Godless PMs Down Under March 16, 2011
Posted by Ian in Religion.trackback
I probably just missed the buzz (if any) about this when Gillard became PM over the ditch but I hadn’t realised she was openly atheistic. Below is an interesting video of her discussing some aspects of this.
It is interesting she never uses the word “atheism” herself but she clearly doesn’t mind the term being used to describe her.
This got me curious about John Key’s religious views. A quick search around the internet revealed this interesting snippet:
He was less than upfront when quizzed about whether he believed in God on Agenda in April.
“That’s an interesting question.
“Do I believe in God? I don’t believe in life after death.”
Asked again he said: “Well I don’t believe in life after death; I don’t know.”
Asked for a third time: “Well if you’re asking me if I’m religious it depends how you define religion.
“I look at religion as doing the right thing; I don’t define that as someone that goes to church necessarily on a Sunday.
“I mean I go to church a lot with the kids, but I wouldn’t describe it as something that I … I’m not a heavy believer; my mother was Jewish which technically makes me Jewish. Yeah, I probably see it in a slightly more relaxed way.” Source
Not believing in a life after death and considering religion as “doing the right thing” suggests to me he is a non-religious person who doesn’t feel comfortable coming out and just saying so. In fact I’d suggest he represents his fellow New Zealanders rather well in that respect – it’s certainly not an unusual position.
It is an interesting sign of the times that religion seems to not play a big part in the lives of the prime ministers down under.
Greetings and salutations.
You might remember me as Lurgee on the old Sensing Murder (shudders) forum. Also Palmerston North based.
Wondering what you are up to these days. Good to see you are still blogging. The world needs more random thoughts forever engraved on the internet.
I notice some ramblings on other places about the SM forum being shutdown amid SCANDAL and RUMOURS and ALLEGATIONS. Were you still about for that, or had you pissed off (as I had) to pursue having a life?
I do remember, good to hear from you
I’m still doing my bit to clutter the net although I’m a bit quiet at the moment due to other commitments.
I haven’t paid much attention to SM lately, and hadn’t noticed the forum had closed although I do seem to recall something like that did happen ages ago. I gave up at the forum after it got to the point where the people whom were going to listen already had lol. Do you have any idea what actually happened?
On a different note, there is a skeptics in the pub thing running in palmy now, the second one is next week. Go to http://meetu.ps/MS4k for details – it’d be good to meet up and the first one was pretty relaxed.