Talking about unknowables I have now watched a few videos of the Emirates ad together with some more about the Burj Khalifa itself which feature people casually hanging onto the side of it at the very top.
How the fuckety fucking fuck do they do that and why. You wouldn't get me to do that for all the tea in China. Funniest bit? There they are carabinered onto the outside of the building 800m high and each of them is wearing a crappy helmet made out of plastic.
Redfield poll is relatively good for Starmer albeit he still has a lot more work to do.
Best PM rating is interesting: Starmer vs Johnson, 40% to 33%, Starmer vs Sunak 40% to 38%.
On that poll it makes no difference whether Sunak or Johnson is party leader then in terms of outcome, if the best PM figures are taken to roughly equate to voting intention.
It would be a hung parliament either way. Just with Johnson Labour would win most seats whereas with Sunak the Tories would win most seats but Starmer would still become PM with SNP support.
Sunak would save some Tory MPs' seats, he would not however stop a Labour government
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Dave Allen had the best response and one we should all coalesce around
May your God go with you
Perhaps sadly, Larkin surely nailed all the God stuff:
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That old moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Hm - but I'd guess(?) one of the reasons you find religion easy is that you grew up in an idiom in which believing in God was seen as a reasonable way of making sense of the world.
I didn't, really. I grew up in a going-through-the-motions idiom. We had nominally religious assemblies at primary school, but no-one really believed it. You sung a hymn and said a prayer because that's what you were told to. The teachers no more believed than the children. When a teacher who genuinely did believe turned up - and complained that by messing about we were begrudging God 20 minutes of our day - the blank incomprehension of both children and other teachers was palpable. The unspoken consensus - no, we aren't, because he doesn't exist, not really.
(I also went to Sunday school. But that was just a reason for mum and dad to have a bit of alone time. And actual church gave me the willies. Again, the sincerity gap.)
And so while I was never told there's no God, I never grew up around any sort of sincere belief that God was a thing. I'm not trying to be virtuously atheistic: my atheism is in many ways as circumstantial as others' belief. But it's just not a concept which makes any sort of sense to me personally. It's not easy to believe. It doesn't make any sort of sense. Less sense than the absolutely vast scale of the galaxy and the counter-intuitivity of quantum physics, anyway.
I find all this genuinely sad
To deny a child the wonderful gift of Faith is as bad, to me, as forcing on them some grotesque fundamentalist creed: Wahhabism or Wee Free Presbyterianism or whatever
Faith is an enormous solace, and we are hard wired for it. We are MEANT to believe. It helps you cope. There is a reason why NA and AA are the most proven and successful means of quitting major addictions, they both rely on a belief in a Higher Power. You surrender to the God that will save you. And it works. Better than fucking methadone. And I have tried both
And it works because it utilizes an algo-module already in our heads. The God module
My advice, if you are atheist but seek faith, is try ayahuasca. If it is anything like the wild shit I did in Ibiza in December you will emerge a believer
Recovering as a I am from a major bout of depression, I can attest that having the support of a friendly church is invaluable.
Very happy to hear that.
Thanks. I think the root cause of my depression was excess drinking. I've been teetotal since 1st December.
ooh, hello Sean - I was reminiscing about you (amongst others) in a discussion of early posters on pb.com the other night. Sorry to hear about your depression and pleased to hear you are now recovering. I also suffered from a bout of depression last year, and stopping drinking was part of my way out of it. I never drank particularly heavily, but I very rarely had a day without alcohol. Relieved of my depression, I did start drinking again, in a low key way, 6 months later. But I give myself far more days off than I used to.
Thanks. In my case, it was one to one and a half bottles of wine, each and every day. I think it dulled my mind to a number of problems which I'm gradually working my way through. I panicked when I first woke up to the scale of the problems.
I find it genuinely inspiring that you were a) at the stage of panicking when you woke up to the scale of your problems, and b) recovered to the stage where you are working your way back again.
That is not drinking, and the support of your church, but that is also an admirable degree of determination and self-discipline.
Many thanks. Having a supportive family is invaluable, as well. Putting up with me when I was at my lowest point (Christmas Day) must have been very difficult.
You can't create Something from Nothing. That which created Something from Nothing can reasonably be described as God (or indeed VALIS*)
*That's just a sci-fi ref for the nerds. There is indeed a God.
Something from nothing is just what happens all the time of course. It may actually be the most common phenonomon in the universe. That'd be a thing though - the most wrong ever post on PB!
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Actually, it is not a need. I was a convinced teenage atheist - utterly scornful of those who “needed” faith. I regarded it as a crutch as you do
Then I did a ton of acid and speed one night and faith kind of overwhelmed me. It erupted INTO me. I was not especially unhappy, I did not ask for it to happen, I did not require it, nor seek it, the revelation was actually quite frightening and destabilising, but also undeniable
Interestingly, the persona of God that I met age 21 on acid in Regents Park is the exact same persona I met on ayahuasca in Ibiza in December of last year, decades later. If anything, He has become more abrasive, and he was never that chummy to begin with
I had a similar teenaged view - either scorn for those that I thought needed the idea as a crutch, or wariness and antipathy to what I assumd was only acting a means of social control.
I also have a very different view now. What thing I'm certain of is that "god" in no way resembles the personage of most organised religions, or the straw man of the most ardent atheists, either.
One area that I will differ with you on is that I think there is not, and cannot, be anything most fundamentally negative about it - in fact it's its absolute opposite, by definition.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Dave Allen had the best response and one we should all coalesce around
May your God go with you
Perhaps sadly, Larkin surely nailed all the God stuff:
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That old moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die
My faith has absolutely zero to do with life-after-death
So Larkin, despite being a genius poet, is wrong here
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
As an aside, I would have thought that humans have a predilection towards belief because that conferred survival advantages. Your group, sharing beliefs, looked out for each other. Individuals that lacked that belief gene, were more likely to find themselves alone, being eaten by a lion.
Sure, but it also seems to have a special affinity for the very cruel torture and murder of outgroups - if you look at the reasons for which people get burned or boiled alive and so on, it is disproportionately for being the wrong sort of believer as opposed to doing anything particularly dreadful. This should be a worry
You just have to observe how heated the arguments on here can become to see the urgent need people have for other people to agree with them, whether it is on politics, the divine or whatever, and people will sometimes take that a bit too far. It's something science has in common with religion, as anyone who has witnessed a scientific feud will attest.
I found myself sat between two scientific luminaries at a conference dinner once, and that was a lively experience.
I think he changed name because I kept calling him out for his refusal to admit that Christmas has not been cancelled in Gibraltar.
Good choice of username then. 'Play Misty for Me' was one of Clint Eastwoods most compelling films. A forerunner of 'Fatal Attraction' about a nutter with identity issues
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Hm - but I'd guess(?) one of the reasons you find religion easy is that you grew up in an idiom in which believing in God was seen as a reasonable way of making sense of the world.
I didn't, really. I grew up in a going-through-the-motions idiom. We had nominally religious assemblies at primary school, but no-one really believed it. You sung a hymn and said a prayer because that's what you were told to. The teachers no more believed than the children. When a teacher who genuinely did believe turned up - and complained that by messing about we were begrudging God 20 minutes of our day - the blank incomprehension of both children and other teachers was palpable. The unspoken consensus - no, we aren't, because he doesn't exist, not really.
(I also went to Sunday school. But that was just a reason for mum and dad to have a bit of alone time. And actual church gave me the willies. Again, the sincerity gap.)
And so while I was never told there's no God, I never grew up around any sort of sincere belief that God was a thing. I'm not trying to be virtuously atheistic: my atheism is in many ways as circumstantial as others' belief. But it's just not a concept which makes any sort of sense to me personally. It's not easy to believe. It doesn't make any sort of sense. Less sense than the absolutely vast scale of the galaxy and the counter-intuitivity of quantum physics, anyway.
I find all this genuinely sad
To deny a child the wonderful gift of Faith is as bad, to me, as forcing on them some grotesque fundamentalist creed: Wahhabism or Wee Free Presbyterianism or whatever
Faith is an enormous solace, and we are hard wired for it. We are MEANT to believe. It helps you cope. There is a reason why NA and AA are the most proven and successful means of quitting major addictions, they both rely on a belief in a Higher Power. You surrender to the God that will save you. And it works. Better than fucking methadone. And I have tried both
And it works because it utilizes an algo-module already in our heads. The God module
My advice, if you are atheist but seek faith, is try ayahuasca. If it is anything like the wild shit I did in Ibiza in December you will emerge a believer
Recovering as a I am from a major bout of depression, I can attest that having the support of a friendly church is invaluable.
Very happy to hear that.
Thanks. I think the root cause of my depression was excess drinking. I've been teetotal since 1st December.
ooh, hello Sean - I was reminiscing about you (amongst others) in a discussion of early posters on pb.com the other night. Sorry to hear about your depression and pleased to hear you are now recovering. I also suffered from a bout of depression last year, and stopping drinking was part of my way out of it. I never drank particularly heavily, but I very rarely had a day without alcohol. Relieved of my depression, I did start drinking again, in a low key way, 6 months later. But I give myself far more days off than I used to.
