I used to consider myself an atheist. Now, when asked, I say I am agnostic. It is not that I have doubts but I don’t want to be bundled in with the atheist crowd.
In answering such a question, it is too difficult to explain the distinction between atheism and anti-religionism and to be honest, the lines are often blurred.
Is it any wonder?
This Easter we have been witness to baffling brawls over halal chocolate Easter eggs and squabbling over whether or not a footy match should be played on Good Friday. I adopt the laissez-faire approach in these matters but I find it troubling that those who advocate sombre reflection on religious holidays are cast as extremists.
Religion is often mocked by atheists. Mockery is fine in some instances but when people are painted as sub-human for holding supernatural beliefs, items of faith in all organised religions, it is clear there is an attempt to wantonly discriminate against people and limit their movements and their associations.
Full column here.
This will change the way you think.
https://www.gohappiest.com/2017/02/28/lie-live-everybody-watch-video-prepare-blown-away-spread/
Bella I had to listen to this as an antidote after that clip. Might have necked myself otherwise. Definitely a worst case scenario.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X8YnCq6UME
Haha MtK & good link too.
Haven’t heard Desiderata since my days in the commune.
Regards, Bella
Commune? Does that make you a Communist?
Just teasing. Really. 😉
Good tor hear the young guy near the end with hope that the internet will be an opportunity to spread the message. Unfortunately the positive seems to get lost in the cacophony or white noise of the negative on the net.
Whether you are “churched” or not, this is stirring: https://youtu.be/BBZ7AfZR9xs
They live streamed it last year and I’ve saved the download.
I’ve been to Temple Square in Salt Lake City and the architecture is magnificent.
Happy Easter.
Yes it is stirring Dwight. And the likes of MacDonalds or whatever commercial outfit should be banned from using it in their ads.
Actually, back in the 90’s we were working in a town in Indonesia where there were many competing mosques and prayer time, which can actually be quite a pleasant and tranquil experience in some situations, was an outright disrespectful cacophony. I proposed that at Easter we bombard them with the Hallelujah Chorus with the biggest mofo sound system we could muster. There were, after all, a few Christians about the place. But I was outvoted by the heathen managers. Would have been fun.
Yep they sure can sing Dwight.
I have to say though, with the failed Catholic in me shining through, the only time I have ever felt intimidated by a religion was on a visit to Salt Lake City. A visit to the Tabernacle was steeped in the feeling the cult was out to get me, one way or another.
At least we could go out for a drink afterwards, even if the bars were hard to find and all below street level. I wonder how polygamy is going down in those parts nowadays. There’s not too many youngsters in the quoir.
Reply Lou oTOD says:
April 16, 2017 at 7:49 pm
” I wonder how polygamy is going down in those parts nowadays. ”
At a guess, Lou i’d say variably and frequently.
On Nathan Buckley (and I won’t bore you with the details of my aunts netball career, and the local councillors she has spoken to and given them a piece of her mind); not to mention my “career” in the junior colts up here and my time with the Nth Canberra Bears!) but my expert opinion reckons that Buckley is not emotionally mature enough to be the boss. A couple of years away from the big time, perhaps coaching the up and comers, might give him the dispassionate outlook required?
Wash your mouth out! None of that fellacious innuendo in the holy hiatus thank you.
Fellacious – very good!
I should know better than to open one of your schmalzy links Dwight. Inspired me alright, inspired me to stick two fingers down me gullet. What a dirge from that bunch of porky clones and their Stepford wives!
Here! Get some gutsy melody into ya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTQi9idglz8
Any smart arse Three Mile Island jokes about “bright and warm with a ground temperature of ten thousand degrees” from you capitalist clowns and I swear I will send Kimmie your co-ordinates.
Kick back and enjoy.
Damn, Kim with the bad haircut couldn’t get it up this morning. Wonder when the firing squad is scheduled?
Yep, he’s not going to like the humiliation of that fizzer. Someone’s head will roll
We don’t have Easter Sunday at our digz
We have it next Sunday when the eggs are as low as $1
The kids don’t mind…they get more Heggz!!
Huge markdowns in many shops up here Bald.
SOUTHS:-killed by Rodents mob. We bombed so many tries I locked myself
in the Dunny.
How very ‘careful’ of you Bassy……..
You will be sorry when your day of judgement arrives, some of you are going to burn in hell …
Hey hey my my
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cawk2cMTnGo
Hiya Bill, Happy Easter to you and all on here who celebrate. Hell can’t be any hotter than my place at times, maybe I died and went there already, but just don’t know it.
Tell your Kathy all about it sweetie you seem to be an angry confused little sweetie arnt you.
Wait till you get to know me , I can be a real devil , sweetness…
Except for the Collingwood supporters.
Only some of us?
Better to burn than rust,
I wonder what these guys think 10 years on.
David Sloan Wilson: http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/david-sloan-wilson
Jonathan Haidt: http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0/jonathan-haidt
The whole conference http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-enlightenment-2-0
Sweet Mary Mother of Jesus, Mr Insider, and I invoke a “religious touch” at this holy time of year, however write to inform of POTRF Vladimir Putin’s “Father of all Bomb’s’ which we read is 4 times bigger than POTUS Donald Trump’s MOAB and explodes akin to a Nuclear Bomb! Its called the “Aviation Thermobaric Bomb of Increased Power” and by all accounts is a real “teeth rattler”. Of course if Kimmy of North Korea gets in first with a Nuclear Bomb all this may well become irrelevant! Time to pour another Whiskey I say Mr Insider.
http://tinyurl.com/lv8bpc3
DITTO:- I was a tyke. Spent most of my skooling getting the snot kicked out of me by cruel Marist Brothers and nuns (You can kiss a nun once you can even kiss her twice but never get into the habit). Why do nuns always walk in pairs? To make sure no nun gets none!
