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.
A classic observation by the broadcast team during the Collinwood Saints game today, at one point the Collinwood bench was occupied with players bearing the numbers 10,20,30 and 40.
Is Nathan Buckley reduced to playing by numbers? Were they the worst selections in the supporters club bingo last week? Is it a religious sequencing thing?
Most Pies supporters would say it doesn’t add up, as much as that would be a challenge for most of them.
Lou oTOD says:April 14, 2017 at 8:58 pm “Why not pull your head in and stop making gratuitous, uninformed comment on every bloody subject that amply demonstrates your limitations. Your references ain’t exactly substantial” Oh my. Can I offer you the above advice from one of the less informed members of the blog team? Oh wait HAHAHAHA.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-15/transgender-indonesians-facing-regular-attacks/8443710
I thought the best bit was the excerpt from the preacher of islam saying how people should be stoned, and then various other things, to cleanse them of their sins.
Meanwhile, as if we needed confirmation, today proves that Collingwood don’t miss Travis Cloke. They can kick just as badly without him, thanks very much.
As a born pagan (by Christian standards), I still had to opt out of the oldest of the current religions.
It was simply a case of lacking faith – and not requiring the spiritual prop.
That does not make it right – and it has to be very comforting to believe in a benevolent god(s); it’s just that I can’t.
Logically it all returns to faith, and as a genuine believer in free thought (and free speech) it is not right to seek to deprive others of their faith or belief (or even to ridicule them for the want of rational logic).
Of course that tolerance does not extend to the evangelical types – or worse still those who are in favour of forced conversion. As a member of the Chosen Race (most frequently chosen to be persecuted), one of the few points in its favour is the lack of prosletytism (but then if you are special you can’t allow just anyone into the club 🙂 )!
The problem is that not only does each mainstream religion believe in its exclusively correct manifesto, but that inherently they compete more or less vociferously (including evangelical atheists of the Dawkins variety).
Live and let live: enjoy the debate but recognise when it runs into faith and dogma (on both sides).
I have enough highly intelligent and well-educated (in terms of doctorates etc) acquaintances who are card-carrying members of various faiths that I do not cease to respect them simply because they do not adhere to my evidence based logical analysis – and as far as I know they do not respect me any the less (perhaps an impossibility?) for my lack of the relevant faith.
Agreeing to disagree – and tolerating the other’s opinion is exactly the right that the state should be guaranteeing.
Mind you, I also think that it is so much a personal matter that the old form of ‘ scripture ” (ie religious class) should cease in state schools in favour of some form of comparative religion (thereby providing some minimal amount of understanding that just MAY breed tolerance)…..
On this day marking yet another misunderstood Jewish boy…..I bid you all well
cheers
PS I am in mourning for the woeful performance of the Swans thus far: mostly the effort has been there but not the skills. By contrast Spurs look as if they should finish 2nd (fingers crossed) with potentially their highest ever points score (but it would require Chelsea to meltdown for anyone else to win). Could be the end of an era for Barca as it seems unlikely that Juve will play ” surrender monkey” given the traditional defensive qualities in Serie A.
The Swans are missing some good players, Voltaire. I also think their very deep, very talented midfield is starting to show signs of age. K. Jack has been poor this year. Not down to lack of effort but maybe time and the knocks to the body have caught up with him. Possibly one year too many. He is not the only one out of form of course. The trick will be to win a few games over the next month, try and hang in there until the cavalry arrives later in the season.
yeah, they could get to round 12 with 5 or six wins, and that would give them a shot.
thought the same about kieran jack, sometimes the end comes quickly for blokes who play it hard, but who knows he might be carrying something
Yes, that’s the proviso I should have added. Still, I doubt he’ll get the selectors’ nod this week.
Have to agree, if that is OK, regarding the Swans game style. I made similar remarks last year after another of their smash up wins. They play such hard contested footy. Great to watch but hard on the bodies week in week out. A bit like Dangerfield they have limited time to achieve great heights due to the attack on the footy before the game catches up with them. When does Heeney come back must be soon? I am a fan of Zak Jones no. 10 also, good old school footballer still learning his craft. I am sure both the Swans and even Hawkthorn will get going. It will be another bottle neck come finals, will be one of the most even season in a while I think.
Thought Zak Jones & Sam Reid (plus Kennedy) the best of the Swans but good effort from some of the kids did not make up for woeful skill errors particualarly coming out of defence. Hanneberry & Parker not as influential this season thus far and Jack slightly slower – which costs. Even when we won taps this year it has not produced clearances in our favour (know thy ruckman?),.
