Filed under: Atheism, Christianity, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Rant, Religion, Science, new zealand | Tags: Atheism, bible, Christianity, contradiction, cult, Destiny, Destiny Church, fundamentalism, fundamentalist, homophobia, hypocritical, movement, new zealand, Religion, scripture
Let’s face it, what would a country be without its own tyrannical, fascist, cult-Christian movement? Well, in New Zealand, we’re glad to have the Destiny Church.
Destiny Church, a movement lead by the extremely wealthy Bishop Brian Tamaki, is mostly known for its outspoken anti-homosexuality opinions and opposition to the recent “anti-smacking” legislation*.
Destiny has been a popular topic in the media of late, particularly in editorial and opinion pages, after Bishop Tamaki instructed that the members of Destiny were now required to swear an oath of loyalty and obedience to him. Our favourite local one-eyed, right-wing Christian, Garth George, even had his own eggs to throw at Bishop Tamaki and Destiny, accusing them of becoming a cult (if they weren’t already).
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10605962
Now, I hate Destiny Church as much as anyone, but what bugs me a little (actually, a lot) is so-called moderate Christians jumping on the fundy-hating bandwagon as a convenient veneer for their flawed ideology. I’d just like to remind them all that all your ramblings come from the same book. As the flaws and contradictions become more apparent to more people every day, it becomes harder and harder to hide behind your different ‘interpretations’.
Garth George exemplifies this point to a tee with his following remarks:
How 700 Kiwi men could accept this nonsense and swear lifetime fealty to a mere fallible mortal is quite beyond me.
To be honest, this makes more sense to me than swearing your life away to something which there is not a single shred of evidence to prove its existence.
But this is my favourite:
I presume that Mr Tamaki and his church leaders take literally the three-verse passage in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians which says: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church … Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”
My question to you is, Garth, why wouldn’t they?
Who has told them not to?
It seems that all Christians and sects of Christianity have their own ‘not to be taken literally’ portions of scripture.
Well, your time of picking and choosing is through.
With an ever-growing scientific bank of knowledge, and a growing public resentment of religious sentiment, the reasons for religion’s survival are diminishing daily. Religion, for the most part, has given up in its fight against Evolution to explain the biological origins of life. It won’t be long before the cognitive neuro-science of religion is taught in schools and universities – explaining the scientific reasons why we believe; the roots of religion.
In the not-to-distant future, people will look back on the beliefs inhibited by Homo-sapiens and giggle under their breath.
Their time is running out.
_____
*In August 2004, Destiny ran an “Enough is Enough” rally, in protest to a bill legally recognising same-sex couples under Civil Unions.
The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 removed the legal defence of “reasonable force for the purpose of correction” for parents prosecuted for assault on their children. Destiny held numerous rallies in protest to this amendment.
Filed under: Atheism, Crime, Rant | Tags: anger, annoyance, Atheism, blog, blogging, disgrace, fundamentalism, hatred, irrational, radical
Once again, I can’t remember how I stumbled across this, but jeez, infinitely more infuriating than my last post.
http://theatheistvisionary.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/my-atheist-vision/
This individual is a gross misrepresentation of Atheism and what Atheism stands for. This is easily the worst possible hi-jacking of Atheism I could imagine.
Nothing more than a pathetic, thoughtless, senseless, pile of shit. An absolute disgrace.
As you can see I’m rather angry.
Today I was reminded by a friend of the importance of viewing everything in a positive light. For without our ability to do so, we’d go bonkers.
Well, from this, at least I can say that it’s the first time I’ve come across anything remotely like it. Similar interpretations of Atheism belong to a very, very small minority. I’m glad that almost all other people who choose to label themselves as Atheist are a very free-thinking, skeptical, and rational, bunch.
Filed under: Atheism, Christianity, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Rant, Religion, Science | Tags: argument, blog, blogging, Christianity, creation, dawkins, debate, design, Evolution, god delusion, Intelligent Design, manipulation, Quote, quote mining, Religion
This utterly infuriates me.
I can’t recall how I stumbled across the following blog post, but I am forced to bring justice to it.
http://pastorjeffcma.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/the-drumbeat-goes-on/
Note that author has aptly named his blog as his “ramblings”.
I won’t delve into the actual argument that Pastor Jeff is presenting, but I merely would like to point out that his suggestive and wildly out-of-context use of Richard Dawkins’ quotes is both manipulative and unfair. Unfair on Dawkins, and unfair on the Pastor’s readers and followers.
