English please

Bill

‘Schools teach religion from year 1′

Utter rubbish. Schools teach ABOUT religion and treat it as some sort of sub-section of anthropology. Teachers have been, for many years, too scared or too stupid to teach it as it should be because of our trendy obsession with diversity and inclusion. In other words it may upset those who are either a) too pig shit thick to understand its real meaning and like to trivialise it with the usual spaghetti monster bollocks, (and that includes a hell of a lot of teachers I have met) or b) may offend those for who the demands of religion gets in the way of their obsession of themselves and the gratification of their own lives, (humanists basically).

One thing that is always lacking on this site with its atheist claims is this simple fact. If Christianity is not literally true, in other words if one sat in a time machine and physically proved that everything written in the Bible did not literally happen, it would not make one bloody difference to those of faith. They do not care about physical facts or Dawkins/Darwin evidence and nor should they. Material truth is not at the heart of what they do. Two different things.

Now think on ‘Alom’. You are arguing against the model of religion that is held in the minds of children. Which is OK for a child as the abstract concepts of religion would be difficult to for them comprehend. But you are a grown up I believe?

Bill

It is a spoof isn’t it?

1. “An omnipotent deity would, after all, get the design right first time and would have no need of continual modification.”

Why? To my mind, a deity outside time and space, who loves creating, is in no hurry and enjoys the variety, the development and the whole evolutionary process. Show me a designer who only wants to get the finished product as soon as possible and I’ll question how much they love design. Sounds more like an accountant or factory supervisor to me.

2. “Countless prominent people agree with him. Famous atheists from the world of film and theatre include Woody Allen, James Cameron, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Paul Bettany, Emma Thompson and Daniel Radcliffe.”

Swipe me, if Daniel Radcliffe is an atheist, argument over! I’d better jettison my faith! Is this going to become a famous-people-on-each-side-of -the-debate session? So the Christians wheel out Bono, Rick Wakeman, Miltom Jones, Tim Vine and good old Sir Cliff? Hardly the quality of argument I’d expect on a site like this.

3. “Today’s young people question why God remains unseen and never intervenes even when he is so desperately needed.”

I hope they do question both humanism and faith. It’s the questioning that gets you deeper. It’s constant questioning that has deepened my faith.

Never intervenes? I’d say that the incarnation was a pretty huge intervention, and the start of a process that leads right up to things like the way that Desmond Tutu’s “Truth and Reconciliation” process in South Africa avoided what could have been a huge bloodbath and Pope John Paul’s crucial part in the collapse of communism in Poland also took a pretty peaceful route. Christianity believes in a God who works through people, even though they constantly fall down on the job.

Yes, you can go to the horrific things done in God’s name a long time ago during the crusades (completely unChristian things that were diametrically opposed to what Jesus taught) but my experience is that most of the self-giving people I know, working for good in their communities without drawing attention to themselves, are Christians. They just get on with giving, whether sponsoring kids; providing regular friendship and transport for the lonely; providing a foodbank for those caught out by delayed benefits and redundancy; caring for the nighttime community in town by helping drunk girls get safely to taxis, etc; volunteering in schools; working at charities like Riding for the Disabled – and all this is a snapshot of just one local church, these things being done for their own sake, not for any personal gain or with strings attached. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands and you get an idea of what Christianity is actually doing in the UK and abroad.

I think that if you count up the war tally, you’ll find most have suffered and died for tribal/national conflicts, wars for territory or at the hands of repressive/corrupt dictators. Religion has often been co-opted, but do you really think that banishing faith would stop or reduce wars? Really?

My personal story is of a supernatural experience for which changed me overnight and for which I have found no rational explanation, and which has been substantiated through intellectual application over few decades. It has led to a successful and happy marriage, quality of work and a sense of living life with the grain of the universe, rather than against it.

I think that the solution to many of the complaints that you list above is not to eradicate faith, but to do better theology and expose people to genuine faith, rather than the caricatures that abound in the media and in blogs like this.

“#MortAuxGay is trending in France too? Surely this must be some sort of protest hashtag supporting equality…”

Oh, it means “DEATH TO GAYS.”

http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/48753240692/france-legalizes-gay-marriage-homophobia-is

This whole idea that belief comes from ignorance, panic and stupidity is just plain wrong and it shows a lack of understanding on your part. I taught for a long, long time in a Catholic School. When I started (as one of your beloved ‘young’ people) I would do my best to challenge the status quo in the staff room and talk about Darwin etc and how old the universe is and all that bollocks. A few would rise to the challenge but most would just look at me and not enter into it. I remember their face now and I cringe!

So there was I assuming they were dumb struck by my revelations However I’m afraid not. All the cliche things I thought they believed in, (like the twaddle you have written up here) they simply didn’t. Those faces were looking at a stupid person, shooting from the hip with only a child’s version of faith to attack. I now know they were just being kind and could have shot me down in a second.

And yes evolution was taught in science and some kind of creationist thing was taught in R.E. One could be said to be fact, (although evolution is theory) and the other was poetry. However both were true.

Bill