Thanks. In my case, it was one to one and a half bottles of wine, each and every day. I think it dulled my mind to a number of problems which I'm gradually working my way through. I panicked when I first woke up to the scale of the problems.
I find it genuinely inspiring that you were a) at the stage of panicking when you woke up to the scale of your problems, and b) recovered to the stage where you are working your way back again.
That is not drinking, and the support of your church, but that is also an admirable degree of determination and self-discipline.
Many thanks. Having a supportive family is invaluable, as well. Putting up with me when I was at my lowest point (Christmas Day) must have been very difficult.
Good luck - and God speed!
There is, SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING, no question that religious faith and - even better - a supportive church (or NA/AA group) is the most reliably successful way out of addiction and associated depression
What an odd choice of comparison - perhaps I'm wrong but id have assumed even in the pool of voters he was swimming in Boris would not be popular.
I think Zemmour is contrarianing himself out of contention.
He is though splitting the Le Pen vote, enabling Pecresse to come through the middle to reach the runoff with Macron. Pecresse could then beat Macron if most Zemmour and Le Pen voters back her in the runoff and Melenchon voters stay home rather than vote for the President
I wouldn't take it as read that Mélenchon will win the 500 nominations (parrainages) needed to make it through to the first round. In 2017 he had the backing of the Communist Party, but this time they are fielding their own candidate, Fabien Roussel (currently polling ~4%). The PCF has over 1000 mayors, and it is mayors who make up the vast majority of the pool of potential nominators.
Marine Le Pen may not bag 500 either. Last time she stood out from the other major candidates in that most of her parrains were regional councillors, not mayors - and the FN/RN lost a lot of council seats in last year's elections.
As for Eric Zemmour, LR have been saying off the record that they'll throw some parrainages in his direction if he needs them, but a) most mayors are fairly long in the tooth and I would imagine capable of being fairly obdurate, even those who are LR-affiliated rather than independent - and this kind of fun and games would be a new venture in French politics and perhaps not as certain to be successful as some pundits seem to believe, and b) twixt cup and lip - Zemmour's finger flip in Marseilles suggests he could easily have a Gillian Duffy moment.
I'm on Anne Hidalgo (you don't get to be mayor of Paris without having a spine), because if it turns out that Mélenchon falters in the zeroth round then she's the candidate who will benefit; and on Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (currently polling ~2%) for similar reasons on the right, in case Le Pen - or less likely, Zemmour - fails to win enough nominations.
Parrains so far:
MACRON Emmanuel 529 PÉCRESSE Valérie 324 HIDALGO Anne 266 ROUSSEL Fabien 159 ARTHAUD Nathalie 138 LASSALLE Jean 124 MÉLENCHON Jean-Luc 100 JADOT Yannick 80 DUPONT-AIGNAN Nicolas 77 ZEMMOUR Éric 58 ASSELINEAU François 56 POUTOU Philippe 54 LE PEN Marine 35
Have we resolved the existence or otherwise of God and the nature of any afterlife yet?
It'd be pretty useful to get to a clear conclusion on these points, but I can't be bothered scrolling through the comments to establish if that's happened yet.
As an aside, I would have thought that humans have a predilection towards belief because that conferred survival advantages. Your group, sharing beliefs, looked out for each other. Individuals that lacked that belief gene, were more likely to find themselves alone, being eaten by a lion.
Sure, but it also seems to have a special affinity for the very cruel torture and murder of outgroups - if you look at the reasons for which people get burned or boiled alive and so on, it is disproportionately for being the wrong sort of believer as opposed to doing anything particularly dreadful. This should be a worry
You just have to observe how heated the arguments on here can become to see the urgent need people have for other people to agree with them, whether it is on politics, the divine or whatever, and people will sometimes take that a bit too far. It's something science has in common with religion, as anyone who has witnessed a scientific feud will attest.
I found myself sat between two scientific luminaries at a conference dinner once, and that was a lively experience.
Scientists waat others to agree with them but they don't want somebody claiming they agree because they thought it first! Newton v Liebnitz I think on Calculus etc
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
As I said earlier, to this atheist the discussion about faith qua faith, ie apart from its historical, artistic, social, cultural and economic influence (all super interesting of course) is a huge waste of time. I have seen Graun CiF threads which basically come down to oh yes there is oh no there isn't.
If you believe great. If you are saying that it is a failing not to believe as though your mind is not sufficiently able to comprehend god then that is interesting. A heroin trip, for example (here am I talking to you about heroin trips, next I'll be telling @Dura all about carburetors) makes one believe all sort of things. If during a heroin trip you became convinced that fire-breathing dragons existed, would it be a failure of their imagination and mental capacity if other people refused to believe that they did. .
Redfield poll is relatively good for Starmer albeit he still has a lot more work to do.
Best PM rating is interesting: Starmer vs Johnson, 40% to 33%, Starmer vs Sunak 40% to 38%.
On that poll it makes no difference whether Sunak or Johnson is party leader then in terms of outcome, if the best PM figures are taken to roughly equate to voting intention.
It would be a hung parliament either way. Just with Johnson Labour would win most seats whereas with Sunak the Tories would win most seats but Starmer would still become PM with SNP support.
Sunak would save some Tory MPs' seats, he would not however stop a Labour government
You simply cannot see the disaster that is Boris, the damage he is doing to the party and country, and by some addiction to an opinion poll you draw a conclusion that is not at all certain, but is primarily influenced by your horror that Boris is not fit to be Prime Minister
I do l ike the photo accompanying the story of Macron and Putin meeting, showing them sat alone at a table without about 25ft between them. Diplomats love visual symbolism, probably readying for a close in shot if agreement is reached.
I had been pondering what 'concession' would save face for Putin in all this, but now I'm more wondering what Macron (or anyone else) could offer by way of concession from Putin - since he insists he doesn't want to invade and is not planning to, a lack of invasion is not an official concession that can be given, so they'd need something else from him.
What an odd choice of comparison - perhaps I'm wrong but id have assumed even in the pool of voters he was swimming in Boris would not be popular.
I think Zemmour is contrarianing himself out of contention.
He is though splitting the Le Pen vote, enabling Pecresse to come through the middle to reach the runoff with Macron. Pecresse could then beat Macron if most Zemmour and Le Pen voters back her in the runoff and Melenchon voters stay home rather than vote for the President
I wouldn't take it as read that Mélenchon will win the 500 nominations (parrainages) needed to make it through to the first round. In 2017 he had the backing of the Communist Party, but this time they are fielding their own candidate, Fabien Roussel (currently polling ~4%). The PCF has over 1000 mayors, and it is mayors who make up the vast majority of the pool of potential nominators.
Marine Le Pen may not bag 500 either. Last time she stood out from the other major candidates in that most of her parrains were regional councillors, not mayors - and the FN/RN lost a lot of council seats in last year's elections.
As for Eric Zemmour, LR have been saying off the record that they'll throw some parrainages in his direction if he needs them, but a) most mayors are fairly long in the tooth and I would imagine capable of being fairly obdurate, even those who are LR-affiliated rather than independent - and this kind of fun and games would be a new venture in French politics and perhaps not as certain to be successful as some pundits seem to believe, and b) twixt cup and lip - Zemmour's finger flip in Marseilles suggests he could easily have a Gillian Duffy moment.
I'm on Anne Hidalgo (you don't get to be mayor of Paris without having a spine), because if it turns out that Mélenchon falters in the zeroth round then she's the candidate who will benefit; and on Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (currently polling ~2%) for similar reasons on the right, in case Le Pen - or less likely, Zemmour - fails to win enough nominations.
Parrains so far:
MACRON Emmanuel 529 PÉCRESSE Valérie 324 HIDALGO Anne 266 ROUSSEL Fabien 159 ARTHAUD Nathalie 138 LASSALLE Jean 124 MÉLENCHON Jean-Luc 100 JADOT Yannick 80 DUPONT-AIGNAN Nicolas 77 ZEMMOUR Éric 58 ASSELINEAU François 56 POUTOU Philippe 54 LE PEN Marine 35
Fascinating rule. Makes me wonder how Macron managed it last time as an outsider - things muyst have been really really bad for traditional parties.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Being teetotal is one thing, but cranking up the price for everyone else suggests a failure to learn one of the lessons of partygate. Which admittedly wasn't much of a thing when he did the cranking. This has to change if Sunak wants the gig.
Rishi Sunak would be only our second Prime Minister to have attended Winchester school (or "college" as posh schools style themselves). The first was Henry Addington, who made the first budget speech, and who abolished income tax by taxing beer instead. I'm sensing a theme.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
What you are talking about are qualia in philosophical jargon, in case you want to google the subject
David Goodwillie was discharged from bankruptcy days before signing for Raith Rovers without paying his victim a penny of the £100,000 court-ordered compensation.
Meanwhile, it is understood he is negotiating a pay-off of around £150,000 from Stark’s Park after the Fife club U-turned on his signing after four days of crushing criticism.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
Well, of course, many people don't see the same colours.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
As I said earlier, to this atheist the discussion about faith qua faith, ie apart from its historical, artistic, social, cultural and economic influence (all super interesting of course) is a huge waste of time. I have seen Graun CiF threads which basically come down to oh yes there is oh no there isn't.