They Micks were good teachers though and excellent football coaches. I am sure they used this release of energy to get their rocks off because of the celibacy thing. Classmate was molested but not me. SO……when I was allowed to think for myself I became an atheist for many years. Most of my life actually. As the bride drags me to church most Sundays I sorta join in. Don’t do the communion bit.
It doesn’t taste like flesh. I pray but I dunno who I am praying to. I guess I could be called an agnostic now coz I wanna ‘believe’ and am insanely jealous of those who have the faith-good on ‘em. I look at it as some sort of insurance policy. Crazy eh? The main reason I wanna believe is for all of those people who HAVE believed, accepted the myriad of changes the church has inflicted on them without as much as a whimper-the more they whip them the more they believe? I want ‘something’ to be there for them for their loyalty in the face of no evidence whatsoever.
Not one person has ever come back. I feel the best evidence for a supreme being is ‘out there’. The fact that space is infinite for example. I am amazed the church does not work on this more. You won’t reach today’s high tech kids via the faded pages of a bible put together by a few blokes a couple of thousand years ago. What has interested me more waere the books left OUT of the bible (e.g. Thomas). Didn’t eat meat Friday.
What happened in the picosecond before the big bang? Science can’t answer that.
Gravitational singularity is the most commonly regarded theory, Dwight. Whatever the hell that means.
I stopped studying physics after three years. Things like that always made my head hurt.
Agree. I think hen they get to something they don’t really understand, the quantum physicists just pop it in an equation and move on
God cocked a cheek to one side, and then ….
… BANG
More Interesting Dwight, what was there a microsecond before the big bang and where did it come from.
What happened in that picosecond? Blue screen of death – press any key to restart Windows.
Haha that’s funny, Triv
I read ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ some years ago. The authors wrote that a conference of Bishops, Catholic and Orthodox, met in Nicosia(?) in c600ad(?) and threw out over 600 books from the new Testament. The Catholics insisted on removing all books that showed Jesus as anything other than a diety. The authors of HBHG reported one of the books documented that Jesus had beat a man to death. They also removed all books that chronicled Jesus’ life from age 12 until he returned for his Ministry. The authors presented evidence that Jesus had been sent to India by his father during this phase of his life. Remember the Wise Men came from the east. Many of Jesus’ teachings mirror Buddhist teachings. Buddhism was about 700 years old at that time.
The Orthodox protested the censorship but went along with it because the Popes had armies. The cast out books were The Apocrypha and a book or two sometimes appear in King James Bibles; Thomas is one.
250 AD, mate. There is some evidence that as much as half of the New Testament was written between the Council of Jerusalem (AD 50) and the Council of Nicea 200 years later. A battle had been fought for the spiritual heart of Christianity and those of the more, shall we say, dictatorial bent won. Fascinating history/histology. Many New Testament scholars now believe that more than half of the NT’s 27 books are forgeries e.g. Books ascribed to St Paul were written years after his death by others with a particular axe to grind. For example, in Letters to Romans, Paul praises the role of women in the Church but in Corinthians, he lays out a submissive and secondary role behind men for women in the Church.
It was one of the crunch periods of human history, not just religious history. The most interesting period of Roman history is from the ascension of authoritarian Caesar Septimius Severis (reigned 193 – 211), through to Constantine the Great (reigned 306 – 337). Constantine converted to Christianity, and with him the rest of the Empire. In his era the Empire had grown so large it had to be divided to survive. Along with Caesar Licinius, who ruled the Western Empire, Constantine signed the Edict of Tolerance, a document guaranteeing religious freedom and racial equality. I regard this as the birth of modern history.
GW – it’s quite easy (for me) to consider both Christianity and Islam as just sects which got lucky.
Kerry Packer came back and reported there’s ‘nothing there’. (Maybe Heaven didn’t want him.)
He wasn’t dead long enough. Takes a while to get there!!
Maybe they have to cool down first.
Bassman your post was one of the best I’ve seen here and perfect for an empty beach at Easter. I think you captured the dilemma of most folks, even die hard athiests, and my agnostic self. Your comment about insurance … What if ?… captures that dilemma perfectly. No-one really knows. We pick a side and play, but there are no certainties no matter where you kick the ball.
‘… football coaches …”
Not just coaches. I would not be the only one to remember a great, Catholic, club (Newcastle Wests), and Test player from the late sixties and early seventies, Father John Cootes. A Catholic priest, a devastating centre three-quarter, fearsome tackler [gimme dem ankles], prolific kicker and all round good bloke. After football he left orders and married, and went right on being a good bloke.
Bassman, last one – I promise – you know how it is – empty beach, Easter, rum, substances, Midnight Oil, God stuff. I read this and felt smaller. No! No! Not like that! Cosmologically smaller.
We may not be alone
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/08/110809-other-universes-multiverse-big-bang-space-science-microwave/
You quote Hitler further down in your column, Mr Insider thus: “To think I may some day be turned into an SS saint,” Hitler told Speer. “Can you imagine it?” Well Hitler must have had an amazingly high opinion of himself. Given his lowly station in life before he got the Nazi movement going one can only presume he was a lunatic before, during and almost after his regime ended, of course he killed himself much to the Worlds delight. Nazism may have become a “Religion” to so many under Mein Fruitcake, but thankfully not a lasting one. Now we have Kimmy and Bashar!
But Happy Easter to all my Christian friends!