skyth wrote: The reason 'Christians' are targetted is that most of the rules and laws (basically most of the power) in the western world (primarily the US) lies in Christian hands and benefits Christianity.
I don't really see any athiests here trying to remove all religion, but rather getting rid of the special privileges that Christianity has that turns people of other or no faith to second-class citizens.
Really. People of other on no faith second class citizens? Lets examine that.
- Jews are not second class citizens in the US. In fact if any religious group should be logically labeled as privileged it would be the Jews. Jews enjoy vastly disproportionate power to their demographics. Heard of 'J Street'.
- Laws that protect Christians also protect other faiths, and have done so from the outset. Back in 1776 having a singular state religion was normal, the US could easily have followed suit, yet was founded with freedom of worship as a core principle.
- As for Christians, which Christians? Denominational bias also has to be taken into consideration. Is America Protestant or Catholic, you could argue it is Protestant as a follow on from the UK and because religious freedom works out better in reality than it does in Catholic countries. Catholic and Protestant don't see eye to eye sadly enough. America rose above that because it had freedom of worship without a denominational bias. Also America has cultivated a milieu that allows Amish to remain, in a way that would be impossible in another nation with a specific denominational bias.
The USA doesn't have a denominational bias because it had a secular state, with the strongest religious culture within being non-sectarian.
- Scientologists, like them or not - have successfully tapped into their religious rights. No second class citizenry for them, at least in terms of external pressure.
Actually Jews are less catered to than Christians in this country, but the faith is close enough that they get some privelege as well. They would be first and a half class citizens
There are multiple ways not being Christian in the US turns you into a second class citizen.
Let's start with holidays. Christian holidays are considered 'generic' holidays that everyone gets off. Ask off for Samhaine and people will look at you weird. You might be able to force the issue, but there's a chance it could cost you your job or a promotion. This is besides the fact that they have to ask for it off. A Christian does not.
Go to a public gathering or even government meeting and there's a decent chance you'll have to sit through a Christian prayer.
Christian churches are a lot less likely to be vandalized and vandalism against Christian churches is taken a lot morr seriously than genetic vandalism.
Not being Christian hurts your chances of being elected to a public office.
Not being Christian hurts your chances of keeping custody of your children when parents separate.
Christianity is seen as the default stance in the US and if you are anything else, you are weird and an outsider.
- It is arguable that Christians are the injured party. Atheists made an 'us vs them' fight by targeting Christians exclusively with regards to their battle against religion; as nobody wants to be seen targeting Jews, and they are collectively litigious if you do, and targeting Moslems is outright dangerous. The fact that Christians are on the firing line indicate where the shots are coming from, it's not like Islam doesnt want to pick a fight, and despises atheism, but is curiously out of this one.
Christians are most definitely NOT the injured party. We have the 1st amendment in the US, which, for some reason a fairly significant number of Christians thinks applies only to them. I mean, look at school districts in the bible belt that are continuing to teach biblical creationism as science, counter to SCOTUS rulings. Look at the horribly written text books for "history" classes in Texas, claiming that Moses (of the 10 commandments) was "instrumental in the founding of the US".... Then, there's this whole thing of there having been around 40 something Christian presidents.
We can also look to Christians at political rallies with signs exclaiming that Muslims need to get out of the country, or expressing a desire to outlaw the religion from the country, despite that same 1st amendment.
Yes, a lot of us atheists have problems with Islam, but when it comes to public policy and domestic governance, in the US, the power is held almost exclusively by Christians. Therefore, that is the "exclusive" target.
First a lot of the extremism you are talking about comes from fringe churches, including Moses helped found America (like sources for that actually), and those who want to expel all Moslems. That being said there are a lot of other people who want Moslems out.
As for power in Christian hands. There isn't a lot of defacto Christian power in the US. Some big evangelical ministries, Catholic church. But they are separate from the state. A lot of causal middle Americans identify as Christian, as in they get married in a church and have baptisms. UK is similar. That isn't Christian though.
The 'Christian' presidents have also been nominal mostly. Lincoln being the notable exception he didn't just talk the talk, but then he was unelectable right up until the time when everything went to gak and he was the only man still standing. Partly because he was a firm Christian.
You admit to exclusive targeting Christianity though, which proves my point. The atheist movement is initiating the struggle, and the people doing so are not disowned by the rest. Wheras most Christians, indeed whole denominations will turn around and say the things you are complaining about are not in their name. Not every atheist is like that, but its a mainstream agenda.
Actually Jews are less catered to than Christians in this country, but the faith is close enough that they get some privelege as well. They would be first and a half class citizens .
Senior positioning in pivotal organisations such as the Federal Reserve are the preserve of Jews. Some are so secure in this they have only recently promoted token gentiles to senior visible positions.
Being Jewish is a big step up in much of the media industry, and those who critique this are often frozen out of the industry.
I cannot critique Jewish companies for favouring their own kind, it is normal, but the demographics are way out of proportion. There aren't that many Jews in the US as a percentage of the population, yet they form a strong power majority in Holywood and in some industries.
Criticising Israel is political suicide in the US, even when Israel is clearly deserving of critique.
Let's start with holidays. Christian holidays are considered 'generic' holidays that everyone gets off. Ask off for Samhaine and people will look at you weird. You might be able to force the issue, but there's a chance it could cost you your job or a promotion. This is besides the fact that they have to ask for it off. A Christian does not.
So generic are these holidays that they are de-Christianised. Christmas is the retail season, and has a lot of secular iconography. Santa Claus is not Christian. Christmas = snow and Santa.
Christmas is a universal festival anyway. Much the iconography is non-Christian, unsuprising as it was orginally Yule anyway. There is also strong and generic iconography an elements of the festival unique to Christmas. It is fairly labelled as generic because it IS generic as part of public celebration.
Easter is not a public holiday. Thankgiving is a public festival and is Christian in origin but it is more properly an American cultural festival linked to the Pilgrim fathers. Thanksgiving has no meaning outside the US, it is not on the list of religious celebrations of any christian denomination in Europe. It has links to harvest festival, which in Europe is in September at the end of the summer harvest.
That is it actually. Surprised to see Easter is not a public festival, (except in ten states) neither is Pentecost. In fact the only holiday on the public calender is th highly commercialised and genericised Christmas.
I don't know where you are getting the idea that you are having to stop for Christian festivals. Good Friday is the only actual case I see here, and only in a fifth of the states of the union.
If you want Samhaine and you will have to get personal time. Ash Wednesday looks like its no different.
Christian churches are a lot less likely to be vandalized and vandalism against Christian churches is taken a lot morr seriously than genetic vandalism.
I think vandalism of a mosque, temple or synagogue would be taken seriously. More seriously than generic vandalism because these are cultural buildings of import to people.
Vandalise a house and thats thuggery. Vandalise a memorial, or a historical building or a church or a cemetery and that is thuggery with an additional harm of cultural shock.
If someone daubs rude words on your house you will be upset, as will your friends and neighbours. Daub rude words on a mosque and lots of people will be upset, not all of them Moslems.
Also generic vandalism is just senseless destruction.
Target a memorial or a religious building and its not necessarily senseless, except my happenstance. It becomes vandalism plus hatecrime. There is a logical distinction.
A humanist centre vandalised this way would qualify.
Not being Christian hurts your chances of being elected to a public office.
That means nothing. In the UK very anti-Christian politicians appear in churches at election time. and claim to be Christian, yet are the same people directly responsible for fething over the churches.
Christianity is seen as the default stance in the US and if you are anything else, you are weird and an outsider.
It is ok to have a default. But you are hardly an outsider for not being Christian. Jews more than do ok and are able to openly discriminater against the presumed power elite, meaning they arent really a power elite.
Go to a public gathering or even government meeting and there's a decent chance you'll have to sit through a Christian prayer.
Get over it.
Why? It's not needed there. I mean, depends on the type of "public gathering" but unless it's a specifically religious gathering, why are we subjected to it?
This response really kills your points. I mean, a lot of what I've read from you in this thread seems hand-wavey to me, but I accept that as difference of opinions. But a couple of times like this when you just totally dismiss issues people have, it's not good.
Plus, for the "default being Christianity" points, you can say we're "hardly outsider[s]" for being non-Christian, but my experience paints a very different reality. And anecdotal evidence is all we really have for this kind of thing. You can't exactly fact-check a "feeling like an outsider" meter.
So 'get over' being treated as a second class citizen. What a nice statement that totally tried to ignore the fact that Christians occupy a position of privelege in this country. I swear some of that rant sounded like it came from neo-nazi talking points.
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First a lot of the extremism you are talking about comes from fringe churches, including Moses helped found America (like sources for that actually), and those who want to expel all Moslems. That being said there are a lot of other people who want Moslems out.
As for power in Christian hands. There isn't a lot of defacto Christian power in the US. Some big evangelical ministries, Catholic church. But they are separate from the state. A lot of causal middle Americans identify as Christian, as in they get married in a church and have baptisms. UK is similar. That isn't Christian though.
Ted Cruz and his ilk would, in my eyes, definitely fall under the category of "Christian power" with the ideas they fight for constantly. The delusion that America is a Christian nation, despite mountains of records and evidence to the contrary is what I'm talking about.
As for the text book thing, here's a few links I found off a quick google search:
Also, you may or may not be familiar with some spectacularly horrible theater in the forms of "God's Not Dead" (starring Kevin Sorbo) and even worse, "God's Not Dead 2".... well, here's a REAL story that happens to take place in the same place as the gakky sequel:
Go to a public gathering or even government meeting and there's a decent chance you'll have to sit through a Christian prayer.
Get over it.
Why? It's not needed there. I mean, depends on the type of "public gathering" but unless it's a specifically religious gathering, why are we subjected to it?
This response really kills your points. I mean, a lot of what I've read from you in this thread seems hand-wavey to me, but I accept that as difference of opinions. But a couple of times like this when you just totally dismiss issues people have, it's not good.
Plus, for the "default being Christianity" points, you can say we're "hardly outsider[s]" for being non-Christian, but my experience paints a very different reality. And anecdotal evidence is all we really have for this kind of thing. You can't exactly fact-check a "feeling like an outsider" meter.
It's a public meeting and someone says a prayer. You aren't going to shrivel under the power of God like holy water sprinkled on a vampire.
Tolerance goes both ways. You aren't 'subjected' to it, because its not an ordeal. Its a time to be patient with other cultures.
You dont want to sit through it. Fine you dont have to, its intolerant and unfair to expect prayers to be banned.
I said get over it and meant it. The whinging about 'someone wants to pray, we should ban that' . If its traditional to open with prayers why should that tradition be redacted because some intolerent people cant abide anyone else expressing a culture you dont want to be part of.
Just about everyone is entitled to be loud and proud about their culture. Gay Pride, St Patricks Day marches are two good examples. Cant Christians be loud and proud also? They have a tradition, open the meeting giving thanks to God. The meeting is secular but before getting down to secular business people in the old days, when people were mostly at least nominal Christian would be seen to remember God first. Ironically t makes more sense in a separate church and state system actually, especially with a then Christian majority. In Europe because there was no separation there was no need for prayers because everything was under the aegis of church. In America prayers are a way of leaving God at the door, evidently not abandoning Him, but a seperation before getting down to business which has been culturally directed to be secular as a means to be fair to all. Get the religion done first, then everyone can get down to secular business without further religious input
This is a very American way of doing things and has risen that was over centuries, it is part of your culture.
Now some intolerent atheists want to rip it all up because they lack the maturity to accept a cultural continuence.
As for being 'subjected' to the prayers, as if it were an unbearable affront. That reads as very SJW. Do you really want to tread that path?
See, that's pretty intolerant right there. If I don't believe why should I have my time wasted? Why should I have to be "subjected" to something I don't believe in?
And no one is saying "ban praying" but rather "do it on your own time, not mine."
And as for Gay Pride parades it's because they ARE treated as second class citizens ( that's slowly changing however), so that doesn't really help your case much.
I said get over it and meant it. The whinging about 'someone wants to pray, we should ban that' . If its traditional to open with prayers why should that tradition be redacted because some intolerent people cant abide anyone else expressing a culture you dont want to be part of.
In other words, cater to my religion and only mine. It's always amusing to see the most intolerant culture accusing others of being intolerant. tell me about being patient with other cultures when muslims can freely start a meeting off with one of their prayers. I'm sure you'd be the picture of being patient then.
Go to a public gathering or even government meeting and there's a decent chance you'll have to sit through a Christian prayer.
Get over it.
Why? It's not needed there. I mean, depends on the type of "public gathering" but unless it's a specifically religious gathering, why are we subjected to it?
This response really kills your points. I mean, a lot of what I've read from you in this thread seems hand-wavey to me, but I accept that as difference of opinions. But a couple of times like this when you just totally dismiss issues people have, it's not good.
Plus, for the "default being Christianity" points, you can say we're "hardly outsider[s]" for being non-Christian, but my experience paints a very different reality. And anecdotal evidence is all we really have for this kind of thing. You can't exactly fact-check a "feeling like an outsider" meter.
It's a public meeting and someone says a prayer. You aren't going to shrivel under the power of God like holy water sprinkled on a vampire. Tolerance goes both ways. You aren't 'subjected' to it, because its not an ordeal. Its a time to be patient with other cultures. You dont want to sit through it. Fine you dont have to, its intolerant and unfair to expect prayers to be banned.
I said get over it and meant it. The whinging about 'someone wants to pray, we should ban that' . If its traditional to open with prayers why should that tradition be redacted because some intolerent people cant abide anyone else expressing a culture you dont want to be part of.
Just about everyone is entitled to be loud and proud about their culture. Gay Pride, St Patricks Day marches are two good examples. Cant Christians be loud and proud also? They have a tradition, open the meeting giving thanks to God. The meeting is secular but before getting down to secular business people in the old days, when people were mostly at least nominal Christian would be seen to remember God first. Ironically t makes more sense in a separate church and state system actually, especially with a then Christian majority. In Europe because there was no separation there was no need for prayers because everything was under the aegis of church. In America prayers are a way of leaving God at the door, evidently not abandoning Him, but a seperation before getting down to business which has been culturally directed to be secular as a means to be fair to all. Get the religion done first, then everyone can get down to secular business without further religious input This is a very American way of doing things and has risen that was over centuries, it is part of your culture. Now some intolerent atheists want to rip it all up because they lack the maturity to accept a cultural continuence.
As for being 'subjected' to the prayers, as if it were an unbearable affront. That reads as very SJW. Do you really want to tread that path?
Nobody shot your dog. Honestly, get over it.
Wow I can tell you're a very tolerant person. "Don't like prayer when there's business to do? There's the door."
Perhaps consideration could be shown that some of us are there to do things and it's quite an affront to waste the time we have.
I "got over it" a long time ago, because I realized that Christians just don't give a gak about anyone's feelings or wants if they go against the theocratic norm. (Anecdotal evidence. Which is apparently valid for truth in this thread.) So I'm very patient about it, because why raise my blood pressure over you?
If you just want to misrepresent what's said and belittle, while giving no thought to "why would they feel this way," and yet expect us to give you that consideration while dismissing almost every issue out of hand, then well, I guess there's nothing more to discuss with you.
I don't care about religious traditions if I'm at a business or government meeting. Open the meeting with relevant things. Open your religious meetings with religious traditions.
By the way, "subjected to" doesn't only mean something would be an ordeal. But hey, that's what misrepresentation is for, eh?
Christians should be allowed to be loud and proud? Yet, atheists should just sit quietly, and get over it? Hm. Sounds less like equality than you might think. But that's SJW culture for you. Oh snap, I can use that acronym too.
One last thing, it IS an affront. An affront to reason.