The Pastor prefaces the first quote with:
One of the reasons that Darwinian Evolution is such a hard sell has been made clear by Dawkins himself in a couple of well known statements:
He then quotes a passage from Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”.
One of the greatest challenges to the [atheistic] human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises. The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself.
The Pastor inserts ‘atheistic’ within the quote before ‘human intellect’ in attempt to establish the point that those enlightened, such as himself, have not been challenged to explain the appearance of design in the universe.
In fact, they have been challenged, but instead of looking beyond the easy answer of attributing the appearance of design to a designer, they settle for the ‘natural temptation’, as Dawkins puts it.
What pathetic arrogance. Now for something even more frustrating…
I will give Pastor Jeff an ounce of credit. He writes well* and, at a guess, I would say is reasonably educated and intelligent.
Also, he is taking stabs at Dawkins, and notes that the professor is one of his favourite topics.
This would lead me to believe that he has actually read the majority, if not all of the material he is quoting.**
If not, then my apologies for being mistaken. However, this would be utterly ignorant on the Pastor’s part.
But if so (I’m struggling to think which one is worse!), then the Pastor has blatantly ignored the sentences which immediately follow:
In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.
The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.
In fact, the Pastor really gives Professor Dawkins absolutely no credit, does he?
Let’s put all our convictions, religious or not, aside for one moment.
This is a Professor who has held posts at one of the most prestigious universities on the planet, has written numerous award-winning and ground breaking books, has an enormous following of admirers and fans, and has changed many many peoples lives (for the better, the changed people would likely argue).
Dawkins has named the chapter that the Pastor and I refer to as “Why there almost certainly is no god”. And, if the Pastor hadn’t noticed, his book is titled “The God Delusion”.
Did the Pastor really think that Professor Dawkins would contradict himself so terribly?
I don’t think so.
Now, I may be jumping to conclusions here, I may not. But I think that Pastor Jeff is up to some no-good brainwashing.
As much as I despise religion for all its unnecessary bloodshed, despicable humiliation, etc, etc; I despise just as much, the root of its power – its manipulation.
This utterly subjective, and deceitfully selective hogwash spewed out by the Pastor is indicative of this manipulation.
—–
*Although, I did have to read the last sentence of his first paragraph numerous times. It was seven lines long!
**Admittedly, this is the only blog post of the Pastor’s that I have read.
I would like to declare a return to the blogosphere. Many apologies for the lengthy hiatus. Something, well… let’s just say something came up 
Unfortunately I won’t be back for very long, my band is going on tour to Europe in a little less than four weeks time. I’m mega excited, and also shitting myself. I’ve never travelled this far off my own back before, and it’s mighty stressful! We’ll be travelling until just before Christmas, so after I leave, I probably won’t post again until the new year.
There’s been lots going through my mind of late, but a combination of a hectic schedule, and just not being able to write much, have contributed to a lack of blog activity.
Anyways, I will try and post more regularly now. And I’m also going to try and get my name out there a bit more. So if anyone has got any tips, please let me know!
- Paul
Filed under: Atheism, Evolution, Quote, Science | Tags: Atheism, dawkins, Evolution, gene, genes, genetics, origins, Science
Firstly, apologies for not posting in ages, I seem to have built up a collection of drafts that I can’t finish for numerous reasons.
I am currently reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, and there is a certain passage so inspiring that I had to share it.
From the chapter entitled The replicators. Previously in the chapter it explains in depth what a replicator is. The following portion caps off the chapter.
Replicators began not merely to exist, but to construct for themselves containers, vehicles for their continued existence. The replicators that survived were the ones that built survival machines for themselves to live in. The first survival machines probably consisted of nothing more than a protective coat. But making a living got steadily harder as new rivals arose with better and more effective survival machines. Survival machines got bigger and more elaborate, and the process was cumulative and progressive.
Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside word, communicating with it by torturous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.
Filed under: Crime, Politics, new zealand | Tags: Crime, murder, new zealand, Politics, prison, sentence, sentencing
The young criminal I recently posted about, Bailey Junior Kurariki, was sentenced on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to assault and four charges of breaching parole.
He amazingly avoided prison, and was sentenced to 12 months supervision. The judge stating, “you should be given a chance to prove yourself”.
Kurariki has already been gifted numerous chances to lead a life without crime, but he is simply unable to.
