People who identify themselves as being Christian make up the majority of the population in Australia. Whether they are practicing is a different story.

And again, you’re missing the point.

Also, this is beside the point. You can believe whatever you like. My point was, if people are going to go around “talking down” Christianity they should do so to other faiths as well.

Edit: oh, and check the meaning of the word omnipotent; it doesn’t mean what you think it means.

How about the fact that Jesus being part of the trinity is omnipotent, so any suffering he endures on earth is constant, foretold, and known well in advance by him. Even worse, he knows where he’s going and he’s been there before. It’s like he never left anyways. So he comes down, puts on a show, and leaves. That’s a theatrical production, not a sacrifice. You can’t tell me that the all knowing and all powerful didn’t know what was going to happen. He even said so at dinner. He knew it. Maybe he didn’t design people making those choices but he obviously knew it was going to happen. He obviously didn’t care because it was part of the production anyways, give away the mortal shell of an immortal entity that is a god anyways. Coming back to life for the omnipotent isn’t hard either, it is just showing off. Again more production. It’s not like he can’t comeback, he did it 2 times so far (Jesus and the resurrecting his corpse again) otherwise he wouldn’t be omnipotent would he?

So basically there’s no sacrifice, just a show trial for the benefit of a religion that’s supposed to be the right track. So assuming that’s all true I’m not sure we should celebrate being duped.

Christians make up at least 64% of the population of Australia.

Give me a break. Even worse your country enacts Judeo-Christian censorship laws, that are inline with everything that Judeo-Christian teachings are prudish about.

So don’t claim that Christians have no power in the democracy of Australia. That’s an outright lie.

And yeah, we’re still cool for AusHack

as to Christians not fighting back: Jews aren’t bombing abortion clinics in the US. and I’m perfectly happy to stand up and say that Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Pastafarianism are all equally kooky.

(… we still cool for ozhack, right?

Also, are you trying to tell me that this is a purely Australian phenomenon? If so, I find it hard to believe you…

Yes, Christians tolerate discussion and criticism… but people seem to have equated that with a soft target and gone after Christianity with a vengeance.

As for this post appearing on planet.haskell.org … Have a look at the FAQ: http://planet.haskell.org/faq.html

As for why christianity get’s targeted, I can think of a couple of reasons:

* As you note, Australia has developed from a christian culture, So the people ‘picking’ on christians almost exclusively consider themselves christians, or come from a christian background. Australian culture has a history of self-deprecating humour, so it’s generally considered more than acceptable to mock your own culture, significantly less so to mock others’.

* As most Australians come from a culturally christian background, they haven’t the slightest clue when the religious celebrations of other religions are which makes it very hard to ‘pick’ on them. We certainly don’t get public holidays for them, so it would be hard to promote visiting family or working on the home for Passover or Ramadan.

* People are much more aware these days of the political history of such celebrations and how to a large extent the timing and rituals involved where used to impose control and weed out opposing beliefs. A certain level of cynicism, especially amongst younger people is therefore quite understandable. The ‘zombie Jesus’ joke you talk about would I assume fall into this category, personally I haven’t been aware of it.

Happy Oestre,
Peter

Also you should be proud to have a religion which can handle and tolerate discussion and criticism.

sidenote: I am offended that this shows up in haskell feeds.