Now goodbye forever, it seems you're not really contributing so much as you are wanting to tell atheists how their concerns are invalid because "suck it up," so you're going into my "never hear from again" pile
I said get over it and meant it. The whinging about 'someone wants to pray, we should ban that' . If its traditional to open with prayers why should that tradition be redacted because some intolerent people cant abide anyone else expressing a culture you dont want to be part of.
In other words, cater to my religion and only mine. It's always amusing to see the most intolerant culture blaming others for being intolerant. tell me about being patient with other cultures when muslims can freely start a meeting off with one of their prayers. I'm sure you'd be the picture of being patient then.
Oh! There was the time a Satanist recently went to do his prayer/ritual and Christians actively spoke over him.
Thankyou for the links. The problem here is that patheos.com refer to Christianity an an epidemic.
So Christianity is as a disease. That is more than a bit loaded.
I am sure I could find plenty of links of reasons to dislike Islam on Stormfront.
I am sure I could find plenty of links to the evil excesses of atheists on a pro-Taliban website.
As fro the Moses thing.
The sources aren't saying that Moses helped found America. They say that the founding fathers wee heavily influenced by the teachings of Moses.
There is actually some logic to that, at face value. The protestant movement of the time was heavily old testament based
They were going through their own exodus to an expected promised land, and some could well be asking God for delivery through it, or seeing the similarities as aspirational. I would need to know more before I would critique this.
There was a lot of spin in early American history. A larger percentage of the population were loyalist than subsequent history portrays, and there was a need for propaganda, even some cases of gerrymandering to ensure support went the way it did. The similarities of delivery from Egypt would be useful to raise the masses.
Mosaic influence is therefore not unreasonable.
Your link to the New York Times echoes this "some academics say exaggerate the influence of Moses in American democracy". Mosaic influence is reasonable, at what point is it being overegged for revisionism. But then the New York Times is a decent journalistic source.
The Atlantic is more vague about what the problem with Moses and founding America is. Rightwingwatch jumps in with both feet though "suggest Moses influenced the writing of the Constitution". It is ambiguous enough you cant tell what the scare story is. You have to dig for yourself to find its not a pants-on-head theology of Moses returning and leading early American leaders to glory. As it was introduced to the thread. I was thinking/hopeing, surely not even in 'Murica.
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Wolfblade wrote: See, that's pretty intolerant right there. If I don't believe why should I have my time wasted? Why should I have to be "subjected" to something I don't believe in?
And no one is saying "ban praying" but rather "do it on your own time, not mine."
If an opening prayer is a traditional activity at a public event it is so.
And as for Gay Pride parades it's because they ARE treated as second class citizens ( that's slowly changing however), so that doesn't really help your case much.
And now you are doing same for Christians. Which is why I mentioned that specific example. Gay Pride was necesssry to say we are here and not going to go away. Relgious people might soon need to do same.
I said get over it and meant it. The whinging about 'someone wants to pray, we should ban that' . If its traditional to open with prayers why should that tradition be redacted because some intolerent people cant abide anyone else expressing a culture you dont want to be part of.
In other words, cater to my religion and only mine. It's always amusing to see the most intolerant culture accusing others of being intolerant. tell me about being patient with other cultures when muslims can freely start a meeting off with one of their prayers. I'm sure you'd be the picture of being patient then.
So you made a flat assumption. I never said the prayers at the beginning meetings had to be Christian. You just assumed I said so because you prefer to assume I only ask for one religion to be catered to.
Reality is often different.
Most public prayers before public secular meetings in the current age are inferfaith, and have a focus on unity and tolerance.
It is even increasingly encourafged by secular authorities because of this.
Funny that. So who are the intolerant ones again?
Funny...local town had only Christian prayers to start the town hall meeting...got sued and won by claiming that they were interfaith and then promptly changed the rules so that only Christians qualified to lead the prayers...
Wow I can tell you're a very tolerant person. "Don't like prayer when there's business to do? There's the door."
Thank you for the unintended complement. It is indeed the act of the tolerent man when faced with a legal activity that he doesnt want to be involved with to remove himself from the qactivity rather than ban it.
Perhaps consideration could be shown that some of us are there to do things and it's quite an affront to waste the time we have.
that consideration is given. This is why the prayers occur at the beginning not during and in many cases the formal start time of the session is business is the time listed for start of meeting.
I "got over it" a long time ago, because I realized that Christians just don't give a gak about anyone's feelings or wants if they go against the theocratic norm. (Anecdotal evidence. Which is apparently valid for truth in this thread.) So I'm very patient about it, because why raise my blood pressure over you?.
So its only them Christians then. Raised blood pressure doesn't imply patience, patience comes from understanding
If you want anecdotal evidence to count quote it and link.
If you just want to misrepresent what's said and belittle, while giving no thought to "why would they feel this way," and yet expect us to give you that consideration while dismissing almost every issue out of hand, then well, I guess there's nothing more to discuss with you.
because its known why you feel this way. There are many atheist movements calling for an outright ban on prayer in public meetings. They beleive that religion should only be practiced behind closed doors, if at all, despite being in an information age where nearly every activity is broadcastable and in a milieu of increased tolerence of public expression of anything legal to be publically expressed.
I don't care about religious traditions if I'm at a business or government meeting. Open the meeting with relevant things. Open your religious meetings with religious traditions.
A tradition means something that is passed down generation to generation and is a continuous cultural link. Once severed of cultural links a society becomes less stable because it has less depth. every society has its traditions and it is a major cultural step to sever one, and it is almost always to the worst.
Sever this one and part of the cultural fabric is torn. Why should that be done just to accommodate your intolerance.
i would say exactly the same about secular traditions and frequently do.
Christians should be allowed to be loud and proud? Yet, atheists should just sit quietly, and get over it? Hm. Sounds less like equality than you might think. But that's SJW culture for you. Oh snap, I can use that acronym too.
If you find an atheist or foreign faith cultural tradition for me to sit through I would do so, or turn up after. I wouldnt demand its removal.
In fact I wouldnt even be offended if I did sit through it. So there is a distinction between you and me. That is why the SJW style intolerence meme works one way only here.
One last thing, it IS an affront. An affront to reason.
Ok. Lets break this down. You dont believe in it, why is not relevant at this point anymore. Others do. Anyway you want to ban it because you insist your own fanatical dogmas take prescedence that others are to be banned from public place.
Lets put these two together: Atheist..... Taliban.
Now goodbye forever, it seems you're not really contributing so much as you are wanting to tell atheists how their concerns are invalid because "suck it up," so you're going into my "never hear from again" pile
Cheerio.
i have given myriad reasons on many posts on this thread.
However when it comes down to atheists demanding the end yo public prayer at meetings. 'Get over it' is a very rational response.
Nowhere have we said you cant practice atheism at a public meeting, if someone tried to shut down the humanists I would consider that a serious affront to civil liberties and would oppose the move.
However there are entire movements in atheist society hell bent on driving a wedge between Christian society in particular, but also other faiths and secular society. Sidelining religion, the right to practice or publically identify with religion.
Oh! There was the time a Satanist recently went to do his prayer/ritual and Christians actively spoke over him.
Turning up to troll. People would talk over Westboro Baptists also.
Also those who would talk over a Satanist need not be Christian.
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skyth wrote: Funny...local town had only Christian prayers to start the town hall meeting...got sued and won by claiming that they were interfaith and then promptly changed the rules so that only Christians qualified to lead the prayers...
Source please.
A humanist speaker could ask for time at meetings for 'unity and quiet reflection'.
If an imam turned up it would be hard to refuse him.
Any evidence they have done so?
Prayers can still be interfaith, and if only Christian preachers turn up with any regularity that is what you get.
No reason to ban though.
I would challenge that if I were you, and if it means something to you.
You don't "practice" atheism, there's nothing to practice. And no one is stopping you from praying, just do it on your own time, and don't involve others who don't want it, in it (which applies to more than just atheists. I'm sure a Hindu would feel uncomfortable during a Christian prayer i.e.)
A tradition means something that is passed down generation to generation and is a continuous cultural link. Once severed of cultural links a society becomes less stable because it has less depth. every society has its traditions and it is a major cultural step to sever one, and it is almost always to the worst.
Sever this one and part of the cultural fabric is torn. Why should that be done just to accommodate your intolerance.
i would say exactly the same about secular traditions and frequently do.
traditions is the worst of all reason to do something. It means it's being down with no thought as to why its being done. Why is a prayer needed to start any meeting? what value does it add to the meeting? none really.
If you had your way and we never changed traditions and do away with the really bad ones, there'd still be a tradition of slavery, a tradition of keeping women in the home and out of the work place.
so you're saying that we are worse off for doing away with those traditions? Even in the navy, they thought about their core values and tradition was the first to go. Tradition used to be a core value of the navy, but was replaced with better values, and a newer, more enlightened tradition was founded on the core values of 'honor, courage, commitment'
Tradition is the worst reason of all to do anything.
Orlanth wrote: A humanist speaker could ask for time at meetings for 'unity and quiet reflection'.
Humanists and athiests have been blocked from speaking on "thought for the day" since its inception. I know that whenever I went into the workshop where I used to work (they only ever listened to Radio 2) the invariably Christian thought for the day would annoy me.
This is far (especially in America) from the only venue at which non-religious, and often specifically non-christian, speakers are refused.
Wolfblade wrote: You don't "practice" atheism, there's nothing to practice. And no one is stopping you from praying, just do it on your own time, and don't involve others who don't want it, in it (which applies to more than just atheists. I'm sure a Hindu would feel uncomfortable during a Christian prayer i.e.)
You may be surprised. From what I know of most Hindus they dont mind, and if there are Hindus in the community meeting the meeting will likely have interfaith prayers, if any.
As fro atheism, for some there is nothing to practice, but in that case why not let everyone else get to it. If the only practice you have is intolerance when religion is encountered, something is wrong
Nevertheless humanism has comparable procedures to a lot of religion, namely in terms of the way a congregation meets and even some of the roles of a priesthood.
There is elements of atheism to practice if you choose to do so. Evidently as atheism has no core theology there is no pressure to join in as such. Though with one caveat below*. Humanist meeting halls and clubs provide fellowship with people of similar perspective. Humanist speakers provide inspiration at meetings, and consolation useful at funerals. There are also times of reflection on a common goal a form of prayer focus, just without any propitiary elements. A humanist call for a moment of quiet reflection on an issue relevant to the group or society in general is 'half a prayer' it focuses the community even if it doesn't ask any deity for assistance.
I could easily see room for humanist speakers in interfaith meetings.
Doing a quick google search and evidently I am not alone in that. It happens here in Europe.
If faith leaders stand together for peace after an atrocity, a humanist is normally with them.
Perhaps if you brought that to America this whole issue would go away.
We dont have the us and them battle with atheists in the UK. Debates yes. The main problem is government pressure for disestablishmentarianism partly under the veil of atheism.
* The caveat. Communists. They were big on atheist/party meetings, and it was a good idea if you turned up. China is still big on these. There is a lot of humanist teaching at face value, though far less gentle because its atheist reason plus party line.
There is even a from of prayer and worship in some extreme communist cultures.
Mentioned for completeness, America after all is not exactly up for communism. Especially the southern states, most of the issues raised refer to.
Regardless, if you leave for or show up after the prayer exoect not to have any comment you make seriously by the board.
Even if you keep on plugging your ears and ranting that it's not true; Chrustians occupy a position of privelege in the US.
So from your link you could turn up and say you leader a congregation of believers and get a slot. Non -christians are definitively catered for and the article expenses that. In fact the picture in the article shows a Baha'i worshipper holding prayers.
Atheists feel they fall foul of the wording intended to weed out lone nutcases, but only because they don't have any congregations. A group of humanists could easily found one, and there is established cause for humanists to meet, human fellowship.
Most religions have human fellowship at its core, in fact the word church refers to the group of believers, not the building, which is a secondary definition.
Time with like minded people is a part of a humans basic need and goes back to our tribal roots. Humanists understand this truth also and can and do meet. They could easily quality for the criteria for Greece, NY. It might make better copy however to assume that the atheists of the rtown would not want to sit in the same room for, reasons, and thus they are all being discriminated against by those dastardly we-will-assume-are-Christians.
Any evidence that you cant turn up after prayers and still be heard fairly?
Regardless, if you leave for or show up after the prayer exoect not to have any comment you make seriously by the board.
Even if you keep on plugging your ears and ranting that it's not true; Chrustians occupy a position of privelege in the US.
So from your link you could turn up and say you leader a congregation of believers and get a slot. Non -christians are definitively catered for and the article expenses that. In fact the picture in the article shows a Baha'i worshipper holding prayers.
Atheists feel they fall foul of the wording intended to weed out lone nutcases, but only because they don't have any congregations. A group of humanists could easily found one, and there is established cause for humanists to meet, human fellowship.
Most religions have human fellowship at its core, in fact the word church refers to the group of believers, not the building, which is a secondary definition.
Time with like minded people is a part of a humans basic need and goes back to our tribal roots. Humanists understand this truth also and can and do meet. They could easily quality for the criteria for Greece, NY. It might make better copy however to assume that the atheists of the rtown would not want to sit in the same room for, reasons, and thus they are all being discriminated against by those dastardly we-will-assume-are-Christians.
Any evidence that you cant turn up after prayers and still be heard fairly?
Oh really, that's what we're basing being discriminated on?
Arkansas, Article 19, Section 1:
No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.
you can't be fairly heard if your immediately dismissed as being incompetent.
The Delta employee then explained that the pilot had decided to ask them to leave as one of the crew members had felt “uncomfortable” in their presence, as the crew member had reportedly seen Mr Ali hide his phone as they walked by, and that Mr Ali had been sweating and saying “Allah”.
tell me any christian would have been removed for saying god?
Orlanth wrote: We dont have the us and them battle with atheists in the UK. Debates yes. The main problem is government pressure for disestablishmentarianism partly under the veil of atheism.
Are you joking?
Christianity is consistently held above all other faiths and non-religious viewpoints in the UK by the government.
The rules are quite restrictive to minority faiths(like mine...I wouldn't be able to offer a prayer there). They are written based on how Christianity operates and are yet another example of Christian privelege.
This is besides the fact that govetnment functions have no business supporting religious rituals.
skyth wrote: Yeah...like they would admit to that.
The rules are quite restrictive to minority faiths(like mine...I wouldn't be able to offer a prayer there). They are written based on how Christianity operates and are yet another example of Christian privelege.
This is besides the fact that govetnment functions have no business supporting religious rituals.
Arent the rules based on how formal religion operates, not necessarily just Christianity.
Some charismatic churches would fall foul of that, house churches for example.
Prayers can still be interfaith, and if only Christian preachers turn up with any regularity that is what you get.
No reason to ban though.
Im not sure how local governance is done where you're at, but here, a religious person offering up an opening prayer doesn't just "turn up".... They are specifically invited.
And in a country such as mine with a disestablishment clause, these prayers run foul of that, ESPECIALLY because so many cities/counties or whatever only send out requests to Christian preachers. The only council meetings I've attended that had a prayer/words offered up by a non-christian, was because that exact religion was going to be talked about (one meeting was opened by a Muslim, because one of the topics of discussion for that night were zoning restrictions and how that Imam/teacher could open a Mosque in town)
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Im not sure how local governance is done where you're at, but here, a religious person offering up an opening prayer doesn't just "turn up".... They are specifically invited.
