This is a problem. It was not rebuttal, I'll attempt to simplify. But please bear in mind,…

https://youtu.be/9foi342LXQE?t=42s

#inevitable

No, you can make a non-religious affirmation, as you can when entering Parliament. You can even (I think) swear on the Qu’ran, if you’re Muslim (I stand to be corrected on that last, but I think I remember something about it…

This is the better link http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/1966/history-myths-in-new-zealand

Our founding father, would you believe?:

British writer Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862) exerted a far-reaching influence. His plans for systematic British colonization focused on a free…

Well, there is The Great Commission.

< source >

As far as I…

Not only that, The sovereign and Head of State in New Zealand is still the Head of the official Church of the UK. By that token, on this train, we could…

I seriously am confused as to where your point lies. You said:…

Isn't this still the case Mark? I feel that the emergence of democracy in Britain, and the extent to which the New Zealand Company pushed the British Government's hand is perhaps getting…

Except that it did. The head of state was also the head of the prevailing church in Britain and granted liberal consessions to the companies such as…

And even those two points require you to believe that the self-contradictory documents that make up…

I'm having a hard time imagining how the classical mind, if defined by it's absence of Christianity, differs from large parts of the world that have never had significant exposure to Christianity to the extent that…

Yeah it's a pretty half-hearted trolling effort, probably because it's not sincere. He should stick to the Marxism, which has a lot more hooks for personal attacks and snide backhanders at the entire community. It's what he knows best.

Dude, this post of yours is largely a manifesto to…

I'm not. It's a sweeping generalization. The "classical mind" is a cliche to stand in place of the millions of individual minds of the time, many of which…

Whatever dude.

Seriously, how can you have an entire TV show on Christianity without anyone seemingly having the faintest idea what all the fuss was all about? Tamaki is an ignorant tosspot, so he wouldn't have the foggiest what the big idea, the "good news" actually was.…

were those pre-christians a bit savagey and dim? if only they'd written some books or something. and if only…

Whoa up there big fella! there never was any Christian revolution.
The residents of Galilee were mainly of the Jewish persuasion and didnt want to submit to Roman rule.They'd had enough of that from the Persians.

[On a side note It was never their land in perpetuity the…

The company became notable for elaborate and grandiose advertising and for its vigorous attacks on those it perceived as its opponents – the British Colonial Office, successive…

LOL. Yeah, right.

either he or his immediate apostles made a revolutionary…

The ideology that justified colonial atrocities was colonialism/ imperialism. Te Kooti, like many others, was christian. Christianity never had a monopoly on persecution and tyranny:

In 845, at the height of the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, Emperor Wuzong decreed that Buddhism,…

Sure, many christians, possibly a majority, have abjured those ideas over the last 100 years – but for the…

Pretty much. One was extremely famous in his own time, more so than probably any other human had ever been, operating out of the heart of the most prolific and powerful culture of the region. The other was obscure, from a remote town, affecting…

Ahh to live in the ancient…

Which could be simply that the Romans adopted it at the right time and enforced it on their empire.

A key distinguishing factor of christianity over previous religions is the way it justified a state monopoly of violence in…

(Which of course would mean that if he had offspring, there would be a succession. And it would obviously run through the Merovingian dynasty and the Grand Masters of the Priory of Sion, up to…

The first ancient account we have of the life of Alexander the Great is Arrian, who wrote his Anabasis of Alexander in the first half of the second century – that is, some 450-500 years after Alexander’s life. All contemporary accounts…

This is an argument that's been going on a long time, but it appears that most scholars believe he existed but attribute varying degrees of historicity to his story.

Well, I'd be interested in which sources they'd cite. As far as I am aware, there is 1 mention of his followers in Josephus (a known fabulist) and that is it, apart from the religious writings which don't actually match…

This is where you can get very different results from the census if you look at language fluency compared to descent. There is a whole complicated area around that.

I think so long as the state gives tax free benefits to Religions compared to other organisations, there is a legitimate reason for collecting the information, along with the Religion/Ethnicity nexus have…

Nope, 2013 census total New Zealand:

No Religion: 1635345
Christian: 1858977
Object to State: 173034
Total Stated: 3901167

So is the attraction of butterfly collecting, the key difference being that butterfly collectors of a particular persuasion have yet to massacre entire populations over matters pertaining to the subtlety of interpreting various Lepidoptera genera. And that is the key problem…

I wonder when was the last time anyone watched the DVD of his investiture – if that's the word – as a bishop. It was a pricey item back in the day, leading to speculation as to whether it included bonus bloopers.

(h/t to www.whatreallyhappened.com for top image)

No, the majority of historians would say that he did.

He's not the messiah, he's just a naughty boy.

The number of people affiliating with Hinduism increased 39.6 percent since 2006 (from 64,392 people in 2006 to 89,919 people in 2013).
Of those who affiliated with Hinduism in 2013:
• more than 1 in 5 people (20.8 percent) were born in New Zealand
• 31.8 percent…

It really was troubling/revealing to see Brian Tamaki's counter-response to your point about…

And it may also be useful for policy makers to know how many people aren't religious.

So, if the goal…

Almost certainly — and it can also be very challenging for people who are used to being in very hierarchical structures with very clear and rigidly enforced top-down lines of authority.…

I wonder if, sometimes, we underestimated what it takes to relate well to people who are different from ourselves. It’s something I’m wildly conscious of when I spend time with diverse groups of people… I want…

The trick there is finding them. Usually the churches doing the best work aren't well equipped for good PR and often couldn't…

And apart from anything else, I'm quite sure there are a lot of genuine news stories out there for the getting, especially in Auckland, where the churches are manifold and entwined with…

Sure, but as I said on Twitter if the media are going to treat religion seriously then media organizations need to do Journalism 101. Put in the…

Not sure I follow – does Brian like cigars?

Or you’ve got Family First…

...and could occasionally have highly sinister interests. In The World At War, one of the Dutch interviewees said they had become so used to filling out annoying forms that when the Germans…

I think it probably balances out with all those people who've given the religious affiliation of their tiny children.

I think you need to parse that one a little carefully, because I'm assuming you're including those who tick the "object to state" box. I'm one of them, because even though I've made no bones that I'm a devout Catholic (before you ask…