Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Nope, Ostern derived from auferstehung ie resurrection represents new life and new light brought to humanity by the new-risen Son
Nobody sensible thinks "Ostern" is derived from "Auferstehung"
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
No, it represents new life and new light brought to humanity by the new-risen Son
It is a Christian corruption of the true Germanic pagan Festivcal of the Goddess Eostre. And in ytour logic the name determines everythjing, so go on, admit it is a pagan festival stolen by the chaps with shaved heads.
Nope, it has a Christian name too via Ostern from auferstehung.
We may not now follow the Catholic Inquisition and burn you at the stake for being a heretic but nonetheless as with Christmas Easter has a Christian name
The Germanic tribes would be very surprised at that interpretation of their theology.
And I take great exception to even jokes about murdering other PBers. Kindly change the wording of that.
It is a historical fact that centuries ago the Catholic Church would have burnt heretics at the stake, indeed as a Scottish nationalist arguing rebellion against the Crown you would also have been executed as a traitor centuries ago, though times change
Not so much times changing as religion losing its power. We can see what horrors powerful religion delivers in the Middle East today; and who here believes that if the religious right in the US ever got their hands on real power, the result would in the slightest resemble paradise on earth?
It is the disbelieving majority that prevents religious bigotry from making all of our lives abjectly miserable.
84% of the global population remains religious however, 31% Christian, 23% Muslim, 15% Hindu, 7% Muslim and 7% have folk or other religions
But, as I was saying, the key is to live somewhere where large numbers of those don't take it very seriously. We are truly lucky to live in such a place.
To expand the debate about Die Hard and if it is a Christmas film; is Twelfth Night a Christmas Play?
Given it’s possibly the only work of literature less comprehensible than Ulysses, how would anyone find out?
Why on earth is 'Twelfth Night' difficult to comprehend ?
It is not dialectical materialism. It is not the story of a Jungian journey to the self. It is not a Nietzschean parable. It is not quantum gravity or M theory.
It is a straightforward comedy of mistaken identity, with all the lovers trooping off to bed in the end. That is it. What is there to understand?
Arcadia is much harder to understand (though some of the jokes are funnier to modern ears). You need a passing knowledge of early nineteenth century poetry, landscape gardening ( for what a ha-ha is if nothing else), Fermat's last theorem, fractals, and the second law of thermodynamics to get the best out of it.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Easter was the feast of Eostre for many pagans
No it wasn’t. ‘Easter’ is in fact from ‘East,’ referring to where Christians in Europe turned to pray.
The controversy reminds me somewhat of the equally fake claimed similarities between the Mithraic cult and Christianity, which were mostly invented by an American lunatic called Dorothy Murdock (although I did come across them many years earlier in the work of a Mary Stewart as well).
(Edit - I should note O’Neill, in that link, does argue that Easter is named from Eostre because it fell in the month of Eostre. But that’s not the general view among scholars.)
There is still a lot more evidence for eostre than jesus being born on the 25th of december and pretty sure other references than bede. Will try and dig some out. Celtic beliefs however were largely an oral tradition like many others of the time and often references are hard to find unless contemporary writers from other cultures explored them
You are moving the goalposts somewhat. I am not disputing Eostre’s existence. I am pointing out that the idea you were promoting that Easter was based on a pagan festival dedicated to her was both demonstrably false and of very recent origin.
Then you misunderstood what I was getting at I wasn't saying that christian festivals were based upon pagan festivals. What I was saying that when christians came in they usurped the times of pagan festivals and inserted their own instead. After all can't take the jollies away and we don't want them ending up celebrating ours and their own so we replace yule with christmas, samhain with All souls, eostre with easter.
And what I am pointing out to you is that that is wrong. Easter is not at the time of a pagan festival. Falling in a month named after a goddess, if that is what happened, is different, and the timing of Easter dates from long before the English name of it!
There has always been a pagan festival at spring equinox...remind me when easter is again
Ok, it wasn't a sex party, it was a try and get AIDS party.
The organiser of a men-only orgy in Brussels attended by a key lieutenant of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s anti-gay rights leader, has told a newspaper that compulsory group sex and no condoms were the party’s only rules.
David Manzheley, 29, a PhD student, organised the sex party — illegal under coronavirus lockdown restrictions — that led to the arrest of Jozsef Szajer, 59, a prominent conservative Hungarian MEP.
“We have a chat, we have a drink, just like in a pub. The only difference is that in the meantime we also have sex with each other,” he told Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper.
Now state Rep. Vernon Jones is trying to turn this into an election rally, urging Republicans to vote for Loeffler and Perdue. “Georgia has a history of going into battle. Georgia has a history of fighting ... we are going to hold the line.” And Lin Wood directly contradicts him, telling the crowd to stay at home until Trump is vindicated. He asks why Perdue and Loeffler aren’t here - and suggests it’s time for Trump to form his own separate political party. #gapol #gasen
10 reasons why Die Hard is the ultimate Christmas movie
They left out: the heroine Holly lives in Santa Monica. Open your eyes, sheeple.
Santa Monica to Century City in rush hour traffic. Every day.
I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Just wait for the Purple Line extension.
(2034 the last time I looked).
The Purple line (Century City) and the Blue Line (Santa Monica) only meet at the 7th Street Metro Center in Downtown, so that's going be a good 60-80 minutes on public transport. Mind you. That might be better than spending 60-80 minutes on Santa Monica Blvd.
At first, I read purple line as a reference to Crossrail - and 2034 as the date of likely completion.
To expand the debate about Die Hard and if it is a Christmas film; is Twelfth Night a Christmas Play?
Given it’s possibly the only work of literature less comprehensible than Ulysses, how would anyone find out?
We had a teacher of English at the school I went to who spent an entire lesson on the first two words..
I like it though: not as much as A Midsummer Night's Dream, but I've seen some excellent productions.