I agree that Rohan (X- factor), Heeney (young class), McVeigh (intelligent ball distribuiot an dskilful kicking), Rampe (extra defensive pillar) & Tippett (ruck & forward) plus Naismith should make a difference. I thought this might be the Swans’year as the window for Franklin, Tippett, McVeigh, Grundy is closing while signs from last year’s young kids were positive….then came the injury run before the season.
Still, as has been said before if they get the players back and their injury run is curtailed, the new regime of everyone getting a week off conveys less advantage to top 4 status although interstate clubs have some advantage in forcing the home ground issue.
So the final 8 sides at the very bottom andthe only sides not to record a win but Kangas a little unlucky (and rebuilding), Swans injury hit and Hawks apparently hit the wall. However that Hawthorn side still possesses enough inherent talent (adn a damned good coach) that they will come back but I have not seen such down-at -heel kicking from the Hawks in the last decade as that 4th quarter against the Cats.
Adelaide v Geelong (whose form has been volatile despite 4 wins) should be the form game ….for the moment.
Sinclair in the ruck. I forgot about Gary Rowan he is a very very good footballer. Had that really bad leg break but still came back with pace. Aliir Aliir, no that’s not a stutter, reads the play as good as just about anyone going around. He looked a little jaded the other night. Swans will come back.
Didn’t Eddie the expert quote one of his rentseeker sites recently talking about the horror of Abbot Point coal dust?
Surely Eddie couldn’t have been incorrect!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/coal-hard-facts-green-group-claims-blown-away-like-dust/news-story/54b0b4894bab8f7f3a310ef029c9da96
I can’t get that link mate but if you’re seriously getting all your info from the Murdoch press on environmental fallout from fossil-fuels, may I politely suggest you may want to stop kidding yourself.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/adani-boast-casts-doubt-on-1b-coal-project-loan-as-new-footage-shows-abbot-point-spill-damage-20170412-gvjt5e.html
Phony alternate facts are not real, not by a long shot, but methinks you already know their obvious agenda & please spare me the ‘jobs for Qld’ pitch.
Turncoat’s ‘tens of thousands’ of jobs is so completely out there when everyone knows by this stage of Adani’s scam, there will be even less than a thousand. Not worth a billion dollar loan of taxpayer money and, far more concerning, not worth the de-listing of a natural treasure.
Bella
Bella,
In short the article demonstrates the ‘coal dust’ you are talking about is Magnetite. A naturally occurring mineral. It would appear your green friends have once again made a story up. Fake news as it were.
Try the link again it works fine………
Rubbish the testing is ongoing. This article is merely a counter point to try and confuse the issue. The key line in the article is “in accordance with temporary emissions licence conditions” The Qld government has failed the nation by reducing requirements. Adani at the time admitted it was coal dust and that they did what i allowed under that “temporary Licence” because they could not contain the water. Razor ( should we say Malcolm Roberts ) the only fake thing around here is you. Your pathological dishonesty knows No bounds. Fake news. You are a disgrace.
Bella,
Also the reef is fine and who gives to flying f’s if the UN want to delist it. Also ask the people who will be employed by the mine, 1000 or 10000, including indigenous Australians, if they hi k their jobs are worth nothing. As for the billion dollars, its a loan they have to pay it back so what’s the issue? It’s not a donation! No different to the money poured into heavily subsidised green schemes or failed green startup schemes except this money gets returned.
I was at Ravenshoe yesterday and saw an absolute blight on an otherwise beautiful landscape further the noise was terrible!
What’s on at Ravenshoe Razor?
A massive noisy wind farm Mack! Strewn across a once pristine area.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2014/may/02/the-beauty-of-windfarms-in-pictures
No one Green Project has received $1 billion and even if 20,000 jobs are created it will cost $45,000.00 per job. 10K jobs, $90,000, The loan will never be paid back because No one can trace the company structure. Rent seeking selfish small minded hicks like you are what cause the problems in Nations like this one. Qld’s slogan = “this is how we always done it” Again you apparently know more than the entire scientific community. too many XXXX again for you. Disgraceful.
Dismayed,
How is it I’m a rentseeker? Or am I a pig hunter? You know the term pig hunter. You use it to describe people you consider less than you. The people who live in regional Australia apparently.
