In which at last Donners and the pond strike a secular agreement ...

Now the pond has no trouble with Bill, has a deep love of Bill, has even got into trouble in the past for liking a dead white male writer. Bill, a lover of puns, might even forgive that horrendous Terror pun, but would surely suggest something a tad better ...

"I am here with thee and they terrorist goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Murdochian Goths..."

In the usual reptile way, the pond was flung into confusion.

You see by the time the pond had shifted from the Terrorists to the reptiles of Oz, "back to basics" with Bill had become a focus on "life skills" ...

"Life skills"? What on earth did it mean?

"Life skills" is academically rigorous and welcome?

That could only mean one thing ... Donners was on the prowl, and he had more things to celebrate than humble academic rigour ...

It seems these days "life skills" is welcome in dashing Donner's passing wonderful world ... but the need for a secularist approach has landed in his noggin too ...

The pond felt a tingle of excitement.

At last there might be a chance for Donners and the pond to bond ...

No doubt that in the face of the latest Islamic outrage, Donners would call for the secularisation of all schools, the abandoning of taxpayer subsidies for whatever religious folly was being peddled in the guise of education, be it scientological, Islamic, Catholic, angry Anglican, creationist, or cult Brethren (even the cultists managed to pocket a cool $70 million one time)

And then there's the $430 million flung at school chaplains, which on the fair dibs principle has seen Catholic, Protestant, Islamic and Jewish bods flock to the taxpayer-funded trough ...

In all, snouts in the taxpayer trough is a shameless religious boondoggle which has extended to many other areas, including charity work ... as noted back in 2013 in Religion continues its free ride without our blessing ...

Let us read the inscrutable runes, and see what Donners says ...

It's a grand thing to learn that Catholics are singularly tolerant, which explains why they have been arguing so fiercely for marriage equality, the rights of gays and women so strongly these past few years.

Down with Daesh, down with anyone who opposes gay rights!

Now some might think that Donners rabbiting on about the cultural Left, and the persecuted white Anglo-Celtic Christian male, happily being served dinner by a devoted apron-clad wife locked in the kitchen and imprisoned behind an impenetrable white picket fence angry Sydney Anglican style ...

... was a bit of a mis-step, but the pond persisted in its hope that the Donners would reveal his deep down impatience with all forms of religion ... and especially the presence of religion in schools, at least where funded by long-suffering taxpayers as opposed to people exercising their right to bring up brain-dead children on their own time and with their own time.

If the pond launched the school for latter day Santa lovers, should it be funded as an educational institution?

Where have all the secularists gone? Don't worry, Donners is here ...

Sublime really.

It is the Bible that said ...

... if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire 
...And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire
...They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might
...You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? 

They are all one in Christ Jesus, and if not they can all go to an eternity of hell?

Never mind, right there at the end, the pond saw a chance to bond with Donners with just a few amendments ...

It is also because of Western moral philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill that we have a separation between church and state and that we don’t live in a theocracy like Israel, the southern states of the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and the Australian Catholic education system where religious laws prevail and basic rights are denied. 
It is impossible to do something about those foreign despotic theocracies, but we can make a start in Australia by removing the chaplain subsidy, and refusing to provide taxpayer funding for any religion that wants to indoctrinate students in its crackpot beliefs, in the guise of providing an education ...

There, the pond and Donners are as one, like secular minds, rigorous in a desire to deny religion a taxpayer funded toehold in state secular educational systems.

If Islamics want to teach misogyny, let them fund their own schools, and not see it condoned in a state school; and if Catholic nuns want to measure the length of a girl's skirts (no brooding, please), why let them do it on their own dime, without a single cent from the Australian taxpayer ...

And let's weed out any of these religious types who insist on wearing religious symbols in schools. Sorry, that goes for nuns and Jews too ...

Let us now solemnly embark on this joint secularisation mission by taking a first step.

Let the pond and Donners join together in stripping the Australian Catholic University of its federal government funding ...oh and we can throw in the odd Islamic school too, just to balance the books and keep it all fair and ship shape ...

Because the last thing this country needs is an Australian Islamic University, or an Australian Jewish University, or an Australian Scientological University or an Australian Brethren University  ... or an Australian Catholic University where its staff is telling everyone they should be united in Christ ... or else they can bugger off to hell ...

And now a sponsor's message from the ACU ... because no woman will ever become Pope ... or even a common or garden Cardinal ... what with the menfolk so loving the way they get to dress up in frocks.

Here girls, here's some satisfying alternative role models for you ...