It’s a fine play, but a less than excellent production is a pretty dismal experience. As a school kid, I saw the 1978 Old Vic production with Eileen Atkins and Robert Eddison. It was magical.
To expand the debate about Die Hard and if it is a Christmas film; is Twelfth Night a Christmas Play?
Given it’s possibly the only work of literature less comprehensible than Ulysses, how would anyone find out?
We had a teacher of English at the school I went to who spent an entire lesson on the first two words..
I like it though: not as much as A Midsummer Night's Dream, but I've seen some excellent productions.
It’s a fine play, but a less than excellent production is a pretty dismal experience. As a school kid, I saw the 1978 Old Vic production with Eileen Atkins and Robert Eddison. It was magical.
I think that's true of most plays.
Though A Midsummer Night's Dream might be an exception: I've seen school productions of that nearly as funny as some in the West End.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
No, it represents new life and new light brought to humanity by the new-risen Son
It is a Christian corruption of the true Germanic pagan Festivcal of the Goddess Eostre. And in ytour logic the name determines everythjing, so go on, admit it is a pagan festival stolen by the chaps with shaved heads.
Nope, it has a Christian name too via Ostern from auferstehung.
We may not now follow the Catholic Inquisition and burn you at the stake for being a heretic but nonetheless as with Christmas Easter has a Christian name
The Germanic tribes would be very surprised at that interpretation of their theology.
And I take great exception to even jokes about murdering other PBers. Kindly change the wording of that.
It is a historical fact that centuries ago the Catholic Church would have burnt heretics at the stake, indeed as a Scottish nationalist arguing rebellion against the Crown you would also have been executed as a traitor centuries ago, though times change
Kindly change the original email. I can accept the meaning of your wording was unintentional, but even so kindly change it - and stop repeating your jokes.
I was pointing out a historical fact, so I will not change it
You were pointing it out in an unacceptably personalised manner.
There is such a thing as the English language and its readings.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Easter was the feast of Eostre for many pagans
No it wasn’t. ‘Easter’ is in fact from ‘East,’ referring to where Christians in Europe turned to pray.
The controversy reminds me somewhat of the equally fake claimed similarities between the Mithraic cult and Christianity, which were mostly invented by an American lunatic called Dorothy Murdock (although I did come across them many years earlier in the work of a Mary Stewart as well).
(Edit - I should note O’Neill, in that link, does argue that Easter is named from Eostre because it fell in the month of Eostre. But that’s not the general view among scholars.)
There is still a lot more evidence for eostre than jesus being born on the 25th of december and pretty sure other references than bede. Will try and dig some out. Celtic beliefs however were largely an oral tradition like many others of the time and often references are hard to find unless contemporary writers from other cultures explored them
You are moving the goalposts somewhat. I am not disputing Eostre’s existence. I am pointing out that the idea you were promoting that Easter was based on a pagan festival dedicated to her was both demonstrably false and of very recent origin.
Then you misunderstood what I was getting at I wasn't saying that christian festivals were based upon pagan festivals. What I was saying that when christians came in they usurped the times of pagan festivals and inserted their own instead. After all can't take the jollies away and we don't want them ending up celebrating ours and their own so we replace yule with christmas, samhain with All souls, eostre with easter.
And what I am pointing out to you is that that is wrong. Easter is not at the time of a pagan festival. Falling in a month named after a goddess, if that is what happened, is different, and the timing of Easter dates from long before the English name of it!
There has always been a pagan festival at spring equinox...remind me when easter is again
Up to a month later.
Easter can fall between 22 March and 25 April - 35 days in all.
Aston Martin is at the centre of a climate lobbying controversy after a study co-commissioned by the company that cast doubt on the green credentials of electric vehicles was found to have been attributed to a PR company registered to the wife of a director at the luxury carmaker.
The study, which has since been widely debunked by experts, was presented as “groundbreaking” third-party research and appeared to show that electric cars would have to travel as far as 50,000 miles before matching the carbon footprint of a petrol model.
Thursday’s report was commissioned by companies including Aston Martin, Bosch, Honda and McLaren shortly after the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, called for a ban on the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles from 2030, and presented as the work of Clarendon Communications.
But it can be revealed that the same companies that were credited with commissioning the study collaborated to write the report themselves, and the communications firm is a company registered under the name of Rebecca Stephens, who is the wife of Aston Martin’s government affairs director, James Stephens. The company was set up in February and registered to the address of a property jointly owned by the married couple.
The study was first reported in the Times, before the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, among other news publications, followed suit.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Easter was the feast of Eostre for many pagans
No it wasn’t. ‘Easter’ is in fact from ‘East,’ referring to where Christians in Europe turned to pray.
The controversy reminds me somewhat of the equally fake claimed similarities between the Mithraic cult and Christianity, which were mostly invented by an American lunatic called Dorothy Murdock (although I did come across them many years earlier in the work of a Mary Stewart as well).
(Edit - I should note O’Neill, in that link, does argue that Easter is named from Eostre because it fell in the month of Eostre. But that’s not the general view among scholars.)
There is still a lot more evidence for eostre than jesus being born on the 25th of december and pretty sure other references than bede. Will try and dig some out. Celtic beliefs however were largely an oral tradition like many others of the time and often references are hard to find unless contemporary writers from other cultures explored them
You are moving the goalposts somewhat. I am not disputing Eostre’s existence. I am pointing out that the idea you were promoting that Easter was based on a pagan festival dedicated to her was both demonstrably false and of very recent origin.
Then you misunderstood what I was getting at I wasn't saying that christian festivals were based upon pagan festivals. What I was saying that when christians came in they usurped the times of pagan festivals and inserted their own instead. After all can't take the jollies away and we don't want them ending up celebrating ours and their own so we replace yule with christmas, samhain with All souls, eostre with easter.
