Letters to the Editor

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The Crusades and Modern Genocide

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SIR: I wondered how long it would take Robert McLaughlin to drag the Crusades into the case against God. It did not take long, with Mr McLaughlin claiming (Letters, January-February 2011), that they were similar to communism, Nazism and the Inquisition. This is historical rubbish.

So overlaid with anti-Christian mythology have the Crusades become that many people are now unaware that they were in fact a limited, defensive reaction to ceaseless Muslim aggression. Muslims threatened Europe’s heartland with a strategic pincer movement from the East and from Spain, and, as has been suppressed by politically-correct historians, sacked Italian and other southern European towns repeatedly in the ninth century. Constantinople was attacked in 673 and again from 717. In 873 Muslim forces devastated Calabria in southern Italy, and the Saracens expressed an intention to destroy Rome, the city of “Petrulus Senex” (“The senile Peter”). In 846 Muslims sacked Rome, and the Basilicas of St Peter and St Paul, and damaged the Vatican. Muslim forces were estimated to include 11,000 warriors and 500 horses, carried in seventy-three ships. In 849 a Papal fleet repelled a Muslim fleet at mouth of the Tiber. In 852 the Leonine Wall was built around the Vatican for defence and blessed by Pope Leo IV. Between 853 and 871 Muslims raided the southern Italian coast, under al-Mufarraj bin Sallam, “Emir of Palermo”. In 859 Muslims completed the conquest of Sicily. Returning from a synod at Ravenna in 882, Pope John VIII found a Saracen force threatening Rome and though in poor health, personally led a successful naval counter-attack. Syracuse fell to the Muslims in 878 with great slaughter. Muslim fortresses were established in France and in the Alps north of Italy to intercept and attack pilgrims and other travellers to Rome from the North. Moorish pirates and slavers terrorised the Mediterranean for centuries. In 883 Muslims captured the fortress of Garigliano, near Anzio, and plundered the surrounding countryside for the next forty years.

It will be seen from this that the Crusades were an exercise in self-defence by Christendom. Though they were marred by atrocities committed by some fanatical individual crusaders, especially against Jews (who the Vatican and some other Christians tried to shelter), it is simply obscene, as well as staggeringly ignorant, to mention them as though they were comparable to communism and Nazism. Nor can the death toll of the Inquisition, itself overlaid with layers of myth, seriously be compared to the death tolls of atheistic French revolutionary totalitarianism (previously documented by Sophie Masson in Quadrant), nationalism, and the great twentieth-century totalitarian ideologies (which grew in part from a misunderstanding of Darwinism). While exact figures are not known, it is quite possible a flea-bitten third-rate communist like Castro managed to kill and torture more than did the Inquisition in its whole history. Further, the atheistic French revolutionaries and their successors excelled at destroying schools, universities and hospitals, all of which had been founded by various churches. They beheaded Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry; French engineers and scientists driven out of revolutionary, atheist France played a big role in the industrial revolution in Britain. 

It is ironic that Mr McLaughlin’s original article should have been headed “Mythbusters” when it shows such readiness to subscribe to anti-Christian and ahistorical myths.

The holocausts and genocides of modern times, starting with the French revolutionary campaign in the Vendee, and continuing into North Korea, were committed by political creeds and ideologies which had abandoned God, and in many cases specifically Christianity. 

I am not impressed by that rhetoric which claims in defence of atheism that any murderous ideology, no matter how anti-religious, is really a form of religion. To quote Mandy Rice-Davies: “He would say that, wouldn’t he?” Assertion and factual proof are different things.

It is hard to know much about Hitler’s psyche, but he was certainly not a follower of Christ. Further, to talk of “religion” as though the beliefs of people like Pope Benedict, C.S. Lewis or G. K. Chesterton on the one hand, and a head-hunting Amazonian animist, Himmler’s horn-tootling SS men, or a jihadi or communist commissar on the other, as if they were part of the same thing and somehow almost interchangeable, is simply nonsense and an aid to unclarity of thought. As for Mr McLaughlin’s accusation that I differ from Peter Singer, an advocate of bestiality and infanticide (to both of which he might be said to give a bad name), I cheerfully plead guilty and confess to losing no sleep over the fact.