If you believe great. If you are saying that it is a failing not to believe as though your mind is not sufficiently able to comprehend god then that is interesting. A heroin trip, for example (here am I talking to you about heroin trips, next I'll be telling @Dura all about carburetors) makes one believe all sort of things. If during a heroin trip you became convinced that fire-breathing dragons existed, would it be a failure of their imagination and mental capacity if other people refused to believe that they did.
You don’t “trip” on heroin. You are just absorbed into a cocoon of painless mild euphoria. You don’t care about anything. All anxiety and boredom is dispelled. It is a brilliant drug, in that respect, and the sensation is languorously wonderful
This is one thing that spooks me about these new synthetic opioids, if they can mimic the high of heroin but be 50 times as addictive due to a far worse withdrawal etc etc then we are fucked as a species
As an aside, I would have thought that humans have a predilection towards belief because that conferred survival advantages. Your group, sharing beliefs, looked out for each other. Individuals that lacked that belief gene, were more likely to find themselves alone, being eaten by a lion.
Sure, but it also seems to have a special affinity for the very cruel torture and murder of outgroups - if you look at the reasons for which people get burned or boiled alive and so on, it is disproportionately for being the wrong sort of believer as opposed to doing anything particularly dreadful. This should be a worry
You just have to observe how heated the arguments on here can become to see the urgent need people have for other people to agree with them, whether it is on politics, the divine or whatever, and people will sometimes take that a bit too far. It's something science has in common with religion, as anyone who has witnessed a scientific feud will attest.
I found myself sat between two scientific luminaries at a conference dinner once, and that was a lively experience.
I don't think that is right. I would go with FPNs for the imbeciles who think that it is really really important that NICs are not held in a separate fund, but burning alive - nope.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
What if we don't have enough different words for types of blue in our particular language? Would we even see the difference between cyan and aquamarine and periwinkle?
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
What you are talking about are qualia in philosophical jargon, in case you want to google the subject
And once you know that there are all sorts of helpful conclusions... Ok, so none.
You can't create Something from Nothing. That which created Something from Nothing can reasonably be described as God (or indeed VALIS*)
*That's just a sci-fi ref for the nerds. There is indeed a God.
Something from nothing is just what happens all the time of course. It may actually be the most common phenonomon in the universe. That'd be a thing though - the most wrong ever post on PB!
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Dave Allen had the best response and one we should all coalesce around
May your God go with you
Perhaps sadly, Larkin surely nailed all the God stuff:
This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That old moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die
That's a very good poem by Larkin. And I think 'faith' is indeed a response to the feelings described in it. Which is why I don't view it negatively.
Talking about unknowables I have now watched a few videos of the Emirates ad together with some more about the Burj Khalifa itself which feature people casually hanging onto the side of it at the very top.
How the fuckety fucking fuck do they do that and why. You wouldn't get me to do that for all the tea in China. Funniest bit? There they are carabinered onto the outside of the building 800m high and each of them is wearing a crappy helmet made out of plastic.
Don’t watch the videos about the window cleaners, or the guy who services the aviation lights and lightning conductor that are right at the top!
What an odd choice of comparison - perhaps I'm wrong but id have assumed even in the pool of voters he was swimming in Boris would not be popular.
I think Zemmour is contrarianing himself out of contention.
He is though splitting the Le Pen vote, enabling Pecresse to come through the middle to reach the runoff with Macron. Pecresse could then beat Macron if most Zemmour and Le Pen voters back her in the runoff and Melenchon voters stay home rather than vote for the President
I wouldn't take it as read that Mélenchon will win the 500 nominations (parrainages) needed to make it through to the first round. In 2017 he had the backing of the Communist Party, but this time they are fielding their own candidate, Fabien Roussel (currently polling ~4%). The PCF has over 1000 mayors, and it is mayors who make up the vast majority of the pool of potential nominators.
Marine Le Pen may not bag 500 either. Last time she stood out from the other major candidates in that most of her parrains were regional councillors, not mayors - and the FN/RN lost a lot of council seats in last year's elections.
As for Eric Zemmour, LR have been saying off the record that they'll throw some parrainages in his direction if he needs them, but a) most mayors are fairly long in the tooth and I would imagine capable of being fairly obdurate, even those who are LR-affiliated rather than independent - and this kind of fun and games would be a new venture in French politics and perhaps not as certain to be successful as some pundits seem to believe, and b) twixt cup and lip - Zemmour's finger flip in Marseilles suggests he could easily have a Gillian Duffy moment.
I'm on Anne Hidalgo (you don't get to be mayor of Paris without having a spine), because if it turns out that Mélenchon falters in the zeroth round then she's the candidate who will benefit; and on Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (currently polling ~2%) for similar reasons on the right, in case Le Pen - or less likely, Zemmour - fails to win enough nominations.
Parrains so far:
MACRON Emmanuel 529 PÉCRESSE Valérie 324 HIDALGO Anne 266 ROUSSEL Fabien 159 ARTHAUD Nathalie 138 LASSALLE Jean 124 MÉLENCHON Jean-Luc 100 JADOT Yannick 80 DUPONT-AIGNAN Nicolas 77 ZEMMOUR Éric 58 ASSELINEAU François 56 POUTOU Philippe 54 LE PEN Marine 35
Fascinating rule. Makes me wonder how Macron managed it last time as an outsider - things muyst have been really really bad for traditional parties.
Initially he leveraged the base of the Socialist Party and then picked up support from LR when his bandwaggon got rolling. The majority of the first batch of signatures he got were from the left.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Ummm.
I find this a curious argument.
Let me explain. With so many stars in the Universe, it seems almost incredibly unlikely that intelligent life does not exist somewhere out there.
But do the aliens of Phobos B 13 share the same God as us? Do they look like us? Do they have a story of a being pinned to a cross?
If we are alone in the Universe, I would think that pretty much guarantees the existence of God, who created man in his image. It would be a Universe that existed just for us.
But it we are not, then who is to say that the beings of Althos XII are not the ones whose creation story (whatever that might be) is right?
Yep.
The Church has consistently been a block to the advance of science and I suspect that when humans eventually encounter intelligent life out there it will shatter the faith of many believers. Certainly Christianity anyway. Islam is in a marginally better position because it doesn't believe any single human being was (is) God incarnate ... which is so ludicrous as to be laughable.
Buddhism will remain as cool as ever.
Has it? Some of the greatest scientists of all time eg Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel were very religious.
I don't see how encountering alien life or not has the slightest impact on whether Jesus Christ was the son of God and the Messiah or not, there are 7 billion humans on earth, Christ was only a middle eastern man. He came to save humanity whether or not there are aliens or not or whether or not he also saved them is completely irrelevant to that for me as a Christian. Not that we have encountered any aliens yet anyway
Never really understood how he saved us. It would be nice if 100% of the evidence were not self-made. I would guess that at least 100s of millions have died a markedly nastier death than his as a direct result of his teachings, and without the consolation of the knowledge/manic delusion they were Saving All Mankind, so where that leaves us I am not sure.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
What if we don't have enough different words for types of blue in our particular language? Would we even see the difference between cyan and aquamarine and periwinkle?
Some Amazonian languages only have a present tense. There is absolutely no sense of a past or a future.
“We are gathering honey”. “Look at the moon. Moon.” “Now you have opened my soft thighs and you are fucking me”.
A dizzyingly different way of being human. It might in some ways be better. After all, we are told constantly it is better to live in the moment, These Amazonian blokes don’t stop fucking each other to go on their iPhones and temporally memorialize the moment on Instagram for likes
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
I have absolutely no doubt he does and not only that, he has never been known to accept he is wrong
Talking about unknowables I have now watched a few videos of the Emirates ad together with some more about the Burj Khalifa itself which feature people casually hanging onto the side of it at the very top.
How the fuckety fucking fuck do they do that and why. You wouldn't get me to do that for all the tea in China. Funniest bit? There they are carabinered onto the outside of the building 800m high and each of them is wearing a crappy helmet made out of plastic.
Don’t watch the videos about the window cleaners, or the guy who services the aviation lights and lightning conductor that are right at the top!
Here's John Noakes helping to clean Nelson's Column. They don't make TV presenters like they used to.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Ummm.
I find this a curious argument.
Let me explain. With so many stars in the Universe, it seems almost incredibly unlikely that intelligent life does not exist somewhere out there.
But do the aliens of Phobos B 13 share the same God as us? Do they look like us? Do they have a story of a being pinned to a cross?
If we are alone in the Universe, I would think that pretty much guarantees the existence of God, who created man in his image. It would be a Universe that existed just for us.
But it we are not, then who is to say that the beings of Althos XII are not the ones whose creation story (whatever that might be) is right?
Yep.
The Church has consistently been a block to the advance of science and I suspect that when humans eventually encounter intelligent life out there it will shatter the faith of many believers. Certainly Christianity anyway. Islam is in a marginally better position because it doesn't believe any single human being was (is) God incarnate ... which is so ludicrous as to be laughable.
Buddhism will remain as cool as ever.
Has it? Some of the greatest scientists of all time eg Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel were very religious.