Well the main thing is you won’t have to worry as you said Adani would never go ahead. Now about that offer from last blog regarding my leaving if Adani doesn’t go ahead and you pissing off if it does. Fair bet I reckon.
Also great to see we can add international finance to the list of the many fields you are an expert on Eddie .
Jeez mate it’s late & I’m tired but I don’t get it. You say you don’t care if the GBR is delisted? What about tourism dollars or their thousands of jobs when word gets out globally?
The Reef is NOT “fine” it is in terminal decline with experts reporting they’ve never seen it this depleted, announcing it’s condition as ‘poor’.
As for the billion dollars, you’re joking right? Adani is well practised at not repaying business loans & has form on defaulting also.
How do we make them pay Razor if they default? It’s not like they will be forced to put in a tax return here.
The Libs are falling over themselves to suck up to a dodgy Indian billionaire mining company with links to the Caymans tax haven & we are expected to fork out for their driverless transport system, all without seeing a red cent?
Open your eyes & smell the bulldust.
I’ve absolutely no idea what you saw in Ravenshoe Razor but do tell me tomorrow.
If I had to guess, I reckon a protest rally filled to busting with loud, green, leftie, latte-sipping, bottom-of-the-garden fairies. How offensive!?
If I’m right, do I win?
Goodnight, Bella
Jean Baptiste – Further to my earlier response to your reasoned critique of my “AGW worshipper” offering, I’ve had time to ruminate over a few hot cross buns and I’ve now concluded that the magical mile regarding a belief that the anthropogenic contamination of our planet is nothing more than a religious leap exercising the minds of the scientific baffle gab, back slapping anointed that the alleged changing climate is simply all about crapping in one’s own backyard.
As far as I’m concerned the home/castle doctrine still applies, if you get me drift. I’m also trusting that my now declared climate caper apostasy does not adversely impact my expected longevity by any future academic or government driven pogrom.
I’ll be relying on your positive support JB to circumvent this possibility, as a free-thinker yourself, should such action eventuate me old mate.
I’m no more interested in your longevity Carl than my own. What I am interested in, passionately, is the possibilities for the generations that should, and might have followed our own in experiencing life.
There’s your difference.
http://www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=51077
Given St Francis assures us that destroying the environment is a sin, it would appear that in the unlikely event of an afterlife for any of us, my chances of going to heaven are much better than yours.
Not bad for a badmouthing heathen eh. Now get your arse down to confessional and mend your ways, your time is running out, old mate.
Jean Baptiste says:
April 16, 2017 at 6:11 pm
“Now, lets have it straight. Do you think the Pope who is in direct contact with your ratbag deity is an idiot?”
I’m not in the business of chucking gibbers at His Holiness JB. But I think it’s a bit rich that references in his 2015 environment encyclical (which you have used as a link earlier) wags a pontifical finger at the climate pseudo science deniers for being allegedly responsible for causing “desolation and filth” to refugees and the poor on the one hand, while the his church stood “idly” by in relation to the wide spread “desolation and filth” caused to so many of those whose care and comfort the same church was responsible for, but denied culpability of, for so many years.
I agree with your condemnation, but that’s a non sequitur, The Pope gets it right on AGW.
https://guymcpherson.com/2017/02/faster-than-expected/
If the church in cahoots with the aristocracy throughout the ages had not been so active murdering heretics and variations eliminating much of the curious and rebellious gene we’d not have been led by the nose to this bloody awful disaster.
JB – “What I am interested in, passionately, is the possibilities for the generations that should, and might have followed our own in experiencing life.”
Love your passion for life and the environment and possibilities, Jean. Would it follow that you are anti contraception, anti abortion? I’m betting you are against the death sentence for criminals? But, Jean as you are a disciple of agw (global warming influenced by humans), and a champion for our grandchildren, and theirs, how do you reconcile the marriage between more people and a planet damaged by people? Some would say that we have too many people in the world at present (a good deal of them aren’t viewing their environment with the luxury of your rose tinted glasses and pampered life, Jean). I’ve heard that we will have to produce more food in the next 50 yrs than we have in human history. In the meantime we will probably bin more food than we have in human history, because it has gone past its use by date and a lot of it is not passed on to the needy. One only has to look at the brimming bounty of “fresh” food in markets and stores and wonder at what happens to the meats and seafood that is not sold.
I would suggest we do waste better than any other animal.
Yes we do. That’s the nature of capitalism, it’s important to keep the poor poor in order to create the surpluses that make the rich insanely , obscenely rich. To dump food rather than allow excess to depreciate the commodity prices.