Hal G.P. Colebatch,
Nedlands, WA.

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Atheists and God

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SIR: Robert McLaughlin appeared in the September 2010 issue of Quadrant as reviewer of 50 Voices of Disbelief and in the letters pages of the January-February issue as a defender of the book he reviewed. I wonder if this is appropriate. A reviewer should be dispassionate and detached from the subject of his review but, of course, he is quite free to defend his review if it should be adversely criticised or misunderstood. 

None of those who wrote in response to the review, of whom I was one, had anything critical to say about the review but commented on what the review revealed about the book. Mr McLaughlin mounts the battlements to defend, not his review, but the book itself and the contributors to it and, in doing so, reveals an affinity with it which is inconsistent with the function of a reviewer. When a reviewer becomes an urger, the value of the review is immediately called into question.

In defending Singer and Hauser from my observation that they misunderstood Euthyphro and, consequently, ended up in a blind alley, Mr McLaughlin advances an assertion that the introduction of the word command makes no difference to the basic philosophical point. It is unclear whether he is advancing this as the belief of Singer and Hauser or as a view of his own. In any case, he is wrong. It makes no sense to attempt to draw a philosophical conclusion on the nature of goodness from the response of the gods to man’s obedience to their commands. The question makes sense only if the action under consideration is the free action of man who presents the deed to the gods for approval or disapproval. It is only then possible to debate whether it is good because it is pleasing to the gods or whether it is pleasing to the gods because it is good. If the deed under consideration has been done because it was commanded by the gods, its goodness will derive from obedience rather than anything intrinsic to the deed.

When Singer and Hauser (and, perhaps, McLaughlin) substitute God for gods, they move the debate onto new territory and one which, it seems, is unfamiliar to them. If they accept that God, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, has, or would have if He existed, the attributes of Aristotle’s God, they will be well on the way to a deeper understanding of goodness and its relation to God. It may also help them avoid fundamental misunderstandings of the type which McLaughlin failed to see.

Among the other attributes described by Aristotle, God, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is perfect goodness. He is also omniscient. We, on the other hand, sadly, do not embody perfect goodness nor are we omniscient. Consequently, we are not in a very strong position to sit in judgment of God and to approve or disapprove of what is pleasing to Him. Why atheists should spend so much time doing so, when they know that God does not exist, is a mystery to me which I don’t think even Aristotle can help me with. 

Frank Pulsford,
Aspley, Qld.

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Arguments against Religion

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SIR: Congratulations on Quadrant’s high-quality debate on atheism. 

As a humanist, I have found the weakest arguments aired against religion to be those that scorn the faithful for their undeniably flawed histories. It is apparently a revelation to some atheists that humans have a tendency to be human, and regularly corrupt noble ideas. Writing off all religions on the basis of such distortions would perhaps be a slippery slope. This approach suggests that human attempts at government, at law, at science, and indeed at morality, should all be given up because humans have a record of doing them badly more often than not. 

Many atheists apparently fall for the spurious philosophical argument that we should only believe what we can touch, a mindboggling assumption for anyone who thinks science might involve a willingness to explore the unknown. They suggest that the currently fashionable theory of a Big Bang should be adequate, without any explanation as to why a Big Bang might have happened (or why, if it wasn’t a unique event that had a cause, we don’t see many examples of “Little Bangs”). 

To continue Mike Alder’s point (January-February 2011), Sir Terry Pratchett explores how humanity needs to believe the little untruths at a childlike level—like the Hogfather (Santa Claus), or indeed a paternalistic deity—in order to believe the big lies—like truth, justice, equality, fairness and all those other fantasies that cannot be seen or touched—which are a vital part of making humanity a worthwhile, if ongoing, project. Even leading atheist Christopher Hitchens reluctantly admits humanity could probably not have developed morality without religion.