And what I am pointing out to you is that that is wrong. Easter is not at the time of a pagan festival. Falling in a month named after a goddess, if that is what happened, is different, and the timing of Easter dates from long before the English name of it!
There has always been a pagan festival at spring equinox...remind me when easter is again
Up to a month later.
Easter can fall between 22 March and 25 April - 35 days in all.
Although it is true that the method of finding the date of Easter is borrowed from another religion.
IANAE on licensing law but my understanding is that the phrase “a substantial meal” comes from the part of the code which allows alcohol to be served to 16 and 17 year olds with an adult and having “ a substantial meal”. My understanding is that it is a phrase which is known and recognised in the licensing trade.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
Ok, it wasn't a sex party, it was a try and get AIDS party.
The organiser of a men-only orgy in Brussels attended by a key lieutenant of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s anti-gay rights leader, has told a newspaper that compulsory group sex and no condoms were the party’s only rules.
David Manzheley, 29, a PhD student, organised the sex party — illegal under coronavirus lockdown restrictions — that led to the arrest of Jozsef Szajer, 59, a prominent conservative Hungarian MEP.
“We have a chat, we have a drink, just like in a pub. The only difference is that in the meantime we also have sex with each other,” he told Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper.
Also, still a student at 29? Is that what they call a tenured student?
Normal enough if you finish a first degree and then go away and do something else, and come back later when you have gained some life experience. Not the normal pattern for a physics graduate, of course.
IANAE on licensing law but my understanding is that the phrase “a substantial meal” comes from the part of the code which allows alcohol to be served to 16 and 17 year olds with an adult and having “ a substantial meal”. My understanding is that it is a phrase which is known and recognised in the licensing trade.
Yes, I remember hearing about that loophole many years ago, but have never seen it enacted upon.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
What is the Too Long: Didn't Want To Watch Him Anymore version?
'Lots of bad things happened because the election takes too long. System is under siege. Democrats acted like they had the election was sorted, because it was. Illegal ballots won't be counted'.
One of the more pathetic aspects of the legal challenges and the wider claims of fraud (since the two are not one and the same) is the pretence that certain practices that have been used for many elections should now be entirely discounted as if in themselves they are fraudulent, never mind proving there was specific fraud.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
OK, what about "Why is there a God?".
Yes, add that one as well. A sixth question. Now back to the first five.
According to The Times, talks are due to centre around a change to the structure that would see clubs playing 10 different opponents in the group stage.
It would see 32 or 36 teams put together in a single division - but they would not all play each other. A random draw would throw up a team's 10 matches, all against different opponents. Five matches would be at home and five away.
Teams would then compete for points in a single league table and the top 16 clubs would go on to the knockout stages.
The last-16 ties would then be decided by the final league standings. So whoever came top of the league table would play the team that came 16th, the second would take on 15th and so on.
Those teams who finished in positions 17 to 24 would drop down into the Europa League. The rest of the teams would be eliminated.
It's such a self defeating approach it almost feels like a trick, like these people are waiting for someone in the crowd to go 'Hang on, this doesn't make any sense', and they can drop the act. And it's so stupid it makes other worried it is a part of some plan to have Republicans lose precisely so they can use that as evidence of a rigged election.
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year award descended into confusion and then farce on Wednesday after the corporation rejected a demand from the world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury to be the first ever athlete to be taken off its shortlist.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
What purposes do people have other than the purposes of which they define for themselves?
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
You will not find any answers to those question in scripture. "God did it" explains nothing. You might as well say "Chance did it"
What is the Too Long: Didn't Want To Watch Him Anymore version?
'Lots of bad things happened because the election takes too long. System is under siege. Democrats acted like they had the election was sorted, because it was. Illegal ballots won't be counted'.
One of the more pathetic aspects of the legal challenges and the wider claims of fraud (since the two are not one and the same) is the pretence that certain practices that have been used for many elections should now be entirely discounted as if in themselves they are fraudulent, never mind proving there was specific fraud.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
You will not find any answers to those question in scripture. "God did it" explains nothing. You might as well say "Chance did it"
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year award descended into confusion and then farce on Wednesday after the corporation rejected a demand from the world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury to be the first ever athlete to be taken off its shortlist.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Not all Hindus do, it is not a religious festival for them and not all will do the secular festivities either
You clearly haven't met enough Indians lol, especially the second generation types like Rishi. Christmas is pretty standard, everyone does something for it, especially with kids. Even my super religious family in the US buy a tree every year and give presents etc...
Oh no, immigrants to a country adopting its customs and traditions.
The BBC Sports Personality of the Year award descended into confusion and then farce on Wednesday after the corporation rejected a demand from the world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury to be the first ever athlete to be taken off its shortlist.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
OK, what about "Why is there a God?".
'Cos religious people invented Her?
Indeed, odd that Occam's razor comes from a religious person, Brother William, when Occam's razor would question why we need to invent a God to explain the unexplained, rather than accept that it is simply unexplained or unknowable. Positing the Unknowable to explain the unknown doesn't really add anything. And positing that God is both Knowable and Unknowable at the same time is downright the antithesis of Occam's Razor.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Not all Hindus do, it is not a religious festival for them and not all will do the secular festivities either
You clearly haven't met enough Indians lol, especially the second generation types like Rishi. Christmas is pretty standard, everyone does something for it, especially with kids. Even my super religious family in the US buy a tree every year and give presents etc...
Oh no, immigrants to a country adopting its customs and traditions.
Sandpit, I thought you lived in Dubai or somewhere in the ME. Surely you've seen how Muslim families celebrate Christmas too (as do many Jewish families I know in NYC).
* Xmas has become the universal non-denominational, secular religious celebration.