There are not too many people Milton, we just use too much fossil fuel and eat too much meat.
We are sick puppies in this little neck of the universe. It wont change before we all die as a consequence of AGW. Which will happen a lot sooner thank you think.
If only Diderot’s proposition had been prosecuted and maintained a couple of centuries ago. “When the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest”
Some prefer it the other way around, it doesn’t make much difference in my view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKMspN-7Co
I don’t see abortion as any different from abstaining from sex or quitting procreating at two three five or fifteen kids.
State sanctioned execution is murder by the state.
Sorry I’m in a rush, I would go on all day. And I will if I get the time.
Give ’em heaps.
How far away do we have to be to survive a nuclear blast Jack?
You’re better off being right in the middle of it, mate.
“The living will envy the dead”.
Nikita Kruschev
Right in the middle of it is Pine Gap , mate …
Kimmy might have one with Brisbane’s name on it just for shits and giggles, mate. Fingers crossed.
That’ll be enough of that thank you Mr Insider!!!
Don’t think anyone will bother with Tassie………. 🙂
You don’t really want to know, but: http://www.nationalterroralert.com/nuclear/
Watch out, Jack! Bernard’s putting in some solid competition:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/faster-higher-whinger-welcome-to-the-outrage-olympics/news-story/ed0595f4c0ec1aa16aa0b3f4b8dd1343
Oh, PS – Happy Easter all. get into those pagan rabbit eggs.
Jack, just quickly, could you drop us a note when a new blog comes out, like you used to do? I keep missing them.
I agree that people should let others be with their faiths. At the same time, I think that those of faith could withhold their evangelism and let everyone else think what they like. I grew up in a Pressbutton family that had such zeal that it turned me off the whole thing for ever. It was simply obsessive and I’ve only encountered the like of it elsewhere in muslim countries. As the black sheep I was harassed until I had to make it clear that they’d lost me. None of it made sense to me and it took years to shake it off. And some of it is burned too deep of course. My brother, who drank the kool aid (most of it) stormed in to my room on a sunny morning many years ago when I was sitting up in bed reading and demanded to know why I had not given my life to Jesus. “Well, I haven’t even finished the paper yet, give me a chance”. He has lived overseas these past 19 years, interfering in other people’s lives in a Buddhist country. Two years ago, before I underwent a serious operation, he wrote to me and said the sort of things you say when you think you might not run into someone again – then added that he didn’t understand why I seemed hostile to religion, “Why not just let it be?” Good song title, I thought. Maybe if religion hadn’t driven me nuts for years and had let *me* be I would be less negative…
But I do still get annoyed when people , as HK jack says, feel that they can run down Christianity and be as disrespectful as they like to its adherents. There’s less of this aimed at Islam because the consequences can be severe, just as they once were with Christianity. Islam needs to get to the point where it can things on the chin if there is to be better relations (which is maybe a spot of reverse psychology). But so much of our culture and civilisation (such as it is) is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition – you can’t just throw that all out. And if you don’t like the shops being shut on Good Friday – go to work.
As for the likes of Dawkins – whilst I tend to agree with the gist of what he says, I don’t think that he says it particularly well, and his tendency to be abusive of religions and the religious is quite childish really. Then there are those who claim that atheism is now a religion of its own. Just how is that? ‘Nothing worshippers?’ (All called Neil?) That’s a silly reaction too. But once again, believe/don’t believe – we don’t all need to know about it.
Interesting to see a few sane and intelligent comments on this over the wall. But scroll down and there are the nutters as usual.
Last thought in this random post – the Council of Nicaea is to me a dead giveaway that the whole thing is a fabrication, and there is so much more contradiction and hoo-ha lining up behind that, don’t start me. Ditto with the others. I could go on. Don’t let me.
Just as easy to ping you on Facebook. Hopefully I’ll remember.
i suppose i don’t mind when people run down religions or disrespect believers, but it rarely makes me respect those doing the running down more, they so often come across as a bit pathetic really.
again i don’t mind evangelists either, but i never seek their company, i much prefer to spend time with folks who wear their beliefs or non-beliefs a bit lighter than that.
there is one exception to that, during my rather long sojourn in the Adventist hospital i used to get regular visits from the chaplain, who was a rather wet behind the ears young fella from central Florida, and i am afraid i succumbed to the temptation to shock him with real and imagined tales of sins committed. great fun.