I can see nothing wrong with saying that we don’t really understand, and indeed find that more comfortable than those who insist they have a direct line to God. But to claim that because we don’t understand then there cannot be, is the exact opposite to science. More importantly, to claim that just because we strive imperfectly to know the “divine” in the universe, means we should give up on striving, is an abandonment even of hope. Humanity has a long way to evolve. Those comfortable to declare that repeated failure requires surrender, have made their own Darwinian choice.

Nigel Davies, 
Melbourne, Vic.

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Opening the Other Eye

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SIR: I think many philosophers and intellectuals make the mistake of regarding the existence or non-existence of God as a question for the intellect when, at least in my experience of it, it is more a question of perception.

There is little point in expecting to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion by considering objectively verifiable evidence when in fact there isn’t any such evidence. In my opinion there never will be. Anyone attempting to discover the truth of the matter by this method must therefore believe God does not exist—simply because there is no objectively verifiable evidence that he does. (It is also the case that there is no evidence that he doesn’t, but that’s another question.)

Religion makes sense only from within its perception of reality. To know whether God is real or not we have to try it out. We get nowhere by trying to assess the pros and cons of probability from evidence. If we really are curious to know we must take the plunge. This does not by any means require us to leave our reason and critical faculties behind. It is just that they are applied from inside the question, rather than from outside it.

In my experience, when I was an atheist I entertained a firm belief that God does not exist, that he is nothing more than a childish fantasy. I believed that the continued progress of science would eventually solve all unknown questions, and put to rest all such delusions as God. This was a positive belief, not an absence of it. When I needed to justify my position in argument, my main concern was to put forward reasons why I should not expand my viewpoint, why my faith in reason was absolute.

After some further experience of life I began to have doubts. There was no “road to Damascus” event, or anything of that kind, but rather a series of small experiences which seemed mysterious and which I could not account for from within my constrained viewpoint. There seemed to be something beyond the reach of reason or psychology which lay behind human motivation. So instead of denying that looking for God was a worthwhile pursuit I began to search for him. Following this line of interest eventually led me to God, not as something reasoned out from objective evidence, but as something objectively real, but subjectively perceived. It is not the weighing up of evidence, but an enhanced perception, which reveals God. It is more akin to opening another eye than to valid reasoning. It changes the viewpoint from which we perceive reality.

In my opinion, God can only ever be subjectively perceived by individuals. This does not necessarily make such individuals deluded; it may make atheists blind.

William Wentworth,
Towamba, NSW.

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Qantas’s Crashes

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SIR: Geoffrey Luck’s article “How Qantas Became the Safest Airline” (January-February 2011) was most interesting and informative. I had long wondered about the Ilfracombe crash and how it fitted with the oft-quoted zero-fatalities claim in relation to Qantas.

What now puzzles me about the DH86 story is how such an interesting story of the whole unfortunate affair can be written and not once mention the efforts of Arthur Baird, the early Qantas mechanic who visited the site on the day of the crash. He quickly identified the fin post as suspicious and checked other Qantas DH86 aircraft for fin post problems and, finding problems even in brand-new aircraft, he arranged for modifications to be carried out before they were operated again. He may well have saved quite a number of passengers’ lives by so doing.

Colin G. Savill,
Goondiwindi, Qld.

Geoffrey Luck replies:

I am delighted to hear of responses to the Qantas story. It has always seemed to me that the value of Quadrant essays and articles is the provocation they may provide, either for alternative views, or new information. Now Colin Savill has come forward with details that I had not been able to find about Arthur Baird and the wooden fin post of the DH86. The Ilfracombe crash of VH-USG was in 1934; eight years later the loss of VH-USE in Brisbane was undoubtedly due to the failure of the tail fin—perhaps nothing could have repaired that inherent weakness. I am still trying to find the crash accident reports of these aircraft in the National Archives, but I fear that they were destroyed, along with more recent investigation reports, when the records were transferred from Canberra to Melbourne. 

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The King James Bible

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SIR: Samantha Grosser (January-February 2011) rightly identified the importance of the King James Bible to the English language. It is a pity however that she did not similarly identify the importance of William Tyndale to the creation of the King James Bible. The fifty-four independent scholars who carried out the work drew heavily on Tyndale’s prior translations. It has been estimated that 84 per cent of the New Testament and 76 per cent of the Old Testament translations, including many of the phrases we use today, were attributable to Tyndale. His genius was acknowledged and used by his own generation. It is a pity it has apparently been forgotten by ours.

