Part II : Secular Humanist influences
On 11th December 2009 came the bizarre news on Radio NZ Checkpoint that New Zealand’s main centres of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were to be subjected to an “Atheist Bus Campaign”. Emulating one in the United Kingdom that year there would be advertisements on buses reading “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” According to a spokesman named Simon Fisher it was “To provide an alternative voice to raise awareness of humanism and atheism”, but closer scrutiny suggested to me a far more suspect motive, of which more shortly.
Moreover, New Zealanders were being asked to pay for this highly questionable prank. Initially $10,000 was being sought, but by December 17th TV3 news was reporting that $20,000 had been raised. No mean feat for an entirely unknown outfit, and one of questionable bona fides. {As an aside, the venture thankfully did not materialise}
Nevertheless it would have helped that there appeared to be virtually no media questioning about who was behind the scheme, let alone any skepticism about the stated goal as quoted above.
Also on the campaign website all sounded so rosy and well meaning, with some anonymous person named “Duncan” even assuring readers that “This campaign is about positivity and we need to respect people’s alternative points of view, just as we hope they will respect ours”.
So as the unnamed backers of this campaign at least purported to want to “raise awareness of humanism”, and also purported to “welcome alternative points of view”, I accepted the invitation, writing about it, albeit to a somewhat limited readership.
I said I hoped to demonstrate that all was far from what it seemed with this highly dubious caper. Indeed, that the whole scheme was nothing less than a calculated confidence trick : part of an insidious attack upon Western cultural values. In short, that it was part of what is widely regarded as a pernicious international Culture War.
Firstly then, I saw the campaign as soliciting money under false pretences. This because secrecy surrounded what would appear to be the true goal of the campaign, along with certain unpalatable facts about the people presumably behind it. Therefore if what I presumed to be the case was correct, the N.Z. public was being asked to donate to a highly suspect “cause”, and one about which it was being kept in the dark.
Indeed the so-called N.Z. Atheist Bus Campaign would be simply a cunning front to disguise the real nature of this appeal and the promoters behind it, as I’m sure also will have been the case with the UK campaign : a shadowy mishmash of international, ideologically driven atheistic humanists and rationalists.
One only needed to check the campaign’s website, www.nogod.org.nz. There, on page 2 of the information for December 13th 2009, and listed as “Valuable links”, were Canterbury Atheists, Humanist Society of New Zealand and N.Z. Association of Rationalists and Humanists, as if the latter two, at least, would not, more than likely, have been the core drivers of this crafty escapade. Also this innocuous-sounding bit of information : "The Humanist Society of N.Z. has kindly offered to administrate and oversee the donation collection to ensure it conforms to financial standards." How very magnanimous of them, as if they would not, almost certainly, have been at the very heart of the whole duplicitous affair anyway!
Admittedly on page 3 of one of their December 13th blurbs there was a vague hint of a humanist influence behind it all, but in no way sufficient to raise questions or to cause doubts : "The promotion and expression of a secular humanist world view [but of course not spelt out - see below] and the affirmation that there is no need to believe in a supernatural being to live a full rich life."
A basic tactic of these zealots is to avoid like the plague facts, rational argument and public debate, and instead to appeal to people's emotions. Hence the absence of hesitation of some to respond to the advertisement funding appeal. So certain unpalatable facts about humanism invariably are never allowed to rear their ugly heads. Facts such as the following.
Global population control
For several decades now the International Humanist and Ethical Union, along with its many shadowy friends, has pursued a covert agenda for revolutionary social change by peaceful means. Moreover the major concern propelling this phenomenon appears to relate to global population control, although this is equally covert, because it is also rare to read/hear any acknowledgement of this, let alone debate.
Yet if one probes deeply enough ample evidence is unquestionably there. Such as a ten page closely typed paper headed “Population – An Outline and Overview of the Human Population of the World – its Situation and Future, its Problems, and our Choice and our Responsibility in Facing These” – A Humanist Occasional Paper, dated May 1976, published by the Humanist Information Service, Christchurch NZ.
As the editor, Trevor M. Cobeldick, explained there, that paper was based upon a submission by the Humanist Society of NZ for a NZ Government Commission in May 1974,that having been designated World Population Year. The full submission was printed in the NZ Humanist, No. 25, July 1974.
What I find particularly disquieting however I come to shortly: the actual social issues which comprise that covert Humanist international, radical social change agenda, and how some of them, at least, seem to fit so well with the Humanist concern for world population control: One, suicide, has already been widely decriminalised.
