The Never Ending Pool

Whatever. JS nailed it. If someone provided that description with no frame of reference aside from it pertaining to a contributor to this thread, wouldn't it be absolutely obvious who that person was?

Although the way you had that quote on deck, Warren (five years after the fact) was a little weird.

What a couple of classy posts – thank you, ragged and Warren.

Warren, apology accepted. I’m sorry you feel the way you do and all I can say is that while I don’t recognize myself in JS’s description, I’ll take it as a challenge to more carefully evaluate my posts before I post them.

ragged, yes we certainly part as friends. Thank you for a discussion which, as you say, has often been frustrating but always civil. And thank you for telling us a little bit of your own life and religious background. I want to say again that as much as I disagree with your view of religion in general and Christianity in particular, I respect atheism as an intellectual choice, and I understand why some people hate it so much. I think, if it's not presumptuous to say so, that I can understand your feelings. All the best, and here’s hoping you’ll have more satisfying discussions on the topic with someone else.

Zoinks - peace. As unpleasant as our exchanges have been, I admire your intellectual energy.

Howard, it's been a pleasure. I wish you'd posted more often!

Likewise, saut, I find in you many traits that I would cherish in things like a mule or existential theater.

You see the constant snide remarks from Zoinks that saut has had to put up with. That should be taken into account when judging him.

At the risk of appearing ridiculous after effectively swearing of the thread, I'd just like to record a couple of recent developments in events I mentioned yesterday.

1. Boko Haram (whose name translates as 'Western Education Is Forbidden' ), the Nigerian Islamic terrorist group which has been blowing up churches, including on Christmas day, has struck again, killing over 120 people. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16663693 Christians are under attack in Islamic countries as never before, including some of the ones where new authorities have come to power following the Arab Spring. We should all be concerned about this.

2. The three Muslim men charged with disseminating leaflets calling for the execution of gays and justifying it by allusion to the Koran have been found guilty. This is an important step, as too often in the past incitement to murder by British Muslims have been ignored in the name of "community relations." In fact, the whole problem with Islamic extremism in Britain started when calls to murder the author Salman Rushdie were ignored.

(In case anyone hasn't seen this, here is the former Cat Stevens, now Yousuf Islam, calling for Rushdie's death on live television in 1989. The author of Peace Train talks about how he would inform the Ayatollah Khomeini of Rushdie's whereabouts if he knew it, and how he would rather burn Rushdie himself rather than an effigy of him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPimaisocv4 . Yousuf denies saying this to this day, but unfortunately for him he is there on youtube saying it for the rest of time.)

Finally, I chanced on a very good explication of the comment I made -- which was certainly not flippant or provocative as saut thought -- that Christianity has never had an ethical system of its own. Have a look here: http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blfaq_jesus_ethics.htm Summary: there is nothing new in Christianity, and Christ didn't follow his own "teachings" anyway.

My being snide has nothing to do with his being intellectually dishonest and evasive.

raggedclown wrote:

QUOTE:
As this month is the 20th anniversary of Bob embracing a very weird, curiously Mormon version of Christianity, as much influenced by Hal Lindsey's "The Late, Great Planet Earth" as by the Bible [several authors], this seems an appropriate question to ask.

Before voting, you might like to check out the recent debate on the more narrow subject "Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?" broadcast by the BBC earlier this month. The final vote convinced me that the best advocates for religious scepticism are believers themselves, and that the more they are heard, the more atheism will prevail.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvZz_pxZ2lw

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFTj9n40rNo

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvDz9_5me74

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0HnNuVVNAQ

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv8LEejj2rQ


Of course, this doesn't alter Bob's great artistic achievement with the Slow Train Coming and Saved albums. What a shame they were inspired by such an intellectually and (especially) morally bankrupt institution; and by the most spiritually impoverished, morally stunted perversion of that already benighted institution at that. It shows how the human gifts of music and language transcend even the most backward and repugnant atavistic thought systems. But should we allow the genius of a Milton or a Dylan to blind us to the toxic reality of religion? This question remains open for me only for duration of reading "Paradise Lost" or listening to "In the Garden."

I don't know how to make a poll on this board, so please post "Yes" if you think that religion is a force for good, and "No" if you think it is not. You are of course at liberty to expand on your opinion as you wish.

Hey, rc.... At this late date I'm gonna go ahead and answer your original question with a big fat "Sometimes". Peace!

I learned a lot from this thread. Thanks to saut, ragged, zoinks -- I'll miss it.

H.

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raggedclown, you have a PM.

I don't know how to make a poll on this board, so please post "Yes" if you think that religion is a force for good, and "No" if you think it is not. You are of course at liberty to expand on your opinion as you wish.

In hindsight, it would have been appropriate if the original above directions said: Post "Yes" or "No" only and then type: What do you say?

saut de basque wrote:

QUOTE:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2011/12/05/in-uk-theocracy-on-the-march/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/council-meeting-prayers-challenged-high-court?newsfeed=true

In UK, theocracy on the march (hah!)

Where would England be without the National Secular Society bravely standing athwart history’s tracks yelling “Stop!” to the onrushing locomotive of Christian theocracy? Excerpt:

"The long tradition of prayers being said before local council meetings is to be challenged at the high court on Friday.

The National Secular Society (NSS) says the ritual is inappropriate in what should be “a secular environment concerned with civic business”. NSS president Terry Sanderson said the practice was leading to a worrying “potential for conflict”.

A survey of local authorities found most include prayers as part of the council meeting agenda.

In what could serve as a test case, the NSS is taking Bideford town council in Devon to the court, acting on a complaint from councillor Clive Bone, a non-believer who says he is “disadvantaged and embarrassed” when Christian prayers are said."