A.W. McCurdy,
Lane Cove, NSW.

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The Douay–Rheims Bible

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SIR: In “The Origins of the King James Bible”, Samantha Grosser claims that “For almost 270 years the King James Bible was the only English translation available.” That is not the whole story. 

Between 1582 and 1610, before King James’s Authorised Version appeared, Catholic scholars exiled in France produced an English translation from the Latin Vulgate. This came to be known as the Douay–Rheims Bible, after the cities where several stages of translation took place. This Bible was later edited by Bishop Richard Challoner (1691–1781). But did Douay–Rheims influence the King James Bible? 

The editors of the Revised Version (1881–85) graciously revealed that the translators of the King James Bible had used the Douay–Rheims Bible in their work. In the era of the Gunpowder Plot and Puritan zealots, King James’s team dared not admit that they had even looked at the Papists’ English Bible. 

In the mid-twentieth century the Douay–Rheims version was superseded by Mgr Ronald Knox’s fine translation, and the less felicitous American Confraternity Version. In the ecumenical era after the Second Vatican Council, Catholics adopted the Revised Standard Version, edited and including various Old Testament “apocryphal” books excluded from most editions of the King James Bible. 

The English translation of the French Bible de Jerusalem has also been popular across denominations. In Australia this is currently used in Catholic worship. In a few years it will be replaced by a more accurate version adapted for public proclamation, another phase in the current project of translating the Roman Mass into dignified English. 

If I may further nuance Samantha Grosser’s article, not a few non-Catholic English translations were produced by individuals or sects between the Authorised Version (1611) and the Revised Version (1881–85). But none of these is said to have approached the literary quality of the King James Bible which she rightly celebrates.

Bishop Peter J. Elliott,
Ormond, Vic.

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Selected African Leaders

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SIR: I certainly agree with the article of Hal Colebatch (November 2010). As a United Nations Field Officer in Africa and Muslim countries I had first-hand experience in the graft, mismanagement and brutalities occurring in a great many of those countries. We were never greatly impressed with Mr Fraser. I well remember twice writing direct to him for help in an aid program during a bad drought causing some tribal fighting. But I never got an answer.

Colebatch however did make a few mistakes, one of which was that the President of Zambia is called Kenneth Kaunda, not Kadunda. His record of economic management was catastrophic and needed World Bank loans in billions of dollars twice. I met him once: a friendly, affable gentleman.

Another mistake was that Samuel Doe was not Chief Executive of Sierra Leone after his bloody coup in 1980 but took the name of Chief of the People’s Redemption Council of Liberia (a different country altogether). Afterwards, he then made himself President, ruling with the usual corruption and atrocities. He was eventually killed in a counter-coup, his ears cut off, which were partially eaten by the opposition. After a day or so, his mutilated body was put in a wheelbarrow and paraded through the streets of Monrovia, the capital.

Other presidents were of equal standard. Idi Amin, President of Uganda, was jovial when you met him and gave you a firm handshake, while secret prayers were held for his demise in churches and even mosques. After residing in that country for four years, one learned how to tread carefully. After some ten years of misrule, Amin was forced by the Tanzanian army to flee the country.

Siad Barre, President of Somalia, was different; he always had armed guards around him who also stood behind him at meetings, pointing their guns at us. None of the delegates made any sudden moves and always kept their hands visible. He was eventually removed and escaped to his friend Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Kim Kuneman,
Noosaville, Qld.

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Exposing the Naked Green Emperor

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SIR: I believe we all owe a debt of gratitude to Kevin Andrews for his fortitude, civic courage and the succinctness of his analysis of Greens policies (January-February 2011). It takes political courage to stick one’s neck out and tell all and sundry, loud and clear that the emperor is not only naked, he is a hoodlum to boot.