The judge goes on to say:
“For every 1000 people that have written you off, I suspect there might be one that’s prepared to hope that with the right intervention, frame of mind and reason to change you might fulfil your goals and dreams and be left to do your thing”
Well, it’s all well-and-good to have unrealistic high-hopes for someone, but don’t we live in a democracy here? And if one thousand people have, with good reason, written Kurariki off, shouldn’t this opinion be taken into consideration when forming a decision? Keeping the public secure is the primary function of the justice system, not fulfilling some motivational moral mantra.
This is basically a feel-good gamble by the judge. Let’s see how long it is before Kurariki finds himself in trouble again.
Filed under: Business, Capitalism, Me, Philosophy, Politics | Tags: banks, big business, Business, Capitalism, freedom, money, objectivism, Philosophy, Politics, principles, profit, responsiblity
I have adopted a Randian type philosophy to politics since I was about 16. I like the idea of people being responsible for their own decisions, no matter how severe the consequences. I was drawn to the idea of black-and-white principles. I think the concept of freedom grabs me at my core.
In the last few months though, there have been several situations that I have analysed over and over. They have prompted me to remove my political blinkers [maybe I'm being a bit hard on myself there, I would like to think that I'm open minded and objective].
One situation involves my job. I work for a big bank.
The multi-million dollar corporation that I work for is in the midst of a complicated and troubling recession. They are determined to resist redundancies in order to avoid reputational damage. Every step that has been taken has been deemed correct, and the good publicity earned by positive moves in the community has been ample.
A month or so ago, it was decided that a bank-wide salary freeze would be implemented. Anyone earning $50,000.00 or more will not get a pay-rise for an indefinite period, and anyone earning less will be almost guaranteed a pay-rise to assist with living in a difficult economic climate. Our bank has a very large proportion of their workers on individual employment agreements, i.e. non-unionised. We have an excellent culture and very good job satisfaction. Barely a whisper was made about the salary freeze, gauging from my perspective. Staff just seemed to take it on the chin, as if they were almost expecting it.
There was a particular part of the media release that caught my attention however. The reason provided by the executive team for the salary freeze, was that the economic environment was forecast to impact profit targets. So this is not the bank losing money, or even directly losing profit – but failing to meet profit targets! TARGETS!!! It’s just a number that, at the start of the year, they decided it would be nice to meet!
Anyway, several weeks later, the bank released its profit figures for the 9 month period ending 31 March 2009. It’s net profit after tax had fallen by an enormous 22% to only $336 million – down from $432 million reported for the same period last year.
I did a few sums to put the salary freeze decision in perspective:
Now lets remember that this $336 million is after-tax profit. Cold hard cash. After expenses, after losses, after tax, etc etc.
Based on a grossly exaggerated average salary figure of $100,000.00 per staff member, it would have cost the bank only $27.5 million of this $336 million to give each of their 5,500 staff a rather generous 5% pay rise.
Even if I give the bank an enormous benefit of the doubt, I just can’t help but think that something just doesn’t quite add up here.
In the past I have been a defender of Capitalism (and I still am). I don’t like the vindication that comes with being one, but I just think that successful people are hard-done-by. My gut tells me that statism is some-what born of jealousy.
But I do, in all honesty, find the above figures really really hard to swallow. I really want to believe that all the people sitting around the executive tables are genuine, good-natured people – and I have every confidence they are. But at the end of the day, they’re out to do the best for the company, and that is to make as much money as they possibly can for the shareholders, without causing damage to their reputation, i.e. doing whatever they can get away with.
My years of Objectivist thought would tell me though, that it is in a business’ best interest to ensure that its staff are happy, and it has a good community image, which my workplace indeed has. So if this is the case, and all parties are ‘happy’, then is there any harm being done?
Is everyone really getting the best deal here? Is everyone involved entitled to the best deal? Is there an authority complex at work? I mean, my loyalty is still such that I would never dream of mentioning my particular bank by name here.
Something just doesn’t fit, and I haven’t quite figured it out yet.
Filed under: Atheism, Christianity, Paranormal, Religion, Science, Superstition, new zealand | Tags: Atheism, Christianity, delusion, god, jesus, Paranormal, personal experience, Religion, supestition
I was driving to work the other day, listening to the morning show on the local Rock radio station (I don’t know why I continually torture myself). Their talk-back topic for the day was Paranormal Phenomena.
A female caller phoned in to the station to share her story, which went a little like:
- Woman wakes to young son crying and pointing out something that isn’t there.
