Atheism

[QUOTE] [b]Zebonka12 wrote:[/b]

My issue is that not enough people bother to perform the thought process themselves, rational or otherwise. Whether you get an opinion because it's the one you were born with, or whether you arrive at it after thinking about an issue for a couple of decades whenever you're on the shitter - I mean, that's a pretty big difference right there.

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It says something about the relative experiences arriving at a similar place. I'm not sure what it objectively says about anybody's "truth".

[QUOTE] [b]Zebonka12 wrote:[/b]

But people, look at the fucking calendar already. We should be past so much of the bullshit that goes along with this stuff. Every time I see a religious leader on the television I want to cry into my soup; they can't (or won't) acknowledge how ridiculous it is for them to be wearing their stupid pyjamas and giving people (frequently) irrelevant advice on how to live.

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Robes are also worn in academia and in the higher courts of many countries. Nobody would perceive your comments as useful or intelligent if you were attempting to say something sweeping about either of those professions or institutions by belittling dress. Your words recalled for me notions of "black pyjamas", the language of dehumanization in the Viet Nam war similarly deployed with the effect of blurring individuality and human worth. Your complaint is presumably with the content but you provide no examples. "Religious leaders on television" could be anybody saying anything, from Fred Phelps raving about fags or a Pentecostal minister rolling around on the floor speaking in tongues, to a well studied theologian tackling modern issues with sensitivity and clarity, or a new Pope longing for a "poor church, for the poor". You've said effectively nothing.

[QUOTE] [b]Zebonka12 wrote:[/b]

I mean, that bloody Papal Conclave - I stayed up and watched the announcement, and it took a while for it all to sink in that there's probably a billion people watching this religious event take place, and it has *nothing* to do with God. God didn't cast a vote, he didn't pick anyone - it was a bunch of old codgers in a fuckin' room.

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I sat in front of the TV laughing at myself because of the level of emotion I was feeling. And you're right. A billion people were probably watching. It wasn't an exclusively 'Catholic' event either, not on television and not in St. Peter's Square. It never is. That for me is always what drives the emotion. There is something very stirring about so many eyes turned to one thing which fundamentally wants to be about goodness and hope whatever its struggles when bound to its earthly troubles and realities. For those few hours cynicism is pushed away and something is transcended. Not for all I realize, but for many. Perhaps some ancient evolutionary circuit that longs to gather is tripped - I don't know.

If one allows for the possibility of a creator or a designer or "evolution on a much huger scale" as it was put earlier in the thread, it does have to do with 'God' - a symbolic concept for far more people than is clearly realized on this thread - in the same way a computer program I write has to do with me. As sophisticated and randomized as a program might get, it's randomness is still bounded by parameters of the system. Free will, if it exists, certainly must function in much the same way. Even if that concept finds no resonance, the fact that Cardinals are old men says nothing about their knowledge, their experience or their vision for electing a man who like it or not will shape a comprehensive social vision which will be given a global voice alongside secular forces. Where would you like them to do that, if not in a "fuckin' room" Zebonka? Again, what have you actually said here?

[QUOTE] [b]Zebonka12 wrote:[/b]

I really am rambling but honestly - enough's enough. I think (and I wouldn't know where to begin as far as making the distinction goes) that there's a way to have your belief and feel that connection to 'whatever', and share that with people - *WITHOUT* all of the bullshit that goes with it. Without sharia law or Mormon doorknockers or a Pope with poisonous attitudes concerning just how much he should be allowed to meddle in the affairs of real people who are going to be influenced by his backwards and nonsensical ideas about contraception.

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I can't speak to Mormonism or Islamic issues but I can speak to some of the 'poisonous attitudes' and 'backwards nonsensical ideas' emanating from Catholic theology and scholarship. You've not indicated with any precision your complaint about contraception but I'm going to presume that you are referring to the Pope's words to Africa on condom use in fighting AIDS. It's been characterized here variously as 'evil' and 'lies' and 'detestable' and 'telling people using condoms will give them AIDS' other things at least a half a dozen times. That is and has been from the first utterance a misrepresentation of just about everything on the subject. I long ago concluded I'd die of old age before anybody would realize the depth of foolish, yammering ignorance that would multiply like cockroaches when someone would hurl out their disgust. Such a shame when Google is free.

Pope Benedict's actual words on the topic on his way to Africa summarized to this: "The problem of AIDS cannot be overcome merely with money, necessary though it is. If there is no human dimension, if Africans do not help [by responsible behavior], the problem cannot be overcome by the distribution of prophylactics: on the contrary, they increase it." He was commenting on the programs to distribute condoms as a solution to AIDS, not the efficacy of latex or it's mysterious ability to produce HIV infection ffs. After the initial howls of outrage and derision in the press, something unusual happened. First came defenses from other religious organizations. Like this one:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/georgepitcher/9213297/Why_the_Pope_is_right_about_condoms/.

And then, ever so hesitantly came the epidemiologists:

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-03-29/opinions/36866483_1_condom-distribution-aids-experts-epidemics

http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/epidemiologist-pope-is-right-about-condoms

From the above: "Surrounded by experts, well informed by Rome's Academy of Sciences, the Pope mastered this issue very well before going to Africa." In this case an objective scientific review of the evidence brought to light the reality of the transmission of AIDS where it is endemic as it is in Africa. Replacing options of abstinence or monogamy with the use of condoms and a more liberal sexuality made the problems worse and condom distribution programs have largely been ineffective after decades of being in place in Africa. These facts were not easily loosened from Western orthodoxies on condom use and the Catholic Church who unflinchingly advocates for what they perceive as humanity in sexuality was in this instance on the right side of the equation.

