samkydd

When children hit their teens I think Life of Brian would be a good film for them to watch, it puts all religion into perspective!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Jackdaw

Both being repeated Channel 4 beginning 02.50 Sun 22nd January.

Jacky

Johnjackgilbert

How true - extreme views, political or religious, clouds judgement and blind faith exists. All the basic religions (as in basic Islam, Christianity, etc rather than the 'cultish' made to measure religions like Christian Science or the Moonies) examine basic humanitarian issues and exemparly behaviour with a belief human kindness and decency. It is when the basic teachings are distorted into a system of fanatism or hierarchy or political power that control and corruption occur. Many of the violent acts committed in the name of religion are politically motivated and a manipulation of the brainwashed followers by a power elite. Banning all religon is not the answer, but it opens up debate on how religion and faith are manipulated.


Fanatism and bigotry are an abhorrence. But surely banning religion from the school curriculum is nonsense. America has its fair share of looney religious fanatics and their state school system does not allow religion to be taught (generally referring to most States, not all of them!) Here in England, the Religious Education that my children are taught at school incorporates all main faiths and they examine moral dilemmas and debate issues such as this one! Banning this type of lesson in favour of science is rather narrow minded. There is a place for both lessons. However, any RE in State school that excludes religious diversity and open discussion should be stopped.

Once voted by a Christian magazine as their favourite movie of all time, I believe.

"I say you are the messiah, and I should know, I've followed a few!"

samkydd

[My favourite part was when the Centurian caught them painting graffiti on the walls and he gave them a Latin lesson . The character must have been based on my Latin teacher at school, and it was spot on!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Ascoyne D'Ascoyne

Be careful - you might attract a following.

Ascoyne D'Ascoyne

The "examination" of moral dilemmas is, basically, nothing to do with religion; it's called "ethics". If your children are being taught "religion" as an offshoot of world history, I cannot see that there is any problem with that. The problem comes when ethics are mixed up with religious beliefs; people then begin quoting chapter and verse to justify their actions concerning others resulting in the sort of appalling views that were apparent in the programme under discussion.
Is there an option for those parents who do not wish to have their children given any form of religious instruction to withdraw them from lessons which provide it?
Furthermore, what about those parents who do not want their children taught about other faiths than their own. Why should they be denied the right to send their children to a faith school? Perhaps we come back to the point that the state should not be promoting any idea of "God" in the school curriculum at all and that if parents want their children to be given religious instruction they should send them to the appropriate church, temple or whatever that can provide it.

Steve Crook

There is in mainstream schools (I don't think that there is in faith schools). But that makes the child "different" and so often a target for bullying.

Who's denying them? Only the limits on places available.

Steve

samkydd

If you read some unbiased history books the main reason why we had religion was simply to control the masses. Pagans worshipped the most obvious life-giver and food provider which was the Sun, and structured government controlled religion eventually outlawed Paganism and classed its followers as witches or devil worshippers! Many Christian festivals handiliy co-incide with their Pagan counterparts, including Christmas, where certain foodstuffs like nuts and dried fruit etc. stashed away from the last of the harvest was brought out in mid-winter as a bit of a morale booster and a treat, along with evergreen foliage, holly, and mistletoe as if to say "We're halfway through the bleak winter, after this feast we can all look forward to the Spring!" (not an X-Box or iPod in sight)!

By literally putting the fear of God into humble peasants the government, landed gentry and the church had enormous power over people and kept them working the fields for a pittance and made them feel grateful, whilst their betters, including the church officials, lived the life of Reilly!

I remember Alistair Sim as Amos Starkadder in the old 60s Cold Comfort Farm delivering a typical fire and brimstone sermon to his simple minded rural flock; "You know when you go to take something out of the oven and you accidently burn your hand, and to take away the pain you put butter on it? WELL THERE'S NO BUTTER IN HELL!" It frightened the life out of me!

Apart from a few million people on beaches on holiday, why don't we all worship the Sun? It seems pretty logical and scientifically proven that it sustains our planet and without it we'd all perish!

Instead its name has been taken by a tawdry newspaper pandering to some people's thirst and lust for scandalmongory, fleshpots, celeb plebs, xenophobia, and very average football reporting!

PS. Apparently Sunday School was invented so that families in overcrowded hovels could get their children out of the house for a couple of hours, so that the parents had the place to themselves so they could have a bit of privacy for the purpose of pro-creation! It's strange that whenever I read something starting with the word "apparently", it's a pound to a penny that it's probably totally untrue!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

arty-dave

Right on, daddy-o!!

ollie

A chap that impressed me immensely was british philosopher Colin Mcginn,i found a transcript from the excellent johnathon millers series the atheism tapes 2004.

JM [To the viewer]: Having discussed the various arguments that have been offered in favour of the existence of God, I asked Colin to summarise some of the best reasons for not JM believing.