- Woman wakes again to persistent son, who seems adamant there is something in his bedroom.
- Woman wakes one night to see ’shadow creature’ wander into son’s room from the hallway.
- Woman and husband follow ’shadow creature’ into son’s room.
- Husband (who fortunately studied the occult for several years) ushers ’shadow creature’ out of room by stating only: “In the name of Jesus Christ – Leave!”
- ‘Shadow creature’ leaves.
- Woman and husband leave son to sleep and venture out to the back porch to have a cigarette (to relieve themselves from stressful shadow-creature-vanquishing).
- Lo-and-behold, woman and husband both see ’shadow creature’ stalking around the boundary-line of the property (‘Shadow creature’ apparently cant get back inside the property because of the husband’s Jesus-spell)
A truly laughable encounter.
Anyways, what really got me about this, was not the story itself, but the DJs reaction – they were not phased by this hogwash in the slightest; it was as if it was totally normal. One DJ even said afterwards that he blamed the occult studying husband, for bringing that kind of eerie stuff into their household. Another said that séances and the like, freak them out. Not one voice of reason amongst them or the callers.
OK, just for the record – THIS STUFF IS NOT REAL!!! IT’S JUST MADE UP!
The argument from personal experience is the most frustrating for me. I can’t provide them with a fact or reason to say that God/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Shadow Creature doesn’t exist inside their heads.
Sam Harris sums it up perfectly in The End of Faith:
We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘ delusional’… Clearly there is sanity in numbers.
And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.
And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are.
This particular ’shadow creature’ scenario is probably in a happy medium between Harris’ description of common and uncommon believers. A large proportion of the population would consider these people delusional, while others would happily sit back and think ‘who am I to tell them what they did or didn’t experience’.
I think if we took Jesus out of the equation it would be a totally different kettle of fish. The caller would then have lost her basis for demanding the respect of the DJs and listeners. Without the common ground of Christ, the general believing public no longer have a reason to believe in the shadow creature.
But wait a minute, it wasn’t just one person who saw ’shadow creature’, it was two adults and a child! Explain that!
I’ll let Mr. Dawkins handle this one, with a comparison to multiple (or in this case, mass) delusion:
On the face of it mass visions, such as the report that 70,000 pilgrims at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 saw the sun “tear itself from the heavens and come crashing down upon the multitude”, are harder to write off.
It is not easy to explain how 70,000 people could share the same hallucination. But it is even harder to accept that it really happened without the rest of the world, outside Fatima, seeing it too — and not just seeing it, but feeling it as the catastrophic destruction of the solar system, including acceleration forces sufficient to hurl everybody into space.
David Hume’s pithy test for a miracle comes irresistibly to mind: “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.”
Filed under: Atheism, Rant, Religion, new zealand | Tags: Atheism, children, demographics of religion, islam, new zealand, Religion, religious children
I can’t remember precisely what led me to look into this phenomenon, but there are some truly mind-boggling statistics out there.
Just a short observation to start off with. I had to post this due to the sheer outrageous numbers. I stumbled across it whilst reading Wiki:
Countries with the greatest proportion of Muslims from Islam by country (as of 2007):
- Mauritania 99.9% (mostly Sunni)
- Somalia 99.9% (mostly Sunni)
- Western Sahara 99.8% (mostly Sunni)
- Maldives 99.41% (mostly Sunni)
- Afghanistan 99% (80% Sunni, 19% Shi’a)
The list extends to 20 middle-eastern countries (the lowest percentage being 92.66% Muslim). It then states this:
Although Islam is the state religion of most Middle Eastern countries, and in these particular countries, legal citizens must be Muslim, this list excludes Saudi Arabia where 100% of national citizens must be Muslims.
I find it remarkable that such a place can still exist on Planet Earth in 2009 CE.
A little bit closer to home now, and in the 2006 New Zealand Census, I was rather amused and annoyed by this particular graph.
Before I provide my take on this graph, I would like to point out that a child must be 15 years of age to fill out the Census in New Zealand. Any younger, and their parent or guardian must fill it in on their behalf.
The general decline of people stating ‘No Religion’ from age 25 onwards comes as no surprise.
The first obvious load of bollocks here is that only 49% of 0 – 4 year olds have no religion. Children CANNOT have a religion. Just like they cannot have a political perspective. Children cannot understand and form opinions surrounding these things, and should not be labelled incorrectly.
