ONE of the key stories on which Australians base our national identity is that of the convict who was desperately poor, stole a loaf of bread and ended up slaving his life away in a new British colony on the other side of the world. None of us condone stealing bread, but we feel compassion for the unjust situation that convict finds himself in.

Now if we were living in London at the time and happened to read a newspaper story from that time suggesting that the solution to the high rate of bread theft in London was to punish the offenders with a life of hard labour in hellish conditions, we might ask if there are better solutions available.

Albert is home. We now begin the task of learning his new feeding routine, mapping out a plan for his swallowing lessons, and all the grabbing lessons we have been holding off, and figuring out some way for one person to feed him and keep his very active hands and feet away from the tubes.

Albert remains true to form. All three aspects of his surgical adventure last week have been deemed successful by the various medical specialists involved. Albert's recovery time, however, has been longer than expected.

First things first, Albert is recovering well in a hospital ward this evening.

He was admitted to day surgery about midday today and, after a briefing from three separate medical staff and the signing of consent forms, was carried away from us about 1:15pm. The procedures were fairly straightforward but, because there were two separate procedures scheduled, there were two full medical teams to coordinate, which takes time.
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As many of you already know, we have been waiting for some time for Albert to be given a stomach

tube for feeding. A few days ago we had a call from the surgeon, and Susan has taken Albert to the hospital today for pre-surgery appointments. All things going according to plan, Albert will go under general anesthetist tomorrow, (Thursday), and will have a gastric feeding tube put in place.
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Today is the feast of St Albert the Great.

Shortly before I was received into the Church I was asked to nominate my patron saint. After a lot of searching, I stumbled on the story of a truly remarkable man of God.

One of the first things I read about him was the claim that he had read almost every book printed on every academic subject. He was a Master of every known discipline at the time.

What a joy and a privilege it was to witness the installation of the new Archbishop of Sydney!

It was a joy to see so many good people gathered to celebrate the occasion. In fact the only negative of the day was not having the time to chase them all down for a decent chat.

I have a confession to make. I find atheists fascinating.

I do not mean the atheists who spend their life ranting about the evils of religion, who seem desperate to go beyond justifying their own lack of belief to demanding public ridicule and persecution of anyone proposing a religious ideal, those are quite predictable and boring. I am referring to a different kind of atheism.

I haven't blogged much about life with Albert lately. Not because life has not been interesting, but because we have been exhausted.

Albert has been through several colds, two bouts of pneumonia, three tube replacements and we have lost track of how many specialist appointments. He continues to improve in general, and the medical issues are important (to do with breathing and feeding) but not life threatening for now.

The popular philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is stirring the pot among atheists by proposing a new kind of atheism. With his tongue firmly in cheek, he calls his idea "atheism 2.0".

You can check out a short version of his ideas in this TED talk.

The part that I am interested in talking about here is the use of religion as a tool for social engineering.
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Married with eight children, I read for work and recreation which results in the current combination of G.K. Chesterton, Orson Scott Card and Terry Pratchet in my backpack. I'm not always certain which is work and which is recreation!
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