For the younger viewer such as Jonba:

I think the way it works is if you like what Dave and Gideon are doing with the place you would have loved her. Otherwise she is the Anti-Christ

Jonba

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

Big mistake!!!!
Should have know better and will next time.

Fair one OP Well done.

Horses for courses obviously, but frankly I wouldn’t piss on Alcudia if I’d had a skinful and it was the last urinal in the world ……. as with all things there are nice bits, but in the main its English boozers, Full english 24 hour breakfast, red faces, fat bellys and the Sun newspaper

I apologise if I have caused offence but that was not my intension.

It would be interesting to know what the intent actually was. Hard pressed to figure it out myself.

Ditto re: Happy to stump up to support her. She is a much finer route to dealing with the bigotry in her home nation than most of the alternatives and is a lesson to us all in courage and dignity. I have nothing other than respect for her.

you too

Does it ever cross your mind that the other guy might be in charge, and that hes winning out hands down because you have free will to make you own choices, and by continuously failing to utterly reject the institution you are actually playing right into his hands……just asking, because honestly there is no way I could ever subscribe to such a blatantly obviously corrupt institution. I’ll go a step further than that, and I’ll tell you without any fear of contradiction that were JC real and still around, I’m totally confident whose side of the table he would be sitting on, and I don’t believe in it, and am a thoroughly bad person and apparently always have been!!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21715473

………. 😯

Nice of Andy Burnham to remind us that this is nothing to do with Labour. It was all running smooth as silk a couple of years ago!

Short memory woody. Pre labour, the big issue was hospital waiting lists. Not somethign you’ve heard about for quite a while. There is a reason. What will happen here is typical tory hack and slash (cutting out imaginary waste). Which will at some point result in massive spending to restore any semblance of a health service that is fit for purpose…and then when they get back in ……. and so on ad infinitum

I think the general area of taking the michael out of the legal system is not goign to be well received if you get nicked. Its seen as very serious indeed, and people who should know better (which both of these are), will get royally stiffed by the beak, and quite rightly so IMHO

Pirate Trail Builders are a pain in the arris. Without exception they think they are some sort of modern day Robin Hood exercising some form of medieval right to do whatever they please wherever they please, and generally just succeed in cocking things up for everyone else.

A similar scenario to the above left some poor innocent a paraplegic in my local forest. Borrow pits either side of a badly constructed, stupidly located, poorly thought through “jump” = one broken neck. Of course having had their fun these guys were long gone when the crap hit the fan, and then everyone else is left paying the price.

..Jeez, its a game, stuff happens, live with it.

Nani: I’ve seen players sent off for less, and not sent off for more as the man said, thats football!
Ferguson: The mans a disgrace. A successful one admittedly, but I’ve dealt with 9 year olds with more dignity and self control.
Referee: Not the best, not the worst (The worst was the one in the England Portugal game 2004 Euros)
Football generally: Bit like cycling, theres something in the Swiss air that makes governing bodies totally stupid. I wish they could grasp a few basic concepts. 1) Its a contact sport, 2) Its professional and needs handling professionally, 3) Cheating needs to be dealt with not ignored.

Could someone give me a summary of the main points covered so far,in a couple of sentences, so I can get up to speed.

Very good generally well mannered discussion about religion with many interesting points discussed. Precisely the sort of thing that should be on internet forum.

if you believe in God and the positive impact your faith has on your life, of course you want your children to have that same positive experience

What if you’re wrong ?

That apart, its not really the parental influence that is the biggy, its the association with the state which is more sinister IMHO. Really, if you read the book and believe it you have to see that JC and his teachings are radical and not aligned to the state in any way. Quite the opposite in fact. One has to wonder what the dear boy would make of how corrupted that position has become.

religious “education” – the very things that others would like to ban!

I’m not sure that was the suggestion. It was more a case of the pervasive influence of religion via the state.

However, seeing as you’ve raised it, what you are actually underlining is the opening of Pandoras box, in much the same way that brought about the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. i.e. even with all the apparatus for the propagation of religion, it is no longer possible to con the population.

