Welcome to the monthly digest for June Hi , During June, Robert Thurman reflected on Darwin's Origin of Species, Meredith Doig took a closer look at institutional conscientious objection and the case of Canberra's Calvary Hospital, and Hugh Harris
questioned why Labor was dropping its support for 'secular' public education. Si Gladman
Editor |
Highlights from Rationale
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| Survival of the fit enough and lucky
enough By Robert Thurman The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin’s masterful contribution to our understanding of evolution, was penned more than 150 years ago. Since then,
science has taken significant steps towards more fully understanding the manifold intricacies of evolution, necessitating a fresh look at some of Darwin’s ideas. A few brief notes are included here for consideration. I believe that Darwin introduced an element of confusion into his 6th edition of The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection by including the phrase “survival of the fittest”. |
| Reacting to pandemics By Jack Dikian By the time the 1918 influenza pandemic broke in Europe and in the United States, the relevance of masks – at least for protecting medical workers and patients – and social distancing had
been well established. By then, advances in public health policy ushered a newfound enthusiasm for political solutions, planning and collective action, not least of which was the prosecution of questionable assumptions about diseases and their causes. At the same time, early versions of neo-positivism, a movement in early 20th-century American sociology which blended together the three themes of quantification, behaviourism, and positivist epistemology, began to gain popularity. It influenced
how the 1918 pandemic was conceived and handled. |
MBJ's view on current affairs
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| The problem with institutional conscientious objection in our
healthcare system
By Meredith Doig
On the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website recently, Joanna
Howe, a Professor of Law at the University of Adelaide Law School, claimed the ACT government’s takeover of Calvary Hospital would have far-reaching ramifications for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. But this is not the case. In the article, Howe – an anti-abortion campaigner who takes part in pro-life marches and even interviews Christian Right politicians on the subject for her social media – claims that doctors, nurses and midwives will be “forced”, directly or indirectly, to
participate in abortion. |
| Why is Labor walking away from secular
education?
By Hugh Harris
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) looks like it’s jettisoning the
long-held ideal that schools are “universal, free and secular”. A draft of its new national policy platform instead contains the bland platitude that schools should be “fully and fairly funded to deliver excellent education that meets the needs of every child”. Dropping ‘secular’ is of particular concern given the spate of recent controversies surrounding the role of religion in schools. The deliberate omission provides alarming insight into internal party machinations, suggesting that perhaps
the ALP would rather avoid tackling issues with outcomes potentially upsetting to religious groups. |
| ‘Religion and charity’ report will help inform
debate
By Peter FitzSimons
This foreword appears in the newly published Religiosity in
Australia: Religion and charity. It is the hoariest chestnut of the lot, one of the first things we were told by the wise-heads as we were about to enter the adult world: “Never discuss religion or politics.” The idea was that to take your place in polite society you had to steer away from the two topics most likely to give rise to opinions that are as
passionate and deeply felt as they risk being divergent from your interlocutors, hence…heat. So, avoid! |
| AI and the problems of
personification
By David James
In literary criticism, a commonly used term is ‘personification’,
which describes when a writer invests natural phenomena with human qualities. So, for example, ‘crying clouds’ or ‘obstinate rocks’. Or it can apply to abstractions, such as Shakespeare’s “Nor shall death brag.” It is unfortunate that such insights are no longer afforded much attention because, if they were, people would notice that the phrase ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) is an instance of personification. It invests inanimate computers with human qualities. Having pulled off this verbal
sleight of hand, the claim is then made that, as computers develop more processing power and have the capacity to create their own software, they will become ‘smarter’ than humans. |
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