And in a country such as mine with a disestablishment clause, these prayers run foul of that, ESPECIALLY because so many cities/counties or whatever only send out requests to Christian preachers. The only council meetings I've attended that had a prayer/words offered up by a non-christian, was because that exact religion was going to be talked about (one meeting was opened by a Muslim, because one of the topics of discussion for that night were zoning restrictions and how that Imam/teacher could open a Mosque in town)
Exactly. And here's my state, being a national embarrassment: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article29931514.html#sto. The courts said the county couldn't limit their pre-meeting prayer to Christians, but when there was a Muslim giving the prayer the chairman walked out and the county voted to stop having prayers before meetings. And, charming person that he is, the chairman had this to say:
“I ain’t gonna have no new religion or pray to Allah or nothing like that,” Mitchem told WBTV, saying that anyone opposed to Christian prayer can “wait until we’re done praying.”
Orlanth wrote: We dont have the us and them battle with atheists in the UK. Debates yes. The main problem is government pressure for disestablishmentarianism partly under the veil of atheism.
Christianity is consistently held above all other faiths and non-religious viewpoints in the UK by the government..
This is a secular move and is a counter to the disestablishmentarianism set up by Blair (who claims to be christian BTW). New Labour wanted this because by reforging the natioanl culture in their image they hoped to become indispensible to the population. a New Brtian of multicultuiralism that doesnt quite work and needs New Labour to cement it to work at all. To do this the old ways hadto go. coE was high on the list, as well as hereditary lords and a number of civic rights. In would come selective empowerment under multiculturalism, which is mainly there to keep the nation divided.
Blairs first agenda was to practice lay investiture to fill the CoE with yes men. Williams was totally useless, but become Archbishop of Canterbury because every candidate the synod elected was rejected by Downing st until they came to him. He was way down this list.
Williams could be replied upon to not make comments if he saw social ills the government said they had a handle on and would ignore the systemic dismantlying of the church. He even took a year off to write a book when there was a schism with the African churches.
Just an example:
He said nothing when Christian ministries were removed from the prison service, which occurred under Blair on a progressive agenda. The same progresive agenda also allowed Islamic mission to continue unchecked, because minority rights. Prison has been a hotbed for Islamic radical conversion because people in prison oftimes want to turn to God, and Allah was the only deity on regular offer. Combine radical Islam wirth ex convicts and you get an unpleasant mixture. In the post Blair years with British citizens without an Islamic background who have been through the prison system converted to Islam and been radicalised being a noticable common history in some ISIS recruits from the Uk hasd caused the current government to rethink.
Blair also went heavily after the CoE in other ways, but relented to some extent because the CoE runs the vast majority of the faith schools in the Uk state system and statistically they are the best schools in the state system overall. CoE schools are highly sought after.
Meanwhile non-Christian faith schools were allowed to get on with it, and under the dogma of equality, false tolerence and multiculturalism could not be scrutinised. Now th Jewish ones were ok and continued as normal, butwhen you allow radical Islam free reign it doesnt need to be asked twice. The 'Trojan horse' schools were like the rape culture in Rotherham, something people knew about but could do nothing about because it was not politically acceptable to beleive these excesses existed.
It took a change of government to deal with both.
The Uk government has big problems with Islamic extremism and has realised that stamping on the church was not helpful in the long run, because the church runs the best schools and the Coe doesnt really get inanyones way, its a non exteremist organisation. So the current government wants to encourage it back on its feet.
Humainists might not like that, but humanists have no threat from the CoE, if the Uk becomes Islamic in 2045-50 as some predict kiss goodbye to your rights then.
This is necessary and was seen as such outside the Guardian. New Labour set up the cultural climate that allowed the Trojan horse schools to prosper. Fro those who don't know what that means it means that behind closed doors teachers were teaching Islamic fundamentalism as its core religious teaching, jihadist teaching was kept off all the records, and often spilled out into times for other curricular.
This had to be stopped. Harsh new measure included but without punishing those faith schools that were not trying to teach preteens to be jihadists.
Lets be clear here, its not some teaching on creationism that some humanists had problems with, indeed the humanists didnt go around critiqing these aschools because criticising ethnic schools in New Labour Britain was not a good career move and CoE were a sanctioned punchbag.
So kids were being taught stuiff that the average humanist, and anyone else might not like. Such as how all Jews are evil, women are third class citizens and how unbeleivers can be persecuted.
Again necessary. Humanists were indirectly used to bash the CoE, this doesnt imply any conspiracy, many atheists like to bash Christianity given the chance, see thread for details, Blair gave them free reign to do so. imagine what would happen if a hostile government purposely and specifically gave Peregrine or some of the more anti-religious posters here free reign to critique Christian schools. I think they might enjoy finding faults. Much of the bashing was entirely uncalled for. Again coE schools have the best records in the state system as a group, some are very very good. there are many failing schools in the state system, humanists don't seem to care about them though for some reason, even though basic literacy is a problem for many school leavers.
The government wants to end this. Humanists have been basically trolling the CoE for over nearly two decades with the blessing of prior governments, it hasn't helped. CoE standards remained high, Jewish schools likewise, secular schools and Islamic schools are generally not so good, infact outside of grammars, a few flagship schools and the CoE and Jewish faith aschools the state system in the Uk is crap.
Some humanists still like to fault find specifically at the CoE, and even post Trojan horse aren't of a mind to look too deeply as Islamic schools.
To some extent it has become a right to troll.
Most of the nit picking is unhelpful and tiresome, especially as the humanists are self motivated to find fault for any reason and bleat about it if they do even if it is very thin. Its a waste of time and resources dealing with these constant nick pickings (remember the CoE schools get the highest OFSTED reports) its also a form of harassment in some cases. So schools in general not just CoE are now given a buffer against spurious complaints. Complaints must come from parents of guardians of students at the school, or professional inspectors, not politicised groups out to score a point. This way resources are not diverted away from relevant issues.
The irony here is that if we stop being a Christian country because of pandering to multculturalism, we will become an Islamic country, with no equality.
Also the CoE is recovering now it has had the New Labour boot lifted off its neck. Cameron got rid of Williams very quickly and replaced him with someone competent. Blair and Brown could have done this at any time, but they didn't want a competent leader of the CoE.
It also helps that the BBC is not pressing an atheist agenda as it did a decade ago and the charismatic church, which has growth rates higher than any other group, is now no longer unwelcome. New Labour shut down a lot of charismatic churches, especially the multicultural ones, as they could make a success of multiculturalism, wheras multiculturalism is not supposed to work without the guiding hand of government.
The situatation in the UK is very different from the US. The CoE worked as a cultural bedrock, so it had to go, or at least be unfit for purpose. Schools had to reflect the new dogma and the divide and rule society. Even devolution of Scotland and Wales was part of the same strategy, Scotland and England separate but united with the unifying glue of Labour, but actually as some said would happen being instrumental for the rise of the SNP and Pliad Cymru from prior inconsequence.
The religious issues in the Uk are party political and recent and the current moves to alter the balance are also entirely polticial. Its not due to a faith bias, it is because the nation is fracturing due to disestablishmentarianism, and the post Blair government see the consequences of the mistakes. The Tories don't give a gak about Christianity, they just dont want civic unrest, an Islamic rise, or for that matter Labour being engineered as the essential component to glue society together.
And nobody wants the continuation of the problems of jihadist infiltration of school curricula, except the jihadists.
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skyth wrote: 'Formal Religion' is determined by how Christianity does it. It's part of the Christian Privellege.
Saudim Arabia has a formal religion, as does Iran and India. Those Christians.....
Orlanth wrote: because its known why you feel this way. There are many atheist movements calling for an outright ban on prayer in public meetings. They beleive that religion should only be practiced behind closed doors, if at all, despite being in an information age where nearly every activity is broadcastable and in a milieu of increased tolerence of public expression of anything legal to be publically expressed.
No they don't. This is a blatantly dishonest straw man argument. What "atheist movements" want in this case is a ban on government-sponsored/endorsed prayer. Nobody is suggesting that religion be banned from public spaces and only allowed behind closed doors or (even more laughably wrong) banned entirely. Virtually all atheists will acknowledge that you can pray in public. What we oppose is that prayer being done by government organizations and/or employees acting in their government role, because that involves the secular government picking a side on religious questions and making other religious (or lack thereof) groups feel excluded or even threatened. It's why our constitution explicitly states that the government can not do this.
In short: build a church on private property if you want. Put a sign out in front with whatever religious message you want. But the government can not endorse your message.
Lets put these two together: Atheist..... Taliban.
Yeah, because "the government should not endorse any religion (or atheism)" is totally the same as "the government should enforce my religion and kill anyone who doesn't follow it". Clearly this is a reasonable comparison to make.
Peregrine wrote: Nobody is suggesting that religion be banned from public spaces and only allowed behind closed doors or (even more laughably wrong) banned entirely.
Orlanth wrote: - It is arguable that Christians are the injured party. Atheists made an 'us vs them' fight by targeting Christians exclusively with regards to their battle against religion; as nobody wants to be seen targeting Jews, and they are collectively litigious if you do, and targeting Moslems is outright dangerous. The fact that Christians are on the firing line indicate where the shots are coming from, it's not like Islam doesnt want to pick a fight, and despises atheism, but is curiously out of this one.
Going to have to go back and reply to this one, because it's so hilariously wrong. What alternate world are you looking at where atheists don't target Islam? Did you miss the fact that some of the most popular "leaders" of the atheist "movement" will go on and on about how much Islam is a threat, how we need to be very afraid of Islamic terrorists, how we need to continue having wars in the middle east to fight Islam, etc? Trust me, there is no shortage of targeting Islam in atheism. If it seems like Christianity is more often a target it's only because English language books/forums/blogs/etc are US/UK-dominated, two countries that are majority Christian. So, especially in the US, if you're going to talk about a way that a religious group is harming society it's almost certainly going to be a Christian church responsible.
Nice job moving the goal posts there. Opposing religion and saying "we want to persuade people that their beliefs are incorrect" is not at all the same as trying to ban religion. Please don't use such a dishonest argument.
And, amusingly, that Sam Harris interview even refutes your own claim that atheists don't target Islam. Quotes:
To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam.
and
There are so many. Let's take the extreme case, honor killing in the Muslim world. Imagine the psychology of a man who, upon hearing that his daughter was raped, is inspired not to console her, not to seek immediate medical and psychological treatment for her, but to kill her. This is an honor-based, shame-based psychology. You cannot name a Muslim country to my knowledge where it doesn't happen. It even happens in the suburbs of Paris. It falls right out of the theology of Islam.
So, especially in the US, if you're going to talk about a way that a religious group is harming society it's almost certainly going to be a Christian church responsible.
Also you arent looking at Christian churches harming society, you are just looking at Christian churches, they don't need to harm anyone. You want them out of the schools and public meetings because fanatic atheism.
Take the prayers in public meetings issue discussing. Christian churches arent causing 'societal harm' here, the thread hasn't even expressed an interest in finding out what type of issues are raised in the prayers, it is the fact that they are still around still exist, and still pray that makes then unwanted to fanatic atheists. No harm is necessary to be hated by the haters.
Stop pretending that this is a necessary response to Christians 'harming society'. It isn't that rational, we even had people right here saying that they find having prayers in meetings as and of itself offensive and when asked to apply some tolerance to that get angry.
I posit that Christian churches are harming society in the US by trying to force public schools to teach Creationism/Intelligent Design, and banning sex ed/family planning courses.
Nice job moving the goal posts there. Opposing religion and saying "we want to persuade people that their beliefs are incorrect" is not at all the same as trying to ban religion. Please don't use such a dishonest argument.
the arguments are not dishonest, the motive is to end religion, it is the stated goal. The thing is religion is not going away.
Now it is understood that you cant just slaughter all the religious people, but you can try to systemically ban them from meetings schools etc.
And, amusingly, that Sam Harris interview even refutes your own claim that atheists don't target Islam. Quotes:
But what does he DO about Islam? The atheist movement is concerned with going after the easier target.
Anyway my point was that as Christianity is targeted the atheist vs Christianity problem comes from atheists targeting Christians not the other way around.
Granted that Harris doesn't like Islam. But then again I listed the three quotes as a counter to your claim that it was ridiculous to think that atheists want to end religion when its is a stated aim.
Take the prayers in public meetings issue discussing. Christian churches arent causing 'societal harm' here, the thread hasn't even expressed an interest in finding out what type of issues are raised in the prayers, it is the fact that they are still around still exist, and still pray that makes then unwanted to fanatic atheists. No harm is necessary to be hated by the haters.
No.
The thing that makes them unwanted to "fanatic" atheists is that they quite clearly violate disestablishment, they place one religion over another and shows preferential treatment to a select group of people.
feeder wrote: I posit that Christian churches are harming society in the US by trying to force public schools to teach Creationism/Intelligent Design, and banning sex ed/family planning courses.
Both of which indisputably cause harm to society.
It can be disputed easily enough.
Creationism and Intelligent design offer a counterbalance of teaching. Exposing children to the idea that not all concepts are universally accepted and that some concepts might have multiple logical paths while being apparently similar is helpful.
teach only one way and you don't teach the person to think for themselves. Also evolution is not an atheist exclusive doctrine, Intelligent Design prevents it from being hijacked as such. In fact all you need to do to teach intelligent design is to say that the evolutionary process is considered by some not to be random but guided by a deity. As backup up one could mention certain bottleneck species which would be difficult to explain under random natural selection because they have developed a very specific lifecycle which could be disrupted in intervening evolutionary stages unless guided. Parasitic wasps come to mind here.
You seem to think that just having a religious element to education is harmful as and of itself. Which actually doesn't show you to be a good judge on what would make fair teaching.
Churches are not banning sex education courses. Churches prefer an abstinenced focused sex education policy. This can work but needs to be backed up with sexual health focused education. the trouble with the former is if people want to ignore abstinence they will. the trouble with the latter is that it sexualises children at progressively younger ages.
There is a logic behind both issues, abstinence is traditonal, is 100% efective if stuck to and doesnt require any sexualisation. It can be combined successfully with awareness of STI's and pregnancy. Just encouranging the use iof condoms however lowers the age of sexual awareness. The UK follows this path and now has to start sex education with preteens in order to educate before the sexualisation of the child. Sexualisation of pre-pubescent children is generally not good.
Besides the church are not the driving force of either but is a party political issue, though it is certainly there.
Nevertheless the churches are concerned with the sexualisation of youth, and it is a desperate stretch to label that indisputable harm. By and large the bible belt areas and those communities with abstinence focused societies have better sexual health overall. You cant just take the same teaching to a ghetto school and get the same results.
Take the prayers in public meetings issue discussing. Christian churches arent causing 'societal harm' here, the thread hasn't even expressed an interest in finding out what type of issues are raised in the prayers, it is the fact that they are still around still exist, and still pray that makes then unwanted to fanatic atheists. No harm is necessary to be hated by the haters.
No.
The thing that makes them unwanted to "fanatic" atheists is that they quite clearly violate disestablishment, they place one religion over another and shows preferential treatment to a select group of people.
But it has already been shown that the meetings can be made multifaith if another part of the community wants in.
feeder wrote: I posit that Christian churches are harming society in the US by trying to force public schools to teach Creationism/Intelligent Design, and banning sex ed/family planning courses.
Both of which indisputably cause harm to society.
It can be disputed easily enough.
Creationism and Intelligent design offer a counterbalance of teaching. Exposing children to the idea that not all concepts are universally accepted and that some concepts might have multiple logical paths while being apparently similar is helpful.
teach only one way and you don't teach the person to think for themselves. Also evolution is not an atheist exclusive doctrine, Intelligent Design prevents it from being hijacked as such. In fact all you need to do to teach intelligent design is to say that the evolutionary process is considered by some not to be random but guided by a deity. As backup up one could mention certain bottleneck species which would be difficult to explain under random natural selection because they have developed a very specific lifecycle which could be disrupted in intervening evolutionary stages unless guided. Parasitic wasps come to mind here.