I don't see how encountering alien life or not has the slightest impact on whether Jesus Christ was the son of God and the Messiah or not, there are 7 billion humans on earth, Christ was only a middle eastern man. He came to save humanity whether or not there are aliens or not or whether or not he also saved them is completely irrelevant to that for me as a Christian. Not that we have encountered any aliens yet anyway
Never really understood how he saved us. It would be nice if 100% of the evidence were not self-made. I would guess that at least 100s of millions have died a markedly nastier death than his as a direct result of his teachings, and without the consolation of the knowledge/manic delusion they were Saving All Mankind, so where that leaves us I am not sure.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Hm - but I'd guess(?) one of the reasons you find religion easy is that you grew up in an idiom in which believing in God was seen as a reasonable way of making sense of the world.
I didn't, really. I grew up in a going-through-the-motions idiom. We had nominally religious assemblies at primary school, but no-one really believed it. You sung a hymn and said a prayer because that's what you were told to. The teachers no more believed than the children. When a teacher who genuinely did believe turned up - and complained that by messing about we were begrudging God 20 minutes of our day - the blank incomprehension of both children and other teachers was palpable. The unspoken consensus - no, we aren't, because he doesn't exist, not really.
(I also went to Sunday school. But that was just a reason for mum and dad to have a bit of alone time. And actual church gave me the willies. Again, the sincerity gap.)
And so while I was never told there's no God, I never grew up around any sort of sincere belief that God was a thing. I'm not trying to be virtuously atheistic: my atheism is in many ways as circumstantial as others' belief. But it's just not a concept which makes any sort of sense to me personally. It's not easy to believe. It doesn't make any sort of sense. Less sense than the absolutely vast scale of the galaxy and the counter-intuitivity of quantum physics, anyway.
I find all this genuinely sad
To deny a child the wonderful gift of Faith is as bad, to me, as forcing on them some grotesque fundamentalist creed: Wahhabism or Wee Free Presbyterianism or whatever
Faith is an enormous solace, and we are hard wired for it. We are MEANT to believe. It helps you cope. There is a reason why NA and AA are the most proven and successful means of quitting major addictions, they both rely on a belief in a Higher Power. You surrender to the God that will save you. And it works. Better than fucking methadone. And I have tried both
And it works because it utilizes an algo-module already in our heads. The God module
My advice, if you are atheist but seek faith, is try ayahuasca. If it is anything like the wild shit I did in Ibiza in December you will emerge a believer
I don't think I was denied faith. My parents are, I think, atheists, though it's not a thing we've ever discussed - but they've certainly never tried to pass on their atheism. I dutifully encountered religion at school. But it was never terribly convincing, and the few people I met who were genuinely and outwardly convinced of God were all rather odd.
Even as far back as the 1970s, religion in mainstream urban Britain was - well, not exactly sidelined, but an anachronism we persisted with but weren't entirely sure why - like soup spoons or ties.
I agree we have a god module in our heads though. There's an evolutionary biologist whose name now escapes me who is quite interesting on that - his view is that tribes which 'did' religion thrived, because they reinforced group identity - and thus outcompeted those tribes which did not, and those without the god module.
I don't really seek faith - it strikes me as an inconvenience and a potential source of unwanted existential terror - but I am interested in it. I am an atheist, but that it is a statement of fact rather than an angry badge of identity, and I am genuinely curious about religious belief.
Could the experience of ayahuasca not equally well make you think 'I have taken a hallucinogenic drug which is having strange effects on my brain'?
That's very similar to my view. And I really think it's important to note that what I have is absence of belief, not belief of absence. I don't go around actively disbelieving in God - which is what so many religious people seem to think atheists do (and I guess in the case of Dawkins, it's true) - I simply don't have any active belief in him.
Sky just reporting on the Guto - Boris first meeting and the sing song 'I will survive'
Jon Craig is openly mocking them live on Sky
It is sickening and if his mps think this is a good look and evidence of change then they are world champions at mistaking the view in the country
Type those letters tonight and end this embarrassment
i hope he did not try and dance to . Imagine that going to work on your first day and your boss starts singing I will survive to you and starts jiving. How David Brent can you get?
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
It's fascinating to learn atheism combines with contempt for the nation's history. I must have misremembered so many of my own posts.
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
Talking about unknowables I have now watched a few videos of the Emirates ad together with some more about the Burj Khalifa itself which feature people casually hanging onto the side of it at the very top.
How the fuckety fucking fuck do they do that and why. You wouldn't get me to do that for all the tea in China. Funniest bit? There they are carabinered onto the outside of the building 800m high and each of them is wearing a crappy helmet made out of plastic.
I don't know if I'm just an oddity, but I have pretty much no fear of heights, but a very definte fear of falling. I'd happily hang off the side of that tower if attached to a safety rope, I think - never been that high, but have done climbs/abseils at 100m or more. But I'm not all that happy about getting up to roof level on my two storey house on a ladder, which is -what? - 5m or so.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
I have absolutely no doubt he does and not only that, he has never been known to accept he is wrong
Not true. He did admit he made a mistake a few days back (writing that the Scottish Army had allied with the Parliament against Cromwell, or something of the sort), and again in a discussion with @ydoethur .
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
As I said earlier, to this atheist the discussion about faith qua faith, ie apart from its historical, artistic, social, cultural and economic influence (all super interesting of course) is a huge waste of time. I have seen Graun CiF threads which basically come down to oh yes there is oh no there isn't.
If you believe great. If you are saying that it is a failing not to believe as though your mind is not sufficiently able to comprehend god then that is interesting. A heroin trip, for example (here am I talking to you about heroin trips, next I'll be telling @Dura all about carburetors) makes one believe all sort of things. If during a heroin trip you became convinced that fire-breathing dragons existed, would it be a failure of their imagination and mental capacity if other people refused to believe that they did.
You don’t “trip” on heroin. You are just absorbed into a cocoon of painless mild euphoria. You don’t care about anything. All anxiety and boredom is dispelled. It is a brilliant drug, in that respect, and the sensation is languorously wonderful
This is one thing that spooks me about these new synthetic opioids, if they can mimic the high of heroin but be 50 times as addictive due to a far worse withdrawal etc etc then we are fucked as a species
Yeah having come to opiates late in life and from the NHS they are the most wonderful comfort drug, but I don't get the whole edgy philosophical cathedral of cool built by the likes of Lou Reed on them. OTOH you don't really enjoy cigarettes properly until you are addicted to them, so I imagine it's that plus the illegality.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Hm - but I'd guess(?) one of the reasons you find religion easy is that you grew up in an idiom in which believing in God was seen as a reasonable way of making sense of the world.
I didn't, really. I grew up in a going-through-the-motions idiom. We had nominally religious assemblies at primary school, but no-one really believed it. You sung a hymn and said a prayer because that's what you were told to. The teachers no more believed than the children. When a teacher who genuinely did believe turned up - and complained that by messing about we were begrudging God 20 minutes of our day - the blank incomprehension of both children and other teachers was palpable. The unspoken consensus - no, we aren't, because he doesn't exist, not really.
(I also went to Sunday school. But that was just a reason for mum and dad to have a bit of alone time. And actual church gave me the willies. Again, the sincerity gap.)
And so while I was never told there's no God, I never grew up around any sort of sincere belief that God was a thing. I'm not trying to be virtuously atheistic: my atheism is in many ways as circumstantial as others' belief. But it's just not a concept which makes any sort of sense to me personally. It's not easy to believe. It doesn't make any sort of sense. Less sense than the absolutely vast scale of the galaxy and the counter-intuitivity of quantum physics, anyway.
I find all this genuinely sad
To deny a child the wonderful gift of Faith is as bad, to me, as forcing on them some grotesque fundamentalist creed: Wahhabism or Wee Free Presbyterianism or whatever
Faith is an enormous solace, and we are hard wired for it. We are MEANT to believe. It helps you cope. There is a reason why NA and AA are the most proven and successful means of quitting major addictions, they both rely on a belief in a Higher Power. You surrender to the God that will save you. And it works. Better than fucking methadone. And I have tried both
And it works because it utilizes an algo-module already in our heads. The God module
My advice, if you are atheist but seek faith, is try ayahuasca. If it is anything like the wild shit I did in Ibiza in December you will emerge a believer
I don't think I was denied faith. My parents are, I think, atheists, though it's not a thing we've ever discussed - but they've certainly never tried to pass on their atheism. I dutifully encountered religion at school. But it was never terribly convincing, and the few people I met who were genuinely and outwardly convinced of God were all rather odd.
Even as far back as the 1970s, religion in mainstream urban Britain was - well, not exactly sidelined, but an anachronism we persisted with but weren't entirely sure why - like soup spoons or ties.
I agree we have a god module in our heads though. There's an evolutionary biologist whose name now escapes me who is quite interesting on that - his view is that tribes which 'did' religion thrived, because they reinforced group identity - and thus outcompeted those tribes which did not, and those without the god module.
I don't really seek faith - it strikes me as an inconvenience and a potential source of unwanted existential terror - but I am interested in it. I am an atheist, but that it is a statement of fact rather than an angry badge of identity, and I am genuinely curious about religious belief.
Could the experience of ayahuasca not equally well make you think 'I have taken a hallucinogenic drug which is having strange effects on my brain'?