My Call With Ron Johnson: He Knows Biden Won But Won’t Admit It
The TL;DR of the call was this: Senator Johnson knows that Joe Biden won a free and fair election. He is refusing to admit it publicly and stoking conspiracies that undermine our democracy solely because it would be “political suicide” to oppose Trump. I find this unconscionable.
According to The Times, talks are due to centre around a change to the structure that would see clubs playing 10 different opponents in the group stage.
It would see 32 or 36 teams put together in a single division - but they would not all play each other. A random draw would throw up a team's 10 matches, all against different opponents. Five matches would be at home and five away.
Teams would then compete for points in a single league table and the top 16 clubs would go on to the knockout stages.
The last-16 ties would then be decided by the final league standings. So whoever came top of the league table would play the team that came 16th, the second would take on 15th and so on.
Those teams who finished in positions 17 to 24 would drop down into the Europa League. The rest of the teams would be eliminated.
"Why the U.K. Approved a Coronavirus Vaccine First
When early results from the final trials began to roll in, scientists were well prepared. Now, they face the logistical challenge of putting the vaccine to work."
According to The Times, talks are due to centre around a change to the structure that would see clubs playing 10 different opponents in the group stage.
It would see 32 or 36 teams put together in a single division - but they would not all play each other. A random draw would throw up a team's 10 matches, all against different opponents. Five matches would be at home and five away.
Teams would then compete for points in a single league table and the top 16 clubs would go on to the knockout stages.
The last-16 ties would then be decided by the final league standings. So whoever came top of the league table would play the team that came 16th, the second would take on 15th and so on.
Those teams who finished in positions 17 to 24 would drop down into the Europa League. The rest of the teams would be eliminated.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Nope, Ostern derived from auferstehung ie resurrection represents new life and new light brought to humanity by the new-risen Son
Nobody sensible thinks "Ostern" is derived from "Auferstehung"
An interesting poll would be to ask "When you think of Christmas do you think more of a) Father Christmas or b) birth of Christ? I suspect the majority would say a).
I don't approve of the Father Christmas story. It encourages children to believe that their parents are liars. What a start. And the tooth fairy ....
The amazing thing is that the Virgin Mary story (I was impregnated by an angel and I'm the mother of God) is still believed by so many adults. I blame their parents. It really borders on abuse.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
No, it represents new life and new light brought to humanity by the new-risen Son
Only for christians and yours is mainly a borrowed and copied faith. Most of the old testament comes from gilgamesh, most of jesus's teachings are copies of buddhist philosophy. Almost all of your festivals were set by committee to mimic the festivals of those people you were trying to bring under the sway of rome.
Rubbish, especially as Buddhism came from another part of the world
Ah of course where buddhism is born is so far from israel and there couldnt possibly have been buddhists travelling through the middle east. The romans were in jerusalem. They knew india etc.
Your argument that christmas is a celebration of the birth of christ falls flat because pretty much every biblical scholar doesnt think its anywhere near his birthday
If its so important to celebrate his birth why not do it on his birthday?
Outside the paranoid conspiracy theories of a number of pseudoscholars like Murdoch, Carrier, Price, Fitzgerald and Dawkins, there is no evidence whatsoever of any connection in origin between Buddhism and Christianity.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had", Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
Four years ago my wife and I were at a Christian convention in Singapore where there were people praying for the sick. She said to me "go and ask them to pray for your tinnitus to go". I grumpily said "several people have done that already and I still have it". Her response was "well get them to pray for your little finger". (Here you need to know that, as a former 5-a-side goalkeeper, during my career I had several fingers dislocated but one of them I could only half close before it would lock). With zero expectation that anything good would come of this, apart from keeping my wife happy, i allowed the person praying to put their hand over my finger and pray for it to be healed in Jesus name. They let go of my hand and asked me to close the finger and it did. I flexed my hand, my finger and just starred at it. I could never fully close it after it had been dislocated but since then, for the last five years I have never had a problem in doing so.
Everytime I read this sort of discussion I just look at my right hand and close that finger. I don't say Darwin is wrong, I don't think the Earth was formed in Genesis timescales but I do think there is something else having an impact on our lives and I will leave it at that.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had",
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
Google "emergent properties." Conway's Game of Life is a good way in, and huge fun.
You sound rattled about all this, I do hope you are not having Doubts. I shall add you to my prayer chain.
To be honest, I'm not sure what the fuss is about: a minister making a bit of a meal of an announcement, but nothing that justifies the tweet.
And they're all under horrendous pressure - not least someone who has been on an intergovernmental call at 6.30am.
While I am no fan of either Sturgeon or Johnson, I have not the remotest doubt that this has weighed very heavily on them personally. There have been no "good" decisions, only "least worst" ones. Whatever they have decided, people have died, as a result of their decisions, and I've no doubt they are aware of that.
Just caught the Winterwatch 1963 on BBC4, which has put me in a very generous mood. It was the contemporary review of that winter, still a bit RP and still the quite jolly observation style akin to British Pathe, but I warmed to n it - a news review that did not gloss over the genuine difficulties and tragedies but didn't dwell on them and put a generous slant on things. I don't want the style back wholesale, but we could certainly take from that.
If we could manage to bear the next few months in as good humour as possible, then give Boris as frightful a whacking at the polls as is deemed necessary, we would not do badly. We will need it for the pieces that will have to be picked up.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
No, it represents new life and new light brought to humanity by the new-risen Son
Only for christians and yours is mainly a borrowed and copied faith. Most of the old testament comes from gilgamesh, most of jesus's teachings are copies of buddhist philosophy. Almost all of your festivals were set by committee to mimic the festivals of those people you were trying to bring under the sway of rome.
Rubbish, especially as Buddhism came from another part of the world
Ah of course where buddhism is born is so far from israel and there couldnt possibly have been buddhists travelling through the middle east. The romans were in jerusalem. They knew india etc.
