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Rationalist Society Of Australia
The Rationalist Society of Australia (RSA) promotes the interests of rationalists nationally in Australia. Originally formed as the Victorian Rationalist Association, the society originated in a meeting of freethinkers in the University of Melbourne in 1906. It is the operational arm of the rationalist movement in Australia. The society created a rationalist library in 1909, and grew its collection though donations. The society ran the 1910 and 1913 Australian tours of rationalist thinker, Joseph McCabe. A number of trade unionists and social campaigners sought to advance political causes, including Robert Samuel Ross and Alfred Foster. John Samuel Langley became the secretary in 1919, and William Glanville Cook became the secretary in 1938. Its aims include: * to propound and advance rationalism, that is, adherence to the principle that all significant beliefs and actions should be based on reason and evidence, that the natural world is the only world there is and that answers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Skeptics
Australian Skeptics is a loose confederation of like-minded organisations across Australia that began in 1980. Australian Skeptics investigate paranormal and pseudoscientific claims using scientific methodologies. This page covers all Australian skeptical groups which are of this mindset. The name "Australian Skeptics" can be confused with one of the more prominent groups, "Australian Skeptics Inc", which is based in Sydney and is one of the central organising groups within Australian Skeptics. Origins In 1979, Mark Plummer (later president of Australian Skeptics) sent a letter to the American skeptical magazine '' The Zetetic'' in which he expressed interest in beginning a skeptical organisation in Australia. Sydney electronics entrepreneur Dick Smith responded to the letter, and offered to sponsor a visit to Australia by James Randi, the principal investigator for the American-based Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), now known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'', 1st edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976. 2nd edition, 1986. 3rd edition, Routledge, London, 1996. p. 286 More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".Bourke, Vernon J., "Rationalism," p. 263 in Runes (1962). In an oldJohn Locke (1690), An Essay on Human Understanding controversy, rationalism was opposed to empiricism, where the rationalists believed that reality has an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, the rationalists argued that certain truths exist and that the intellect can directly grasp these truths. That is to say, rationalists asserted that certain rational principles exist in logic, mathematics, ethics, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Rights And Equal Opportunity Commission
The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body funded by, but operating independently of, the Australian Government. It is responsible for investigating alleged infringements of Australia's anti-discrimination legislation in relation to federal agencies. The ''Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986'' articulates the Australian Human Rights Commission's role and responsibilities. Matters that can be investigated by the Commission under the ''Australian Human Rights Commission Regulations 2019'' include discrimination on the grounds of age, medical record, an irrelevant criminal record; disability; marital or relationship status; nationality; sexual orientation; or trade union activity. Commission officebearers The Commission falls under the portfolio of the Attorney-General of Australia. Commissio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freethought Association Of Canada
The Atheist Bus Campaign was an advertising campaign in 2008 and 2009 that aimed to place "peaceful and upbeat" messages about atheism on transport media in Britain, in response to evangelical Christian advertising. It was created by comedy writer Ariane Sherine and launched on 21 October 2008, with official support from the British Humanist Association and Richard Dawkins. The campaign's original goal was to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across London for four weeks early in 2009 with the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Richard Dawkins, author of '' The God Delusion'', agreed to match all donations up to a maximum of £5,500, providing a total of £11,000 if the full amount were to be raised. The campaign reached that target by 10:06am on 21 October and had raised £100,000 by the evening of 24 October. The campaign closed on 11 April 2009, having raised a total of £153,523.51. The first buses started running on 6 January 2009 – ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. (page 56 in 1967 edition) Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify either the belief that God exists or the belief that God does not exist." The English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the word ''agnostic'' in 1869, and said "It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe." Earlier thinkers, however, had written works that promoted agnostic points of view, such as Sanjaya Belatthaputta, a 5th-century BCE Indian philosopher who expressed agnosticism about any afterlife;Bhaskar (1972). and Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher who expressed agnosticism about the existence of "the gods". Defining agnosticism Being a scientist, above all else, Huxley presented agnos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists. The first individuals to identify themselves as atheists lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. The French Revolution, noted for its "unprecedented atheism", witnessed the first significant political movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human reason.Extract of page 22 In 1967, Albania declared itself the first official atheist coun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy'', 1st edition, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976. 2nd edition, 1986. 3rd edition, Routledge, London, 1996. p. 286 More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".Bourke, Vernon J., "Rationalism," p. 263 in Runes (1962). In an oldJohn Locke (1690), An Essay on Human Understanding controversy, rationalism was opposed to empiricism, where the rationalists believed that reality has an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, the rationalists argued that certain truths exist and that the intellect can directly grasp these truths. That is to say, rationalists asserted that certain rational principles exist in logic, mathematics, ethics, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Major World Religions
The world's principal religions and spiritual traditions may be classified into a small number of major groups, though this is not a uniform practice. This theory began in the 18th century with the goal of recognizing the relative levels of civility in different societies, but this practice has since fallen into disrepute in many contemporary cultures. History of religious categories Christian categorizations Initially, Christians had a simple dichotomy of world beliefs: Christian civility versus foreign heresy or barbarity. In the 18th century, "heresy" was clarified to mean Judaism and Islam; along with paganism, this created a fourfold classification which spawned such works as John Toland's ''Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity'', which represented the three Abrahamic religions as different "nations" or sects within ''religion'' itself, the "true monotheism." Daniel Defoe described the original definition as follows: "Religion is properly the Wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Secular Lobby
The National Secular Lobby is an Australian pro-secular organisation, founded in July 2017 and officially launched in January 2018. It aims to promote secular principles and the separation of church and state in Australia. The National Secular Lobby combines the building of grassroots awareness and action with the direct lobbying of parliamentarians by high profile ambassadors. It has made submissions to various parliamentary inquiries, including the Religious Freedom Review (2018), the 2021 Census Topic Review (2018), and the Parliamentary Prayers Inquiry (2018). Ambassadors Current National Secular Lobby ambassadors are: * Phillip Adams * Van Badham * Lazaras Panayiotou * Julian Burnside * Jane Caro * Fiona Patten * Chris Schacht * Dr Paul Willis * Dr David Zyngier See also * Secular Party of Australia * Secular state * Secularism * Secularity Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Secular Party Of Australia
The Secular Party of Australia is a minor Australian political party, founded in January 2006 and registered as a federal political party in 2010.History of Secular Party It aims to promote ethical principles and the separation of church and state in Australia. In early 2022 it merged with other parties to become the . History The Secular Party was f ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religion In Australia
Christianity is the largest religion in Australia, though its share of total population has declined significantly over the past several decades. Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia of 1901 states, "The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth." Australia's Aboriginal peoples developed the spirituality of the Dreaming and some of the earliest evidence on earth for religious practices among humans has been found in the archaeological record of their ancestors. Torres Strait Islander religion bore similarities to broader Melanesian spirituality. Since the start of European arrival and settlement with the British in 1788, and with subsequent immigration, Christianity has been the most widely professed faith. However, the religious landscape ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
