IloveFauns wrote:@Wagga I must also add that Queensland appears to be more religious than the other states. We use to have religion lessons in a government school. I went to school in Tasmania and had no religion lessons. Same here in WA.
So if there are any Queenslanders or someone that knows I have a question. Is the religion lessons in government schools a state government choice? do they still have the lessons in all state schools?. I left in 2005(getting close to a decade ago now) so a lot has possibly changed.
Yes, all the states have their own separate government education departments and make their own decisions about religious lessons. Occasionally the Federal government intervenes, using the states' share of our tax dollars as a carrot and a stick to get compliance, notably John Howard's wanting state schools to have Ministers of Religion as school counsellors, or Julia Gillard's BER funding of school projects.
The father of Federation was Sir Henry Parkes, a Premier of NSW several times, and what he thought and worked out is largely reflected in our constitution, from 1901. By the way, Queen Victoria and the British Parliament ratified our becoming an independent country, shortly before she died early 1901, and it is unlikely she would have wanted Australia to be anything else but a Christianity-based country. I don't know if religious lessons are still held in NSW as even my youngest child left school fifteen years ago. I wouldn't say that Queensland is the most religious state. More like it is our Deep North, where conservatism rules OK.
W4J wrote:You do make one baseless assumption though. YEC was the mainstream belief prior to evolution and uniformitarinism, it's not a modern movement.
I wouldn't say so. More like that the subject never arose until inquisitive humans started opening the Pandora's box of Evolution. I'd say that Genesis 1: 1-11 was generally read that way, without people thinking it maybe could be read in other ways. Before I go on to answer Phosphorus's question, I decided to pay Genesis 1:1-11 a visit, and found something interesting in the way it was set out. In KJV there is a repetition at the end of each section which goes something like this: "And the Lord said Let there be light.... And that was the first day." At the conclusion of each of the next five sections there is a refrain "And that was the second day" etc. I never thought about it beforehand, but Genesis 1: 1-11 isn't prose at all. This chapter of the Bible is meant to be sung or chanted like a litany, with maybe the rabbi or minister calling out what the Lord did, and the congregation responding with the refrain. I haven't been to a Jewish religious ceremony, though I have been inside Sydney's Great Synagogue. But they do use extensively the Pentateuch (Torah) and they sing the Psalms which we also did in the Anglican church. (Including Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, before they lost the Latin and the music.)
I don't understand Hebrew and would very much like to know what the Hebrews called each day of the week, and how they arrived at these names, apart from the Seventh day, which is called the Sabbath. But I do have an English translation of the Hebrew
Tanakh. Comparing this book with the KJV, I found the refrain "And that was the first day" became "And there was evening and there was morning, the first day." Both versions start off the same way with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" and proceed similarly. The thing is that which day it is, isn't uttered until the end of each section.
It doesn't say which first, second, third etc day it was, only that the Lord called the Seventh day, The Sabbath. And the Jews ever afterwards used a seven day week, claiming the seventh day as a day of rest, basing it on this song. I've learned elsewhere (from a Seventh-Day-Adventist archaeological magazine) that the Hebrews used two calendars, one being a religious calendar to work out such long-standing festivals such as the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. The other one was measured according to the reigns of their Kings whilst they had them. The months all had names - even the Aboriginal peoples measured time and named the seasons of the year, even though they found six rather than the four Europeans claim for the world.
What I am trying to ask, is that were the six days consecutive? Or were they merely six random days all called Monday, for example? Were they really called Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc., or were these days at any random interval, according to which stage God finished, before moving onto the next stage? A 24 hour day was calculated by the Babylonians either before or about the time of the Jewish captivity, though it was Eratosthenes who calculated the circumference of the world.
But if you are expected to work every day like slaves do, one day is much like another, and a rest day is when the master says so. Sunrise and sunset goes by as do winter and summer. Who cares then whether it is Sunday, Monday or Doomsday? To use an Aussie expression, the slaves could very well say "Fair crack of the whip, I need a regular rest day". And now with that song, a very old song, possibly sung from the time of Exodus, they could have their weekly rest day as a matter of religious faith. Plus if I was a Babylonian slave, a nice little dig at my Babylonian masters who thought their calculations as so impressive.
phosphorus wrote:While of course many Christians throughout history have believed (or assumed) a literal six days, I consider YEC, with all its specific elements and understandings, most definitely a product of its time...I don't know the movement's history in Australia. I'm grateful you could read my post amicably and in the spirit it was intended.
A literal seven day week, starting on Sunday and finishing on Saturday, is certainly the Adventist stance, and why it is called Seventh Day Adventist in the first place. This Church was started in USA in the 1800's by people who felt, among other matters, that we should be resting on the Seventh day, the way the Jews do to this day, not the First day, Sunday, a day of worship for much of Christendom, being the Lord's Day. The Adventists spread widely through the Pacific area, notably in places like Samoa, Tahiti, and especially Norfolk Island and Pitcairn Island, both associated with the famous Mutiny on the Bounty, after which William Bligh got to be Governor of New South Wales until the Rum Corps kicked him out. Did you know that Anna Bligh, who was Queensland Premier when VDT was being filmed in the Moreton Bay area here, is also one of his descendants?
However, New South Wales, in particular, was already settled and was the main administrative centre for the area, including New Zealand, Queensland and Tasmania. Anglicanism and Catholicism were far more important here, up until Federation. Our day of rest is still Sunday, and businesses used to have a half-day holiday on Saturday afternoons. Even today there are no dramas if businesses and Government services close on both Saturdays and Sundays, though there is a push to have 7 day a week working weeks with no penalty rates for people working shifts or on weekends.
Although the Adventists are respected, I notice they do not seem to be as prominent as they used to be before the notorious Lindy Chamberlain case, when at Uluru, a dingo stole her baby, Azaria, in August 1981, called down a monumental injustice against her, personally, and prejudicial opinions against the Adventists. However, in Sydney at least, they still have their own churches and schools. They run a hospital at Wahroonga which has an impressive reputation, and they also are linked to the Sanitarium cereal company as well as the production of vegetarian and health foods. As
W4J points out, the majority of Christians in Australia would be Theistic Evolutionists.
I'm glad you said in a later post, that we will have to agree to disagree with you. There is one way the fossil record resoundingly agrees with the Bible, even Genesis 2:7, or even Genesis 2:21-22. Everything in and on the Earth and any living creature or organism which inhabits it, is of the Earth, the dust of the earth, its chemicals, their combinations, and the more complex transmitted DNA. We do not come from wandering aliens, UFO's etc, like the likes of Erich Von Daniken would have had us believe some decades ago. Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus. 
Of course DNA and RNA wasn't discovered until after WW2, but Genesis also insists that woman is flesh of man's flesh and bone of man's bone, and of the same species, whichever part of the world one comes from. Would that be why, sometimes, women and men treat each other as enemy aliens? 
