http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...istianity.html
I likes it. Surprised, eh? lol
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...istianity.html
I likes it. Surprised, eh? lol
One can never stop saying Thank You![]()
Shame an article like that got put in a rag like the Mail tbh. Deserves better.
Bloody hell, a bit of a long article to 'Fisk', if I may use the right wing blogosphere terminology.
Erm....why? Were you and the people you knew actually engaged in acts of pure evil at the time? What actually set off this terror that you might be damned for all eternity?Originally Posted by Peter Hitchens
Again, why?I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. My large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head.
I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned. Van der Weyden was still earning his fee, nearly 500 years after his death.
My parents were and are atheists, and yet they got me to sing in a church choir from when I was 7 to 13. I fairness I loved it- loved the music, loved the Christian message. I may sound arrogant, but I had a beautiful treble voice as a kid, and I like to think that as a result of me singing in that choir a load of people got to enjoy a lot of beautiful music, beautifully sung. And for 5 years Christmas was a time to look forward to, because I had a couple of months singing some awesome tunes.At around the same time I rediscovered Christmas, which I had pretended to dislike for many years. I slipped into a carol service on a winter evening, diffident and anxious not to be seen.
I knew perfectly well that I was enjoying it, although I was unwilling to admit it. I also knew I was losing my faith in politics and my trust in ambition, and was urgently in need of something else on which to build the rest of my life.
Erm wut? My personal recollection of events in 1998 was that the vast majority of people didn't give a toss about the age of consent being equallised for gay and stright people at 16. It was that arsehole, homophobic bully Baroness Young and the CofE bishops in the House of Lords that kicked up a stink. I wrote a letter to Janet Young as a student, cussing her out. Apparently there's a proper way to address a Peer Of The Realm in a letter, and I didn't follow it. Good!Being Christian is one thing. Fighting for a cause is another, and much easier to acknowledge - for in recent times it has grown clear that the Christian religion is threatened with a dangerous defeat by secular forces which have never been so confident.
Why is there such a fury against religion now? Because religion is the one reliable force that stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. The one reliable force that forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law..
Never mind, say, No2ID, an organisation with no political or religious affiliation, to whom I personally give £10 a month so they can fight the database state.The one reliable force that restrains the hand of the man of power. In an age of powerworship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power.
Yeah, like Christopher, I think it far better not to. In the absence of proof, we're going to have to agree to disagree, no?While I was making my gradual, hesitant way back to the altar-rail, my brother Christopher's passion against God grew more virulent and confident.
As he has become more certain about the non-existence of God, I have become more convinced we cannot know such a thing in the way we know anything else, and so must choose whether to believe or not. I think it better by far to believe.
Oh right, so you can base your entire belief system on rationalism, extrapolated from first principles (my first principles, for the record, are that all men and women should be equal, and that there's only one life, which is obviously better than death, hence premature death is a bad thing).It is my belief that passions as strong as his are more likely to be countered by the unexpected force of poetry, which can ambush the human heart at any time.
And yet this fundamental belief system can, apparently, be challenged at any time...by poetry.
Well maybe a few lines of well written verse could steer me from my moral course. Unlikely, though, TBH.
Well I can't speak for Christopher, but my beliefs are based on the works of the many physicists who have presented an entirely plausible case for the formation of the universe and the reasons for its present form. If you want to build some sort of large, 30km long machine to reveal god, then good luck to youIt is also my view that, as with all atheists, he is his own chief opponent. As long as he can convince himself, nobody else will persuade him. His arguments are to some extent internally coherent and are a sort of explanation - if not the best explanation - of the world and the universe..
WTF? Why can't the idea of conscience be based on an extrapolation of some simple first principles which happen to coincide entirely with Christian belief? I don't need a god to tell me that all people are created equal; I don't need a god to tell me killing is wrong. To me these truths are self evident.He often assumes that moral truths are self-evident, attributing purpose to the universe and swerving dangerously round the problem of conscience - which surely cannot be conscience if he is right since the idea of conscience depends on it being implanted by God. If there is no God then your moral qualms might just as easily be the result of indigestion.
The problem you have, Peter, is that you think you're too stupid to figure out what is right and what is wrong for yourself. Hey, maybe you are. I don't need to be told, I can figure it out for myself.One of the problems atheists have is the unbelievers' assertion that it is possible to determine what is right and what is wrong without God. They have a fundamental inability to concede that to be effectively absolute a moral code needs to be beyond human power to alter.