Your argument that christmas is a celebration of the birth of christ falls flat because pretty much every biblical scholar doesnt think its anywhere near his birthday
If its so important to celebrate his birth why not do it on his birthday?
Outside the paranoid conspiracy theories of a number of pseudoscholars like Murdoch, Carrier, Price, Fitzgerald and Dawkins, there is no evidence whatsoever of any connection in origin between Buddhism and Christianity.
How about Catharism?
Given that that was several centuries later then even if they were influenced by Buddhism it doesn't really refute the "there is no evidence whatsoever of any connection in origin between Buddhism and Christianity" part of the statement. (My bold).
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Easter was the feast of Eostre for many pagans
No it wasn’t. ‘Easter’ is in fact from ‘East,’ referring to where Christians in Europe turned to pray.
The controversy reminds me somewhat of the equally fake claimed similarities between the Mithraic cult and Christianity, which were mostly invented by an American lunatic called Dorothy Murdock (although I did come across them many years earlier in the work of a Mary Stewart as well).
(Edit - I should note O’Neill, in that link, does argue that Easter is named from Eostre because it fell in the month of Eostre. But that’s not the general view among scholars.)
There is still a lot more evidence for eostre than jesus being born on the 25th of december and pretty sure other references than bede. Will try and dig some out. Celtic beliefs however were largely an oral tradition like many others of the time and often references are hard to find unless contemporary writers from other cultures explored them
You are moving the goalposts somewhat. I am not disputing Eostre’s existence. I am pointing out that the idea you were promoting that Easter was based on a pagan festival dedicated to her was both demonstrably false and of very recent origin.
Then you misunderstood what I was getting at I wasn't saying that christian festivals were based upon pagan festivals. What I was saying that when christians came in they usurped the times of pagan festivals and inserted their own instead. After all can't take the jollies away and we don't want them ending up celebrating ours and their own so we replace yule with christmas, samhain with All souls, eostre with easter.
And what I am pointing out to you is that that is wrong. Easter is not at the time of a pagan festival. Falling in a month named after a goddess, if that is what happened, is different, and the timing of Easter dates from long before the English name of it!
There has always been a pagan festival at spring equinox...remind me when easter is again
Up to a month later.
Easter can fall between 22 March and 25 April - 35 days in all.
Although it is true that the method of finding the date of Easter is borrowed from another religion.
In Romance languages, the connection between the Jewish and Christian holidays is explicit. The Hebrew word for Passover is Pesach. In French, Easter is Paques. In Italian it’s Pasqua. In many other languages, the word for Easter is simply a transliteration of the Greek word for Easter, Pascha. English is among the exceptions. Our word, Easter, is German in origin, though we do speak of the Passion of Christ, and have Passion plays about the events of Easter.
What are the latest betting odds on the existence of God?
Can you imagine how long it would take Betfair to settle that?
Seems a conflict of interest when they are backing the other team, as it were.
What would be really depressing would be to find there is a God but that he was indeed an insecure puritanical egotistical maniac who cannot stand any dissent or non-worship of him and occasionally has strops and causes nasty things like earthquakes. He is even likely to be to be out of his creative phase as for the last 2000 year he has not even parted any seas, made people , created light or anything more original than earthquakes.
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had", Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
Four years ago my wife and I were at a Christian convention in Singapore where there were people praying for the sick. She said to me "go and ask them to pray for your tinnitus to go". I grumpily said "several people have done that already and I still have it". Her response was "well get them to pray for your little finger". (Here you need to know that, as a former 5-a-side goalkeeper, during my career I had several fingers dislocated but one of them I could only half close before it would lock). With zero expectation that anything good would come of this, apart from keeping my wife happy, i allowed the person praying to put their hand over my finger and pray for it to be healed in Jesus name. They let go of my hand and asked me to close the finger and it did. I flexed my hand, my finger and just starred at it. I could never fully close it after it had been dislocated but since then, for the last five years I have never had a problem in doing so.
Everytime I read this sort of discussion I just look at my right hand and close that finger. I don't say Darwin is wrong, I don't think the Earth was formed in Genesis timescales but I do think there is something else having an impact on our lives and I will leave it at that.
Good for you. It didn't help with my mother's cancer though.
That's what I've been saying. If we can't enforce the rules and need time to adjust then the solution is to not enforce the rules. At least originally.
That the very idea of that seems unthinkable to many people just shows why the solution is often outside the box. If people need 6 to 12 months to adjust to the rules, give it to them.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Not all Hindus do, it is not a religious festival for them and not all will do the secular festivities either
You clearly haven't met enough Indians lol, especially the second generation types like Rishi. Christmas is pretty standard, everyone does something for it, especially with kids. Even my super religious family in the US buy a tree every year and give presents etc...
Oh no, immigrants to a country adopting its customs and traditions.
Sandpit, I thought you lived in Dubai or somewhere in the ME. Surely you've seen how Muslim families celebrate Christmas too (as do many Jewish families I know in NYC).
* Xmas has become the universal non-denominational, secular religious celebration.
Xmas is formed but using the Greek letter Chi, (for Christ) combined with mass as in a religious celebration. It is actually an old way of writing Christmas, and not secular at all.
That's what I've been saying. If we can't enforce the rules and need time to adjust then the solution is to not enforce the rules. At least originally.
That the very idea of that seems unthinkable to many people just shows why the solution is often outside the box. If people need 6 to 12 months to adjust to the rules, give it to them.
Building a three or six month "implementation phase" into the agreement would seem the obvious solution, but then I'm not an expert.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Not all Hindus do, it is not a religious festival for them and not all will do the secular festivities either
You clearly haven't met enough Indians lol, especially the second generation types like Rishi. Christmas is pretty standard, everyone does something for it, especially with kids. Even my super religious family in the US buy a tree every year and give presents etc...
Oh no, immigrants to a country adopting its customs and traditions.