That's very similar to my view. And I really think it's important to note that what I have is absence of belief, not belief of absence. I don't go around actively disbelieving in God - which is what so many religious people seem to think atheists do (and I guess in the case of Dawkins, it's true) - I simply don't have any active belief in him.
Do you believe in Truth? I.e. that there is a correct scientific explanation for things, even if our current level of understanding is not able to grasp every detail of it?
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Ummm.
I find this a curious argument.
Let me explain. With so many stars in the Universe, it seems almost incredibly unlikely that intelligent life does not exist somewhere out there.
But do the aliens of Phobos B 13 share the same God as us? Do they look like us? Do they have a story of a being pinned to a cross?
If we are alone in the Universe, I would think that pretty much guarantees the existence of God, who created man in his image. It would be a Universe that existed just for us.
But it we are not, then who is to say that the beings of Althos XII are not the ones whose creation story (whatever that might be) is right?
Yep.
The Church has consistently been a block to the advance of science and I suspect that when humans eventually encounter intelligent life out there it will shatter the faith of many believers. Certainly Christianity anyway. Islam is in a marginally better position because it doesn't believe any single human being was (is) God incarnate ... which is so ludicrous as to be laughable.
Buddhism will remain as cool as ever.
Has it? Some of the greatest scientists of all time eg Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel were very religious.
I don't see how encountering alien life or not has the slightest impact on whether Jesus Christ was the son of God and the Messiah or not, there are 7 billion humans on earth, Christ was only a middle eastern man. He came to save humanity whether or not there are aliens or not or whether or not he also saved them is completely irrelevant to that for me as a Christian. Not that we have encountered any aliens yet anyway
Never really understood how he saved us. It would be nice if 100% of the evidence were not self-made. I would guess that at least 100s of millions have died a markedly nastier death than his as a direct result of his teachings, and without the consolation of the knowledge/manic delusion they were Saving All Mankind, so where that leaves us I am not sure.
He saved us from a fate we learned about from him (and from his predecessor faith). I recall an old gag about missionaries and how the first thing they had to teach was people to feel shame for something, then to teach how to take that shame away
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Hm - but I'd guess(?) one of the reasons you find religion easy is that you grew up in an idiom in which believing in God was seen as a reasonable way of making sense of the world.
I didn't, really. I grew up in a going-through-the-motions idiom. We had nominally religious assemblies at primary school, but no-one really believed it. You sung a hymn and said a prayer because that's what you were told to. The teachers no more believed than the children. When a teacher who genuinely did believe turned up - and complained that by messing about we were begrudging God 20 minutes of our day - the blank incomprehension of both children and other teachers was palpable. The unspoken consensus - no, we aren't, because he doesn't exist, not really.
(I also went to Sunday school. But that was just a reason for mum and dad to have a bit of alone time. And actual church gave me the willies. Again, the sincerity gap.)
And so while I was never told there's no God, I never grew up around any sort of sincere belief that God was a thing. I'm not trying to be virtuously atheistic: my atheism is in many ways as circumstantial as others' belief. But it's just not a concept which makes any sort of sense to me personally. It's not easy to believe. It doesn't make any sort of sense. Less sense than the absolutely vast scale of the galaxy and the counter-intuitivity of quantum physics, anyway.
I find all this genuinely sad
To deny a child the wonderful gift of Faith is as bad, to me, as forcing on them some grotesque fundamentalist creed: Wahhabism or Wee Free Presbyterianism or whatever
Faith is an enormous solace, and we are hard wired for it. We are MEANT to believe. It helps you cope. There is a reason why NA and AA are the most proven and successful means of quitting major addictions, they both rely on a belief in a Higher Power. You surrender to the God that will save you. And it works. Better than fucking methadone. And I have tried both
And it works because it utilizes an algo-module already in our heads. The God module
My advice, if you are atheist but seek faith, is try ayahuasca. If it is anything like the wild shit I did in Ibiza in December you will emerge a believer
I don't think I was denied faith. My parents are, I think, atheists, though it's not a thing we've ever discussed - but they've certainly never tried to pass on their atheism. I dutifully encountered religion at school. But it was never terribly convincing, and the few people I met who were genuinely and outwardly convinced of God were all rather odd.
Even as far back as the 1970s, religion in mainstream urban Britain was - well, not exactly sidelined, but an anachronism we persisted with but weren't entirely sure why - like soup spoons or ties.
I agree we have a god module in our heads though. There's an evolutionary biologist whose name now escapes me who is quite interesting on that - his view is that tribes which 'did' religion thrived, because they reinforced group identity - and thus outcompeted those tribes which did not, and those without the god module.
I don't really seek faith - it strikes me as an inconvenience and a potential source of unwanted existential terror - but I am interested in it. I am an atheist, but that it is a statement of fact rather than an angry badge of identity, and I am genuinely curious about religious belief.
Could the experience of ayahuasca not equally well make you think 'I have taken a hallucinogenic drug which is having strange effects on my brain'?
That's very similar to my view. And I really think it's important to note that what I have is absence of belief, not belief of absence. I don't go around actively disbelieving in God - which is what so many religious people seem to think atheists do (and I guess in the case of Dawkins, it's true) - I simply don't have any active belief in him.
i would say that, based on your description, you're an agnostic, not an atheist. And that the difference between absence of belief and belief of absence is the dividing line between the two.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
What if we don't have enough different words for types of blue in our particular language? Would we even see the difference between cyan and aquamarine and periwinkle?
The Chinese have no distinction between green and brown. It is all Ching dz. Literally nature coloured. Teaching colours in English to toddlers there is somewhat challenging.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
It's fascinating to learn atheism combines with contempt for the nation's history. I must have misremembered so many of my own posts.
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
China isn't atheist anyway. It's true that the majority of people do not believe in a creed, defined by a religious hierarchy, but they're not atheist.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Hm - but I'd guess(?) one of the reasons you find religion easy is that you grew up in an idiom in which believing in God was seen as a reasonable way of making sense of the world.
I didn't, really. I grew up in a going-through-the-motions idiom. We had nominally religious assemblies at primary school, but no-one really believed it. You sung a hymn and said a prayer because that's what you were told to. The teachers no more believed than the children. When a teacher who genuinely did believe turned up - and complained that by messing about we were begrudging God 20 minutes of our day - the blank incomprehension of both children and other teachers was palpable. The unspoken consensus - no, we aren't, because he doesn't exist, not really.
(I also went to Sunday school. But that was just a reason for mum and dad to have a bit of alone time. And actual church gave me the willies. Again, the sincerity gap.)
And so while I was never told there's no God, I never grew up around any sort of sincere belief that God was a thing. I'm not trying to be virtuously atheistic: my atheism is in many ways as circumstantial as others' belief. But it's just not a concept which makes any sort of sense to me personally. It's not easy to believe. It doesn't make any sort of sense. Less sense than the absolutely vast scale of the galaxy and the counter-intuitivity of quantum physics, anyway.
I find all this genuinely sad
To deny a child the wonderful gift of Faith is as bad, to me, as forcing on them some grotesque fundamentalist creed: Wahhabism or Wee Free Presbyterianism or whatever
Faith is an enormous solace, and we are hard wired for it. We are MEANT to believe. It helps you cope. There is a reason why NA and AA are the most proven and successful means of quitting major addictions, they both rely on a belief in a Higher Power. You surrender to the God that will save you. And it works. Better than fucking methadone. And I have tried both
And it works because it utilizes an algo-module already in our heads. The God module
My advice, if you are atheist but seek faith, is try ayahuasca. If it is anything like the wild shit I did in Ibiza in December you will emerge a believer
I don't think I was denied faith. My parents are, I think, atheists, though it's not a thing we've ever discussed - but they've certainly never tried to pass on their atheism. I dutifully encountered religion at school. But it was never terribly convincing, and the few people I met who were genuinely and outwardly convinced of God were all rather odd.
Even as far back as the 1970s, religion in mainstream urban Britain was - well, not exactly sidelined, but an anachronism we persisted with but weren't entirely sure why - like soup spoons or ties.
I agree we have a god module in our heads though. There's an evolutionary biologist whose name now escapes me who is quite interesting on that - his view is that tribes which 'did' religion thrived, because they reinforced group identity - and thus outcompeted those tribes which did not, and those without the god module.
I don't really seek faith - it strikes me as an inconvenience and a potential source of unwanted existential terror - but I am interested in it. I am an atheist, but that it is a statement of fact rather than an angry badge of identity, and I am genuinely curious about religious belief.
Just started reading Dominion, which seems like it will be quite interesting, since as an atheist it doesn't seem unlikely to me that it might well be true (as Holland says in the opening) that our present culture can underestimate the impact of Christianity and its development on some pretty basic elements of our culture, which inclines to dimiss religious influences.
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
speaking of colours I always find it fascinating that we have no way of knowing or experimenting to show that the "red" I see when I see say a tomato is the same "red" as somebody else is seeing. For all anyone knows somebody else could be seeing my "blue" when they see a tomato . They just call it red like I do because thats the colour of a tomato or a fire when in reality humans maybe see all sorts of different colours for the same thing. How do we ever know?
What you are talking about are qualia in philosophical jargon, in case you want to google the subject
And once you know that there are all sorts of helpful conclusions... Ok, so none.
