Paul ’s Comments (group member since Sep 12, 2010)

Paul ’s comments from the Atheists and Skeptics group.

Forty-nine years a dee-dar, never quite manged to leave (except for a stint living in Rotherham, about which the less said the better).



It is all very confusing. According to the Covid tracker app, most of the city is "medium risk" (although someone told me yesterday that Attercliffe and Shirecliffe are High), but a city council email said the city as a whole is in the High tier - which is, I think, actually the middle tier as the top one is called Very High.



I've seen almost no clear public information, and cafes here in Hillsborough seem to be operating normally. We had a mini-break in Castleton at the weekend and ate in three of the pubs (table service, following the guidance about wearing our masks when not at the table, etc) which felt gorgeously normal. I've been working from home since early May but as NE Derbyshire is now under Tier 3 restrictions am booked in for a test to be on the safe side, partly as am taking turns looking after my elderly dad.



Hope you're keeping safe and well dahn Sahf, Madge.

I'm getting mine next week, voucher from work - but it'd only be £13 at Boots if I was paying.

George wrote: "An article like this appearing in the U.S. would cause an uproar of epic proportions. We already have states using voucher programs to take tax money away from the public schools for the purpose of..."


In the UK we still have the built in assumption that religions are charities and only recently has the act of supporting and spreading religion ceased to be considered a charitable act - however, unlike the US, religious institutions are subject to the same oversight as all other charities, and I think that is one of the things that makes a big difference. Also, that we are an island of godless heathens, of course.

These nuts have been around the republican party for decades - Reagan's secretary of the interior, in charge of environmental policy, stated that the "death of the last tree would be something to be celebrated as it would herald the return of Christ" - but, as this article points out so well, that grip has become so much stronger. Pompeo is terrifying.

I've carried my donor card for more than twenty years, and plan on my body being of use when I die. I'm also very pleased that the UK is at last going down the route of assumed consent for organ donation.

I think it must be one of the many benefits of multiculuralism; even for those that are still brought up religious, if you see others who are being taught that they have access to a completely different ultimate truth, that must be hard to reconcile.

Travis wrote: "Did Jesus vs demons really happen in the bible?
I don't remember that.

Sounds like a cool idea for a movie or novel, not so much as a reason by grown adults to justify questionable behavior."


Aye, casting demons out of someone into pigs, and then making them run off a cliff.

"What medieval nonsense!" is a fine description of religion generally.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/i...



This piece annoys me - largely as it's a terrible bit of faux-journalism, the collection of brief quotes and picture looking like nothing so much as a bunch of bad inspirational posters - but I think it actually draws attention to what I've always seen as the problem with the word "spirituality".


Frankly, it is so amorphous in meaning as to be useless, and the people quoted here use it so differently as to not be talking about the same thing at all. Some use the word as a new-agey concept, some clearly state a belief in god, at least one sounds to have very much my attitude - although I would NEVER describe myself as spiritual. I experience joy and love, awe in the face of nature, and I think that is all that most people mean.


It's probably unfair the judge the people in the piece on the quotes, as they are so brief, but things like this rile me:

"Spirituality is inseparable from life. It is a way of experiencing the truth of this moment with a clear mind and an open heart. Life is this truth manifest."


What? That sounds like something out of Paulo Coelho of the Secret. what's worse, I think it has the same problem as when people say that "god is love", implying that those without god are lesser, either incapable of love or rejecting it.


Gah.

I'd guess this is so utterly culture dependent. While I was raised nominally Christian, it was not only the watery secular religion of of a large UK city, I never really felt it and dispensed with it very early, so have never had the urge to pray - although there have been times when I've begged or cursed the universe while knowing there's nobody listening. But, if the religiosity is more culturally deep rooted, of course that is going to show itself as prayer occasionally; the response ti hope that there is some greater meaning or greater power is precisely what foments religion in the first place.

The problem being, as has always been the case with 'socialist' China and the USSR, they want to get rid of religion largely so they can replace it with their own dogmatic ideology. It's the argument you sometimes get from (especially American) christians, about 'atheistic socialism' and Stalin and Mao being atheist mass-murderers; the problem is dogmatic ideology that knows The Truth. Religion has just been the dominant form of this for the most of human history.


Soviet and Chinese socialism (which, of course, aren't socialism at all, but state capitalism. If you have any doubt about this, look up Chinese workers being 'strongly encouraged' to smoke heavily to bolster economic activity) push out gods and replace them with worship of the State and the Leader - which is how North Korea styles itself a Socialist Republic.