You seem to think that just having a religious element to education is harmful as and of itself. Which actually doesn't show you to be a good judge on what would make fair teaching.
Churches are not banning sex education courses. Churches prefer an abstinenced focused sex education policy. This can work but needs to be backed up with sexual health focused education. the trouble with the former is if people want to ignore abstinence they will. the trouble with the latter is that it sexualises children at progressively younger ages.
There is a logic behind both issues, abstinence is traditonal, is 100% efective if stuck to and doesnt require any sexualisation. It can be combined successfully with awareness of STI's and pregnancy. Just encouranging the use iof condoms however lowers the age of sexual awareness. The UK follows this path and now has to start sex education with preteens in order to educate before the sexualisation of the child. Sexualisation of pre-pubescent children is generally not good.
Besides the church are not the driving force of either but is a party political issue, though it is certainly there.
Nevertheless the churches are concerned with the sexualisation of youth, and it is a desperate stretch to label that indisputable harm. By and large the bible belt areas and those communities with abstinence focused societies have better sexual health overall. You cant just take the same teaching to a ghetto school and get the same results.
The only difference is one is obviously made up, and the other is made up and then written down in a book. Creationism/ID has no scientific evidence to back it up, has its roots in theology, and therefore should be nowhere near any publicly funded school.
Also, if abstinence works so fantastically, why does Texas (and other abstinence focused states over actual sex ed classes) have the highest teen pregnancy rates?
Intelligent design could be taught in schools... however in the US at least, it is ALWAYS coupled with religious dogma. It's been a fair few months since my last science course, but TBB, singularity or spoken word for the instant of creation are not taught. What is taught is scientific, observable fact. This means evolution is taught.
When it comes to sex ed, yeah, Evangelical conservative groups (if you care to, google what happened in Texas) have pushed for abstinence only "education." Most school districts that have implemented these policies from that pressure, within a few months will see a major spike in STIs. Every. Single. Time.
I will not sit here saying "the church" as if Christianity is a cohesive group, but it is undeniable that when a local group gets it's way on religious grounds, the results to education and public discourse is never good.
feeder wrote: I posit that Christian churches are harming society in the US by trying to force public schools to teach Creationism/Intelligent Design, and banning sex ed/family planning courses.
Both of which indisputably cause harm to society.
It can be disputed easily enough.
Creationism and Intelligent design offer a counterbalance of teaching. Exposing children to the idea that not all concepts are universally accepted and that some concepts might have multiple logical paths while being apparently similar is helpful.
And have nothing to do with science. There is no disprovable theory to either. They are not scientific theories and do not belong in science classes. It is beyond laughable that a well-tested scientific theory is put on the same level as a religious myth. Also, if you're going to teach creationism (In a philosophy class), you have to teach ALL of the creation stories from all the religions. Intelligent Design is just a dog whistle for 'Christian God did this'.
[quote[You seem to think that just having a religious element to education is harmful as and of itself. Which actually doesn't show you to be a good judge on what would make fair teaching.
Actually, it is not science at all. Teaching it AS science in a science classroom IS harmful. Not realizing that shows that YOU are not a good judge on what would make fair teaching.
Churches are not banning sex education courses. Churches prefer an abstinenced focused sex education policy. This can work but needs to be backed up with sexual health focused education. the trouble with the former is if people want to ignore abstinence they will. the trouble with the latter is that it sexualises children at progressively younger ages.
There is a logic behind both issues, abstinence is traditonal, is 100% efective if stuck to and doesnt require any sexualisation. It can be combined successfully with awareness of STI's and pregnancy. Just encouranging the use iof condoms however lowers the age of sexual awareness. The UK follows this path and now has to start sex education with preteens in order to educate before the sexualisation of the child. Sexualisation of pre-pubescent children is generally not good.
Besides the church are not the driving force of either but is a party political issue, though it is certainly there.
The church is the driving force behind abstinence ONLY teaching. No other information is allowed to be presented other than trying to scare the kids.
Nevertheless the churches are concerned with the sexualisation of youth, and it is a desperate stretch to label that indisputable harm. By and large the bible belt areas and those communities with abstinence focused societies have better sexual health overall.
And that statement has no relation to reality at all. Abstinence-only sex ed produces more teen pregnancies than a balanced approach.
But it has already been shown that the meetings can be made multifaith if another part of the community wants in.
And it has already been shown that communities refuse to do that and marginalize people who are not an 'accepted' religion.
The whole point is that Christianity is singled out for criticism in the western world because it enjoys undeserved privilege and works to keep other religions down.
And have nothing to do with science. There is no disprovable theory to either. They are not scientific theories and do not belong in science classes. It is beyond laughable that a well-tested scientific theory is put on the same level as a religious myth. Also, if you're going to teach creationism (In a philosophy class), you have to teach ALL of the creation stories from all the religions. Intelligent Design is just a dog whistle for 'Christian God did this'.
Creationism doesn't necessarily have to include any particular story, just the concept that some people believe that the origins of creation had a guiding hand. You don't even have to accentuate with any specific deity. That is indeed best left to religion classes.
Actually, it is not science at all. Teaching it AS science in a science classroom IS harmful. Not realizing that shows that YOU are not a good judge on what would make fair teaching.
The point here is that atheism isn't scientific either, including that evolutionary theory does not imply the non existence of a creator God. keeps the teaching fair, as it cannot thereby be hijacked by atheism.
And it has already been shown that communities refuse to do that and marginalize people who are not an 'accepted' religion.
Except evidence suggests that faith groups can and do demand their rights to free religion. The problem mainly rises from spoof 'religions' set up to mock those rights. Some breaks are needed to prevent people from turning up and demanding equal time for the belief in their left sock, or a spaghetti monster.
The whole point is that Christianity is singled out for criticism in the western world because it enjoys undeserved privilege and works to keep other religions down.
Except that the reality differs from the doctrine. This is certainly not true in the UK, the opposite in fact even with a formal state religion. Ethnic religions get the free pass and isolated critique of the churches is encouraged.
As for undeserved privilege, freedom of religion is not an undeserved privilege, its a right that doesn't require merit to attain.
Orlanth wrote: As backup up one could mention certain bottleneck species which would be difficult to explain under random natural selection because they have developed a very specific lifecycle which could be disrupted in intervening evolutionary stages unless guided. Parasitic wasps come to mind here.
Just going to stop you here. There is no such thing as a species that is difficult to explain under evolution. Creationism is no more appropriate for science class than flat earth theory, it's clearly garbage and the only way it should ever be mentioned is in a historical context of incorrect theories and how we moved past them. And intelligent design is nothing more than an attempt to get Christian creationism past US separation of church and state laws, complete with literally copy/pasting "intelligent design" over "creationism" in a creationist textbook.
By and large the bible belt areas and those communities with abstinence focused societies have better sexual health overall.
Uh, no, they don't at all. We have some pretty strong evidence that abstinence-only policies increase rates of disease and pregnancy. And the state with the highest rate of teen pregnancy? Mississippi, right in the heart of the bible belt. So yeah, feel free to state the obvious and mention that abstinence is 100% effective at preventing things that happen if you have sex, but you'd better be giving out more useful information as well.
But it has already been shown that the meetings can be made multifaith if another part of the community wants in.
Did you see the article I posted, where the county immediately stopped having pre-meeting prayers as soon as a Muslim gave one, and the chairman explicitly said that only Christian prayers were welcome?
Orlanth wrote: the arguments are not dishonest, the motive is to end religion, it is the stated goal. The thing is religion is not going away.
Now it is understood that you cant just slaughter all the religious people, but you can try to systemically ban them from meetings schools etc.
It's absolutely dishonest. The subject was banning religion, you moved the goalposts and provided examples of atheists saying "we should persuade people that their religions are wrong". Do you honestly not see a difference between using the power of the government to remove religion by force and trying to persuade people to say "you know, you're right, this whole god thing is kind of silly".
But what does he DO about Islam?
What does he DO about Christianity? You seem to have this impossible standard for "targeting Islam" where anything short of personally grabbing a gun and going off to fight ISIS doesn't count.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Intelligent design could be taught in schools... however in the US at least, it is ALWAYS coupled with religious dogma. It's been a fair few months since my last science course, but TBB, singularity or spoken word for the instant of creation are not taught. What is taught is scientific, observable fact. This means evolution is taught.
Fair point. This issue is handled with more care and foresight elsewhere in the west. Intelligent design can be summed up in once sentence anyway: " in evolution theory science may have discovered a tool by which a creator god could create.". It requires no separate study.
I will not sit here saying "the church" as if Christianity is a cohesive group, but it is undeniable that when a local group gets it's way on religious grounds, the results to education and public discourse is never good.
Pity this, again decent teaching can be had in a balanced approach. In the UK the balanced approach of the faith schools has better results than the approach of encouraging condom use in ever younger children which runs the danger of directly encouraging sexual experimentation at younger ages. With the pregnancies and STI's being skewed towards the secular schools.
Ok, I can see where you are coming from about Texas. But removing religion as an influence in schools is not a good solution, without the CoE to hold the candle education in he UK would be ever poorer than it is. But then the UK denominations are not like some American ones.
That being said abstinence can and does work, but needs a social framework to surround it. and a community with workable abstinence would likely not be afraid of teaching about STI's and condoms aswell. That does exist in some US communities, due to the geography of isolation but is almost unheard of in Europe including the UK.
Not everything to do with Bible belt is full of whackjob fringe churches. If some communities get to make it work. I wonder if they are less heard because they are less scripturally aggressive?
Orlanth wrote: You want them out of the schools and public meetings because fanatic atheism.
No, I want them out of public schools and government meetings because an important principle of the US government (stated in the very first amendment in our bill of rights) is that church and state are separate. The government does not get to promote or endorse any religion or position on religion. It would be just as inappropriate to open a government meeting with an atheist giving a speech on why god doesn't exist.
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Orlanth wrote: Intelligent design can be summed up in once sentence anyway: " in evolution theory science may have discovered a tool by which a creator god could create.". It requires no separate study.
Here's an alternate sentence: "it's Christian creationism, except with the references to 'God' literally find/replaced to 'intelligent designer' to attempt to slip through US laws on separation of church and state". I see no reason to pretend that it's anything other than a dishonest attempt to get Jesus back into public schools.
Not everything to do with Bible belt is full of whackjob fringe churches.
It really is. Even outside of the "Bible belt" region the US is still pretty overwhelmingly Christian. The thing that defines the "Bible belt" is that those supposed whackjob fringe churches have a whole lot more influence than other places.
Actually, it is not science at all. Teaching it AS science in a science classroom IS harmful. Not realizing that shows that YOU are not a good judge on what would make fair teaching.
The point here is that atheism isn't scientific either, including that evolutionary theory does not imply the non existence of a creator God. keeps the teaching fair, as it cannot thereby be hijacked by atheism.
Irrelevant. Not mentioning a creator deity is not the same as saying that there is no deities. There's that Christian privilege...Needing to make sure that your religion is injected into everything.
And that statement has no relation to reality at all. Abstinence-only sex ed produces more teen pregnancies than a balanced approach.
The availability of condoms in the local area will be the deciding factor.
How to use them and that they are effective is more of a deciding factor. Abstinence only education tends to lie and greatly exaggerate (IE effectively lie) about the possibility of condom failure and don't include how to use one. Message is 'why bother then?'
And it has already been shown that communities refuse to do that and marginalize people who are not an 'accepted' religion.
Except evidence suggests that faith groups can and do demand their rights to free religion. The problem mainly rises from spoof 'religions' set up to mock those rights. Some breaks are needed to prevent people from turning up and demanding equal time for the belief in their left sock, or a spaghetti monster.
A)free religion does not include the right to have the government give your religion preferential treatment. and 'spoof' religions have all the same rights as 'real' religions. To the government they should be indistinguishable. The validity of a religion should never be up for debate for a government institution.
The whole point is that Christianity is singled out for criticism in the western world because it enjoys undeserved privilege and works to keep other religions down.
Except that the reality differs from the doctrine. This is certainly not true in the UK, the opposite in fact even with a formal state religion. Ethnic religions get the free pass and isolated critique of the churches is encouraged.
As for undeserved privilege, freedom of religion is not an undeserved privilege, its a right that doesn't require merit to attain.
Freedom of religion is being allowed to practice your own religion. it does not include the right to have the government force your religion on anyone else. Besides the fact that that isn't the only privilege that Christianity has in western society. I liked to a list of over 30 of them earlier in the thread.
Quite frankly, the government has no business sponsoring religious practices or deciding which ones are valid. There government should have an EXTREMELY good reason to make anyone feel like an outsider. This is especially true with regards to religion and I can see no compelling reason to intertwine religion with government.
Orlanth wrote: As backup up one could mention certain bottleneck species which would be difficult to explain under random natural selection because they have developed a very specific lifecycle which could be disrupted in intervening evolutionary stages unless guided. Parasitic wasps come to mind here.
Just going to stop you here. There is no such thing as a species that is difficult to explain under evolution.
How about parasitic wasps that eat into the host caterpillar brain just enough to specifically brain damage them so they wrap their cocoon around the wasp rather than themselves, then stand guard over the wasp cocoons.
This will require to pull off , random brain surgery by an insect larva, and survival of such in order to survive the metamorphosis which is entirely reliant on the continuence of the host species in its changed state.
This offers no room for error, and thus no room for random progression, but is easily understandable if the parasitic wasp was guided by an external intelligence into what it needs to do, until the brain surgery program as set.
Creationism is no more appropriate for science class than flat earth theory, it's clearly garbage and the only way it should ever be mentioned is in a historical context of incorrect theories and how we moved past them. And intelligent design is nothing more than an attempt to get Christian creationism past US separation of church and state laws, complete with literally copy/pasting "intelligent design" over "creationism" in a creationist textbook.
Creationism is intelligent design. Young earth creationism is the Bible literalist stuf, and the Bible itself preaches against Bible literalism.
Intelligent design as and of itself has nothing to do with US law. From the time of Darwin some theologians have put forward the hypothesis that evolution is nothing more than the tool God uses. From a non literalist it makes sense, and it is not inconsistent with scripture either for reasons that I wont go into long, briedly put: Genesis is creation from Gods perspective (there wasnt any other) to God a day is an unspecified age/thousand years/long time and God is an extra dimensional being, thus the seven days of Creation are seven 'long times', and not necessarily in chronological order, but the order in which God thinks through the process.
But I need not go into that on an intelligent design/creationism.
complete with literally copy/pasting "intelligent design" over "creationism" in a creationist textbook.
They should copy paste it back. Intelligent design is just creationism explained. Its a recent political movement, but an old idea. Hadnled properly it requires no explaining because it doesnt interfere with the science in any way, it just challenges the assumption of evolution as an exclusively atheist theorem.
Uh, no, they don't at all. We have some pretty strong evidence that abstinence-only policies increase rates of disease and pregnancy.
I am not calling for that, and neither are many states, including some Bible belt ones. Abstinence can be taught in tandem, many education curricula do just that. I never reference abstinence-only as anything positive, it fact I never mentioned it at all. Have a check.
And the state with the highest rate of teen pregnancy? Mississippi, right in the heart of the bible belt. So yeah, feel free to state the obvious and mention that abstinence is 100% effective at preventing things that happen if you have sex, but you'd better be giving out more useful information as well.
Did you see the article I posted, where the county immediately stopped having pre-meeting prayers as soon as a Muslim gave one, and the chairman explicitly said that only Christian prayers were welcome?
It's absolutely dishonest. The subject was banning religion, you moved the goalposts and provided examples of atheists saying "we should persuade people that their religions are wrong". Do you honestly not see a difference between using the power of the government to remove religion by force and trying to persuade people to say "you know, you're right, this whole god thing is kind of silly".