In the Eastern bloc a good deal of its demise was attributed to the global coverage of the 1976 Olympics, and the simple fact that it became impossible to hide the realities if life within in relation to life outside. Similarly, as information has become instantly globally available it has become impossible to stem the intellectualisation of views on religion. If you do and you take take just a short step back the sort of views being expressed on here are difficult to deny. i.e. generality is good, specifics are not, and the apparatus for delivery is corrupt.

Personally, I think the religious texts are products of a word of mouth system of passing historical knowledge on. But we only have to look at our own highly sophisticated systems of information dissemination to realise how distorted and misshapen factual detail can become. A change of emphasis here and a tweak there and before you know it there’s a bus on the moon. So its fair enough that much of what’s now written will be an interpretation of much distorted data

What I can’t get through though is the very obvious and blatant corruption at the heart of organised religions, and how respect for the teachings translates to shoving real and dangerous issues into the “too difficult drawer” and simply ignoring them.

For example Cardinal O’Brien. It was obvious that the 4 priests who shopped him have had their lives seriously impacted by what is by his own admission his drunken sexual bullying. It was equally obvious how hard it was for them to come out and do something about it. Very brave in fact. Yet you still had serious big hitters like Shirley Williams and Alex Salmond publically backing the fecker up and saying what a shame it was he had to resign.

So in my simplistic world, as I said back in the day when this thread was mere stripling, I simply cannot accept this “my church right or wrong” attitude. As was amply demonstrated to those of faith by the Religious Ronaldo of his day J.H. Christ it is not acceptable to simply turn a blind eye and do nothing about that which is blatantly, indefensibly, and totally wrong.

Therefore at that point, sorry to those of faith, but I have to say idleness in this respect is not an acceptable route other than to culpability and complicity in the crimes that are being carried out.

PS: This is not Catholic bashing, there are equivalent examples across all faiths.

Ditto what richmtb said. Somewhere way back on about page 6 of this epistle according to STW, I did say something along the lines of no issues regarding peoples personal belief systems, its about the time they start giving it the one true faith that I start getting bilious. In fact no real problems with the generality of the rules for life inherant in religioning. Its just the mumbo jumbo to protect privilige and hypocracy that has the proverbial piss at 100 degrees Celsius.

when the Church teaches anything, it is not doing so with a view to offering a list of dos and don’ts, even when it comes across this way.

SR: Thats on a par with trying to understand what the Liberal parties stance is on anything.

Frankly that whole spiel was a complete load of hockum. i.e. We’re always right, even when we’re wrong but then we deploy the “its up to the individual to interprete in whatever ways suits our best interest at that moment in time” defence. Sorry, and I’m sure you do geuninely beleive it but thats utter drivel.

……blimey a 655 post thread about religion with no one banned and its not been locked…… there must be a god after all!

Been in China a lot, so heres a few

Deep fried locust: Crunchy nothingness
Drunken Prawn : i.e. live prawn in alcoholic liquor. Trick = get pissed yourself, and then pick the one that’s moving least, i.e. most pissed also.
Ox penis: Not nice at all
Sinew: looks like noodles, taste and texture like rubber bands
Elephant Nose Clam: Raw …nasty
Sea Cucumber: General consistency and flavour of snot
Live Snake: Executed at the table…gory and unpleasant
Live turtle: Ditto
Soft shelled turtle: served whole, then shell ripped off and dip into the innards…<gag>
Pig bowels: like soggy hula hoops.. and nasty
Assorted testicles at various times: General view being it improves your libido……flawed thinking IMHO

so the failings or otherwise come down to how individuals act not the underlying belief system. Just a thought

That’s pretty much the standard religious get out of jail free card used to explain the obvious fact that what they preach/believe/profit from is clearly nonsense. Try it again from the perspective that the big cheese is all knowing all seeing and infallible. Right about there, as his/her creations, the fact we are fallible clearly either knocks the big cheeses infallibility into a cocked hat, or turns him/her into something akin to a puller offerer of wings.

