And does a solitary informant plus unnamed, unquantified Facebook commentators really constitute an "outcry"?
As the late Judge Mick Williams of Auckland once said, sometimes we think we're making progress, only to receive a sharp reminder that we still have a long way to go.
DANNY KEENAN, Whanganui
Race-based events not OK
Well done to Joseph Parker coming to Whanganui High School to give a motivational session to students.
However, I was shocked to read that this closed motivational session is available to Māori and Pasifika students and their dads only.
What? Since when are our public schools being permitted to implement race-based activities? What an uproar there would be if someone promoted an event and publicly excluded attendance by Māori and Pasifica folk.
In today's society we teach children that racism is bad, and for a high school to publicly exclude students from an event based on their ethnicity is wrong.
Whanganui High School can't sugarcoat this - it is racism at its worst.
ROBERT ALLEN, Durie Hill
Humanism is a religion
How can humanism be secular?
Julian Huxley called it "religion without revelation"; John Dewy called it "our common faith" and called humanity "God".
John Dunphy said in Humanist magazine (1983): "The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proselytisers of a new faith; a religion of humanity that recognises and respects what theologians call 'divinity' in every human being."
Puts the battle to keep humanism in, and Christianity out, of schools in a different light, eh?
Humanism rests on the premise that there is no God. Adherents exercise a "faith" in their highest power (human reason) and observe a moral code (situation ethics).
Humanism has living gods (humanity); is creedal (eg. humanist manifesto); and has fundamentals of faith (atheism, pre-eminence of reason, human ethics, naturalism). Yep, religious.
Denial of "belief in the supernatural" (Russ Hay, Chronicle, July 28) does not produce a neutral philosophical frame. It simply sets up an alternate religion.
I do not know the details of how Jesus the Christ rose again from the dead, nor how he ascended bodily into heaven (both are solidly attested); yet neither do materialists know where matter came from, whether space has boundaries, and what is outside any boundary it might have.
Infinity is incomprehensible to finite beings and, an eternity unavailable to man apart from God would be needed to find out.
JOHN HAAKMA, Whanganui
Great game of rugby
Did you see the Ranfurly Shield challenge between Wanganui and Taranaki?
What a great game of rugby and it was a shame to see Wanganui (without an "H") go down 33-10.
The score didn't reflect the game as it was very evenly played, and the eight-hour plus daily workers were cramping up at the end.
I enjoyed this game more than the Crusaders v Lions Super Rugby final - but I must congratulate Scott "Razor" Robertson on a very well-polished display of rugby.
GARY STEWART, Foxton Beach
Give Assange a home in NZ
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Since the petition on the New Zealand Parliament website asking that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange be granted political asylum in New Zealand was launched on July 5, our media - "the fourth estate" - have remained suspiciously reluctant to give any oxygen to the story of their colleague's plight.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Julian Assange has been subject to arbitrary detention since December 7, 2010.
True democracy is predicated on the freedom of journalists to investigate without fear of reprisal. In the absence of that, we are doomed to descend into an ever-darkening future.
The case of Julian Assange and the future of Wikileaks is pivotal. That you are reading this at all shows that there may be a glimmer of hope.
ALAN WILLIAM PRESTON, Mangawhai