Some of my Jewish friends have Chanukah Bushes at this time of year
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Easter was the feast of Eostre for many pagans
No it wasn’t. ‘Easter’ is in fact from ‘East,’ referring to where Christians in Europe turned to pray.
The controversy reminds me somewhat of the equally fake claimed similarities between the Mithraic cult and Christianity, which were mostly invented by an American lunatic called Dorothy Murdock (although I did come across them many years earlier in the work of a Mary Stewart as well).
(Edit - I should note O’Neill, in that link, does argue that Easter is named from Eostre because it fell in the month of Eostre. But that’s not the general view among scholars.)
There is still a lot more evidence for eostre than jesus being born on the 25th of december and pretty sure other references than bede. Will try and dig some out. Celtic beliefs however were largely an oral tradition like many others of the time and often references are hard to find unless contemporary writers from other cultures explored them
You are moving the goalposts somewhat. I am not disputing Eostre’s existence. I am pointing out that the idea you were promoting that Easter was based on a pagan festival dedicated to her was both demonstrably false and of very recent origin.
Then you misunderstood what I was getting at I wasn't saying that christian festivals were based upon pagan festivals. What I was saying that when christians came in they usurped the times of pagan festivals and inserted their own instead. After all can't take the jollies away and we don't want them ending up celebrating ours and their own so we replace yule with christmas, samhain with All souls, eostre with easter.
And what I am pointing out to you is that that is wrong. Easter is not at the time of a pagan festival. Falling in a month named after a goddess, if that is what happened, is different, and the timing of Easter dates from long before the English name of it!
There has always been a pagan festival at spring equinox...remind me when easter is again
Up to a month later.
Easter can fall between 22 March and 25 April - 35 days in all.
Although it is true that the method of finding the date of Easter is borrowed from another religion.
In Romance languages, the connection between the Jewish and Christian holidays is explicit. The Hebrew word for Passover is Pesach. In French, Easter is Paques. In Italian it’s Pasqua. In many other languages, the word for Easter is simply a transliteration of the Greek word for Easter, Pascha. English is among the exceptions. Our word, Easter, is German in origin, though we do speak of the Passion of Christ, and have Passion plays about the events of Easter.
Pascha in Greek is itself not really a Greek word, it's just a transliteration of pesach.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Not all Hindus do, it is not a religious festival for them and not all will do the secular festivities either
You clearly haven't met enough Indians lol, especially the second generation types like Rishi. Christmas is pretty standard, everyone does something for it, especially with kids. Even my super religious family in the US buy a tree every year and give presents etc...
Oh no, immigrants to a country adopting its customs and traditions.
Some of my Jewish friends have Chanukah Bushes at this time of year
"He is of course right that Darwin destroyed any last vestige of credibility that religion ever had", Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
Four years ago my wife and I were at a Christian convention in Singapore where there were people praying for the sick. She said to me "go and ask them to pray for your tinnitus to go". I grumpily said "several people have done that already and I still have it". Her response was "well get them to pray for your little finger". (Here you need to know that, as a former 5-a-side goalkeeper, during my career I had several fingers dislocated but one of them I could only half close before it would lock). With zero expectation that anything good would come of this, apart from keeping my wife happy, i allowed the person praying to put their hand over my finger and pray for it to be healed in Jesus name. They let go of my hand and asked me to close the finger and it did. I flexed my hand, my finger and just starred at it. I could never fully close it after it had been dislocated but since then, for the last five years I have never had a problem in doing so.
Everytime I read this sort of discussion I just look at my right hand and close that finger. I don't say Darwin is wrong, I don't think the Earth was formed in Genesis timescales but I do think there is something else having an impact on our lives and I will leave it at that.
Good for you. It didn't help with my mother's cancer though.
I am sorry to hear that. Prayer often doesn't stop suffering, but can help us to bear that suffering better.
Their is a long history of theological exploration of why a loving God permits suffering. The events described in the Book of Job are really quite a bizarre exploration, for example. Starting with a bet between God and Satan that Satan couldn't shake Job's fate, and it is downhill from there...
What are the latest betting odds on the existence of God?
Can you imagine how long it would take Betfair to settle that?
Seems a conflict of interest when they are backing the other team, as it were.
What would be really depressing would be to find there is a God but that he was indeed an insecure puritanical egotistical maniac who cannot stand any dissent or non-worship of him and occasionally has strops and causes nasty things like earthquakes. He is even likely to be to be out of his creative phase as for the last 2000 year he has not even parted any seas, made people , created light or anything more original than earthquakes.
I believe we are in a simulation run by a six year old in an incredibly advanced alien civilisation who has got bored and clicked on the disaster button.
That's what I've been saying. If we can't enforce the rules and need time to adjust then the solution is to not enforce the rules. At least originally.
That the very idea of that seems unthinkable to many people just shows why the solution is often outside the box. If people need 6 to 12 months to adjust to the rules, give it to them.
Some tend to be a bit absolutist "The EU will enforce the rules, the UK won't".
I suspect both will enforce them to their own advantage. For example on passport control, UK passport holders won't be able to use EU e-gates on entering the EU, but initially EU passport holder will on entering the UK ("this is being kept under review") - which is actually more sensible.
Couple of Daily Mail front pages and that will finish.....
What are the latest betting odds on the existence of God?
Can you imagine how long it would take Betfair to settle that?
Seems a conflict of interest when they are backing the other team, as it were.
What would be really depressing would be to find there is a God but that he was indeed an insecure puritanical egotistical maniac who cannot stand any dissent or non-worship of him and occasionally has strops and causes nasty things like earthquakes. He is even likely to be to be out of his creative phase as for the last 2000 year he has not even parted any seas, made people , created light or anything more original than earthquakes.
