Fallible wrote:She's a twat, plain and simple. I don't care how well she can cook a chicken.

She'd probably cook a nice baby too. Pity she's not one of us

Fallible wrote:

Mick wrote:Even if that were true, that is, even if it were bullshit, you need to remember that these are beliefs intimately tied to identity, culture and way of life. These aren't ordinary beliefs, guys. They help make the person who he is-they are part of the individual and culture. Thus, it's unlikely that you can call these beliefs ridiculous without affronting the many of the people themselves. But who wants to do that? There are far more sensitive and respectful ways to go about it.

This is just special pleading. It can be said of any belief that it 'helps make the person who he is'.

It's also just not true. The personality, culture and behaviour (outside of discussion of a few specific topics) of people who undergo deconversion doesn't noticeably change in the typical case. They are in this sense very ordinary beliefs, individuals carry on with or without them.

From The Mail on Sunday's ludicrous commentary about Delia Smith:

Mail on Sunday wrote:The militant secularists have acquired a formidable enemy, with a longer reach and a larger audience than any archbishop.

( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... alarm.html )

Watch out, the anti-secularists are pulling out the big guns. First, Baroness Warsi; now this.

WTF is a militant secularist, anyway? Is it anyone "militantly" opposed to theocratic governance: unelected bishops in the House of Lords, and laws based on religious dogma, discriminating against homosexuals and preventing a rational approach to euthanasia? And what's an "enemy of secularism"? Presumably, it's somebody who would prefer religious dogma to be imposed on everyone with the full force of the state and the law. In my view this makes Delia Smith formidably misinformed, stupid, or odious. Tony Nicklinson will doubtless be told that he has to suffer in perpetuity for the sake of the high "Christian morality" of people who, conveniently for them, will never be in his situation. We need more secularism.

Matthew Shute wrote:From The Mail on Sunday's ludicrous commentary about Delia Smith:

Mail on Sunday wrote:The militant secularists have acquired a formidable enemy, with a longer reach and a larger audience than any archbishop.

( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... alarm.html )


WTF is a militant secularist, anyway? Is it anyone "militantly" opposed to theocratic governance: unelected bishops in the House of Lords, and laws based on religious dogma, discriminating against homosexuals and preventing a rational approach to euthanasia? And what's an "enemy of secularism"? Presumably, it's somebody who would prefer religious dogma to be imposed on everyone with the full force of the state and the law. In my view this makes Delia Smith formidably misinformed, stupid, or odious. Tony Nicklinson will doubtless be told that he has to suffer in perpetuity for the sake of the high "Christian morality" of people who, conveniently for them, will never be in his situation. We need more secularism.

It might well be someone who can't see the clear blue water between theocratic government and the presence of a handful of bishops in the Lords.

It isn't an either-or dichotomy (theocratic or non-theocratic); it's a question of how much you want governance to be based on religion. There are a few cases in which the justification for accepting or rejecting a particular policy is that the policy does/doesn't conform to some religious dogma. Cases regarding gay rights and euthenasia are particularly telling; and it's not so long ago that we had to overturn a law against blasphemy.

What would an "enemy of secularism" be? Somebody who wants to bring back the anti-blasphemy law, for example?

Matthew Shute wrote:It isn't an either-or dichotomy (theocratic or non-theocratic); it's a question of how much you want governance to be based on religion. There a few cases in which the justification for accepting or rejecting a particular policy is that the policy does/doesn't conform to some religious dogma. Cases regarding gay rights and euthenasia are particularly telling; and it's not so long ago that we had to overturn a law against blasphemy.

I agree about the greyness, but those I might be tempted to call militant secularists are those who, echoing to some extent, the religious fundamentalists attitudes to progreesive opinion, see the religious as always the enemy.The role of the bishops and of church schools are 2 examples. If you look at the intervention of bishops in debates in the House of Lords, you will notice that more often than not, they are drawing on their expertise in such areas as the social condition of the poor and the plight of ethnic minorities, due to the parish system. That could be dismissed as dogmatic posturing because of their inheritance of christian social teaching and a naive adherence to the teachings of Jesus! And even their doubts about euthanasia have found them making common cause with disabled rights activists, who are otherwise about as likely to have encouragent as sufferers from mental illness.
And as for the schools, our local C of E comprehensive, has become an object of desire to the local middle class parents, but some are put off because its admissions policy ,giving equal opportunities to church attenders also means that it provides the best chance for children from Afro-Caribbean backgrounds- because of the prevalence of Pentecostalism among their parents- to get a good education. That was an effect by design, not accident. Certainly not a perfect solution, but a lot better than the Academy system and the Free school system, with their potential for generating further inequalities and sectarian mind-sets.