While living in the USSR I thought that Western supporters of socialism must be either fools or scoundrels. Only a fool could seriously contemplate taking up the Soviet way of life with its poverty, brazen propaganda, government incompetence and the total defencelessness of the individual before the state. Alternatively, only a scoundrel, knowing precisely what such a system has in stock for everyone, could defend it, could whitewash it, could condone its crimes, could insist that the socialist system of governance should be humanity’s future. 

In his intellectually robust article Kevin Andrews demonstrates the connection between the failed Marxist utopia and our ecological warriors, still peddling the same tired ideological crap under a different sauce, mixed in with warm and fluffy motherhood statements. 

In the Soviet Union if you were accused of not liking Lenin you were earmarked for a very hard time. Now Messrs Brown and Singer are getting ready to start a hunt for those who they think do not like nature. They will do it if we let them take the political power they are after. They have claimed ownership of a legitimate and worthy cause—ecology—to serve as a weapon for achieving their political ambitions mounted on a Marxist platform. The word platform nowadays is used to describe a place, a carrier, or a surface capable of carrying a weapons system. The Greens’ platform is nihilist, pagan Marxism, their weapons system is ecology, and the end result of their attack is control of our way of life.

Kevin Andrews is quite clear who the Greens are and what kind of life they would have for all of us if they take power. More than that—he is able to show the ideological connection of Greens with failed Marxism and the grievous consequences for Australia in case of a green revolution, because these two branches of the same rotten tree are mutually compatible and enhance each other’s deadliness. Sends shivers down my spine.

Michael Galak,
Elwood, Vic.

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Mao’s Murder Toll

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SIR: Philip Ayres in his letter (December 2010) says that “a claim such as Colebatch’s that Mao was the worst mass-murderer of the last century depends on the assumption that he intended [Ayres’s emphasis] his misconceived Great Leap Forward to be a disastrous failure and result in the deaths of twenty million people by famine”. Furthermore, flippantly, he adds, “(I’ve seen “thirty” claimed, even “forty”—hell, what does it matter? Add ’em in).”

Contrary to what Ayres says, I don’t think you have to assume that Mao intended the Great Leap forward to be a “disastrous failure” to believe that Mao was at the very least a mass murderer of tens of millions of his own people, if not the “worst mass-murderer of the last century”—he was a megalomaniac in the mould of Hitler and Stalin. 

Jasper Becker in Hungry Ghosts: China’s Secret Famine says that Mao was not deluded about the famine and he quotes Li Zhisui, Mao’s doctor: “Mao knew the peasants were dying by the million. He did not care.” One of the aims of the Great Leap Forward was the collectivisation of agriculture and his model was the Soviet Union. It beggars belief that he wasn’t aware of the consequences, in particular the mass starvation in the Ukraine in the 1930s. 

Then in 1966 Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution aimed, according to Becker, at those “Party persons in power taking the capitalist road”, in effect those who had opposed his handling of the Great Leap Forward such as Chen Yun, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Once again probably millions, if not tens of millions, died; and once again Mao did not care how many died in order for him to reassert his authority. 

Chris Rule,
Gilmore, ACT. 

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Safeguards in Euthanasia Laws

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SIR: Brian Pollard’s article on euthanasia (January-February 2011) is very interesting. He treats legal euthanasia as primarily a medical problem. There are four sets of players (apart from the patient): doctors who want to kill their patients (very few in number); doctors who do not want to kill them, but not being up-to-date in palliative care see no other option with a patient with a illness suffering excessive pain; people who are genuinely facing that situation; and “useful idiots” who contemplate the possibility of intense pain, or that people could exist fully conscious but incapable of being more than immobile vegetables, and so support the euthanasia push.

To date it seems there is great support for a doctor killing a patient, “If a hopelessly ill patient in great pain with absolutely no chance of recovering asks for a lethal dose”. As Brian Pollard notes, this is the wrong question, and ignores the many assumptions which should be considered. First, is the patient hopelessly ill? Second, can the pain be removed or greatly reduced without killing the patient? Third, is the patient in a fit mental state to properly ask for a lethal dose, taking into consideration all possibilities? Fourth, is the patient being, or possibly being, pressured into the request? Fifth, is the doctor the proper person to administer the lethal dose?

