God’s Undertaker?

“God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?”
by Dr John Lennox

Has science buried God? The subtitle of the book and the question Lennox dedicates over 200 pages to answer.

This one was hard to read. At one stage I considered putting it down for eternity. What I thought was mainly a work of apologetics I discovered was a work of scientific discussion.

This book is not for the faint hearted though. Some of the scientific concepts can be tough to follow from both sides of the argument. But if you can endure the concepts you will find the main premise.

Has science buried God? Simply put the answer is NO. As if that was a surprise. Science has not and cannot bury God. Any statement to the contrary is one of philosophy and not of science.

There is so much more to the book but it will need a second read through the further grasp Lennox’s argument. Or a reading of books using simpler language.

The Reign Had To End

“Howards End: The Unravelling Of A Government”

By Peter Van Onselen and Philip Senior

It is a marvellous thing to look back using hindsight on the political landscape. Especially now that the man who, as the subtitle suggests, unravelled a govt, has himself since been sent packing by the people that got him the top job in the first place.

With hindsight perhaps we should have seen it coming. Yet as a nation the people wanted change so much that a multitude of personal weaknesses in Rudd were overlooked. The sentiment was strong, was it a good enough reason to oust a strong, capable government? The last three years have gone some way to answer that question. Still, depending one your philosophy the question will be debated for a long time.

So much more happens in an election campaign than we will ever know. A multitude of factors contributed to the events of 2007.

Firstly there was the strong sentiment for change for the sake of changing. Add to that an unknown entity in Kevin Rudd who despite his nerdy and awkward demeanour managed to capture the attention of a nation. He played heavily on the desire for change while gaining some profile on channel 7’s popular morning program, Sunrise.

On the other side of the coin was an over confident government that didn’t see Rudd coming, who did? They were rarely able to set the agenda and were playing catch up most of the time. Any thought of succussion planning or generational change came too late. This didn’t help counter the strong public sentiment for change.

Rudd had cleverly neutralised most issues through what was called “me tooism”. The government tried to inform the public that there is no point of distinction between then and the opposition. But they didn’t care.

The opposition had a distinct advantage in the issue of workchoices. The union campaign was very successful in scaring the public that the world will end if workchoices were allowed to continue. Admittedly the legislation went a tad too far but was nowhere near as bad as the unions would want you to believe. There were in fact some very good and well-needed aspects of the legislation. But once again, it didn’t matter, the government had no chance to counter the well-funded union machine once it had gained ascendancy.

It is ironic to read this book three years after the events. In particular to read quotes that resonated with the public back then. Such as examples on how committed the Rudd government was to being fiscally responsible. He even bagged out Howard for what he considered “reckless spending”. Yes, ironic.

Think of the Children

Childcare has made its way back into the media spotlight recently. This is mainly due to government legislation dictating certain qualifications for staff and specific ratios of children to staff. These changes naturally result in increasing costs for service providers. Costs that will be passed on to parents, and you can’t blame them for doing that.

So with that begins what can feel like and endless cavalcade of sob stories from parents who proclaim they cant afford such expensive childcare. The sob story is only part of the big picture though, you never get told the rest. It would be interesting to inquire the parents’ rationale for requiring full time childcare.

Even if the reasons were purely financial, what has led to the circumstances that required two incomes? We don’t hear about this from the media. They could be very genuine and doing it tough. Or conversely they could be merely overextended because they wanted the house in the suburb that was extending beyond what was realistically attainable.

Whatever the reason, as a nation we forget that children are a blessing. They should be treated as such, however they continually get treated as commodities with their upbringing pawned off to the cheapest tender.

From the government’s point of view it is all short term thinking, in the name of productivity. They want to get the highly skilled women back into the workforce as soon as possible. This is all well and good but what about the children who now have two limited or non-existent parents. Their most formative years spent with someone very qualified yet not their parent.

Of course it is difficult to make ends meet on one income. But perhaps we all just need to be content with not having it all.