My understanding of God is that He exists, but He starts drinking at about 11am. Once you understand that, the entire universe is explained.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Not all Hindus do, it is not a religious festival for them and not all will do the secular festivities either
You clearly haven't met enough Indians lol, especially the second generation types like Rishi. Christmas is pretty standard, everyone does something for it, especially with kids. Even my super religious family in the US buy a tree every year and give presents etc...
Oh no, immigrants to a country adopting its customs and traditions.
Sandpit, I thought you lived in Dubai or somewhere in the ME. Surely you've seen how Muslim families celebrate Christmas too (as do many Jewish families I know in NYC).
* Xmas has become the universal non-denominational, secular religious celebration.
Xmas is formed but using the Greek letter Chi, (for Christ) combined with mass as in a religious celebration. It is actually an old way of writing Christmas, and not secular at all.
I was once working in Dubai leading up to Christmas and they certainly celebrated the festive side. A huge tree in the Marriott reception and the staff singing carols every late afternoon which was one of the most endearing things I've ever seen and little gifts when I left. It was perfect
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
Easter was the feast of Eostre for many pagans
No it wasn’t. ‘Easter’ is in fact from ‘East,’ referring to where Christians in Europe turned to pray.
The controversy reminds me somewhat of the equally fake claimed similarities between the Mithraic cult and Christianity, which were mostly invented by an American lunatic called Dorothy Murdock (although I did come across them many years earlier in the work of a Mary Stewart as well).
(Edit - I should note O’Neill, in that link, does argue that Easter is named from Eostre because it fell in the month of Eostre. But that’s not the general view among scholars.)
There is still a lot more evidence for eostre than jesus being born on the 25th of december and pretty sure other references than bede. Will try and dig some out. Celtic beliefs however were largely an oral tradition like many others of the time and often references are hard to find unless contemporary writers from other cultures explored them
You are moving the goalposts somewhat. I am not disputing Eostre’s existence. I am pointing out that the idea you were promoting that Easter was based on a pagan festival dedicated to her was both demonstrably false and of very recent origin.
Then you misunderstood what I was getting at I wasn't saying that christian festivals were based upon pagan festivals. What I was saying that when christians came in they usurped the times of pagan festivals and inserted their own instead. After all can't take the jollies away and we don't want them ending up celebrating ours and their own so we replace yule with christmas, samhain with All souls, eostre with easter.
And what I am pointing out to you is that that is wrong. Easter is not at the time of a pagan festival. Falling in a month named after a goddess, if that is what happened, is different, and the timing of Easter dates from long before the English name of it!
There has always been a pagan festival at spring equinox...remind me when easter is again
Up to a month later.
Easter can fall between 22 March and 25 April - 35 days in all.
Although it is true that the method of finding the date of Easter is borrowed from another religion.
In Romance languages, the connection between the Jewish and Christian holidays is explicit. The Hebrew word for Passover is Pesach. In French, Easter is Paques. In Italian it’s Pasqua. In many other languages, the word for Easter is simply a transliteration of the Greek word for Easter, Pascha. English is among the exceptions. Our word, Easter, is German in origin, though we do speak of the Passion of Christ, and have Passion plays about the events of Easter.
Pascha in Greek is itself not really a Greek word, it's just a transliteration of pesach.
Does Richi go anywhere without his personal photographer?
Thought 1: I hope this is for Rishi himself, otherwise he's just spoilt the surprise for (at least one of) his kids. Thought 2: His kids will also now know that it's Rishi, not Santa, who buys the presents Thought 3: Unless 'kids' refers to everyone's kids and Rishi is in fact Santa?
Rishi and his wife are Hindu anyway, the family might not even celebrate Christmas.
The caption just said he was picking up presents, not that they were Christmas presents
Why do you think they might not even celebrate Christmas?
Because he's from the 17th century and thinks Christmas is Christian.
It is Christian, hence the title, the secular add ons do not change the fact it is primarily a festival to celebrate the birth of Christ
No, it's not. It's a secular holiday celebrated for thousands of years predating Christ. Just because Christians appropriated it and moved the supposed birth of Christ by months to match the preexisting festivals doesn't mean only Christians can, do or should partake.
Christmas trees and other elements have been celebrated in this continent for about 3000 years.
Christian my arse.
Oh yes it is.
There were winter festivals before and Christmas trees may have been around for centuries but Christmas ie 'CHRISTmas' is a Christian festival and always has been.
The fact your ideological, atheist, non conservative views as usual differ does not change that
What about Muslims who might celebrate it as the commemorating the birth of one of the prophets of Islam?
Some might and of course Islam is an Abrahamic religion like Christianity but it is not a Muslim festival
Christmas is also often referred to as yule or yuletide hence the yule log. Yuletide was a pagan festival long before christians dirtied these shores
And surely the 'resurrection' etymology derives from Nature in the spring, nothing to do with an Aramaic-speaking chap being executed by the Roman occupiers.
No, it represents new life and new light brought to humanity by the new-risen Son
Only for christians and yours is mainly a borrowed and copied faith. Most of the old testament comes from gilgamesh, most of jesus's teachings are copies of buddhist philosophy. Almost all of your festivals were set by committee to mimic the festivals of those people you were trying to bring under the sway of rome.
Rubbish, especially as Buddhism came from another part of the world
Ah of course where buddhism is born is so far from israel and there couldnt possibly have been buddhists travelling through the middle east. The romans were in jerusalem. They knew india etc.
Your argument that christmas is a celebration of the birth of christ falls flat because pretty much every biblical scholar doesnt think its anywhere near his birthday
If its so important to celebrate his birth why not do it on his birthday?
Outside the paranoid conspiracy theories of a number of pseudoscholars like Murdoch, Carrier, Price, Fitzgerald and Dawkins, there is no evidence whatsoever of any connection in origin between Buddhism and Christianity.
How about Catharism?
Given that that was several centuries later then even if they were influenced by Buddhism it doesn't really refute the "there is no evidence whatsoever of any connection in origin between Buddhism and Christianity" part of the statement. (My bold).