~200,000 killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki- Vs potentially half a million or more killed in a conventional land war to take over Japan? People forget that more people died in in two nights of conventional firebombing of Tokyo than were killed by either atomic bomb.Left to himself, Man can in a matter of minutes justify the incineration of populated cities
Oh, piss off. Death is wrong, living is good, how about that?For a moral code to be effective, it must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself.
Yeah, but how about "greater love hath no man than this, that we should all stop killing each other and get along"? Don't ya think?Its most powerful expression is summed up in the words 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends'.
The huge differences which can be observed between Christian societies and all others, even in the twilit afterglow of Christianity, originate in this specific injunction.
If they cared for each other, they wouldn't be waging war to the death. I know it's nearly 100 years ago now, but- correct me if I'm wrong- the First World War was fought between two Christian nations.Humans, he says, are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves.
<Snip>through the heartrending deeds of courage on the battlefield.
Well, even assuming that I was in support of communism at the age of 10, which I wasn't, it's now 20 years down the line and I'm now a 30 year old atheist liberal. So you can't throw that **** at me, rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish.Soviet Communism is organically linked to atheism, materialist rationalism and most of the other causes the new atheists support. It used the same language, treasured the same hopes and appealed to the same constituency as atheism does today.
When its crimes were still unknown, or concealed, it attracted the support of the liberal intelligentsia who were then, and are even more now, opposed to religion.
LIBERAL, SELLOUT PUSSY!:LOL:LOL:To my astonishment, Christopher cooked supper, a domesticated action so unexpected that I still haven't got over it. He had even given up smoking.
Last edited by Rave; 10-03-2010 at 04:52 AM.
Phage (11-03-2010)
I love the christian trappings. The quiet solitude of a church, and the Anglican marriage ceremony is amazing.
That said, how consciousness or morality are proof of the christian myth is once again a poor, illogical and redundant argument. Morality is quite obviously a product of evolution.
I'm not liberal, but libertarian. If people want to practice religion, let them, but keep it out of government and schools, and don't suggest that I should have any respect for their weakness of thought.
oh you see this is why I don't read the daily fail.
What a lot of un-substantiated tosh, I feel the need to quote it all with [citation needed]..........
I can't help but feel with these people its like they are presenting a solution for a unified theory, but they decided that it only has one variable, and anyone who suggests there is more than one is a liar.
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
morning, all
![]()
One can never stop saying Thank You![]()
Seems like a 'I'm right, you're wrong' article to me.
I've had the 'discussion' with my father in law a few times, it always ends with us agreeing that neither of us can understand how the other does/doesn't believe in God.
I always say I'll believe what has the most proof, I'd love to be proved wrong but at the present time that's not the case so I stick to my current views.
Last night he was around our flat & reading a new book I'd bought 'Bad Science' and was laughing at the revelations that Tony/Cherie Blair used crystals to ensure their kids didn't get MMR (and other new-age rubbish) but he still believes in God/Jesus/Creation etc, I just don't get that!
Last edited by Rob_B; 10-03-2010 at 05:03 PM.
Ever seen a devout christian 'knock on wood'?
Ever seen a devout atheist 'knock on wood'?
One can never stop saying Thank You![]()
Last edited by TeePee; 11-03-2010 at 03:41 AM.
This is what gets up my nose. The bad logic and blindness of faith I can get by, but assuming that anyone who has a conscience owes it to God is bloody offensive. I am a lot more conscientious than the average paedophile priest, and I owe none of it to any imaginary magic chap. And neither does the priest.He often assumes that moral truths are self-evident, attributing purpose to the universe and swerving dangerously round the problem of conscience - which surely cannot be conscience if he is right since the idea of conscience depends on it being implanted by God. If there is no God then your moral qualms might just as easily be the result of indigestion.
(Thanks Evilmunky)
Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet intakes.
an organized religion based on "touch wood" sounds like a great idea, anyone want to buy some enchanted offcuts?
VodkaOriginally Posted by Ephesians
Phage (11-03-2010)
I'm fairly sure that the actuality of society is quite well explained by the selfish gene theory without ant any reference to morals at all.
Society's to blame,
Or possibly Atari.
Wow lot a load of waffle. I love they way his tumultuous life (at least his description of it in an article publicising his book) has him grasping and clamoring after one extreme and another. He and religion make good bedfellows I feel. As ever it's great to see fuddam decry ignorant atheists. Is every post he starts an attempt to further his religous education? Is it a trolling conceit? Is he trying to extend his flock (an unapologetic apologist, could be, could be)? Perhaps he just likes division? What better tool than religion to eke such feelings from people!
I sometimes wonder.
To err is human. To really foul things up ... you need a computer.
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