It was Kingsley Amis who nailed the fallacy that giving something a Latin name is the same thing as explaining it. "Why is that monk floating unsupported in mid air, mummy?" "That's called levitation, darling."
I think too that Leon's need for belief in God, if not the need to diss those who don't need him, rests more on what he has written about his own battles for wellbeing. And therefore I shall leave my input there.
If religion helps your mental health and wellbeing then that's fine. Just keep it to yourself and don't diss those who don't feel the need for it in the same way.
Agree although it is also a factor that people need to denigrate the beliefs of others "something something of a middlebrow mind..." to try to justify their own beliefs.
Good luck to everyone, frankly. We'll all find our soon enough although given that this is a betting site I can understand why people take the Pascal route...
Yes, you are right. the “middlebrow” remark was me cheerfully spoiling for a fight, and that is unseemly in this regard. I apologise to the forum
What I was trying to say (before my testosterone got in the way) was that there really is a kind of atheism which just does not grasp WHY people believe, because the atheist mind lacks….. something. It’s not brains. Some of the smartest people in the world are atheist. Hell, possibly a majority.
But trying to explain faith to an atheist is like trying to explain “red” to a blind person. They just lack the faculty. It is no one’s fault.
As I said earlier, to this atheist the discussion about faith qua faith, ie apart from its historical, artistic, social, cultural and economic influence (all super interesting of course) is a huge waste of time. I have seen Graun CiF threads which basically come down to oh yes there is oh no there isn't.
If you believe great. If you are saying that it is a failing not to believe as though your mind is not sufficiently able to comprehend god then that is interesting. A heroin trip, for example (here am I talking to you about heroin trips, next I'll be telling @Dura all about carburetors) makes one believe all sort of things. If during a heroin trip you became convinced that fire-breathing dragons existed, would it be a failure of their imagination and mental capacity if other people refused to believe that they did.
You don’t “trip” on heroin. You are just absorbed into a cocoon of painless mild euphoria. You don’t care about anything. All anxiety and boredom is dispelled. It is a brilliant drug, in that respect, and the sensation is languorously wonderful
This is one thing that spooks me about these new synthetic opioids, if they can mimic the high of heroin but be 50 times as addictive due to a far worse withdrawal etc etc then we are fucked as a species
Yeah having come to opiates late in life and from the NHS they are the most wonderful comfort drug, but I don't get the whole edgy philosophical cathedral of cool built by the likes of Lou Reed on them. OTOH you don't really enjoy cigarettes properly until you are addicted to them, so I imagine it's that plus the illegality.
Shelley, Byron and others might have been having slightly different experiences on opium itself, though. That is the origin of a lot of the mythology.
Talking about unknowables I have now watched a few videos of the Emirates ad together with some more about the Burj Khalifa itself which feature people casually hanging onto the side of it at the very top.
How the fuckety fucking fuck do they do that and why. You wouldn't get me to do that for all the tea in China. Funniest bit? There they are carabinered onto the outside of the building 800m high and each of them is wearing a crappy helmet made out of plastic.
Don’t watch the videos about the window cleaners, or the guy who services the aviation lights and lightning conductor that are right at the top!
Here's John Noakes helping to clean Nelson's Column. They don't make TV presenters like they used to.
Ha, I remember watching that as a youngster. No safety ropes, wooden ladders lashed each other and to the side of the column.
Favourite comment from under that video: “2021: certified high angle training people, documented and inventoried person rated ropes with logs and expiry dates, hard toed boots, hi-visibility vests, hard climbers hats with chin straps, latex gloves and respirators, regulation leather gloves, safety supervisor, traffic control, first aid personnel standby, safety glasses, weather and wind monitors, redundant ropes, certified safety harnesses with rated carabiners...
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
Hm - but I'd guess(?) one of the reasons you find religion easy is that you grew up in an idiom in which believing in God was seen as a reasonable way of making sense of the world.
I didn't, really. I grew up in a going-through-the-motions idiom. We had nominally religious assemblies at primary school, but no-one really believed it. You sung a hymn and said a prayer because that's what you were told to. The teachers no more believed than the children. When a teacher who genuinely did believe turned up - and complained that by messing about we were begrudging God 20 minutes of our day - the blank incomprehension of both children and other teachers was palpable. The unspoken consensus - no, we aren't, because he doesn't exist, not really.
(I also went to Sunday school. But that was just a reason for mum and dad to have a bit of alone time. And actual church gave me the willies. Again, the sincerity gap.)
And so while I was never told there's no God, I never grew up around any sort of sincere belief that God was a thing. I'm not trying to be virtuously atheistic: my atheism is in many ways as circumstantial as others' belief. But it's just not a concept which makes any sort of sense to me personally. It's not easy to believe. It doesn't make any sort of sense. Less sense than the absolutely vast scale of the galaxy and the counter-intuitivity of quantum physics, anyway.
I find all this genuinely sad
To deny a child the wonderful gift of Faith is as bad, to me, as forcing on them some grotesque fundamentalist creed: Wahhabism or Wee Free Presbyterianism or whatever
Faith is an enormous solace, and we are hard wired for it. We are MEANT to believe. It helps you cope. There is a reason why NA and AA are the most proven and successful means of quitting major addictions, they both rely on a belief in a Higher Power. You surrender to the God that will save you. And it works. Better than fucking methadone. And I have tried both
And it works because it utilizes an algo-module already in our heads. The God module
My advice, if you are atheist but seek faith, is try ayahuasca. If it is anything like the wild shit I did in Ibiza in December you will emerge a believer
I don't think I was denied faith. My parents are, I think, atheists, though it's not a thing we've ever discussed - but they've certainly never tried to pass on their atheism. I dutifully encountered religion at school. But it was never terribly convincing, and the few people I met who were genuinely and outwardly convinced of God were all rather odd.
Even as far back as the 1970s, religion in mainstream urban Britain was - well, not exactly sidelined, but an anachronism we persisted with but weren't entirely sure why - like soup spoons or ties.
I agree we have a god module in our heads though. There's an evolutionary biologist whose name now escapes me who is quite interesting on that - his view is that tribes which 'did' religion thrived, because they reinforced group identity - and thus outcompeted those tribes which did not, and those without the god module.
I don't really seek faith - it strikes me as an inconvenience and a potential source of unwanted existential terror - but I am interested in it. I am an atheist, but that it is a statement of fact rather than an angry badge of identity, and I am genuinely curious about religious belief.
Could the experience of ayahuasca not equally well make you think 'I have taken a hallucinogenic drug which is having strange effects on my brain'?
That's very similar to my view. And I really think it's important to note that what I have is absence of belief, not belief of absence. I don't go around actively disbelieving in God - which is what so many religious people seem to think atheists do (and I guess in the case of Dawkins, it's true) - I simply don't have any active belief in him.
Do you believe in Truth? I.e. that there is a correct scientific explanation for things, even if our current level of understanding is not able to grasp every detail of it?
I believe that most people are mostly reasonable most of the time.
Talking about unknowables I have now watched a few videos of the Emirates ad together with some more about the Burj Khalifa itself which feature people casually hanging onto the side of it at the very top.
How the fuckety fucking fuck do they do that and why. You wouldn't get me to do that for all the tea in China. Funniest bit? There they are carabinered onto the outside of the building 800m high and each of them is wearing a crappy helmet made out of plastic.
The helmet is for falling debris.
Had a very near miss on Stac Pollaidh dislodging rock onto a friend.
I see the Captain Tom Foundation made over £1m last year, but only donated £160k.
Another £160k was consumed in “management fees”.
And to think, someone was convicted (in Scotland) of sending a “grossly offensive” tweet about the dead Captain.
A tweet which, by the way, was far less offensive than Jimmy Carr’s joke about killing gypsies.
16% is not the lowest ratio of charitable work & donations performed by a charity. There are charities where the charitable bit is not visible using a state of the art microscope.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
It's fascinating to learn atheism combines with contempt for the nation's history. I must have misremembered so many of my own posts.
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
No. No no no. HYUFD is absolutely right. Atheism really does, very often, combine with contempt for a nation’s history
This is partly because nearly all societies have been religious until at least the late 19th, 20th centuries, but it is still true
The MOST atheistic societies have generally been the most destructive of their own past. The great example is Pol Pot’s Cambodia, which was so atheist it burned down all the temples it found and threw every single Buddhist monk into the sea. It was so atheist it destroyed every single person who knew how to do “sacred Cambodian dance” - one of the great traditions of Indochina before the Khmer Rouge - to the extent that when the atheist commies were finally overthrown there was no one left who knew how to dance. They have had to resurrect it from scratch and a few documents and videos, tricky with a tradition that was handed down over centuries, orally and practically not via written instructions
Another example. The French Revolutionaries stripped bare all their churches and cathedrals, scars that are still highly visible today. A French church is generally much less interesting inside than an English or Italian church, precisely because the French s church was scoured by atheists
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
It's fascinating to learn atheism combines with contempt for the nation's history. I must have misremembered so many of my own posts.