[edit:]

Answered my question ( again) yet?

See you’re not over the OCQR yet. In answer, No but Moley did inadvertantly come up with a link that pretty much defintively proved the point.

Just for clarity my plea for rationality was in relation to the disputable bit not the nice bit. I really hope that didn’t come across as being nasty, as it really wasn’t.

perhaps I’m getting my point across

Well lets hope

13 pages of people disputing it suggests that it IS disputable.

As I said before not really bothered about people being nasty, but rational would be nice. Still applies

Interesting positions moley. I’ve just scanned back through the thread and actually can’t find anyone being nasty to each other particularly, and especially not by STW standards, In fact quite the reverse, there are several posts saying how well mannered the thread has been.

Regarding religion being shoved down peoples throats, frankly I think it is pretty indisputable, mostly, but definately not solely due to the link you yourself posted.

So really it does come across that you are having a lovely troll, which is fine by me, but it is the sort of thing that does get people being nasty to each other, so is best avoided IMHO if that really is how you feel.

Not entirely sure what you’re getting at, but don’t think for a minute that I’m religious

Dviersionary tactic yet again? But just to clear that up I didn’t say you were, I called you a religionist, i.e. one who is in this context defending the position of religion.

It had fizzled out years ago, starting in the 60s

For goodness sake moley read your own link: The flipping thing is talking about guidance introduced by Chris Patten in 1994 specifically defining the nature of the act of worship and RE lessons. Thats not exactly fizzling out now is it? Recinded in 2012.

You see this is where the religionists really fall down. You can deny all sorts of things, but if it looks, smells, tastes and acts like a fish then to be honest you are going to struggle to convince people that it isn’t one. However, if you’ve hung your hat firmly on that denial you either have to accept that you’re wrong, or continue to insist that its not what it self evidently is, however ridiculous that denial is.

The point is that in 2013 it is not forced down our throats.

Did you actually read the link you put up? Its dated November 2012. Admittedly not 2013, but come on, is 2 months out of 2000 years really a big deal. Its certainly not 25 years ago, as you claim. I think you may well be misinterpreting the introduction of the guidance in 1994, with the revoking of that guidance in 2012.

Moley: I know you’ve moved on and are trying to change the subject, but any chance of a response regarding this? I’ve asked very politely two or three times now, and it would nicely wrap up the “forced down our throats” thread of this topic.

..and DD you’re still an ignorant **** 😉

The point is that in 2013 it is not forced down our throats.

Did you actually read the link you put up? Its dated November 2012. Admittedly not 2013, but come on, is 2 months out of 2000 years really a big deal. Its certainly not 25 years ago, as you claim. I think you may well be misinterpreting the introduction of the guidance in 1994, with the revoking of that guidance in 2012.

Regarding being nice, personally couldn’t care less, wouldn’t mind rational as a criteria though.

I’m going to go for it grum….. I’m going to call him an ignorant **** (which he obviously isn’t of course), and lets see if hes offended or if the mods jump in.

I don’t think anyone’s forced to go to religious schools are they?

Oh so you wern’t being ironic then……..

Berm Bandit – Member

Thanks to Charlie for having the willpower to expose the ‘forced down our throat’ line as rubbish.

Interesting point of view when right next to a link demonstrating that every man, woman and child in the country above a certain age has indeed had it shoved down their throats……or was that intended to be ironic?

Junky, Grum: What they are missing is that the repeated intransigence, and denials in the face of overwhelming evidence is simply proving the point they are arguing against.

I know this is going to draw the “it was Fathcer what dun it” response, but in all fairness to everyone currently wrestling with the current economic situation, the reason for it is directly attributable to her governments policies. Twas her government who deregulated the banks, and devastated the traditional bed rock of the British economy. Basically turning our economy into one where as you see daily, we are held to ransom by the city boys, (its my bonus and I’ll go home if I can’t have it).
The fact that attempts to re-regulate the bastards have been unsuccessful does not change the origin.

