• Ian Robinson wrote about where ‘opinion’ fits between matters of ‘fact’ and matters of ‘taste’.
• Phillip Hoglin revealed that Census data showed lower religious affiliation levels among military veterans than those who have never served and those who are currently serving.
• Paul Monk critiqued John Cottingham’s and other religious apologists’ attacks on the scientific approach to understanding the world.

Opinions loom large in the contemporary world. They inform people’s behaviour. They lead to actions which seriously affect both individuals in particular and society in general. Everybody has opinions. Many people claim that they have a right to their opinions – that they are somehow entitled to them. It is incumbent upon us to understand what an opinion is and to form an opinion about the concept’s merits and limitations.

Many religionists – especially those who have a mission of evangelising in the Defence Forces – will often throw around the old trope that there are “no atheists in fox holes”. In the heat of conflict, they like to believe, the men and women of our military embrace the supernatural. But a close analysis of national Census data suggests otherwise. In one of the many unexpected stories to come from the 2021 national Census data – which included questions on military service for the first time – religious affiliation of veterans is lower than for both the general public and currently serving permanent force Defence members.

In March this year, John Cottingham, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading and an Honorary Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford University, wrote a column for an online magazine, IAI, under the title ‘Wittgenstein vs Dawkins: Is God a scientific hypothesis’. In the article, he suggests that Richard Dawkins mistook religion for a second-rate and out-of-date kind of science. In reality, Cottingham argues, religious claims are not defective science if we follow the reasoning of Ludwig Wittgenstein on language and meaning. Instead, they constitute an entirely distinct way of seeing the world.

Perhaps the Coalition’s resounding defeat might be an opportunity to deliver some feedback: stop imposing religious beliefs on the public. We live in a democracy, not a theocracy. It was the defeat of the Northern Territory’s democratically introduced Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995 (NT) by the Coalition’s then federal government that stopped me voting for the Coalition. I had until that time been an active supporter of the Liberal Party. I now vote independents.