Australian Catholic University – Greg Craven’s theist hissy fit, poor diddums

Poor Greg Craven, the Vice Chancellor of the Catholic University, he posted an article in The Age as he thinks atheists are attacking catholics because they question his beliefs.

Michael Brull followed it up with ‘The New Crybaby Theists’ a great article pointing out just how stupidly hypocritical the article was.

Finding issue with major flaws in theistic arguments is taken by these ‘precious’ apologists as personal attacks and they respond with name calling and cries of offense, classic ad hominem attacks instead of approaching the ideas and debating the opinion. I know heaps of religious people and we have seen a number on the site here that are willing to discuss reasonably major differences without taking personal slight, yet here we have the Vice Chancellor of a Catholic University acting like a petulant child.

Let’s have a look at his Catholic University ‘Mission’ shall we? Some of the points there I think Mr Craven should read again in a not-so-biased way are :

• a continuing dialogue between faith and reason – represented, for example, by the dialogue between philosophy and science;
• respect for truth in all its forms and collaboration in seeking it through all the disciplines;
• promotion of the common good, and the dignity of the human person;
• collaboration of all our staff and students, whatever their beliefs, in the interests of a more decent and humane society;
• the promotion of teaching and research in ways that most serve the mission of the University;
• respect for academic freedom.

Well I only left out one line out of the whole mission points, and that was the first; ‘following the way of Christ and commitment to Christian values’. Even that I am sure other more reasoned christians would gladly debate with him.

.. but be careful. Diddums might call you names and claim you are attacking him if you try to debate any of his beliefs. It’s alright one way, but don’t oppress the poor thing by stating what you think!!

It’s heartening to see that this type of bigotry is bringing more and more non-believers out, to openly call themselves atheist and tackle the privilege that religion asks of anyone not of their faith

I find the responses to both this article and to Greg Craven’s immensely heartening because they signal to me there’s a huge number of committed, thoughtful and motivated non-believers out there.

Traditionally I’ve always kept my thoughts to myself, partly to avoid awkward confrontations but mostly because they are exactly that – my thoughts. Now I feel emboldened to share and debate and refine my views.

So thanks Greg Craven for bringing so many atheists together, discussing and openly debating, which is as it should be.

Michael – November 05, 2009, 3:24PM

There’s many other great quotes on both the articles, I suggest you have a good read of some of them, and keep open minded

NO ONE would be bothered by the Catholic Church if it insisted that only Catholics followed its precepts. But in the past year alone, it pushed to influence Parliament to support discrimination against non-Catholics, argued in favour of prolonging the untreatable suffering of non-Catholics who are dying and opposed reproductive health for non-Catholic women. The more sinister aspects of its health policy have been discussed in The Age this week. The Catholic Church is a wealthy, non-tax-paying organisation that receives huge government funding for the provision of social services to all Victorians. For these reasons, what it stands for – unsavoury history, policy directions from a non-human and continued efforts to re-establish medieval Christendom with secular funding – should be scrutinised.

Janine Truter, The Basin