Essy wrote: "Who are your favorite atheist/agnostic apologists and why are they your favorites? There's quite a lot out there, so I'd like to know who and why.

Also, what convinced you Christianity was false, ..."

Are you watching our responses, Essy? Or was this simply an exercising in aiming the cat at the birdbath?

Hi Essy


My reply is similar to Scire's. When I was ten I worked out that the question of god's existence was irrelevant. This was the early 80s in the UK, so school began with prayers and hymns, we went to church for the major festivals, and had Religious Education classes every week (yes, this was a state school, not a religiously affiliated one). That said, the RE was, at least in part, about comparative religion, as society had been multicultural for some time - the area in which I grew up very much so; I had friends and classmates who were Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish and various flavours of Christian.


This comparison of religion probably helped - knowing they all claimed The Truth and realising that was incompatible, despite a wishy-washy hand-waving "there are many paths to god" explanation. Th explanation of the value of religion - by which I mean Christianity - that it made us good, was the source of morality, just seemed definitionally and obviously false, even at such a young age. I could see that how 'good' someone was bore absolutely no relation to their religious belief, or lack of it. Besides, I knew that the reason I should be a good person was just because it was right, and if Christianity was also about justice, as we were taught, then I should be judged on how I behaved not on what I believed or said. This was also aided by coming across passages in the bible that made no sense or seemed actually evil - ones about bashing out babies' brains, and god ordering genocide, you know they stuff. That undermined the moral authority of the bible somewhat, and being told "well, it was a different time" further weakens the argument for timeless morality.


Remember, at this time I still believed that the bible was a trustworthy historical document, and I didn't find out otherwise for many years. Nor did I read any 'atheist' texts for a long time. Other than fiction - much of which probably had a humanist slant, although I'm sure just as much had a religious bias - the first atheism I read was almost certainly Carl Sagan - Cosmos, which isn't really focused on that and The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which is all about good and bad reasons for believing. Of course, there was a lot of science programming on TV, which I devoured from a young age, so that probably had an effect.


So I'd nominate Sagan as my 'apologist', although I don't really think there is any such thing as an 'atheist apologist', at least outside the wilds of the web. Apologetics is the art of trying to prove something, usually by odd contortions of semantics and circular logic. The best writers on atheism write about the importance of questioning received truth, and authority figures, and one's own assumptions.

Griffin wrote: "We don't have God in the UK. We have the Queen instead. Americans need God to make up for their awful Presidents."


You forget, both Liz and the Cheeto in Chief rule under divine right

And 72% of younger people - which at first I thought sounded low, but I have met people who keep quiet about their religiosity through general embarrassment, and of course there are still those who consider themselves 'religious' or 'spiritual' in general terms, or even of a specific group but aren't in the least active.


It does seem to be an anomaly that the US is so much more religious than the UK, despite their supposedly secular government compared to our state-church ties - the state religion, bishops sitting inn the Lords, Her Maj being head of both, and RE in schools (as Shappi Khorsandi once put it "I went to a Christian school; but this was England in the 1970s and 80s, we just called it 'school'...")


Is it simply that the CoE is so generally lukewarm and ineffectual, or perhaps that our longer history of flipping between intolerance and inclusivity have lead to this? The majority of Europe is even more secular than we are, and many of their state or dominant churches are more active (although I've been to few places were you tend to see so many churches as in UK cities. We've been integrating different religions and cultures since the Romans decided that the Celtic gods were just Jupiter, Juno, Mars and the rest with silly names. It hasn't always gone smoothly, of course, but perhaps it's that long learning curve.


Or is the thing with America just, as has been suggested, that that's where we sent our worst religious bigots and so much came from that?

Absolutely. I think there are very few people (even many Christians) who would think this is anything other tan stupid and embarrassing.

Madge UK wrote: "Stephen Fry investigated by Irish police for alleged blasphemy

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2......"


Not at all a massive waste of public resources

I saw this the other day but haven't found time to make my suggestions - Shelly Segal, Tim Minchin, George Hrab

Madge UK wrote: "Now there are reports of voter intimidation by Trump supporters, including members of an armed militia!!

Leader of the free world my eye!"


Well, he did actually tell his supporters to "keep an eye" on certain districts, I guess they're just loyal...

MadgeUK wrote: "
I worry about it developing into another religion too but guess it is OK as long as it is just individuals doing stuff and not organised groups with 'creeds' etc. If it is just a way of poking fun at religion then I feel it is OK."


I would say that it's too inherently silly to ever become a 'proper' organised religion, but the evidence suggests that "too silly" isn't a barrier.

I saw this, love it. I have a Norwegian friend who is an ordained CFSM minister.