Some people have been saying that a long time, religion is still here. Nothing is going to change that way. However they have a professed intention to remove religion, hijacking the education system is a start. It is not a case of explaining to people God is silly, its about controlling the narrative, likely through the media and a biased education system. With the intent to rid the word of religion, so a generation is raised atheist and can then prevent its continuence.
This wont work either, China did that, religion went underground, but it survived and in fact grew.
What does he DO about Christianity? You seem to have this impossible standard for "targeting Islam" where anything short of personally grabbing a gun and going off to fight ISIS doesn't count.
Here's an alternate sentence: "it's Christian creationism, except with the references to 'God' literally find/replaced to 'intelligent designer' to attempt to slip through US laws on separation of church and state". I see no reason to pretend that it's anything other than a dishonest attempt to get Jesus back into public schools.
Except it predates the controversy you talk about.
It really is. Even outside of the "Bible belt" region the US is still pretty overwhelmingly Christian. The thing that defines the "Bible belt" is that those supposed whackjob fringe churches have a whole lot more influence than other places.
I think you misread me here. Yep the bible belt is full of Christian churches, but most churches are attached to functional communities and are not run by nutcases. America includes communities that simply could not exist elsewhere due to its minimal interference in religious affairs, Amish for example. it is a strong credit to the US that a people group can say: we want to live in a selectively primitive environment not based on poverty, as a community, for generations but without complete isolation - and achieve that.
By and large the bible belt areas and those communities with abstinence focused societies have better sexual health overall.
Uh, no, they don't at all. We have some pretty strong evidence that abstinence-only policies increase rates of disease and pregnancy. And the state with the highest rate of teen pregnancy? Mississippi, right in the heart of the bible belt. So yeah, feel free to state the obvious and mention that abstinence is 100% effective at preventing things that happen if you have sex, but you'd better be giving out more useful information as well.
Just for funsies, I looked for an article I recall seeing a while back, and came across some interesting maps... If by "sexual health" Orlanth means, absolutely swimming in STDs, then yeah, the bible belt is pretty healthy.
Also, the bible belt has the highest rates of non-completion of HS, lower college rates, higher obesity, higher diabetes rates, etc. etc. etc.
Orlanth wrote: As backup up one could mention certain bottleneck species which would be difficult to explain under random natural selection because they have developed a very specific lifecycle which could be disrupted in intervening evolutionary stages unless guided. Parasitic wasps come to mind here.
Just going to stop you here. There is no such thing as a species that is difficult to explain under evolution.
How about parasitic wasps that eat into the host caterpillar brain just enough to specifically brain damage them so they wrap their cocoon around the wasp rather than themselves, then stand guard over the wasp cocoons.
This will require to pull off , random brain surgery by an insect larva, and survival of such in order to survive the metamorphosis which is entirely reliant on the continuence of the host species in its changed state.
This offers no room for error, and thus no room for random progression, but is easily understandable if the parasitic wasp was guided by an external intelligence into what it needs to do, until the brain surgery program as set.
I think that you simply underestimate what 100 million years of a 100 million wasps can achieve by sheer dumb luck. Even with one-in-a-billion odds of it working that is still 10 million wasps who will get it right. Plus it would not have happened all at once but instead probably have derived from a more typical parasitoid life cycle.
And just for fun what are the odds of an intelligent creator appearing who knows what to do to cause the wasps to evolve this way? Because it is actually creating a more complicated scenario, not a simpler one.
I actually agreed with you that intelligent design could be taught in school... what I pointed out was that here in the US, is that it would be attached to theology, which is scientifically unsound, as well as putting religion in schools where it doesn't belong.
It was you who kept up with abstinence programs being so successful, and yet there are a number of links you could check out to find that you are wrong. Instead, you wanted to continue beating the "it works!" drum.
As mentioned earlier ITT, religion has been generally negative for the world. And the link I provided that shows that the most religious portion of the US happens to also have the highest rates of most of the worst things (heart disease, strokes, diabetes, STDs, low education, economic issues, etc) which should at least give you pause. I know I'm not gonna change your mind, but you should also keep in mind that the religious experiences you have in the UK (I'm assuming you're CoE?) is probably quite different from Evangelicalism, Millenialism and other fairly distinctly American aspects of Christianity.
Orlanth wrote: How about parasitic wasps that eat into the host caterpillar brain just enough to specifically brain damage them so they wrap their cocoon around the wasp rather than themselves, then stand guard over the wasp cocoons.
This will require to pull off , random brain surgery by an insect larva, and survival of such in order to survive the metamorphosis which is entirely reliant on the continuence of the host species in its changed state.
This offers no room for error, and thus no room for random progression, but is easily understandable if the parasitic wasp was guided by an external intelligence into what it needs to do, until the brain surgery program as set.
Even a brief google search will give you discussion of the evolution of parasitic wasps, without involving any guiding intelligence at all.
Intelligent design as and of itself has nothing to do with US law.
No, it really does have to do with US law. The concept of god guiding the process of life is not new, but in the past people had no problem being open about calling it "god". The idea of intelligent design is to remove the explicit references to "god" and say "look, this is a purely scientific theory, it has nothing to do with religion so we can teach it in public schools" as if the courts are too RAW-literal to notice how obvious it is that the "intelligent designer" is meant to be the Christian god.
I am not calling for that, and neither are many states, including some Bible belt ones. Abstinence can be taught in tandem, many education curricula do just that. I never reference abstinence-only as anything positive, it fact I never mentioned it at all. Have a check.
So then what exactly are you talking about then? Normally when people mention teaching abstinence it's in the context of abstinence-only policies. And removed from that context the idea of teaching abstinence seems kind of meaningless. It's stating the obvious to say that the chance of pregnancy is zero if you never have sex, so what does your desired teaching approach include that isn't either abstinence-only or what we currently have?
Some people have been saying that a long time, religion is still here. Nothing is going to change that way. However they have a professed intention to remove religion, hijacking the education system is a start. It is not a case of explaining to people God is silly, its about controlling the narrative, likely through the media and a biased education system. With the intent to rid the word of religion, so a generation is raised atheist and can then prevent its continuence.
This wont work either, China did that, religion went underground, but it survived and in fact grew.
Sorry, but this is getting into tinfoil hat territory. Having schools be neutral on the subject of religion (and no, that does not include teaching atheism instead) is not an attack on your religion. Nor is it anything like China's attacks on religion, where churches are banned/restricted.
Call for it to be removed from schools.
And I'm pretty sure he also wants Islam removed from public schools. The only difference here is that, in the US, there are a lot more schools attempting to violate separation of church and state by promoting Christianity than schools attempting to violate separation of church and state by promoting Islam.
I think you misread me here. Yep the bible belt is full of Christian churches, but most churches are attached to functional communities and are not run by nutcases. America includes communities that simply could not exist elsewhere due to its minimal interference in religious affairs, Amish for example. it is a strong credit to the US that a people group can say: we want to live in a selectively primitive environment not based on poverty, as a community, for generations but without complete isolation - and achieve that.
I saw what you said, my point is that the defining element of the "Bible belt" is that more of the churches are run by nutcases. Maybe their communities are "functional" in some sense, but it's where you get the most problems like parents disowning their gay kids and leaving them homeless. Contrast this with the rest of the country, where the Christian majority is still overwhelming but churches are much more of "that thing you do on sundays" than some kind of right-wing theocracy.
And screw the Amish and their abusive cult. The conventional myth of the Amish as peaceful people living a simpler rural way of life is just that: a myth. In reality they're a lot like the fundamentalist Mormon cults, an ugly mess of abuse and misogyny using "freedom of religion" as an excuse to keep the cult free of outside interference. The only real difference is that the Amish bring in tourist money, so the secular authorities have a strong incentive to not look beyond the superficial image.
I think the idea of Resurrection doesn't even have to find basis in religion at all. All it needs is for a person to believe the idea that there's something after you die (i.e. the continued existence of the "Soul"). To my mind: Religion (with respect to resurrection) only paints a picture of what happens and possibly provides incentive to do something (i.e. the ideas of heaven vs hell), but religion doesn't form the basis for the idea of resurrection.
You didn't comment on the importance (or not) of human life, you took a line out of my post isolating it from its context and made snide remarks that disparaged my ability.
Explain your 'logic' behind your personal attack or man up and apologise.
I already explained my reasoning, and I'm not going to apologize for anything. I said you shouldn't be a suicide counselor because, based on your statements, you shouldn't be one. You clearly have no idea what could motivate a person to end their own life, and would probably try to brute force the matter by saying something like "God wants you to live!".
There are lots of reasons why people would try to end their life, and God isn't always the answer. Indeed, trying to drive someone to God through counselling is often counterproductive.
America includes communities that simply could not exist elsewhere due to its minimal interference in religious affairs, Amish for example. it is a strong credit to the US that a people group can say: we want to live in a selectively primitive environment not based on poverty, as a community, for generations but without complete isolation - and achieve that.
Only a select few of the Amish have held to the primitive lifestyle, most have given into modernity somehow; often leaving their communities for better things.
Creationism and Intelligent design offer a counterbalance of teaching. Exposing children to the idea that not all concepts are universally accepted and that some concepts might have multiple logical paths while being apparently similar is helpful.
Multiple "reasonable" paths, but not multiple "logical" paths; and a lot of those "reasonable" paths are easily refuted.
Creationism and Intelligent design offer a counterbalance of teaching. Exposing children to the idea that not all concepts are universally accepted and that some concepts might have multiple logical paths while being apparently similar is helpful.
In certain parts of Africa, there is a belief (or superstition) that having sex with a virgin cures HIV, which sadly results in HIV infected men raping babies, and consequently compounds the AIDS problem in the region... Would you also argue that this belief offers "a counterbalance" to medical science and contraception, or is it just misguided and unhelpful when people replace education and critical thinking with superstition?
A conscientious science teacher might use Intelligent Design to compare with Evolutionary Theory as an example of pseudoscience. They wouldn't teach it as an alternative theory because it isn't. They might teach an example, such as the blood clotting cascade mechanism, that ID says is too complex to have arisen by evolution in order to show how it did arise by evolution.
Mainstream Christianity accepts the truth of evolution and doesn't believe in Intelligent Design.
You didn't comment on the importance (or not) of human life, you took a line out of my post isolating it from its context and made snide remarks that disparaged my ability.
Explain your 'logic' behind your personal attack or man up and apologise.
I already explained my reasoning, and I'm not going to apologize for anything. I said you shouldn't be a suicide counselor because, based on your statements, you shouldn't be one. You clearly have no idea what could motivate a person to end their own life, and would probably try to brute force the matter by saying something like "God wants you to live!".
There are lots of reasons why people would try to end their life, and God isn't always the answer. Indeed, trying to drive someone to God through counselling is often counterproductive.
Not only should you refrain from personal attacks, you should also refrain from adding in completely unwarranted personal attacks caused by totally misreading a comment.
For a start you don't know me kiddo.
Second you don't know what I was talking about because as usual you eliminate context in order to fit your own agenda, and then assume the person you are wanting to attack is saying something different to what they actually are.
By the time you extrapolate this you are so far off the mark you might as well just be making random troll noises, and as a conclusion make blanket assessments about your targets capacities, bassee entirely on the false evidence manufactured for purpose.
Now let me explain to you why your comment is way off the reservation.
Here is the actual post. The comment I made, in context was a rebuttal to Peregrines assumption that if people pray to live it is because they know deep down there is no afterlife, they are praying ofr the one life they will ever have to continue. In adition he hypothesises that a believer would logically pray for death, so that heaven comes sooner.
My reply was that you get one life on Earth and therefore there is a instilled highlight to preserve that life as and of itself, and that doing so doesn't mean that an afterlife doesn't exist.
And from the section you took out of context - a believer who was assured of resurrection has no reason to just seek death sooner on the grounds that heaven is assured.
It continues there reinforcing the context.
The context is not in any way unclear. It has nothing to do with specific cases or circumstances, like suicidal thoughts, only the general point as to why believers dont generally feel an urge to seek an early death to get to the afterlife sooner.
Now you stripped one sentence out of all context, in order to make a troll point that I would be unable to help a person who felt suicidal. In doing so you made blanket assumptions here on my own beliefs, without even seeking evidence if I actually believed them. Somehow you persisted in this even when posting "even if assured of resurrection there is no reason to seek death now." which indicates that it refers to a case of a believer, so your comments on using or not using Biblical motives in counselling is invalid because there is Christian counselling, and that of other religions which is intended to help other believers exclusively. Most people who do this are also secular counsellors and can wear different hats for different tasks. It is insulting to assume that someone with a Christian perspective in counselling is incapable of being a secular councellor. I know you are flat out wrong here because I know people in the church who are both accredited Christian and secular counsellors and are able to use either methodologies dependent on what client comes to them. I have done something similar as a homeless worker, though at a lower level. I and other homeless workers would pass along suicide cases quickly.
As for suicide counselling, most people are not pants-on head stupid to be uncareful in what to say. In my private life I have known personal friends who have stuggled with suicidal thoughts, and I don't abandon my friends when in need, but I know better than to be anything but gentle.
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Kilkrazy wrote: A conscientious science teacher might use Intelligent Design to compare with Evolutionary Theory as an example of pseudoscience. They wouldn't teach it as an alternative theory because it isn't. They might teach an example, such as the blood clotting cascade mechanism, that ID says is too complex to have arisen by evolution in order to show how it did arise by evolution.
Mainstream Christianity accepts the truth of evolution and doesn't believe in Intelligent Design.
Actually mainstream Christianity accepts the truth of evolution and calls it the tools of creation. At its heart most Christian denominations are creationist, and believe in a creator God.
Taking my own example. I am a creationist because I believe in a creator God, and I see no need to dress that up in any way. I also have 0% trouble with accepting evolutionary theory, it just isn't a challenge to my or God in any way. Now I believe in the creator for reasons quite separate to this doctrine, I know God by other means. In other words I don't believe in God because I am a creationist, I am a creationist because I know God and choose to believe He creates because He says He does.
I don't like the term Intelligent design because it doesnt require its own material, just evolution + statement that evolution is a theorem that explains the mechanics of how life has come to be and makes no comment of itself on the existence or non existence of God. The Pope has got this right, the Catholic church accepts evolution, it makes sense to do so. You can do that and be a creationist or not a creationist, and it makes no difference to the theology of creation or the science of evolution if you do. the Pope has made no statement disavowing creation. The beginning of Genesis is being seen at long last like people have always read the end of revelation, as apocalyptic prose rather than literalist prose. About time.
Religions believe in churches, customs and some written stories . Agnostics can believe in god directly. They do, when something bad happening in their life. And then forget again
SilverMK2 wrote: It is almost like believing in daemons, speaking in tongues, etc predisposes you to not actually not engage with reality...
Actually having grown up in a church where speaking in tongues and other "gifts of the spirit" were a common occurrence, I cannot explain what is going on, but I can tell you that that church's beliefs, or rather the things people are told it's a good idea to believe definitely fall under your latter statement.
During my time growing up, one mother was on a one woman crusade to get everyone to boycott disney films because of "subliminal messaging" (this was like, day 5 of the internet, and she had seen an article describing what most of us know as the covert protests of the artists who felt they were being wronged in their disputes with Disney)
The church held the belief, partly due to a "satanic cult" that was discovered in the local theater (oldest theater in town, bought by new guy. New guy discovers candles and books and chalk lines/designs in a back room. Calls cops, those cops call our church's pastor)... It was a rather imaginative group of DnD players.... So, the church ends up believing that DnD, and by extension, ALL RPGs are creations of the devil, and by role playing someone other than yourself, you are actually role playing a demon, thereby opening your soul to be possessed by said demon.