Some others, however, are still on the agenda, such as euthanasia; abortion and homosexuality. This latter also fits very well with those quotes I included in Part II from 1979 and 1980 : “You can choose to be gay!” and “Eight ‘advantages’ of being homosexual”! Moreover, on page 10 of that Humanist Population paper, under “Examples of means of population regulation”, in the “decrease” category, are listed, inter alia, “homosexuality” and “abortion”! So much for the hackneyed sloganeering of being necessarily “Born that way!” More on this under my “Present Day” notes.
Now for a closer look at the Humanist phenomenon. As long ago as October 1980 Pat McCarthy, editor of the N.Z. Catholic newspaper at that time, Humanity, wrote a highly informative article entitled “Humanism : A philosophy for social action” . There he quoted Vince Nesbit, an Australian researcher who had made a study of humanism, and especially its influence in education. Nesbit:-
“I am not going to suggest that humanists are evil people. On the whole they are good people…..They are trying to work to bring about the sort of society they believe to be the best for their fellow men…They have used the Fabian method of gradualism to penetrate into society in all those areas where they can exert influences – in the pulpit, in government, in the school, in the bureaucracy, in the trade unions.
“From about 1963 the British Humanist Association, in a series of resolutions, drew up a plan of political action for law change. Its seven points, some of which were achieved during the 1970’s to become planks in Britain’s permissive society, are:-
Legislation of homosexual acts between consenting adults
Abortion on demand
Easy divorce for marriage “breakdown”
Legalised voluntary euthanasia
Removal of restrictions on “soft drugs”
Abolition of all forms of censorship
Abolition of religious education in schools.”
In that article McCarthy quoted Nesbit as observing that “A humanist organisation often doe not appear in public as itself. It sets up organisations like the Council for Civil Liberties, The Divorce Law Reform Association, the Homosexual Law Reform Association, the Abortion Law Reform Association and various other groups, particularly women’s groups…..It doesn’t operate as itself. It makes the intellectual bullets for other people to fire.” McCarthy then pointed out :-
“In N.Z. Humanism has provided many of the leading activists in the pro-abortion movement.[Such as the massively Government funded Family Planning Association] The Humanist Society has also instigated the founding of a society devoted to legalising euthanasia, and taken a close interest in the introduction of moral education in schools…..” etc.(End of quotes)
As indicated there by McCarthy, over the past several decades N.Z. has also had its various Humanist front groups similar to those quoted above in Britain; and the Atheist Bus Campaign would seem to be but the latest example of this trickery.
Similarly to the British situation, in N.Z. some of these front groups doing Humanist lobbying are, or have been, the Abortion Law Reform Association of N.Z. (ALRANZ); Homosexual Law Reform Association of N.Z. (now defunct); Divorce Law Reform Association of N.Z. (now defunct) and the Voluntary Euthanasia Society etc.
Yet the N.Z. public is being kept utterly in ignorance about such an ongoing covert attack upon its traditional cultural values. Now, in 2012, one of the most obvious such Humanist-based issues is that of euthanasia, via a Parliamentary Private Member’s Bill, and sponsored by, unsurprisingly, a seasoned lesbian teacher-activist from the 1980’s, Maryan Street. So more on euthanasia and other hot potato subjects in the “Present Day” section.
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PRESENT DAY : General Discussion
Chickens coming home to roost?
I was interested to read Jim Hopkins’ column “Soldiers serve countries, Assange only himself” (NZ Herald 24th August 2012). Particularly his reference to a 20 year old man he had just met, who was still angry about a most unsettling experience at primary school ten years earlier.
One day all the ten year old girls had been taken for a “self defense course”, while all the ten year old boys had been subjected to an “anger management” session. Later the girls refused to play with the boys, regarding them as “the enemy, demonised, stigmatised, and judged to be a dark, threatening menace”.
Hopkins reflected upon this troubling situation : “That’s our world; that’s the place we’ve made – or allowed others to make on our behalf.” etc.
Now for the irony I see here. In the early to mid-1980’s Hopkins was, for a time, a talkback host on the (back then) most radical Leftist-oriented station Radio Pacific. As secretary/spokesman for Credo Society, and although unwelcomed by the station, I was a frequent caller to challenge what I saw as perverse socialist-driven programme content, such as the above radical feminist, mind-poisoning drivel which went under the guise of girls’ “self defense”.
For my trouble I was detested by the station and many of its staff. One day Hopkins and another male staffer went to air with a satirical skit, mocking me for my concerns, and even acting out a supposed phone call to Moscow!
So to Hopkins I would just say this : Do not include me among those comments above (“That’s our world”) etc. Back then, when such pernicious thinking was establishing itself in the minds of our people I was one of the very few who stood up to be counted. So in this respect my conscience is clear. How about yours?
KiwiCredo blog 25th August 2012
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