Ian Tattum wrote:And even their doubts about euthanasia have found them making common cause with disabled rights activists, who are otherwise about as likely to have encouragent as sufferers from mental illness.

Is that supposed to be a good thing?

It seems that every time someone who considers their own life not worth living asks for help ending it, some rentagob pops up claiming it'll be the thin end of the wedge on the road to the mass murder of disabled people.

Thin-end-of-the-wedge arguments are typically bogus, relying as they do on the logic that to do something which in itself seems justifiable could be 'wrong' because if the process taken to get from where we are now to the suggested new state was taken far further to a complete extreme with no control at all, the end result would be bad.
That logic effectively suggests that there's something magically stable about where we currently are, and that people can't be trusted to set limits anywhere else, whereas in reality most of the positions that a society takes are some kind of compromise, relying on legal limits to define what is and isn't allowed rather than some anything goes free-for-all situation, but where the positions do change over time without hurtling off to horrifying extremes every time anything changes.

Working on thin-end-of-the-wedge logic, almost nothing could ever be changed in any direction since the risk of a potential worst-case situation resulting would be too great.

Though it's one of those positions virtually impossible to prove wrong.
If someone bangs on about assisted dying being on the road to some kind of 'life unworthy of life' policy and things do change a little to allow assisted dying with tight controls but the sky doesn't fall as a result, the campaigner will congratulate themselves on how their campaigning stopped people going too far, they way they inevitably would have done without the campaigning happening.
Be it no change, small change, or extreme change, the thin-end-of-the-wedger can either pat themselves on the back for having averted disaster, or pat themselves on the back for being proved right.

And as for the bishops, some might have some meaningful insights as a result of their life experience, as might any number of of other people.
If so, let the bishops, (depending on the system we end up with), convince either the government or the people of their personal usefulness, and either be appointed for a term as individuals or stand for election as individuals, rather than having some automatic right to have a permanent seat on the basis of nothing more than how far they managed to get up a religious management structure.

Matthew Shute wrote:From The Mail on Sunday's ludicrous commentary about Delia Smith:

Mail on Sunday wrote:The militant secularists have acquired a formidable enemy, with a longer reach and a larger audience than any archbishop.

A retired TV chef has a longer reach and a larger audience than any archbishop. You have to wonder if the people at the Mail actually think about the things they write.

Nebogipfel wrote:A retired TV chef has a longer reach and a larger audience than any archbishop. You have to wonder if the people at the Mail actually think about the things they write.

Christianty is really breaking out the theological big guns now.
The last thing I remember her being in the news for was getting bladdered and slurring shouts of support for her football team in true Cider Woman fashion.

tolman wrote:

Nebogipfel wrote:A retired TV chef has a longer reach and a larger audience than any archbishop. You have to wonder if the people at the Mail actually think about the things they write.

Christianty is really breaking out the theological big guns now.
The last thing I remember her being in the news for was getting bladdered and slurring shouts of support for her football team in true Cider Woman fashion.

Fucking hell, this is funny!

Bloody militant Norwich City supporters!



was she calling for divine intervention? If so 'he' didn't oblige.

So does "militant" just mean gobby now? If so, do we have a new word for those followers of the divine that use guns, bombs and such to enforce their opinions?

When I hear "militant atheist", I always conjure up the image (equal parts amusing and disturbing) of Dawk with belts of ammo wrapped around him in Rambo fashion.
I don't have any entertaining images for "militant secularism" because it is a nonsense.

trubble76 wrote:I don't have any entertaining images for "militant secularism" because it is a nonsense.

I think some believers imagine a squad of Dawkins clones kicking down doors and viciously stripping houses of tasteless religious tat.

Some of them really don't understand the difference between 'secular' and 'anti-religious'.

I don't think it's all simply down to people defending past privilege - some people do seem to get an excessive quiver of validation out of imagining enemies, since they only really value things that they can see other people lacking, and ideally plotting to take away from them.
For some people, having a few 'travelling folk' living in the field down the road is not just something that makes them a bit more cautious about home security, but actually makes them appreciate what they have far more than they would have done otherwise.
For some people, the paranoid idea in the Cold War that there were hordes of salivating commies just waiting to parachute in and rape their wife and daughters would have been not simply unpleasant, but somehow thrilling, making their wife seem much more alluring.

I think everyone will have a little bit of that about them - a real threat can help people stop taking things for granted.
The problem is when it gets pathological, and people end up reading the Daily Mail, and taking it seriously.

Oh, Delia ... *points* ...