SilverMK2 wrote: It is almost like believing in daemons, speaking in tongues, etc predisposes you to not actually not engage with reality...
Actually having grown up in a church where speaking in tongues and other "gifts of the spirit" were a common occurrence, I cannot explain what is going on, but I can tell you that that church's beliefs, or rather the things people are told it's a good idea to believe definitely fall under your latter statement.
During my time growing up, one mother was on a one woman crusade to get everyone to boycott disney films because of "subliminal messaging" (this was like, day 5 of the internet, and she had seen an article describing what most of us know as the covert protests of the artists who felt they were being wronged in their disputes with Disney)
The church held the belief, partly due to a "satanic cult" that was discovered in the local theater (oldest theater in town, bought by new guy. New guy discovers candles and books and chalk lines/designs in a back room. Calls cops, those cops call our church's pastor)... It was a rather imaginative group of DnD players.... So, the church ends up believing that DnD, and by extension, ALL RPGs are creations of the devil, and by role playing someone other than yourself, you are actually role playing a demon, thereby opening your soul to be possessed by said demon.
How did the speaking in tongues work? Could the people speaking be understood by someone who spoke the language?
I ask because a close friend of mine was a missionary in Malasia who had a few weeks of learning and was not very fluent. He was on a bus with a fellow missionary and someone asked him who he was, since looks wise, he stood out from the regular population. He then spent several minutes talking with the man, telling him of Christ and gospel doctrine.
After they left the bus, his fellow missionary, who had been in the country for over a year and a half, told him he had spoken the language flawlessly.
SilverMK2 wrote: It is almost like believing in daemons, speaking in tongues, etc predisposes you to not actually not engage with reality...
Actually having grown up in a church where speaking in tongues and other "gifts of the spirit" were a common occurrence, I cannot explain what is going on, but I can tell you that that church's beliefs, or rather the things people are told it's a good idea to believe definitely fall under your latter statement.
During my time growing up, one mother was on a one woman crusade to get everyone to boycott disney films because of "subliminal messaging" (this was like, day 5 of the internet, and she had seen an article describing what most of us know as the covert protests of the artists who felt they were being wronged in their disputes with Disney)
The church held the belief, partly due to a "satanic cult" that was discovered in the local theater (oldest theater in town, bought by new guy. New guy discovers candles and books and chalk lines/designs in a back room. Calls cops, those cops call our church's pastor)... It was a rather imaginative group of DnD players.... So, the church ends up believing that DnD, and by extension, ALL RPGs are creations of the devil, and by role playing someone other than yourself, you are actually role playing a demon, thereby opening your soul to be possessed by said demon.
How did the speaking in tongues work? Could the people speaking be understood by someone who spoke the language?
I ask because a close friend of mine was a missionary in Malasia who had a few weeks of learning and was not very fluent. He was on a bus with a fellow missionary and someone asked him who he was, since looks wise, he stood out from the regular population. He then spent several minutes talking with the man, telling him of Christ and gospel doctrine.
After they left the bus, his fellow missionary, who had been in the country for over a year and a half, told him he had spoken the language flawlessly.
I speak in tongues. I dont know the language I speak, it could even have been unique to me. I recognise words, but do not know what they are.
Anyway back in 2005 a family came to the church I was at and asked for the gift of tongues. People laid hands towards them (you dont need physical contact) and prayed they would receive the gift. The instruction was, just start speaking, dont think about it just try it. Tongues being a subconscious gift. I prayed for this young Indian man about 20 years old. . All the family started speaking odd words. the young man before me started speaking in tongues, but had this confused and a little embarassed look on his face. With tongues it is hard to tell for yourself at first if you are operating with the spirit or just mimicing it. I could see the doubt on his face. I could also hear him clearly. I dont know what he was saying or which language but I reconise the words he used. I had only ever heard them before from one source. Me. This man had been imparted with the same spiritual language that I had been gifted with.
So I said to him. "You look like you dont know what you are saying, like you dont know if you are doing this for real or faking the gift." He frowned at that,, and seemed to be disappointed and examining himself. I continued. "But dont be concerned. I recognise the words you are saying, I don't know what they mean but they are the exact same words I say. We speak the same language. You do have the gift, know this to be true."
I will remember the look of joy on his face to my dying day.
Tongues is a very uplifting thing, once you pass beyond doubt.
I wonder if when "speaking in tongues" the speaker spouts a kind of nonsense language made of odd syllables derived from human basic phonemes, and the listeners feel as if they are going to understand because they also have the same phonemes.
I speak Japanese. If I listen to Koreans talking, it sounds like a rough version of Japanese that I am just about to understand, catching odd words here and there, but I can never break through to understanding.
However, Korean and Japanese are completely unrelated languages, and don't share any vocabulary, although their grammatical structures are similar. I don't speak a single word of Korean, anyway, so the words I think I am almost understanding must mean something completely different to what I think.
I don't to disrespect the religious inspiration of speaking in tongues, only to suggest there is a natural human capacity for producing such forms of speech. Which is not to say it isn't inspired by God.
This, however, was not my friend's experience. He knew what he was saying and the Malaysian he spoke with understood it since my friend was speaking in Malaysian.
Wolfblade wrote: Could be he just has a gift with languages, as in, naturally good with them, no mystic explanation needed.
That could be, but he said at the time his language skills were almost non existant to minimal at best since he only had a few weeks of training. After the conversation on the bus he didn't have skills of that level until months later of immersion.
How did the speaking in tongues work? Could the people speaking be understood by someone who spoke the language?
I ask because a close friend of mine was a missionary in Malasia who had a few weeks of learning and was not very fluent. He was on a bus with a fellow missionary and someone asked him who he was, since looks wise, he stood out from the regular population. He then spent several minutes talking with the man, telling him of Christ and gospel doctrine.
After they left the bus, his fellow missionary, who had been in the country for over a year and a half, told him he had spoken the language flawlessly.
I cannot fully explain it, because it just sounded like a bunch of BS when others explained it. There were the occasional missionary stories, our church sent a group to India to build a school (unlike many out there, the church I grew up in's focus was doing work for people, rather than handing out bibles) During this trip to India, during a worship service, one of the guys who was there to pour concrete began speaking in tongues. A local came up to him after the service and asked him if he spoke Hindu. Mr. Concrete said that he only spoke English. The local man replied, that that was odd, because he was not only speaking Hindu fluently, but he was speaking that specific dialect fluently.
There was a belief in the church that if someone had a "prophetic message" from god, delivered in tongues, that god would also deliver the "translation" and so during service you'd hear one person speaking louder than others in another language, there'd be a hush, and usually someone would then randomly start speaking in English with the response.
I've heard a number of these stories and always was intrigued by them. My friend's tale of his experience put it on a more personal level.
I believe in the gift being of a divine nature as long as what is being said may be understood, such as having people there that can understand the language being spoken and it is a skill given in a time of need.
feeder wrote: I think that both theists and atheists are relying on zero evidence to form a firm belief. Both require faith.
I can never have understand people saying there is no evidence for God. For me the fact I'm alive, the world, the universe I'm part of scream to me that someone made it all and it all screams at me some me one saying 'I made this all and I'm awesome.' I just can't get the no evidence thing. Having problems with faith systems or belief sets is different but I cannot get my tiny head round no evidence.
Knockagh wrote: For me the fact I'm alive, the world, the universe I'm part of scream to me that someone made it all and it all screams at me some me one saying 'I made this all and I'm awesome.
Who would there need to be some kind of entity responsible for all that?
feeder wrote: I think that both theists and atheists are relying on zero evidence to form a firm belief. Both require faith.
I can never have understand people saying there is no evidence for God. For me the fact I'm alive, the world, the universe I'm part of scream to me that someone made it all and it all screams at me some me one saying 'I made this all and I'm awesome.' I just can't get the no evidence thing. Having problems with faith systems or belief sets is different but I cannot get my tiny head round no evidence.
That's because none of that is evidence unless you have proof any of that was made by some entity.
This, however, was not my friend's experience. He knew what he was saying and the Malaysian he spoke with understood it since my friend was speaking in Malaysian.
It doesnt correspond with the guy speaking in tongues in an airport, only to be approached by a person from a country he had never visited who recognised the language spoken. He has no training in that language or ever visited that country.
It doesnt correspond with what I witnesses either I speak an unknown language, and another person who I never met before (or since) and had never spoke in tongues in the presence of used exactly the same words.
This cannot be a coincidence because there is zero reference between the myself and he beyond laying on of hands.
I don't appreciate the trolling accusation that tongues users belong in 'the asylum'.
The link is filled with BS also. There are uses and examples of tonufges widely in excess of what the artcile claims, the article makes no reference to spontaneous and unrehearsed usage of the same words between different people with different native langguages, it also erroneuosly places the gift of tongues usage beginning in the early 20th century, when its use is biblical and has recorded usage throughout history.
" I’m not presenting you with an alternative opinion, but rather with hard solid scientific proof that it is not real."
No proof was actually given anywhere in the text,, some opinion was given that some people dismiss the claim, also the but they haven't seen identical patterns, or denied those they saw because it didn't fit their world view. I cant even begin to work out the probabilities of two people independently of each other speaking an unknown language using the exact same words, but it will likely be extremely slim.
There was a belief in the church that if someone had a "prophetic message" from god, delivered in tongues, that god would also deliver the "translation" and so during service you'd hear one person speaking louder than others in another language, there'd be a hush, and usually someone would then randomly start speaking in English with the response.
There still is a belief in this, not past tense by any account. The gift of interpretation of tongues is a separate gift entirely. This is standard New Testament teaching, here:
1 Corinthians 12 : 4-11
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually has he wills.
Interpretation of tongues works more or less as you say it does, though interpretation is not from my experience random. Tongues desiring an interpretation are specific, the speaker knows if he has a tongue from God for interpretation and then asks to speak it publically. Those who can interpret listen to the tongues and wait to see if there is a translation given, or images are thought of that fit the interpreter things are a fit for the words.
Because of contamination from human imagination it is quite normal to dismiss an interpretation unless two or three persons with the gift of interpretation give the same interpretation. God doesn't see it as a lack of faith to dismiss and unverified prophesy or interpretation at any time. Multiple independently corroborated interpretations occur rather a lot, despite the consistently extreme odds of this happening randomly. I would witness this on a weekly basis, participate in it fully (though I personally lack the gift of interpretation) yet it only occurs in meetings of believers with the Holy Spirit present, but it happens a lot in those meetings. I am long past the point where it is any way feasible for me to have any excuse to doubt God, I consider myself exceptionally fortunate in having lived my faith to this point, and have sympathies for those here who are trying to work things out. My advice, don't even bother. Instead of trying to work out religion just ask the Holy Spirit to enter your life, through Jesus Christ once you know the Holy Spirit and have experienced the living God, you can then go looking for answers and God will instruct you.
I can never have understand people saying there is no evidence for God. For me the fact I'm alive, the world, the universe I'm part of scream to me that someone made it all and it all screams at me some me one saying 'I made this all and I'm awesome.' I just can't get the no evidence thing. Having problems with faith systems or belief sets is different but I cannot get my tiny head round no evidence.
But that's exactly the point of the 'no evidence' claim.
You're seeing all these awesome things and ascribing them to a God. But where is the actual link between 'The universe exists' and 'God did it'?
The fact that something is awesome doesn't mean God did it. It just means something is awesome.
Case in point: The infamous 'Bananas: The Atheist's Worst Nightmare' video that still circulates around the depths of the internet, where it was claimed that the banana was proof of a Creator, because it was just too perfectly designed for human consumption (shaped to fit the hand while 'pointing' towards the mouth, handy tab for opening, changes colour to show when it is good to eat, etc... Or, you know, all the things that banana growers specifically bred into early bananas, which started out as horrible, hard, green lumps of ick,.. nothing to do with God at all)
The Creationist says: 'Here's all this amazing stuff that I don't understand. Must have been God!'
The Atheist says: 'Here's all this amazing stuff that I don't understand. I wonder what caused it?'
God is only an answer if you presuppose the existence of God. Otherwise, there is literally no evidence linking God to the creation of the universe.
I put "Babelfish is much better." into Babelfish and ran it through English - Spanish - Italian - French - Ukrainian - Japanes - Hindi - English and got the following;
The first lady speaking says "Chigee" ... ... "Hanashi" ... ... "Hachiru" ... which sounds to me like "Chigee" (Different/Mistake, informal) "Hanashi" (Speaking/Speech) and "Hachiru" (To run) in Japanese.
Maybe there are similar confusions between say Finnish and Dutch or German, though these languages I believe are distantlyrelated.
Wolfblade wrote: Could be he just has a gift with languages, as in, naturally good with them, no mystic explanation needed.
That could be, but he said at the time his language skills were almost non existant to minimal at best since he only had a few weeks of training. After the conversation on the bus he didn't have skills of that level until months later of immersion.
I've heard similar stories from the sailors living in japan. they've been trying to learn the language to start with, a good night of drinking gives them the clarity of the language. Of course it's usually another drunk sailor recounting the tale I find such claims dubious
The point here is that atheism isn't scientific either, including that evolutionary theory does not imply the non existence of a creator God. keeps the teaching fair, as it cannot thereby be hijacked by atheism.
atheism as absolutely nothing to do with evolution. That needs repeating,
atheism as absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
So I have to wonder how anyone can hijack it. I'd ask where such a notion would even come from, but I already know. Evolution is a scientific theory backed by a mountain of evidence and taken as fact by almost all biologists. Evolution is the only theory that explains all life on earth and compliments other scientific fields, along with, and this is the key part. Allows predictions to be made and tested. That's how many new species are being discovered, you find a gap between a species that evolved from another, pick a 1/2 way point, look back at the geological records to figure out where the middle species could have lived and where fossils were likely to occur and go dig in that spot and most of the time, find the species you were looking for.
Theories allow for predictions to be made from them, that's what makes them good theories.
ID allows for none of that, it's not even a theory, I don't think it even qualifies as a hypothesis as it's designed to be non refutable. Which is another key part of being a scientific theory, there must be a way to disprove the theory. The theory of evolution as presented by Darwin had quite a few mentioned. Creationists have been trying and failing at trying to provide that evidence.
so let's remember, the theory of evolution is a solid theory with mountains of evidence, just like the theory of gravity and the theory of electricity.
Atheist is just the label you are given if you answer "no" to one specific question.
Scientific method is awesome.
I don't believe it is complete; the task of studying a subject enough to make it sell, and forgoing extensive field research to determine real-life results is quite lacking today. Quite essential.
However, on note of evidence and proof, I have a couple things to say:
1) Instruments & Tools:
science uses instruments/tools to find results. What was once inconceivable and ridiculous, the earth being discovered as spherical rather than flat for example, was discovered through an instrument (hanging weight from ceiling, drawing on the floor). Germs and micro cellular life being discovered through lenses that allow us to see what the naked eye cannot.
Instruments/tools.
With things Spiritual, we do not have man made tools to determine much. We can see the electromagnetic fields around the body which is called the "aura". Little actual scientific effort has been given towards understanding this, instead the hippies and what not put their lives into this. Not a very fact-driven community, very much more -experience- driven.
What is used in lieu of direct instruments/tools is our own human body. One can feel the warmth of anothers hug within our "heart", which is amongst being a bio-electrical/chemical response is also a spiritual one.
However, it is difficult to set aside ones feelings and impressions, presumptions and preconceptions, to have that sterile "clean/null environment" from which to develop a theory from. It makes things more challenging. One must continue a walk of life continuing to develop on their experiences and conclusions to get more accurate results over time.