What is tradition in the face of Clive Bone’s embarrassment? God Null forbid that Clive Bone should ever be made to feel uncomfortable about anything, ever. Anyway, as Niall, who sent this from London, remarks:

"What I love in this story is how the guy says the prayers have “worrying potential for conflict”. Erm, they didn’t until you picked a fight about it. I don’t think prayers before council meetings have ever caused any conflict in Britain until the touchy, intolerant, passive-aggressive atheist movement got into full swing. It’s like a mugger complaining that his victim’s iPad has a worrying potential for conflict."

More National Secular Society freaking out here http://www.secularism.org.uk/councillor-calls-on-scouts-and-g.html, endorsing a local politician’s call for the Boy Scouts to drop the God stuff and to quit meeting in churches so as not to upset “Asian” (read: Muslim) kids, who supposedly won’t go there because they find the meeting places offensive. A Muslim politician says Asians have their own groups, and are happy with them. Why, exactly, is this a problem for anybody? It’s not, except for the Puritanical busybodies at the National Secular Society, who are so thin-skinned it’s a wonder their guts don’t fall out onto the sidewalk every time they bump into something.

Well, it seems that the High Court agreed with the NSS: Council Prayers Ruled Unlawful

Actually, the judge ruled that councillors could go on saying prayers, as long as they were not "summoned" to attend them. Also, he found against the council not on human rights grounds, which is the angle the NSS was pushing, but on statutory grounds -- the council has no power to convene prayers under section 111 of the Local Government Act of 1972.

A classic British compromise that satisfies neither party. Although Councillor Bone declared himself content:

QUOTE:
Clive Bone told the BBC he found "people didn't want to stand for the council" because of the inclusion of the prayers.

He said the National Secular Council's case against the council had "nothing to do with intolerance towards religion.

"Religious freedom is an absolute right, and so is freedom from religion."

Amen (or rather, the secular equivalent, Shit, yeah) to that last sentiment.

However, I think he should have provided evidence of his claim that people are not standing for the council because of prayers.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey (one of the stupidest leaders of the Church of England in recent times) predictably had a jolly good moan about the "marginalization" of Christianity, but even he admitted that the ruling was "an empty victory" and councillors could simply pray privately before meetings.

YES, indeed they can, that is PRECISELY the National Secular Society's point, you silly man! Christian self-affirmation sessions are not part of public business and should be conducted on members' own time.

And all the pissing and moaning about the "marginalization" of Christianity means only one thing: Christians demand that they be taken as seriously by the rest of us as they take themselves.

There is some good news for Devon Christians, though -- they can still harass gay people in the street by telling them they will burn in hell!

Thank Jesus, this is still a Christian country with Christian values after all.

I'm not sure what you're saying there poor_howard. You will miss it for what reason? Have you gotten wise and decided to boycott the site? I did that for some time; the issue was the "banning" of one member.

Or is this thread itself being disposed of? Are you leaving the electronic web of dark confusion?

Anyway - this is not one of the great threads, although it has produced some good and intelligent writing. The question itself doesn't make for a clear way to answer.

I haven't taken part in the "discussion" because I first have to understand what is the definition/the parameters of "religion." And I mean, it's oh so damned obvious that this "religion" as much as most anything else be it a thought or a tangible object, carries with it an inherent duality.

well, "next year in Jerusalem" Howard.

Posted by Rod Dreher at http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/2012/02/24/john-gray-atheism-religion/ :

John Gray: Atheism & Religion’s Value:
John Gray, the philosopher and religious skeptic, reviews atheist Alain de Botton’s new book (http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2012/02/religion-atheism-atheists) advocating a more irenic view of religion. Gray says that the militant, Ditchkins-style atheists of today are ignorant knotheads, however formally brilliant:

It is only the illiteracy of the current generation of atheists that leads them to think religious practitioners must be stupid or thoughtless. Were Augustine, Maimonides and al-Ghazali – to mention only religious thinkers in monotheist traditions – lacking in intellectual vitality? The question is absurd but the fact it can be asked at all might be thought to pose a difficulty for de Botton. His spirited and refreshingly humane book aims to show that religion serves needs that an entirely secular life cannot satisfy. He will not persuade those for whom atheism is a militant creed. Such people are best left with their certainties, however childish.

More:

Most people think that atheists are bound to reject religion because religion and atheism consist of incompatible beliefs. De Botton accepts this assumption throughout his argument, which amounts to the claim that religion is humanly valuable even if religious beliefs are untrue. He shows how much in our way of life comes from and still depends on religion – communities, education, art and architecture and certain kinds of kindness, among other things. I would add the practice of toleration, the origins of which lie in dissenting religion, and sceptical doubt, which very often coexists with faith.

Today’s atheists will insist that these goods can be achieved without religion. In many instances this may be so but it is a question that cannot be answered by fulminating about religion as if it were intrinsically evil. Religion has caused a lot of harm but so has science. Practically everything of value in human life can be harmful. To insist that religion is peculiarly malignant is fanaticism, or mere stupidity.

I really, really tried not to bite, but this sentence is so comically lacking in self-awareness that I couldn't resist:

QUOTE:
It is only the illiteracy of the current generation of atheists that leads them to think religious practitioners must be stupid or thoughtless.

A sentence whose first part renders its second part comically hypocritical. Oh, and illiterate? Hitchens??! Really? One of the best read and finest stylists of his generation?

QUOTE:
Were Augustine, Maimonides and al-Ghazali – to mention only religious thinkers in monotheist traditions – lacking in intellectual vitality?

Does the writer think that the state of knowledge has stood still for the past 1,000 years? All those persons lived before the scientific age. Scientific knowledge expanded more within the first three decades of the 20th century alone than in the entire history of mankind to this day. Even someone like Cardinal Newman (perhaps the most recent person who can be regarded as a Christian intellectual) has nothing useful to teach today's world.