Isn't it blindingly obvious and reasonable in retrospect? Haven't many here formed these very judgments in relation to the loss of Fred? Did Fred need more condoms or less indiscriminate sex with people he didn't love or in many cases even know? The thrust of almost every judgement or rumination here has been the latter, not the former. How Papal of you all. Millions of condoms have been distributed in Africa over decades. The Catholic Church doesn't highjack condom trucks on the savannah. In Africa it's just a set of ideas out there on a sea of other ideas, and in this case this ancient 'look at the fuckin' calender people' idea of abstinence and monogamy was and is the better one. If anything is detestable here it's the inability of too many people to let religion succeed, even when it does.

Zebonka12 wrote:

We have enough of that from our elected officials. The only thing the Pope should ever fucking say - the only thing - is "Love each other!".

Any institution that oversteps that mandate, as far as I'm concerned, ought to be bulldozed and turned into a bowling alley. And it's upsetting to me that this notion might be, in turn, upsetting to others - but that's fuckin' life. There are people in the world who think they have a meaningful opinion about my sideburns - I tell them to fuck off and I move on.

It wouldn't be upsetting if people knew what they were talking about and didn't do unsettling things like adopt the language and attitudes of some of our worst historical mistakes in their slobbering outrage. I think it's clear that secularism is a vastly preferable framework for our governments and much of our everyday lives. But it is also imperfect as any clear eyed look around will indicate. Religion, faith and spirituality is a good foil and it can be far wiser than people here credit. It's just another set of ideas. Some are good, some are less so, some are best only speaking quietly from the edges. So very little of it in reality deserves the unthinking, orchestrated disgust and anger it gets. It's manipulated and stupid. My advice to those who aren't too far down the road to Bigotville here is don't be manipulated and don't be stupid.

Donna13 wrote:

Well, my third paragraph was responding to something another person brought up already.

I think it was highly relevant. I don't have time to get to it tonight but hope to tomorrow or soon.

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"Robes are also worn in academia and in the higher courts of many countries"

Yeah, we need to get past that too. Ceremonial dress needs to bite a dick. I don't want to feel like I'm at a Comic Con when I'm at something important.

You could imagine a graduation ceremony without a gowns? Or a Supreme Court?

Yes. Very easily. I don't think that requires much of an imagination, actually.

GratefulFan wrote:

You could imagine a graduation ceremony without a gowns? Or a Supreme Court?

Maybe you need to look around a little and notice that most of the world don't have that kind of nonsense. In fact, most Europeans find American graduation ceremonies distinctly funny for being so pompous. And yes, I could certainly imagine a Supreme Court not following the latest early fifteenth century Italian fashion. This argument is perhaps the silliest I've heard so far.

It was a question, not an argument. (!) I was simply curious because I like and appreciate the past and purpose of both traditions reasonably well and Canada and Australia inherited similar colonial history. The original argument was that if you said something like "I want to cry in my soup every time I see people in their pyjamas with boxtops on their heads and diplomas clutched in their hands" people would probably think you're an anti-intellectual with a lousy point. If you said "I want to cry in my soup every time I see Supreme Court justices in their pyjamas droning on about the eleventy-eleventh amendment" people would probably think you have a poor appreciation of citizenship or a partisan axe to grind. Applied to the idea of religion however it's apparently "careful and deep thought hidden beneath an equally inadequate layer of profanity". Ridiculous. And delusional. If there is some real argument to be made about religious dress, make it. If there is some argument about the universal irrelevancy of faith, make it. Don't pretend these arguments have already been made, because they haven't. And if seizing that scrap of the entirety of my points and running with it in the Special Olympics of discussion that is this thread doesn't illustrate that you can't or won't address the heart and substance of any of it, I don't know what does. And academic dress is some niche function of America? As if! There seems to be simply no limit to how disingenuous and silly people are willing to be to cling on to their right to diminish faith and mangle its reality unaccosted by facts.

I am quite simply responding to your post. If you don't want me to respond to it, and would instead like me to respond to some other post of yours, why don't we just make the process a little more efficient and have you write the reply you would like me to make yourself, as I obviously couldn't do any better than you...

Jesus Thomas. That post was so pitiably transparent six birds just flew into Queenzone and died.

Well, what do you want? No matter what I write, your only response will be further bitching and moaning. In case you haven't noticed, there hasn't been any meaningful discussion for pages. It's mostly just you telling everyone else that they are wrong.

-fuck it.

thomasquinn 32989 wrote:

Well, what do you want? No matter what I write, your only response will be further bitching and moaning. In case you haven't noticed, there hasn't been any meaningful discussion for pages. It's mostly just you telling everyone else that they are wrong.

If by bitching and moaning you mean pointing out that people spend an inordinate amount of time pulling stuff directly out of their asses on this topic, and if by 'telling everyone else that they're wrong' you mean pointing out facts and the utter indifference to both them and reasonable standards of argument, and if by "meaningful discussion" you mean to acknowledge much of what has been to discussed here is to comprehension and discernment as Robbie Williams is to 'We Are the Champions', I'm down for all that.

Seriously GF - you have become very embittered as of late. You used to be a wonderful voice of reason at this place. But these past few months you have become completely closed-minded to any views other than your own and have made it a full time job to troll people who are rationally picking apart your ever-worsening arguments.

You present yourself as being open-minded, but these past couple weeks you've revealed yourself to be far more dogmatic than even you might realize.

Just an observation - take it how you will. All BS stripped away, I sincerely hope you're doing alright.