Similar to how one would receive data from stellar studies, not having a perfect picture yet but forming a greater picture over time. This is in its own way an accurate study.
2) of Gods silence
Taking from ancient Hebrew literature on God, its said that God withdrew from the world. That God gave free will, and although gave Law through Moses didn't pressure people into a life they didn't choose to live. God wants to "separate the wheat from the chaff", and to do this chooses to see what peoples lives produce, the "fruit" of their choices.
If taking from Hebrew context, life was pretty perfect at first. Man screwed things up. Over. And over. And over again... God hasn't murdered. Man has. God has raped. Man has. God hasn't withheld food from families. man has.
With the style of life its said God created, to up and clean up the world by literally using His own hands and feet would undermine His purpose/style in life. Instead, its said He uses people as His "hands and feet". Everywhere within the texts it speaks of people being how He works in others lives.
Christianity today does good on some things, and is also so very fail on others. Its a hard path for those who truly seek to make good "fruit", and really they cannot do this without letting go of self/I/wants/desires/personal-ambitions, in this very ego driven world.
He is said to have a kingdom established for those whom He finds are fruitful. This world is in a way a school for which one learns and is tested, to determine the direction they choose in life. He wants everyone to succeed, that is to have actions and "fruit" in their lives that 'echo into eternity' rather than what selfishness brings which is death (in concept, and in actuality).
Being that we weren't ever able to make it on our own efforts, always failing and falling short, He gave His most cherished thing, His Son, to lead the way and ultimately die the death of a criminal tho He broke no law. This act was to put an end to Law, and create a path of Faith and in this faith bring righteousness. Its said that a person who has Faith in His Son is like a single page inserted into a book, what God sees is not the person (the page) but His Son (the book).
This is all from Hebrew context, but it is an illustration as to how/why God chooses to be this way. He Himself surely could fix every little thing that's wrong in life... but wants us to play our part in it, so that we may participate in His will for reality.
3) Christian Example
There shouldn't be any form of condemnation, only love; in no way does any Christian gain by his own merit, any good thing is from Him - that we be saved from carrying any form of pride. Even faith is a gift, not out own making.
There should be complete generosity, giving all one is asked to give; to have faith He will supply what one needs. In fact, when one gives they receive many times over. Try it out, like a psuedo-experiment, it really does happen this way.
There should be faith, not fear; churches standing for/against gays, fighting politically... no no no. Nothing happens without faith, as it all comes from Him. A church should pray and find solace in His plan, not doubt or fear which manifests itself as the need to act out against... but instead be humble and meek.
Given that things have had such a falling away with the "organized" religion called Christianity, i do understand why people would look the other way.
Its only in my relationship with Him that i hold any hope, and joy, and trust in my daily walk in life. Like a son to His Father, that's me. In small thins and great, He loves to hear His children. He loves to give. He loves.
He works on a system of conditions. To have what we ask, we must meet the conditions. If we care not for the conditions, He won't give what we ask. Some things tho are without condition, like His love.
Would a father to "easy" on a druggie son, or would he reprimand him?
MekLeN wrote: What was once inconceivable and ridiculous, the earth being discovered as spherical rather than flat for example, was discovered through an instrument (hanging weight from ceiling, drawing on the floor).
This is somewhat of a misconception, by the way. We've known that the earth is round for well over 2000 years, backed up by even basic observations like the changing of constellations with changes in latitude or ships disappearing over the horizon. I suppose at once point maybe it could have been considered "inconceivable and ridiculous", but it's been a very long time since then.
Little actual scientific effort has been given towards understanding this, instead the hippies and what not put their lives into this.
No, plenty of scientific effort has been put towards understanding "spiritual" things. It just happens to be the case that none of this effort has found any credible evidence that "spiritual" things are real.
Taking from ancient Hebrew literature on God, its said that God withdrew from the world. That God gave free will, and although gave Law through Moses didn't pressure people into a life they didn't choose to live. God wants to "separate the wheat from the chaff", and to do this chooses to see what peoples lives produce, the "fruit" of their choices.
And yet people, including people in this thread, still talk about prayer having results and god continuing to be active in the world. This non-interventionist god is not the one that most people believe in.
Being that we weren't ever able to make it on our own efforts, always failing and falling short, He gave His most cherished thing, His Son, to lead the way and ultimately die the death of a criminal tho He broke no law. This act was to put an end to Law, and create a path of Faith and in this faith bring righteousness. Its said that a person who has Faith in His Son is like a single page inserted into a book, what God sees is not the person (the page) but His Son (the book).
Sorry, but this just makes no sense at all. Why is the omnipotent creator of the universe always portrayed as some kind of TFG rules lawyer obsessing over RAW? Why does he need to send himself to earth and have himself brutally tortured to death before he can change his own rules? Why does brutally torturing an innocent person to death spare the lives of the guilty (we certainly wouldn't allow this concept in a criminal trial)? Why is it considered a meaningful sacrifice when god is eternal and just resurrected back up to heaven as soon as he "died"? God in this story is a bloodthirsty tyrant, and probably thoroughly insane. There is nothing at all morally appealing about the idea.
Its only in my relationship with Him that i hold any hope, and joy, and trust in my daily walk in life.
Honestly, this is really sad. I'm sorry that your life has no other hope or joy, and I sincerely wish that things get better for you.
Would a father to "easy" on a druggie son, or would he reprimand him?
When the "reprimand" consists of torturing his son for eternity I think the obvious morally correct choice is to go easy on him.
God hasn't murdered. Man has. God has raped. Man has. God hasn't withheld food from families. man has.
peregrine did a good response, but I wanted to touch on this part.
God has committed many genocides and murders. If you accept his existence. The flood, all the first born of egypt, etc. but think about the flood though, he committed genocide on a unthinkable scale. Murdering many men, women, children, and unborn children. Then just to be dic he tells people to murder their children just for the lols and to see if they'll do it.
yes man has raped, and you know what god see's as a fit punishment for it? 40 pieces of silver to the father and to marry the girl who was raped. How evil is that, telling a girl after she's been raped that she has to marry the guy who did it.
then if you think about being kicked out of the garden of eden, god has withheld food from families. Don't eat the apple or I'll take away your home, your livestock, and your way of life. then he killed all of the egyptians livestock, sent a plague to eat all the crops, etc.
all the things you think god hasn't done, he's done in such a horrific and truly evil manner.
The flat earth was mainly a european idea, based on the bible. most other people on the earth had a pretty good idea it was round. the aztecks, the egyptians, and maybe some others. the book of Enoch was all about how flat the earth was, that even when it came time for man to choose which books were canon they knew it didn't work that way and didn't add it as canon. Of course they didn't like the idea Enoch never died, he walked with god to heaven many times and just skipped the whole death part. It was thought that it cheapened the idea of jesus death.
According to Stephen Jay Gould, "there never was a period of 'flat Earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology."[4] Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference"
This is a myth people get taught about Columbus by people who really shouldn't be teaching about Columbus. The idea that Christians in the middle ages thought the Earth was flat originates in the 19th century, when the debate over evolution was even more intense than it is now and a certain scholars invented the myth, either by design or by misconceptions present in their own time now lost to us.
Mario wrote: I think this is a succinct allegory regarding the idea of god and intelligent design:
I'm sorry but that's utter drivel, to compare sentiment beings with needs so complex to survive to something so base is pretty pathetic but that's what comedians do, it's a tired old routine. Donald Trump science. Make something ridiculous sound clever, well done clever man. If he can't see the difference between a puddle and a human he needs to do a little more study.
Knockagh wrote: I'm sorry but that's utter drivel, to compare sentiment beings with needs so complex to survive to something so base is pretty pathetic but that's what comedians do, it's a tired old routine. Donald Trump science. Make something ridiculous sound clever, well done clever man. If he can't see the difference between a puddle and a human he needs to do a little more study.
No, it's entirely accurate. Instead of seeing how we have adapted to the world around us (and would have adapted differently in a different world) we assume that the world must have been created to perfectly fit the way we are now. The fact that it might be painful to hear the idea that we aren't special and there's no higher power out there building the perfect home for us doesn't make it any less true, nor does expressing the point with some humor.
Kilkrazy wrote:Maybe there are similar confusions between say Finnish and Dutch or German, though these languages I believe are distantlyrelated.
Finnish really doesn't sound anything like Dutch or German (to me)... I'd personally put Finnish as being closer to Swedish or Norwegian languages, but even that is a stretch.
sirlynchmob wrote: The flat earth was mainly a european idea, based on the bible.
This is a myth. Europeans knew the earth was round, there was never any point where they believed it was flat because of the bible.
This is a myth people get taught about Columbus by people who really shouldn't be teaching about Columbus. The idea that Christians in the middle ages thought the Earth was flat originates in the 19th century, when the debate over evolution was even more intense than it is now and a certain scholars invented the myth, either by design or by misconceptions present in their own time now lost to us.
The one thing that I personally think would perpetuate the myth that people from Europe believed the earth was flat, was because of naval maps.... It's fairly well known that on maps, they'd put "There be monsters here" to denote areas that, ultimately had not been explored yet. But, that's a fairly weak reasoning for someone to believe that you'd simply "fall off" the cube for sailing too far.
Mario wrote: I think this is a succinct allegory regarding the idea of god and intelligent design:
I'm sorry but that's utter drivel, to compare sentiment beings with needs so complex to survive to something so base is pretty pathetic but that's what comedians do, it's a tired old routine. Donald Trump science. Make something ridiculous sound clever, well done clever man. If he can't see the difference between a puddle and a human he needs to do a little more study.
I think you've rather missed the point of his allegory. It was not to compare people to puddles.
Those who promote "intelligent design" often use the argument that our complex needs are exactly catered to by the environment, showing a level of planning. This is actually somewhat backwards, rather our needs and abilities actually evolved to fit (imperfectly) the complex environment. To the incurious, it looks the same, but there is a fundamental difference in causality.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: The one thing that I personally think would perpetuate the myth that people from Europe believed the earth was flat, was because of naval maps.... It's fairly well known that on maps, they'd put "There be monsters here" to denote areas that, ultimately had not been explored yet. But, that's a fairly weak reasoning for someone to believe that you'd simply "fall off" the cube for sailing too far.
Yeah, I don't think anyone has put forth a definitive origin for the mythology. Probably the most famous example of its perpetuation is Washington Irvings biography of Christopher Columbus, which including conversations where Columbus was called crazy and his opponents held up the Bible and declared the world flat. This event is not recorded in history, and in fact Columbus was faced with a completely different challenge. That challenge being scholars pointing out he'd horribly miscalculated the Earth's circumference (which he had!). Of course, no one knew the Americas were there, so no one really doubted that you could go straight west and wind up in China or Japan, but many in Columbus' time were skeptical the journey was doable for logistical reasons.
Kilkrazy wrote:Maybe there are similar confusions between say Finnish and Dutch or German, though these languages I believe are distantlyrelated.
Finnish really doesn't sound anything like Dutch or German (to me)... I'd personally put Finnish as being closer to Swedish or Norwegian languages, but even that is a stretch.
Finnish is a Fenno-Ugric language completely unrelated to the Germanic languages of Germany, the Netherlands, and the Nordic languages. As a native speaker of Swedish, Finnish is thoroughly incomprehensible to me.
Finnish is related to Hungarian and Estonian from memory (and they are more estranged cousins than close family).
It's certainly NOT a germanic language. Unlike German, Dutch or the nordic tongues.
I'm not a native speaker of Hungarian (dad was born there) but I find Finnish likewise incomprehensible except for a small hand full of words.
German is just Dutch spoken with less phlegm. (It's a dutch 'joke' - Dad was born shortly before the outbreak of WW2, and spent most of his childhood fostered out in the netherlands, so he spoke both languages - and Russian as well).
chromedog wrote: Finnish is related to Hungarian and Estonian from memory (and they are more estranged cousins than close family).
It's certainly NOT a germanic language. Unlike German, Dutch or the nordic tongues.
I'm not a native speaker of Hungarian (dad was born there) but I find Finnish likewise incomprehensible except for a small hand full of words.
German is just Dutch spoken with less phlegm. (It's a dutch 'joke' - Dad was born shortly before the outbreak of WW2, and spent most of his childhood fostered out in the netherlands, so he spoke both languages - and Russian as well).
I'm from Limburg (southern most dutch province), my dialect is part Dutch and part German, get's even weirder then.
Mario wrote: I think this is a succinct allegory regarding the idea of god and intelligent design:
It is a comment on entitlement and land ownership, I dont see any correlation with Intelligent design.
Creationism in any of its forms doesn't assume that universe is made for man. Man might be the pinnacle of life on earth, but earth was not made for man. Man has dominance over other lifeforms, but these lifeforms were made for themselves, not as gifts to man. Neither was the world, humans are just another though more important lifeform.
However saying the land fits me, and therefore I have freedom to do what I want with it is a dangerous principle, which Adams critiques. I do understand that Adams was a critic of religion, but i dont think this is what he is doing here, or if he is, he has a poor understanding of creation theology.
Creationism in any of its forms doesn't assume that universe is made for man. Man might be the pinnacle of life on earth, but earth was not made for man. Man has dominance over other lifeforms, but these lifeforms were made for themselves, not as gifts to man. Neither was the world, humans are just another though more important lifeform.
Again, perhaps this is due to a difference of opinion between christians of different areas... but the idea that all things are "gifts to man" is very present and in the front of much of American flavored Protestantism.
This perception hasn't changed, but I have noticed in the last 15-20 years, a definite shift in reaction to this idea. It used to be that Christians in the US were A-Ok with clearcutting forests, dumping toxic waste into rivers, hunting animals to near extinction.... What I see a bit more of today, is that while these things are gifts, that means we have a duty and near a mandate to conserve and protect all of "gods creatures" precisely because of our position at the top. Still doesn't make any sense to me as far as there being a creator, much less an active deity(ies) over us.
Orlanth wrote: It is a comment on entitlement and land ownership, I dont see any correlation with Intelligent design.
He is apparently speaking about some environmental issue, but his analogy describes something akin to the anthropic principle, which is definitely relevant to a discussion about evolution and design. Personally, I'd give him 7/10 for the analogy... It's a good one, but I don't think it has made the issue significantly easier to understand (given that some people in this topic still didn't understand).
What's important is that liquid changes shape to fit whatever receptacle it is poured into. Pour it into a vase: it will be vase-shaped, pour it into pipe: it will be pipe-shaped; you could even pour it into a complicated mould with lots of details and undercuts, and it will still fit every detail perfectly, because it's a liquid and it adapts its shape to fit whatever environment it is in. This is analogous to life and evolution: living things adapt to suit their environment... or perhaps they don't adapt (in fact most don't), and so the environment kills them. Eventually, you are left only with organisms that seem to be perfectly suited to their environment.
What Douglas Adams was saying is that people are not innately aware that they are organisms which adapt, because the changes take place slowly over thousands of lifetimes, and we only have one lifetime. So he makes the analogy of water, because we all know water changes shape all the time... but in his analogy the water doesn't realise that it changes (just as we don't realize that we evolve). So the water assumes that its shape it permanent, and because everything around it fits that shape perfectly, it assumes that the world must have been designed to perfectly fit its needs.
People are like that water... they look around and see fruit on the trees for them to eat, air to breath, water to drink, and they say: "Hey! this place is perfect for me, it must have been designed to perfectly fit my needs", and just like the water in the analogy, they have got things completely backwards. Case in point: "breathable air". All the wonderful life-giving oxygen that we can't live without, was originally a pollutant, which (as it first built up in the atmosphere) poisoned and killed-off nearly all the Earth's original species. However, a few organisms had mutations which allowed them to survive in an oxygen rich environment, and eventually organisms came to fit the oxygen environment so perfectly, that we can't live for more than a few minutes without it. The oxygen was never put there to fit "our needs": "our needs" were dictated by what was there.
