Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
28 September 2009
It has been argued that if people do not believe in a God who will condemn them for bad actions, they will feel free to act outrageously. The claims of Christopher Hitchens give pause to reflect upon whether ethical thinking needs to include God.
Christopher Hitchens appeared on Q+A last week with Frank Brennan and others to debate questions of belief. Hitchens was a sharp debater, relentless in pointing out the flaws in fellow panelists' arguments. But Brennan was a worthy opponent.
Marrying Out recalls the vicious sectarian divide between Catholics and Protestants in Australia during much of the 20th century. Blame is allocated to neither Protestants nor Catholics, but to the human propensity for distrust and hatred.
Big families are no longer fashionable, but they had their benefits. Vastly outnumbered, there's no chance for adults to practice the kind of helicopter parenting common to my own generation, where we hover over our one or two, soothing and solving.
Homosexuals in Iran and allegedly 'adulterous' women in some countries are at risk of execution. Such cases may not qualify for refugee status in Australia, but would benefit from a 'complementary protection' Bill currently before Parliament.
The one thing more potent than the anticipation of seeing your team in a grand final is the misery of seeing them defeated. A wet, bedraggled lamb glimpsed en route to Melbourne proved to be an ill omen for one footy fan.
The kiss of peace in the Eucharist .. Judas' kiss of death, CPR's of life .. Georgie Porgie's, spin the bottle's .. the kiss of a rolling billiard ball .. Gene Simmons' great tongue Kiss
Australian online and wireless games constitute a rapidly-growing, billion-dollar industry, and sites such as Facebook increasingly dominate our social networks. Have we taken the first step towards 'trusting the computer' too much?
The parochial Australian press reaction to last week's Samoan tsunami shows how editors play on people's sense of pride to sell newspapers. But the misuse and manipulation of information can have adverse consequences for third parties.
Hitchens, like The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins, views belief in God not just as quaint, but as a sign of intellectual bad will. The age of muscular evangelical Christianity has been replaced by the age of muscular evangelical atheism.
An alliance of traditional owners in the Murray Darling Basin is seeking to assert their role in decisions concerning water management. In Murray River Country, Jessica K. Weir shows how their view for a healthy river could bring economics and ecology into alignment.
The case for Polanski's avoiding extradition has generally received a sympathetic hearing. The same sympathy is not generally shown to clergy who have been tried for less serious acts committed just as many years ago.
It is testament to the virility of Che Guevara as a revolutionary symbol that, with the 'Che Christ', his image is used to augment the understanding of Christ as a social radical. A new biopic takes Che as far from myth and symbol as possible.
Since the axing of The Religion Report, mainstream ABC news and current affairs programs have missed a range of important religious topics and events. It seems unlikely that General Manager Mark Scott will be able to maintain religion as a viable reality on the ABC.
After midnight, a group of international students, on a break from their night jobs as waiters, gather in a concrete stairwell and share their stories. Victorian premier John Brumby could learn a thing or two in that shabby stairwell.
We are terrible at caring for the planet because we are terrible at caring for each other. And we are lousy at caring for each other because we don't seem to have any idea of where the roots of human emotional sustenance lie. We might begin to look at our obsessive love of money and power.
According to NSW education policy, if a parent wants their child to opt out of religious education, that child is not entitled to any instruction during this period. An alliance of parents and educators is pushing for an ethics-based alternative to religious education.
We've been fighting, you've been beating .. your fists against my intractable wall — your version, of course, flawed as mine .. It's taken us years to give up on logic .. to realise neither will bleed to death.
A bill passed hastily by the NSW Parliament last week, specifically to force released paedophile Dennis Ferguson out of his home, effectively enshrined hate in legislation. Like drug addiction, paedophilia is a problem that requires community empathy, rather than ostracism.
During the last week, a fight broke out in the media over the place of feminism in Australian society. It's an old fight, that's been going on ever since women broke out of their bloomers and demanded the vote. What's the real deal, feminism?