But as soon as the graph hits the 5 – 9 year old age bracket, another almost 10% of children magically find a god they can’t comprehend! What this really is, is that now the child has the capability of mimicking their parent’s practice, the parent is more comfortable labelling them. The same thing occurs, but to a lesser degree, when the graph reaches the 10 – 14 year old bracket.
The graph also demonstrates the terrible rebellion (no doubt an often used excuse for this statistic) of teenagers and early-twenties adults, with the bars jumping back up to almost 50% stating ‘No Religion’. This coincides neatly with the time that youths are allowed to complete the census on their own, and also with an age bracket where they can actually start to understand what religion is.
Filed under: Crime, Politics, new zealand | Tags: Crime, murder, new zealand, Politics, prison
A 19 year old man was released on bail today in Auckland, after pleading guilty to an assault charge. Police did not oppose bail. This assault charge was reduced from a male-assaults-female charge. This man will be sentenced later this month in relation to this, and also three other charges of breach of parole.
Yes, thats right, three charges of breach of parole. This man was released from prison one year ago after serving a sentence of… wait for it… 7 years for manslaughter. Bailey Junior Kurariki played a pivotal and calculated part in a fully plotted, cold blooded murder of a totally innocent and unsuspecting pizza delivery man in 2001.
And yes, my math was correct; Kurariki was 12 years of age at the time of the murder. This was big news in New Zealand. Our youngest killer. How did this happen? How could we let this happen?
No one is truly ‘destined’ for anything in my opinion, but Kurariki would sure have been a strong willed person to have stayed out of trouble considering his upbringing. His mother had 7 other children to several failed relationships. She admitted in the media to once bashing his head against a wall, later claiming in a different interview that she “never hit her son” but “maybe should have”. When posed the question: ‘Do you think you’re a good mother?’, she answered, ‘Not perfect, but I did the best I could.’
With a non-existent support group, Kurariki was a truant and a violent troublemaker at school. He was first suspended from school at age 10, and it would not be too long before he was turned down from 5 other schools, and so home-schooling was resorted to.
Bailey Junior was dealt with by the Child Youth and Family (CYF) agency on numerous occasions before he was arrested. 36 to be precise. In the three years leading up to the Choy killing, his crimes had included terrorising, beating and robbing other children. He had not been to school since 1999.
After Kurariki’s arrest, a disturbing, but predictable sequence of events took place as highlighted in the New Zealand media.
26 August 2002: Social Services Minister rejects a call for a parliamentary inquiry into Child Youth and Family’s handling of young killer Bailey Junior Kurariki.
26 August 2002: A policeman who tried to save New Zealand’s youngest killer from a cycle of chronic offending says Child, Youth and Family Services failed the boy.
Kurariki’s family are also critical of the service [excuse me?], saying not enough was done to break his cycle of crime.
Doesn’t take long for the local Christian Fundamentalist journalist to throw in his 2 cents of propaganda…
29 August 2002: Garth George: How we managed to turn some of our kids into killers
[...] liberal politicians, academics and social engineers have presided over the destruction of the sanctity of marriage, the institution of the family and the mystery of sex, the denigration of manhood and fatherhood and have sanctioned the wholesale slaughter of the most defenceless among us, the unborn child.
Yet we wonder why the likes of 13-year-old Bailey Junior Kurariki – who for some reason is being lionised among the child killers – turns out to be the evil, twisted, cruel little psychopath that he is.
We can’t blame the child welfare people, the education system or the police; we can’t even blame his parents because they, too, are products of the society we have allowed to be created.
But we can blame a society in which everyone has rights and no one has responsibilities, in which God has been banished, in which there is no right and wrong or good and bad and thus no morals or ethics or standards, in which children suffer the ultimate abuse of not being allowed to be children, and in which everyone is a victim except those of us – and thank God there are still hundreds of thousands – who won’t buy into this arid and meaningless manner of living.
17 September 2002: Bailey Junior Kurariki is sentenced to 7 years inprisonment. His mother spoke on the radio that day, blaming his descent into violence on schools “blacklisting” him, saying being suspended from school when he was just 10, set Kurariki on a downward spiral.
“I said never mind (after the suspension) you will be going to intermediate next year, and then I got an order saying he… hadn’t even been there,”
She was unsure why he had been suspended.
“When one headmaster biffs a child out they can blacklist them, they do, they do. I’ve been told that now.”