Mario wrote: I think this is a succinct allegory regarding the idea of god and intelligent design:
It is a comment on entitlement and land ownership, I dont see any correlation with Intelligent design.
Creationism in any of its forms doesn't assume that universe is made for man. Man might be the pinnacle of life on earth, but earth was not made for man. Man has dominance over other lifeforms, but these lifeforms were made for themselves, not as gifts to man. Neither was the world, humans are just another though more important lifeform.
However saying the land fits me, and therefore I have freedom to do what I want with it is a dangerous principle, which Adams critiques. I do understand that Adams was a critic of religion, but i dont think this is what he is doing here, or if he is, he has a poor understanding of creation theology.
Not only should you refrain from personal attacks, you should also refrain from adding in completely unwarranted personal attacks caused by totally misreading a comment.
I misread nothing. I touched on a point, which I also find quite sensitive, and you got angry. It is best that we drop the matter.
Second you don't know what I was talking about because as usual you eliminate context in order to fit your own agenda..
The fact that I omitted certain elements does not mean I did not know what you were talking about. It simply means that I was only responding to a given point, that I assume anyone who cares can contextualize. The thread is there, after all.
Again necessary. Humanists were indirectly used to bash the CoE, this doesnt imply any conspiracy, many atheists like to bash Christianity given the chance, see thread for details, Blair gave them free reign to do so. imagine what would happen if a hostile government purposely and specifically gave Peregrine or some of the more anti-religious posters here free reign to critique Christian schools. I think they might enjoy finding faults. Much of the bashing was entirely uncalled for. Again coE schools have the best records in the state system as a group, some are very very good. there are many failing schools in the state system, humanists don't seem to care about them though for some reason, even though basic literacy is a problem for many school leavers.
The government wants to end this. Humanists have been basically trolling the CoE for over nearly two decades with the blessing of prior governments, it hasn't helped. CoE standards remained high, Jewish schools likewise, secular schools and Islamic schools are generally not so good, infact outside of grammars, a few flagship schools and the CoE and Jewish faith aschools the state system in the Uk is crap.
Some humanists still like to fault find specifically at the CoE, and even post Trojan horse aren't of a mind to look too deeply as Islamic schools.
To some extent it has become a right to troll.
Most of the nit picking is unhelpful and tiresome, especially as the humanists are self motivated to find fault for any reason and bleat about it if they do even if it is very thin. Its a waste of time and resources dealing with these constant nick pickings (remember the CoE schools get the highest OFSTED reports) its also a form of harassment in some cases. So schools in general not just CoE are now given a buffer against spurious complaints. Complaints must come from parents of guardians of students at the school, or professional inspectors, not politicised groups out to score a point. This way resources are not diverted away from relevant issues.
CoE results are high because they illegally operate selection, which has been demonstrated statistically and successfully challenged in court. The government also fought long and hard to avoid revealing how many schools were being converted to faith-based schools under the academy system because this bs conversion of our state school system is being used as a massive trojan by the CoE to become the biggest provider of state education in the country. Also, the continued approval of religious schools far beyond the need, and often against the will of the local population who want a secular school is denying parental choice.
But I guess if you're in a losing position, trying to brainwash the kiddies is probably the next play.
Creationism in any of its forms doesn't assume that universe is made for man.
There are several creationist theories which assume precisely that. Even without specific reference you're left with the problem of Adam and Eve, and the classical Christian creation myth.
Creationism in any of its forms doesn't assume that universe is made for man.
There are several creationist theories which assume precisely that. Even without specific reference you're left with the problem of Adam and Eve, and the classical Christian creation myth.
Its called "the fine tuned universe" if anyone wants to see the argument.
Mario wrote: I think this is a succinct allegory regarding the idea of god and intelligent design:
It is a comment on entitlement and land ownership, I dont see any correlation with Intelligent design.
Creationism in any of its forms doesn't assume that universe is made for man. Man might be the pinnacle of life on earth, but earth was not made for man. Man has dominance over other lifeforms, but these lifeforms were made for themselves, not as gifts to man. Neither was the world, humans are just another though more important lifeform.
However saying the land fits me, and therefore I have freedom to do what I want with it is a dangerous principle, which Adams critiques. I do understand that Adams was a critic of religion, but i dont think this is what he is doing here, or if he is, he has a poor understanding of creation theology.
CoE results are high because they illegally operate selection, which has been demonstrated statistically and successfully challenged in court.
Since when. Faith school admissions criteria are still legal. It is also a firm tie in with equality and diversity, many ethnic minorities want faith schools.
The government also fought long and hard to avoid revealing how many schools were being converted to faith-based schools under the academy system because this bs conversion of our state school system is being used as a massive trojan by the CoE to become the biggest provider of state education in the country.
That is a very twisted assessment. The CoE cant be a 'trojan' because 1. they arent radicalising the children, and 2. the CoE has been the bedrock of education in this country for centuries. It isnt an underhand backdoor movement as you imply.
Also the figures of how many schools are faith schools can be found easily enough. A websearch revealed it to be 19%.
Also, the continued approval of religious schools far beyond the need, and often against the will of the local population who want a secular school is denying parental choice.
Is it now? There are no big protests, and a lot of people go to church for a while in order to secure places. Also CoE is more than 19% of the population on its own, and the percentage actually applies to all faiths. There are plenty of secular schools everywhere to choose from, many are places savvy parents dont want to choose.
But I guess if you're in a losing position, trying to brainwash the kiddies is probably the next play.
Brainwashing eh. Do you think the CoE would be able to get away with that allowing for how the British Humanist Society is trying to breath down the necks of select faith schools. The brainwashing came from radical Islamic schools which were unmonitored because nobody wanted to appear 'racist' by scrutinisiing ethnic minority education establishments.
Also the actual membership of the CoE is still very substantial. The idea that is is dying is a myth propagated loudly and often in the hope it becomes true.
I have a friend who has to attend church every Sunday to get his kids in the local church school (because the next nearest is much further away). He guesses 40% of the congregation are doing the same thing, and wouldn't be anywhere near the place otherwise. It is clearly just another way to keep attendance up, and the church seemingly relevant, when it basically isn't anymore.
Another few generations and religion will be removed from education completely, and everyone will be better for it, Telling people X is so, and you just have to believe it (because someone wrote it down in the same book that says the world is 6,000 years old), is infact the absolute antithesis of education. Religion is fine in it's place, but not in schools, there it is brainwashing.
Darkjim wrote: Religion is fine in it's place, but not in schools, there it is brainwashing.
A general religious education class is beneficial though, provided that it absolutely doesn't focus on a single religion and covers all major religions and religious themes in the same depth.
Brainwashing eh. Do you think the CoE would be able to get away with that allowing for how the British Humanist Society is trying to breath down the necks of select faith schools.
The catholic church certainly does it, why else would you have a mandatory mass ever Friday for 5 year olds? My son goes to a Catholic primary school (mostly due to its Ofsted outstanding rating) and a lot of their activities are very much designed to turn small children into Catholics before they can even read. That sounds like brain washing to me. Luckily I act as a counterweight at home
Darkjim wrote: Religion is fine in it's place, but not in schools, there it is brainwashing.
A general religious education class is beneficial though, provided that it absolutely doesn't focus on a single religion and covers all major religions and religious themes in the same depth.
Of course, as a historical subject, little if anything has been more influential on human history. Often in the violent, crusading, chop up the unbelievers type of way, but certainly influential.
And yes, it is the necessity for parents to explain to children that even though most of what they learnt in school was worth learning, some of it is a single, misleading viewpoint, that even other factions of the same faith would disagree with, that distorts the genuine parts of the education. 19% of schools being religious would be fine if every parent has a lot to choose from - where the nearest and only local school is faith based, then it is 100%.
A further point is of course putting people who are just believed, regardless, in charge of impressionable and gullible children is also a very bad idea. A school I almost had to attend in the 70s has been revealed since as the site of 41 cases of child abuse, and that's only the cases that were fully prosecuted, from what people I know went there said, it was hundreds of times that. It isn't just religious schools where this occurs, but it does make it much, much easier, when the abuser in question has the power of the lord behind him.
CoE results are high because they illegally operate selection, which has been demonstrated statistically and successfully challenged in court.
Since when. Faith school admissions criteria are still legal. It is also a firm tie in with equality and diversity, many ethnic minorities want faith schools.
I didn't say faith school admission criteria aren't legal. I said faith schools are operating illegal criteria to select, which is why faith schools are consistently unrepresentative of their local socio-economic community.
The government also fought long and hard to avoid revealing how many schools were being converted to faith-based schools under the academy system because this bs conversion of our state school system is being used as a massive trojan by the CoE to become the biggest provider of state education in the country.
That is a very twisted assessment. The CoE cant be a 'trojan' because 1. they arent radicalising the children, and 2. the CoE has been the bedrock of education in this country for centuries. It isnt an underhand backdoor movement as you imply.
Also the figures of how many schools are faith schools can be found easily enough. A websearch revealed it to be 19%.
Teaching children faith before their critical thinking skills have been extensively developed is brainwashing. Also that's two comments in a row you've either not read properly or you're strawmanning. I used future tense "to become" not current tense "is".
Also, the continued approval of religious schools far beyond the need, and often against the will of the local population who want a secular school is denying parental choice.
Is it now? There are no big protests, and a lot of people go to church for a while in order to secure places. Also CoE is more than 19% of the population on its own, and the percentage actually applies to all faiths. There are plenty of secular schools everywhere to choose from, many are places savvy parents dont want to choose.
Why would there be big protests, these are local matters? And there have been petitions. There aren't plenty of schools, there is a significant under-provision of school places in general, it gets reported on every year.
But I guess if you're in a losing position, trying to brainwash the kiddies is probably the next play.
Brainwashing eh. Do you think the CoE would be able to get away with that allowing for how the British Humanist Society is trying to breath down the necks of select faith schools. The brainwashing came from radical Islamic schools which were unmonitored because nobody wanted to appear 'racist' by scrutinisiing ethnic minority education establishments.
Also the actual membership of the CoE is still very substantial. The idea that is is dying is a myth propagated loudly and often in the hope it becomes true.
Yeah, I mean the London Oratory school's admission code was only illegal in 105 different ways, and "It is amongst the ten most socio-economically selective state secondary schools in the country, taking just 6% of pupils eligible for school meals compared to 36% locally." But yeah, it's the big bad BHA that are in the wrong and not LO for massively abusing public money.
Sure, the CoE may well have a stable membership, but Christianity on the whole has had a significant decline over the last 15 years, and that's despite using a biased phrasing in the Census question.
CoE results are high because they illegally operate selection, which has been demonstrated statistically and successfully challenged in court.
Since when. Faith school admissions criteria are still legal. It is also a firm tie in with equality and diversity, many ethnic minorities want faith schools.
I didn't say faith school admission criteria aren't legal. I said faith schools are operating illegal criteria to select, which is why faith schools are consistently unrepresentative of their local socio-economic community.
The admissions criteria were legal, the law ha changed very recently and has been complied with. This accommodated concession to the faith schools, namely the removal of expensive trolling lawsuits from groups unrelated to the parents, mostly to force a political agenda.
The government also fought long and hard to avoid revealing how many schools were being converted to faith-based schools under the academy system because this bs conversion of our state school system is being used as a massive trojan by the CoE to become the biggest provider of state education in the country.
That is a very twisted assessment. The CoE cant be a 'trojan' because 1. they arent radicalising the children, and 2. the CoE has been the bedrock of education in this country for centuries. It isnt an underhand backdoor movement as you imply.
Also the figures of how many schools are faith schools can be found easily enough. A websearch revealed it to be 19%.
Teaching children faith before their critical thinking skills have been extensively developed is brainwashing. Also that's two comments in a row you've either not read properly or you're strawmanning. I used future tense "to become" not current tense "is".
Actually only 16% of faith schools have a mandatory religious curriculum at all, that is a listed statistic too. So you are just spouting scare stories perpetrated by atheist political movements.
There is not evidence that outside he Islamic trojan horse schools this is laced above any other portion of the curriculum.
There is a pattern here, because its a faith school it must in yor mind be evil and indoctrinating because you are incapable of seeing otherwise. The government itself admits that the Christian faith schools n the UK were under constant unsupervised monitor from hostile secular societies looking for fault to find. If there was a mind to harm children, which is an offensive and baseless assumption they would not be able to get away with it. No such evidence has been found, yet people are still being brainwashed into thinking there is an evil brainwashing agenda.
Lets face facts there are bigots in the UK who hate with a passion the idea that the church has any part to play in education, seeth at the truth that they generally do a better of than their secular counterparts; and want to find any excuse, plausible or not, valid or not, to condemn them and are blind to any positive sides to what they do. The government is now taking action though.
Also, the continued approval of religious schools far beyond the need, and often against the will of the local population who want a secular school is denying parental choice.
Is it now? There are no big protests, and a lot of people go to church for a while in order to secure places. Also CoE is more than 19% of the population on its own, and the percentage actually applies to all faiths. There are plenty of secular schools everywhere to choose from, many are places savvy parents dont want to choose.
Why would there be big protests, these are local matters? And there have been petitions. There aren't plenty of schools, there is a significant under-provision of school places in general, it gets reported on every year.
Constant petitions and complaints from the humanist and secular societies, not the local communities, the actual parents are generally a lot happier and want the trolls to butt out.
But I guess if you're in a losing position, trying to brainwash the kiddies is probably the next play.
Brainwashing eh. Do you think the CoE would be able to get away with that allowing for how the British Humanist Society is trying to breath down the necks of select faith schools. The brainwashing came from radical Islamic schools which were unmonitored because nobody wanted to appear 'racist' by scrutinisiing ethnic minority education establishments.
Also the actual membership of the CoE is still very substantial. The idea that is is dying is a myth propagated loudly and often in the hope it becomes true.
Yeah, I mean the London Oratory school's admission code was only illegal in 105 different ways, and "It is amongst the ten most socio-economically selective state secondary schools in the country, taking just 6% of pupils eligible for school meals compared to 36% locally." But yeah, it's the big bad BHA that are in the wrong and not LO for massively abusing public money.
First the London Oratory Schools is not CoE its Roman Catholic. Its admission code was separate because Blair and other New Labour leaders sent their kids there. Labour don't want to share their childrens school classrooms with plebs and yet don't want to be seen to send them to private school for the most part.
You cant blame the churches or that or the CoE at all. Also London Oratory's policies are not 'illegal', they are legal until forced to review, there is no evidence of non-compliance of matters reviewed.
Sure, the CoE may well have a stable membership, but Christianity on the whole has had a significant decline over the last 15 years, and that's despite using a biased phrasing in the Census question.
The current government is not longer promoting bishops solely on their ability to spout Blairite dogma, or closing successful churches because they are growing, and atheists are no longer given a free pass to bash the church in the BBC with a one sided critique. aka things are changing.
The Pentecostal movement is outgrowing Islam, which it did at the turn of the century, but is now what the government wants rather than doesnt want the trend will be supported rather than trodden on.
So let me get this straight... Its bullying for an outside civil rights group to point out illegal activities? The fact that some parents don't like it means absolutely nothing.
The reason these "secular bullies" exist is to protect people's civil rights. Just because some people are against certain civil rights doesn't mean what they are doing is immoral.
And yes, religion is declining in the western world, including the US. England is a majority non religious country for example, and it makes sense that people are upset that their child is only able to go to a religious school, where in some cases defenseless children are indoctrinated into an unhealthy world view.