"However, in the East syncretism between Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism was widespread along the Silk Road in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and was especially pronounced in the medieval Church of the East in China, as evidenced by the Jesus Sutras.[10]"
Comments
As a school kid, I saw the 1978 Old Vic production with Eileen Atkins and Robert Eddison. It was magical.
Though A Midsummer Night's Dream might be an exception: I've seen school productions of that nearly as funny as some in the West End.
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1334221529014472705
There is such a thing as the English language and its readings.
The study, which has since been widely debunked by experts, was presented as “groundbreaking” third-party research and appeared to show that electric cars would have to travel as far as 50,000 miles before matching the carbon footprint of a petrol model.
Thursday’s report was commissioned by companies including Aston Martin, Bosch, Honda and McLaren shortly after the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, called for a ban on the sale of new fossil fuel vehicles from 2030, and presented as the work of Clarendon Communications.
But it can be revealed that the same companies that were credited with commissioning the study collaborated to write the report themselves, and the communications firm is a company registered under the name of Rebecca Stephens, who is the wife of Aston Martin’s government affairs director, James Stephens. The company was set up in February and registered to the address of a property jointly owned by the married couple.
The study was first reported in the Times, before the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, among other news publications, followed suit.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/02/aston-martin-pr-firm-anti-electric-vehicle-study
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1334240039639937026?s=20
But the truly terrifying thing, she ran for the Delaware Senate seat in November for the GOP.
https://twitter.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/1333391082743357441
Nice try. Try by science alone, explaining: Why there is something rather than nothing. How life began. What consciousness is. Where rationality comes from. How and why if there are no purposes in the universe we have evolved to have purposes and intentions.
https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1334242301204459520
https://twitter.com/ianjamesparsley/status/1334240853427187712?s=20
One of the more pathetic aspects of the legal challenges and the wider claims of fraud (since the two are not one and the same) is the pretence that certain practices that have been used for many elections should now be entirely discounted as if in themselves they are fraudulent, never mind proving there was specific fraud.
According to The Times, talks are due to centre around a change to the structure that would see clubs playing 10 different opponents in the group stage.
It would see 32 or 36 teams put together in a single division - but they would not all play each other. A random draw would throw up a team's 10 matches, all against different opponents. Five matches would be at home and five away.
Teams would then compete for points in a single league table and the top 16 clubs would go on to the knockout stages.
The last-16 ties would then be decided by the final league standings. So whoever came top of the league table would play the team that came 16th, the second would take on 15th and so on.
Those teams who finished in positions 17 to 24 would drop down into the Europa League. The rest of the teams would be eliminated.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-9008929/UEFA-propose-radical-changes-Champions-League-group-stage.html
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/dec/02/im-the-peoples-champion-tyson-fury-asks-bbc-to-take-him-off-sports-personality-of-year-list
Is that the lowest he's been on BF?
https://twitter.com/NewYorker/status/1334242707829633025?s=20
* Xmas has become the universal non-denominational, secular religious celebration.
The TL;DR of the call was this: Senator Johnson knows that Joe Biden won a free and fair election. He is refusing to admit it publicly and stoking conspiracies that undermine our democracy solely because it would be “political suicide” to oppose Trump. I find this unconscionable.
https://thebulwark.com/my-call-with-ron-johnson-he-knows-biden-won-but-wont-admit-it/
When early results from the final trials began to roll in, scientists were well prepared. Now, they face the logistical challenge of putting the vaccine to work."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/world/europe/uk-covid-vaccine-pfizer.html
So yes, I agree.
BBC News - Brexit: It's nearly now or never for UK-EU trade deal
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55167822
I don't approve of the Father Christmas story. It encourages children to believe that their parents are liars. What a start. And the tooth fairy ....
The amazing thing is that the Virgin Mary story (I was impregnated by an angel and I'm the mother of God) is still believed by so many adults. I blame their parents. It really borders on abuse.
Are we still talking about Buddhism? Or has that particular karmic energy been dissipated?
Everytime I read this sort of discussion I just look at my right hand and close that finger. I don't say Darwin is wrong, I don't think the Earth was formed in Genesis timescales but I do think there is something else having an impact on our lives and I will leave it at that.
You sound rattled about all this, I do hope you are not having Doubts. I shall add you to my prayer chain.
While I am no fan of either Sturgeon or Johnson, I have not the remotest doubt that this has weighed very heavily on them personally. There have been no "good" decisions, only "least worst" ones. Whatever they have decided, people have died, as a result of their decisions, and I've no doubt they are aware of that.
If we could manage to bear the next few months in as good humour as possible, then give Boris as frightful a whacking at the polls as is deemed necessary, we would not do badly. We will need it for the pieces that will have to be picked up.
In Romance languages, the connection between the Jewish and Christian holidays is explicit. The Hebrew word for Passover is Pesach. In French, Easter is Paques. In Italian it’s Pasqua. In many other languages, the word for Easter is simply a transliteration of the Greek word for Easter, Pascha. English is among the exceptions. Our word, Easter, is German in origin, though we do speak of the Passion of Christ, and have Passion plays about the events of Easter.
That the very idea of that seems unthinkable to many people just shows why the solution is often outside the box. If people need 6 to 12 months to adjust to the rules, give it to them.
Their is a long history of theological exploration of why a loving God permits suffering. The events described in the Book of Job are really quite a bizarre exploration, for example. Starting with a bet between God and Satan that Satan couldn't shake Job's fate, and it is downhill from there...
https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html
I suspect both will enforce them to their own advantage. For example on passport control, UK passport holders won't be able to use EU e-gates on entering the EU, but initially EU passport holder will on entering the UK ("this is being kept under review") - which is actually more sensible.
Couple of Daily Mail front pages and that will finish.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Christianity