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
No. No no no. HYUFD is absolutely right. Atheism really does, very often, combine with contempt for a nation’s history
This is partly because nearly all societies have been religious until at least the late 19th, 20th centuries, but it is still true
The MOST atheistic societies have generally been the most destructive of their own past. The great example is Pol Pot’s Cambodia, which was so atheist it burned down all the temples it found and threw every single Buddhist monk into the sea. It was so atheist it destroyed every single person who knew how to do “sacred Cambodian dance” - one of the great traditions of Indochina before the Khmer Rouge - to the extent that when the atheist commies were finally overthrown there was no one left who knew how to dance. They have had to resurrect it from scratch and a few documents and videos, tricky with a tradition that was handed down over centuries, orally and practically not via written instructions
Another example. The French Revolutionaries stripped bare all their churches and cathedrals, scars that are still highly visible today. A French church is generally much less interesting inside than an English or Italian church, precisely because the French s church was scoured by atheists
See also Mao’s China, and so on
Well I grant you, as an atheist, that militant atheists can be among the worst arseholes.
So we can deduce, from all those polls that Labour are drifting slightly upwards, the Conservative, LibDems and Greens slightly downwards. What I would like to see is the percentage of those who said they genuinely didn't know, at this point in time, how they were likely to vote next time.
I see the Captain Tom Foundation made over £1m last year, but only donated £160k.
Another £160k was consumed in “management fees”.
And to think, someone was convicted (in Scotland) of sending a “grossly offensive” tweet about the dead Captain.
A tweet which, by the way, was far less offensive than Jimmy Carr’s joke about killing gypsies.
16% is not the lowest ratio of charitable work & donations performed by a charity. There are charities where the charitable bit is not visible using a state of the art microscope.
Yes. For example, most private schools.
Not sure the comparison is fair. Most private schools will be in more or less a steady state, covid and Brexit apart, but the Captain Tom Foundation is new, so maybe they are building up a reserve for future payments. Capital investment for annual dividends.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
It's fascinating to learn atheism combines with contempt for the nation's history. I must have misremembered so many of my own posts.
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
No. No no no. HYUFD is absolutely right. Atheism really does, very often, combine with contempt for a nation’s history
This is partly because nearly all societies have been religious until at least the late 19th, 20th centuries, but it is still true
The MOST atheistic societies have generally been the most destructive of their own past. The great example is Pol Pot’s Cambodia, which was so atheist it burned down all the temples it found and threw every single Buddhist monk into the sea. It was so atheist it destroyed every single person who knew how to do “sacred Cambodian dance” - one of the great traditions of Indochina before the Khmer Rouge - to the extent that when the atheist commies were finally overthrown there was no one left who knew how to dance. They have had to resurrect it from scratch and a few documents and videos, tricky with a tradition that was handed down over centuries, orally and practically not via written instructions
Another example. The French Revolutionaries stripped bare all their churches and cathedrals, scars that are still highly visible today. A French church is generally much less interesting inside than an English or Italian church, precisely because the French s church was scoured by atheists
See also Mao’s China, and so on
The choice, though, doesn't have to be between restrictive and very outspoken atheism on the one hand , and strict and dogmatic established religion on the other. We've somewhat fallen into that polarising trap of of one or the other over the last few decades, in our societies in the west, or at least in N Europe and N America.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
It's fascinating to learn atheism combines with contempt for the nation's history. I must have misremembered so many of my own posts.
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
No. No no no. HYUFD is absolutely right. Atheism really does, very often, combine with contempt for a nation’s history
This is partly because nearly all societies have been religious until at least the late 19th, 20th centuries, but it is still true
The MOST atheistic societies have generally been the most destructive of their own past. The great example is Pol Pot’s Cambodia, which was so atheist it burned down all the temples it found and threw every single Buddhist monk into the sea. It was so atheist it destroyed every single person who knew how to do “sacred Cambodian dance” - one of the great traditions of Indochina before the Khmer Rouge - to the extent that when the atheist commies were finally overthrown there was no one left who knew how to dance. They have had to resurrect it from scratch and a few documents and videos, tricky with a tradition that was handed down over centuries, orally and practically not via written instructions
Another example. The French Revolutionaries stripped bare all their churches and cathedrals, scars that are still highly visible today. A French church is generally much less interesting inside than an English or Italian church, precisely because the French s church was scoured by atheists
See also Mao’s China, and so on
Er, I don't think the Reformers were atheists. Yet look at what happened in England and Scotland. Albeit the former somewhat remedied by the Anglo-Catholic wing of the C of E.
Every galaxy contains - on average - 100-200 BILLION stars (some are much smaller, others much bigger)
So that's TWO TRILLION times 200 BILLION = the number of stars in the universe
In actual numbers that is
400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That is the estimated number of stars in the observable universe, and that number keeps going up the more we explore. And we have only really just started exploring, beyond our own planet. And above this hovers the idea of the multiverse: that we are just one cosmos amongst many many many, or indeed an infinite number
This, I submit, is ONE reason Why Religion. The science of some cheeky vertical monkeys who wank half the day will never be able to comprehend this vastness. This should not stop us trying. But, eeeesh, God is a better answer for much of everyday human life, and indeed much spiritual inspiration. We are meant to believe, so believe, the way we are meant to enjoy booze, so drink
TO put it in physical terms there are more stars out there than grains of sand on all the Earth's beaches!
Yes.
Unlike Leon I don't see the vastness of the universe as a reason for believing in God but I think we've had this kind of discussion on here before.
I look up at the stars above and I'm filled with wonder. I find it comforting to think I am nothing and I will return to nothing. The universe will go on through timespans that make us seem even smaller than one of those grains of sand you mention.
Only Zaphod Beeblebrox managed to out-ego the universe. And Boris Johnson, obvs.
It isn't really that interesting. There's lots of things, some very big and far away. Wooo.
Well I agree.
I wrote my 'Yawn' before reading this.
You literally wrote: “the universe: YAWN”
Consider which approach might be the more diseased
Atheism is a tragic cul de sac of the frightened middlebrow mind
Atheism and disinterested agnosticism is also a symptom of the decline of self confidence in the West.
Atheism combined with contempt for your nation's history. If you look at growing economies and growing nations, Nigeria, Brazil, India etc they are all religious. The least religious parts of the US however are also generally the most Woke and least patriotic.
Even Putin recognises the strength of the Orthodox Church in entrenching pride in Russia (not that he is really a Christian of much devotion). China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China
Wow.
Do you really believe the shit you post?
It's fascinating to learn atheism combines with contempt for the nation's history. I must have misremembered so many of my own posts.
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
China isn't atheist anyway. It's true that the majority of people do not believe in a creed, defined by a religious hierarchy, but they're not atheist.
How would you define Confucianism or Taoism? Or Buddhism come to that. AIUI none of them have 'gods' in the sense the Abrahamic religions do. Although Buddhists 'sort of genuflect' (if that's the right phrase) towards assorted Hindu deities.
”The EU is in talks with the US and other gas-supplying countries about increasing deliveries to Europe amid concerns over flows from Russia.
“Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission President, said: "We are building a partnership for energy security with the United States, which is primarily about more LNG [liquid natural gas] gas supplies.
“"We are talking to other gas suppliers, for example Norway, about increasing their supplies to Europe."
“Tensions between the West and Moscow over Ukraine have fuelled worries about gas supplies at a time when lower-than-normal flows from Russia have already driven a surge in prices.”
Sounds about as urgent as their vaccine rollout this time last year.
At worst (for the unionists) it's 50/50 on the major issue.
We've been a divided nation since 2014 since your side failed to concede defeat.
Concede defeat?!
In a democracy, you are never “defeated”. All survive to contest the next election. Unless you are advocating that the Yookay abandon democracy?
You’ll be sending round the goons to lock us up.
Well Nippy should be in jail for sedition. But it's actually her stormtroopers that drive round in the police vans up here so I'm pretty sure that it's me that should be more fearful than you.
I see the Captain Tom Foundation made over £1m last year, but only donated £160k.
Another £160k was consumed in “management fees”.
And to think, someone was convicted (in Scotland) of sending a “grossly offensive” tweet about the dead Captain.
A tweet which, by the way, was far less offensive than Jimmy Carr’s joke about killing gypsies.
16% is not the lowest ratio of charitable work & donations performed by a charity. There are charities where the charitable bit is not visible using a state of the art microscope.
Yes. For example, most private schools.
Not sure the comparison is fair. Most private schools will be in more or less a steady state, covid and Brexit apart, but the Captain Tom Foundation is new, so maybe they are building up a reserve for future payments. Capital investment for annual dividends.
Actually, most private schools do stuff like lend their sports facilities to local state schools, and offer bursaries.
One of my daughters schools is planning, by next year to be offering 25% of places for 100% bursaries - they have built up a massive endowment fund to support this.
As I previously mentioned, when the idea of pulling charitable status from private schools came up, the problem was that private schools (in general) do more actual charitable work than a quite a number of large charities.
Comments
How the fuckety fucking fuck do they do that and why. You wouldn't get me to do that for all the tea in China. Funniest bit? There they are carabinered onto the outside of the building 800m high and each of them is wearing a crappy helmet made out of plastic.
https://twitter.com/JackElsom/status/1490736516590718977
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That old moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die
I also have a very different view now. What thing I'm certain of is that "god" in no way resembles the personage of most organised religions, or the straw man of the most ardent atheists, either.
