Former leader of the Australian Democrats Lyn Allison argued the Bible is a "cruel text" at a debate on religion in Sydney last night while another speaker pointed to the need to believe in a "higher being". Global warming was an Armageddon ignored by religious leaders including Cardinal George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, but one which would need more than an Ark to be avoided, Ms Allison argued.
Lyn Allison began last night's Intelligence2 debate with an argument for democracy in place of religion, the first affirmative in a case for the world being better without religion.
The Bible was a cruel text in her reading, dependent on complex and outdated myths, a fosterer of cults that had protected pederasts. Church teaching had fuelled AIDS and repressed women, she argued.
"Organised religion still bears no responsibility for its extremism and the problems its dictators have created," Ms Allison said. "Religion absolves people from blame or the need to fix anything."
But Suzanne Rutland, the chairwoman of the department of Hebrew, biblical and Jewish studies at the University of Sydney, defended religion on the basis of the Ten Commandments.
"The inadequacy is not in the religious message but is in inadequacy of us as people."
She pointed to Alcoholics Anonymous as proof of the need for religion. "You need to believe in something higher, in the awe we have spoken about," she said.
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