Anyone see Herman Van Rompuy last night, great line about negotiating whilst having your hand on the knob (exit door). Basically shrugging his shoulders at Camerons euro referendum idea and suggesting that the exits over there, feel free to use it.

Bluff called IMHO both in Europe and Eastleigh

Thanks to Charlie for having the willpower to expose the ‘forced down our throat’ line as rubbish.

Interesting point of view when right next to a link demonstrating that every man, woman and child in the country above a certain age has indeed had it shoved down their throats……or was that intended to be ironic?

So all in all, great eh? Totally, except it’s not true, the whole thing is essentially based on a big lie. Realising this in my early teens made me a bit cross really and I have been angry at religion ever since. Finding out the beliefs you have been taught by everyone you’ve trusted are a crock of shite is a bad experience.

ditto, and precisely my point, but put better than I havebeen able to.

Regarding Mungus’s OCRQ (obsesive compulsive repetitive questioning). there is little point in responding Charlie. The question has been answered, its not particularly relevant, and whatever answer anyone gives is immediately denegrated. I suspect you may have learnt this technique at Church, as its pretty much what they do too.

Its also interesting that folk want to argue, that the state, education, family, and pretty much every other aspect of life in this country being pervaded by religion has no influence on them. As before if that is true, why the high chair about it? In fact why bother? Obviously because those who are engaged in it feel there is no relevance or influence I guess.

Its also interesting the words being bandied about by the religionists such as Aethist and so on. Fundamentally flawed thinking IMHO, you have no idea what I or others who similarly choose not to bandy it about believe. Strangely, and for the benefit of clarity I do consider myself to be morally Christian in my views. Unfortunately, that does immediately put me at odds with the religious orthodoxy in this country, and thats the point.

C’mon guys even the outgoing Pope admitted that he thought God had buggered off, i.e. the church is doing a wrongun. How hard is it to actually fess up? You can’t actually move forward until you do.

CharlieMungus – Member
So, who said it?

Read the thread, already covered elsewhere, and not just by my last post.

You don’t believe in Hell, and you don’t believe that the “rules” that will supposedly send you there exist.

So how can you possibly find it insulting ?

This deserves an answer: Pretty straightforward. Neither you nor I believe you are a ****, however I suspect both of us would feel pretty insulted if someone walked up to you and called you that. Same principle really.

So, has anyone actually said this to you?

Yep they certainly have. As has already been pointed out it is a fundamental aspect of a number of religions, and I certainly was led to believe it was factual as a child. Pretty sure that still goes on today, albeit I can’t claim current experience for obvious reasons

It’s not semantics. There is the difference between the churches description is of what it believes will happen to a soul. It does not compel that to happen.

The point was regarding being insulted. Personally I find being told that I am condemned to hell because I’m not in their club and don’t follow their rules is extremely insulting, mainly to my intelligence, but insulting non the less.

When did this undue influence last sway legislation?

No one said it did, but out of interest how about the current fudge over same sex marriage? you know, the one where we aren’t going to apply the equality legislation to religious organisations.

Regarding the pervasive influence, I’m very pleased for you that you don’t find the 4 quick things I listed to be influential, let alone forcing religion down my throat. That may be because you appear to be comfortable with the concept. Personally I find it highly offensive, buts that because I don’t believe in fairies. It does however beg the question as to why it is necessary at all if its so meaningless and innocent.

How would you make an informed choice about religion if you don’t learn anything about the world’s religions[/S] are brainwashed either at school or from your family?

TFTFY

Home now 🙂

I agree DD, and don’t know what the few people on STW are on about when they suggest that religion is ‘thrust down their throats’ constantly in this country.

I’ll type slowly so you can understand…..

Point 1: Religion is a compulsory subject in UK Schools.
Point 2: The head of state carries the title defender of the faith
Point 3: The national anthem goes “god save etc etc”
Point 4: The clergy have automatic right to membership of the upper house of government

Seems pretty pervasive to me already, how much longer do you want me to go on for?