One area that I will differ with you on is that I think there is not, and cannot, be anything most fundamentally negative about it - in fact it's its absolute opposite, by definition.
So Larkin, despite being a genius poet, is wrong here
Thanks for the response though!
I found myself sat between two scientific luminaries at a conference dinner once, and that was a lively experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDUIdrT9eRA
There is, SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING, no question that religious faith and - even better - a supportive church (or NA/AA group) is the most reliably successful way out of addiction and associated depression
The Serenity Prayer works
Marine Le Pen may not bag 500 either. Last time she stood out from the other major candidates in that most of her parrains were regional councillors, not mayors - and the FN/RN lost a lot of council seats in last year's elections.
As for Eric Zemmour, LR have been saying off the record that they'll throw some parrainages in his direction if he needs them, but a) most mayors are fairly long in the tooth and I would imagine capable of being fairly obdurate, even those who are LR-affiliated rather than independent - and this kind of fun and games would be a new venture in French politics and perhaps not as certain to be successful as some pundits seem to believe, and b) twixt cup and lip - Zemmour's finger flip in Marseilles suggests he could easily have a Gillian Duffy moment.
I'm on Anne Hidalgo (you don't get to be mayor of Paris without having a spine), because if it turns out that Mélenchon falters in the zeroth round then she's the candidate who will benefit; and on Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (currently polling ~2%) for similar reasons on the right, in case Le Pen - or less likely, Zemmour - fails to win enough nominations.
Parrains so far:
MACRON Emmanuel 529
PÉCRESSE Valérie 324
HIDALGO Anne 266
ROUSSEL Fabien 159
ARTHAUD Nathalie 138
LASSALLE Jean 124
MÉLENCHON Jean-Luc 100
JADOT Yannick 80
DUPONT-AIGNAN Nicolas 77
ZEMMOUR Éric 58
ASSELINEAU François 56
POUTOU Philippe 54
LE PEN Marine 35
It'd be pretty useful to get to a clear conclusion on these points, but I can't be bothered scrolling through the comments to establish if that's happened yet.
If you believe great. If you are saying that it is a failing not to believe as though your mind is not sufficiently able to comprehend god then that is interesting. A heroin trip, for example (here am I talking to you about heroin trips, next I'll be telling @Dura all about carburetors) makes one believe all sort of things. If during a heroin trip you became convinced that fire-breathing dragons existed, would it be a failure of their imagination and mental capacity if other people refused to believe that they did.
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I had been pondering what 'concession' would save face for Putin in all this, but now I'm more wondering what Macron (or anyone else) could offer by way of concession from Putin - since he insists he doesn't want to invade and is not planning to, a lack of invasion is not an official concession that can be given, so they'd need something else from him.
David Goodwillie was discharged from bankruptcy days before signing for Raith Rovers without paying his victim a penny of the £100,000 court-ordered compensation.
Meanwhile, it is understood he is negotiating a pay-off of around £150,000 from Stark’s Park after the Fife club U-turned on his signing after four days of crushing criticism.
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/david-goodwillie-pay-off/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/30/im-really-just-high-on-life-and-beauty-the-woman-who-can-see-100-million-colours
This is one thing that spooks me about these new synthetic opioids, if they can mimic the high of heroin but be 50 times as addictive due to a far worse withdrawal etc etc then we are fucked as a species
But on the other hand, strong Con showing in Midlands (klaxon Starmer).
Voting intention:
London:
Lab 54%
Con 27%
Grn 8%
LD 8%
Ref 2%
UKIP 1%
oth 1%
Rest of South:
Con 43%
Lab 32%
LD 13%
Grn 7%
UKIP 3%
Ref 1%
Midlands:
Con 45%
Lab 40%
LD 9%
Grn 3%
Ref 1%
UKIP 1%
oth 1%
North:
Lab 53%
Con 27%
LD 7%
Grn 5%
Ref 5%
UKIP 2%
oth 1%
Wales:
Lab 46%
Con 31%
PC 11%
LD 9%
Grn 2%
Scotland:
SNP 46%
Con 19%
Lab 18%
LD 14%
Grn 2%
(Deltapoll; Sample Size: 1,587; Fieldwork: 3- 4 February 2022)
Jon Craig is openly mocking them live on Sky
It is sickening and if his mps think this is a good look and evidence of change then they are world champions at mistaking the view in the country
Type those letters tonight and end this embarrassment
I get the Coalition on <50pc - and given the amount of idiot unionists that vote for them it's probably 55 v 45 again.
https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/parrainages-le-profil-des-premiers-soutiens-d-emmanuel-macron-02-03-2017-6726366.php
Do you really believe the shit you post?
“We are gathering honey”. “Look at the moon. Moon.” “Now you have opened my soft thighs and you are fucking me”.
A dizzyingly different way of being human. It might in some ways be better. After all, we are told constantly it is better to live in the moment, These Amazonian blokes don’t stop fucking each other to go on their iPhones and temporally memorialize the moment on Instagram for likes
@bigjohnowls ditto!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ-h70IK9s
Not as fascinating as "China is atheist but then it has its own alternative religion ie devotion to the Communist Party as the backbone of China" though. If only I could think of an example of religious devotion to a political party, regardless of leader or policy, as the backbone of this country.
Scottish Governing coalition = 48%
BetterTogether2 = 34%
Start filling yer breeks.
Lab: 41% (+3 from 26-27 Jan)
Con: 32% (n/c)
Lib Dem: 10% (-1)
Green: 6% (-1)
SNP: 5% (n/c)
Reform UK: 4% (+1)
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/02/02/voting-intention-con-32-lab-41-1-2-feb?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=voting_intention https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1490744252120326155/photo/1
Keir Starmer: 35% (n/c from 20-21 Jan)
Boris Johnson: 25% (n/c)
Don't know: 36% (n/c)
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/02/02/voting-intention-con-32-lab-41-1-2-feb?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=voting_intention https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1490744256650166272/photo/1
You're closer to HYUFD than you think.
Deltapoll did not ask that question.
Favourite comment from under that video:
“2021: certified high angle training people, documented and inventoried person rated ropes with logs and expiry dates, hard toed boots, hi-visibility vests, hard climbers hats with chin straps, latex gloves and respirators, regulation leather gloves, safety supervisor, traffic control, first aid personnel standby, safety glasses, weather and wind monitors, redundant ropes, certified safety harnesses with rated carabiners...
1976: a turtleneck and a hangover”
I come to PB to test my faith.
Read more here: https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/keir-starmer-and-rishi-sunak-outscore-boris-johnson-host-leadership-traits-little-choose-between https://twitter.com/TrinhIpsosUK/status/1490744801737719813/photo/1
At worst (for the unionists) it's 50/50 on the major issue.
We've been a divided nation since 2014 since your side failed to concede defeat.
Had a very near miss on Stac Pollaidh dislodging rock onto a friend.
This is partly because nearly all societies have been religious until at least the late 19th, 20th centuries, but it is still true
The MOST atheistic societies have generally been the most destructive of their own past. The great example is Pol Pot’s Cambodia, which was so atheist it burned down all the temples it found and threw every single Buddhist monk into the sea. It was so atheist it destroyed every single person who knew how to do “sacred Cambodian dance” - one of the great traditions of Indochina before the Khmer Rouge - to the extent that when the atheist commies were finally overthrown there was no one left who knew how to dance. They have had to resurrect it from scratch and a few documents and videos, tricky with a tradition that was handed down over centuries, orally and practically not via written instructions
Another example. The French Revolutionaries stripped bare all their churches and cathedrals, scars that are still highly visible today. A French church is generally much less interesting inside than an English or Italian church, precisely because the French s church was scoured by atheists
See also Mao’s China, and so on
'I'm sorry if anyone feels they were pursued by a mob whipped up by a misunderstanding of the very real point I was making'
Another Milliband bacon sandwich moment. What an utter spanner!
What I would like to see is the percentage of those who said they genuinely didn't know, at this point in time, how they were likely to vote next time.
In a democracy, you are never “defeated”. All survive to contest the next election. Unless you are advocating that the Yookay abandon democracy?
You’ll be sending round the goons to lock us up.
Or Buddhism come to that. AIUI none of them have 'gods' in the sense the Abrahamic religions do.
Although Buddhists 'sort of genuflect' (if that's the right phrase) towards assorted Hindu deities.
Not good. Bit Trumpian.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/02/07/ftse-100-markets-live-news-house-prices-energy/
”The EU is in talks with the US and other gas-supplying countries about increasing deliveries to Europe amid concerns over flows from Russia.
“Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission President, said: "We are building a partnership for energy security with the United States, which is primarily about more LNG [liquid natural gas] gas supplies.
“"We are talking to other gas suppliers, for example Norway, about increasing their supplies to Europe."
“Tensions between the West and Moscow over Ukraine have fuelled worries about gas supplies at a time when lower-than-normal flows from Russia have already driven a surge in prices.”
Sounds about as urgent as their vaccine rollout this time last year.
Right-o.
One of my daughters schools is planning, by next year to be offering 25% of places for 100% bursaries - they have built up a massive endowment fund to support this.
As I previously mentioned, when the idea of pulling charitable status from private schools came up, the problem was that private schools (in general) do more actual charitable work than a quite a number of large charities.