Ms West said principals talked to each other about children, therefore preventing them finding a place in any schools.
It appears this woman is not acknowledging any of her own, or her son’s, responsibility for this heinous crime.
14 February 2003: A report looking at whether Government agencies could have prevented Michael Choy’s murder is released.
The heavily censored report, released yesterday, finds that the system did not fail the teenagers.
But it highlights a lack of communication between agencies, lost files within the police, and a failure by some frontline officers to understand the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act.
It also criticises CYF’s plan for helping Kurariki – labelling it ineffective and saying it did not delve deeply enough into the reasons for his troublesome early behaviour.
Umm, OK. Isn’t that failure?!
24 October 2003: A review of Child Youth and Family finds that it is an agency locked in a downward spiral of responding to emergencies. This leaves it unable to tackle the problems of many children in its books.
Despite a 50 per cent increase in funding between 1999 and 2002 “some aspects of its performance have got worse”, the review said.
The government pours a further $127 million into the agency.
26 March 2004: It is established that Lorraine West, the mother of Bailey Junior Kurariki, had her flights and accommodation paid for by Child Youth and Family to see 14-year-old Kurariki at Christchurch’s Kingslea Corrections Centre.
July 2004: Kurariki requests his case is taken to the Privy Council. His request is denied.
August 2004: Kurariki is moved from a Manukau facility to one in Hawkes Bay for causing trouble.
January 2006: Parole for Kurariki is refused because he still presented “an undue risk to the community”.
21 January 2007: Kurariki up for parole again. The mother of murdered Michael Choy warns the Parole Board that setting free her son’s killer would be a “disastrous gamble”. Parole is again declined.
27 January 2008: Bailey Junior Kurariki is again denied parole because of a history of violence in prison and because he remains a very high risk to society.
A report says: “The psychologist … assesses Mr Kurariki as continuing to be at very high risk of general and violent reoffending.”
It says he also demonstrated an immaturity and distorted understanding of society.
“We are not satisfied that he understands the dynamic factors that underpinned his offending at the age of 12, or indeed since … against prison rules and discipline.”It says Kurariki has clearly demonstrated a “willingness to offend against others in a violent way, either when he is under stress or seeking to establish that position in the group he believes is his”.
He is scheduled for another hearing in July – but he is warned that he is unlikely to be let out then because of the danger he still poses to society.
This is my favourite part…
15 March 2008: Kurariki finds God and culture
New Zealand’s youngest killer has embraced religion and Maori culture as he prepares to be released from prison this year
Despite its refusal to grant parole last July, the board said Kurariki was committed to his parole conditions, had a job to start and was looking forward to associating with people from the church on his release.
But three years ago he began going to church and was baptised around May last year, which “has really helped him to mature”.
Prison Fellowship director Kim Workman said Kurariki had been rated by the Corrections Department “at the lowest possible level of risk”.
“Those who are close to him in the prison, and those from outside the prison who have supported him, are unanimous in their view that he is very unlikely to reoffend on release.”
University of Canterbury criminologist Greg Newbold expressed doubts, saying it was a “great big question mark, a dirty big guess” over whether Kurariki would reoffend.
Let’s not forget that this is less than two months after a psychologist said that Kurariki was “continuing to be at very high risk of general and violent reoffending.”
Also note that it specified that a member of the Corrections Department labelled him “at the lowest possible level of risk”, as opposed to a psychologist.
18 May 2008: Kurariki paroled and is instantly lavished with gifts by his family. Claims that he has ‘learnt his lesson’.
27 July 2008: Bailey Junior Kurariki arrested and charged with breaching parole.
13 February 2009: Kurariki back in court – alleged to have breached his release conditions on three occasions since November. Judge gives him ‘final chance’.
And here we are. Only months later and he’s assaulted a woman and breached his parole several more times.
This is a difficult situation. There is always going to be crime – we are never going to rid the world of it. There are no overnight remedies to reduce it either.
What we can do however, is manage it effectively – try to prevent criminals re-offending. We failed with Bailey Junior Kurariki. He had not been rehilbilitated.
Kurariki was, in part, destined for this way of life. His mother had 7 other children that she could not support. And at a guess, I would say she was unlikely to have been supporting herself financially either.
New Zealand seems to be in for more of the same. The prisons are full. Violent crime and murder seems to be being reported on a daily basis, with more and more horrific crimes rearing their ugly head. How do we stem this? A once remarkably safe country is quickly losing its aura.
