winning the 2000 election for Republicans.
The record says otherwise. IMO it was Brash's "honest", professorial public image that facilitated the profound shift in our nation's conversation on race relations that occurred after Orewa.
Chris Trotter had often warned something that the left's Treaty consenus was too far ahead of the national mood. But for whatever reason, Brash, and Brash alone, made the issue get political traction.
I have my own reasons for not liking Brash, but give the man his due.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Brash#National_Party_Leader
"Though the sentiments expressed in the Orewa speech differed little from established National Party views (as voiced previously by Bill English, for example), these comments quickly gave National an unprecedented boost in public opinion polls. National gained 17 percentage points in the February 2004 Colmar Brunton poll for Television New Zealand, taken shortly after Brash's Orewa speech. So startling was the turnaround that TVNZ instructed Colmar Brunton to double check the figures. It was the biggest single gain by a Party in a single poll in Colmar Brunton’s polling history. In the months that followed, changes of emphasis in Labour's policy agenda became apparent as Labour attempted to recoup the ground lost to National in the February poll."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3875994a19855,00.html
"I think credit will always be given to Dr Brash for rescuing the National Party from oblivion," Mr Ryall said.
"This is the man who singlehandedly dragged us back from 20.9 per cent to being a very credible political force again," Mr Power said.
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There's something not quite right about this.
Firstly, Brash resurrected National's fortunes, not Key. Aren't National still ahead in the polls?
Secondly, there is something I don't trust about Key that I can't put my finger on. My problem with Brash was the sense he was projecting a moderate image in order to ultimately enact an 80's style laissez-faire/privatisation agenda. Is this any less of a danger with Key? I know Key is the MP for Helensville, that he was formerly an investment banker, and that he comes across as a jerk on TV, thats pretty much it.
I guess I would have liked to have known what was in this book before people resigned because of it.
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Keith's blog is always thought provoking and well reasoned. IMO it is better than most of the writing you'll find in our small country.
I just want to make this clear: It's okay to investigate crime among Asians. It's okay to ask whether there is a lot of crime among Asian migrants. It's even okay to present evidence that says this is the case. That does not equate to racism.
I have quite conservative views on immigration, particularly with regards to criminal offending. But Keith completely demolished DC's argument, and DC's halfwitted grab bag of a response only compounds her original mistake.
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All he simply wants is for someone who believes to provide to him a repeatible, verifiable test that beyond a reasonable doubt proves a god or gods exist. No such test exists, therefore Dawkins cannot be convinced.
If such an experiment could be devised we wouldn't be arguing about this. In the absence of such an experiment, Dawkins' conclusion that there is no God extends beyond the available scientific data - which is the case for the agnostic's position. In the absence of such an experiment, reasonable scientists, such as Collins and Dawkins, disagree on the philosophy.
Parenthetically, framing Dawkins' atheism as the mere "absence of positive belief in God", rather than as the positive belief that there is no God, is a farce. Boo to semantics of this kind.
If people want to free associate/speculate/extrapolate/make sh*t up about other dimensions and multiple universes they are free to do so, but I fail to see how such imaginary worlds are any better than Collins' imaginary friend. If one is acceptable conjecture so is the other, particularly when god concepts more sophisticated than 'old man with a beard' are taken into account.
...since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.
Danyl's critique of Eagleton was well written, and I agree mostly, except for the steady stream of straw man attacks coming from the Dawkins' side of the fence.
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Hamish,
As you can tell by the fact I'm referring you to a wiki, I'm no expert, but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution#Evolutionary_biologists_who_were_also_theists
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You haven’t seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid” - then I can’t even be bothered to argue
The question of whether the universe has a cause is not like the question of whether the moon is made of cheese.
The argument is between theism, on its strongest formulation, and atheism, on its strongest formulation. The invocation of bronze age theology, the death of Galileo, or teapots in orbit does not advance this debate.
It's generally up to the person proposing the theory to gather proof, rather than simply putting it out there and expecting everyone else to disprove it.
In my view both the theist and the atheist are making claims they need to prove, rather than simply assert. Both views have implications for the real world. Have a look at the difference between Aristotle's virtue ethics and Nietzsche's.
God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything
I don't necessarily accept this proposition, and consider that the difference between intelligent design and theistic evolution is not widely understood. Dawkins' account that time and chance alone are solely responsible for both our universe and life is plausible, but no more than that. This is where science, philosophy and religion start to intersect.
Lastly, I'd like to say that I enjoyed reading all the thoughtful comments on this.
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It seems to me that agnosticism is the only strictly rational position on spirituality. Unfortunately, many athiests prefer not to accept that their own religious belief (the unprovable assertion that there is no god) is open to serious critique.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster, while clever and entertaining, is not a compelling analogy. The question of whether our universe has a reason to be, or a cause, cannot be answered with a well designed rhetorical trick. In any case, the question of who bears the onus of proof - theists or athiests - seems to me to be a distraction. Both sides have the same evidential constraints.
In my experience, many athiests wrongly consider that their views on this quintessential philosophical question are supported by "science", or that somehow "science" has negated the views of the other side. It is a mistake Richard Dawkins makes frequently.
The last thing I would query (this not being the forum for a point by point) is Dawkins' claim to be both an athiest and in awe of his apparently meaningless universe. The athiest existentialists described a arbitrary existence - the term often used to describe the tension between that existence, free will, and a profoundly pointless universe is "the absurd". (A view, incidentally, that can be traced back at least as far as "all is vanity".) And despite its obvious practical merit, the humanists' meta-ethical position lacks a compelling theoretical justification.
None of which is to say the athiests are wrong. Its just that the implications aren't nearly as pretty as they like to make out, and the evidence in support of their primary assertion is no stronger than the evidence favouring their adversaries.
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Graham Henry is at least as good as Rod McQueen, the coach of the last team to dominate world rugby. There's a rugby genius behind that wry grin and laconic manner I say - mad props, propitious circumstances, et cetera. The only thing that can stop us now is an untimely intercept try.
After some initial doubts, I am coming around to the waterfront proposal, mainly because of the superior public transport options and the implications for the CBD. Maybe we can persuade Trev to fix the rest of the public transport network while he's here.