Supposing a “euthanasia law” were passed. What safeguards should be employed? 

I suggest that the first safeguard is that a doctor, or any other person, receiving such a request should pass it on to a proper authority charged with the well-being and care of persons making such a request. The patient should be examined, separately, by at least two other doctors to assess the patient’s condition. If each, separately, concurs with the “” diagnosis, then the patient should be examined by at least two persons skilled (and up-to-date) in palliative care (but who do not need to be medical personnel). If each separately concurs that proper palliative care will neither reduce pain to acceptable levels, nor improve the patient’s quality of life, the next step should be examination by psychiatrists to assess the patient’s mental state. Assuming the patient is found to be in a fit and proper state of mind to make such a request, the next step is examination by lawyers, to determine if there is any likelihood that the patient is being improperly pressured to have life extinguished. 

Finally, the last step, assuming all safeguards have been properly completed, is a visit by the “public executioner”, who will administer the necessary treatment to end life—preferably slow-acting so the patient can withdraw consent at any time. (You may recall the recent case of a man who administered to himself one and a half pints of sherry as an enema—one can hardly think of a more pleasant way to die, yet one reversible if caught in time.) 

The “public executioner” should be accompanied by police to confirm the patient’s final assent to the procedure and to witness death. Under no account should the public executioner be a medical practitioner!

This would seem to take into account all the problems that Brian Pollard mentions. Doctors should never take lives; they are there to save lives. Unfortunately this does not deal with the problem of the doctor, or nurse, who wilfully administers a massive dose of a pain-killing drug. “Malice aforethought” is still murder, even if it is done to put a person out of his misery. 

And finally, the patient, having been executed, should be autopsied to assess if the person were in fact suffering from a illness. If memory serves me, at least one of those who were (legally) murdered in the Northern Territory was not in fact suffering from the alleged disease considered to be the justification for the death.

Dudley Horscroft,
Banora Point, NSW.

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Involuntary Euthanasia

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SIR: Brian Pollard is probably right in saying that safe voluntary euthanasia is a myth. The enabling laws are very likely to become a legal muddle, unless the process comes to involve a court ruling and a legally appointed executioner following a protocol, perhaps an improved version of the one used in the USA for putting down their criminals. This is obviously not likely to happen.

The involuntary euthanasia, to which Dr Pollard appears to take similar animadversions, is another matter altogether. It’s been practised since medicine began, because dying patients often are in pain, or may be so, even if their brains are severely damaged and they may appear unconscious. Who would withhold morphine (or the equivalent) in that setting, even though it would certainly shorten the patient’s remaining life? This is what palliative care is all about. If the time scale of the putative dying is beyond days or even weeks, the palliative care should, in my view, escalate to the point of either abolishing the suffering or rendering the patient asleep until he dies. Futile life-sustaining therapy is also a crime, albeit a moral one.

Dr George Nikolić,
Hughes, ACT.

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Antony Flew and the True Scotsman

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SIR: A letter from Roy Williams (December 2010) referred to my old friend Antony Flew. I wish that Roy Williams was correct in referring to him as “Sir Antony”, but he was not so honoured. Tony Flew was certainly still mentally alert until a ripe old age, but I know nothing about his condition when he became a deist. Professor Dennis O’Keeffe, who knew Tony far better than I did, might wish to enlighten us.

One of Tony Flew’s most amusing inventions was his “No true Scotsman” fallacy. It goes as follows: “No Scotsman would ever beat his wife”; “But Angus McInnes beats his wife and he was born and has lived all his life in Aberdeen”; “Then Angus McInnes is no true Scotsman”. Some claims as to who are “true Aborigines” may well contain the “No true Scotsman” fallacy.

Geoffrey Partington,
Elsternwick, Vic.

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Sarcophaguses or Sarcophagi?

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SIR: I was disappointed that Mr de la Fuente (January-February 2011), teacher of English, used sarcophaguses in lieu of sarcophagi, the Concise Oxford Dictionary’s preferred form.

John Maloney,
South Perth, WA.