CM: Well the classic argument against is the problem of evil. This is a... even religious people find this one very uncomfortable. So the argument is simply, God is meant to be a being who is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good, so how come there is suffering and pain in the world? Why does God allow it? God, obviousally if he is all-good, thinks that it's bad that this should occur, would rather it didn't occur, like any decent person would rather it didn't occur, and yet he lets it occur. Now that would be OK if he didn't have the power to change it, but he's meant to be all-powerful. I mean we're told by religious people he intervenes all the time in various ways, so why doesn't he intervene to prevent the death of a child, or the torture of a prisoner? He doesn't do it. So you don't want to conclude from that, "Well God is actually quite bad... quite a bad person.". That's a conceivable conclusion you might draw. But what you conclude from it is the combination of these two characteristics is inconsistent. He's all-good and he's all-powerful - you need all-knowing too of course because he has to know what's going on - but it's essentially the conflict between being all-good and all-powerful and the existence of evil.

The standard reply to that, the apologists of religion will give the reply, "God created human beings with free will.". Now there's the question, why did he do that, knowing the results were going to be horrific? That was a pretty wicked thing to do to start with. But let's put that one aside. The problem with that argument is that not all suffering in the world comes from the exercise of human will. Much of it comes from human... not human, natural catastrophes, or disease, accidents... All sorts of things can cause tremendous suffering in humans... You know, someone's born with a genetic disease, no human being had any role in whatsoever in creating that. That comes from nature - God's creation of course, we're told.

So God created a world in which it was inevitable there'd be tremendous suffering on the part of completely innocent human beings.

JM: But there might be religious argument to the effect that he created this obstacle course...

CM: Yep...

JM: ...for his created creatures endowed with free will in order to bring out the best in them.

CM: Yes... and I always... this one to me brings out to me the sort of... hard-hearted, immoral side of this way of thinking about things. Because just think about what's being said when somebody says that. You've got the innocent child with some terrible disease, and God's up there saying, "I really need to test some people here. The obstacle course needs to be put there. Let me just pick on this two year old girl, put her through this terrible ordeal, and I'll test the other people.". I mean, if any human being had told you that's what they'd done - suppose I decided, in my wisdom, "I need to test some people here. I need to improve their moral characters, so I'm going to do this terrible thing to their child.", you know, you'd think I was the wickedest person it the world to do that. Well why isn't God? If that's what God does, I have no respect for him. I think it's a wicked thing to do. God shouldn't do that if God cares about human beings, he should not allow that to happen. to do.

JM [To the viewer]: Having discussed the argument both for and against religion, we turned to speculation as to the reason why so many people still had a need to believe.

CM: I don't think anybody has any very good ideas about why this is, especially why they believe in it to the extent that they do. What I would speculate about it is I think it's less to do with the idea of death and survival of death, and rewards in heaven and punishment in hell. I think it's a sort of cosmic loneliness. I think that's what's behind it. It's hard for people to accept that we are alone, and that nobody cares. Outside of us. I think there's a kind of constitutive reason for that, which is human consciousness is essentially sealed off from other consciousnesses. I'm sealed... mine has sealed off from you. We only know each other indirectly, through the symptoms of the body, and yet we yearn to be in contact with other people. Love is a lot to do with that. So we have this feeling that we are, as conscious, embodied beings, somehow lonely is out essence, cut off in out essence, and that's a feeling that we struggle against. You can see it in literature and so on, dealing with this theme. Frankenstein actually deals with it a lot.

So we feel this sort of metaphysical, existential aloneness in the universe and God is a wonderful antidote to that, because in the case of God, God, we feel comes directly into our minds, and we're directly in contact with God. You see God doesn't know us through our bodies, God knows us intimately in our minds. And that satisfies a deep craving, I think, in the human soul, right, for communion with something outside the self.

JM: I'd just like to finish with one thing. Here you are, like myself, reluctant to use the word, "atheist" to describe what we are - because it's an accusation, rather than, as it were a conviction, in a country which, in fact, has become more intensely religious. Do you find it difficult to uphold such ideas in the America of the 21st century?

CM: Let me say something about the first point, the label... the label one has. Yeah, to be called an atheist it's a negative view, and it suggests that one is a sort of professional atheist... you spend your life arguing against God, the way Russell did. And I think that's a rather undignified and pointless procedure. Once you've decided there isn't a god, there's not much point in inveighing against it, unless you think that huge harm is done by the belief in God. But you don't... nobody spends their time trying to prove to others that the Greek gods don't exist. You know, you just decide that they don't, and that's the end of the story for you.

So I like to distinguish atheism from antitheism. Antitheism is opposition to theism. I am an antitheist, because I believe that religion is harmful in human life. So I am an antitheist. I'm not just an atheist who... suddenly, my only values are that I don't agree with it. I'm actively opposed to it. But then I distinguish that from what I call post-theism or post-atheism, which is the healthy state of mind where you've put all that behind you. Now we can't do that yet because there's lots of religion in the world, and lots of bad results of it.

But to me, the ideal society would be one where the question of religion didn't really arise for people, or if it did, it wasn't a heavy question for them. They would say to each other, "You know, those humans used to believe, back there in 2003, some of them believed there was this God and he did this... others didn't and they did TV programs about why they didn't. What a funny debate that was!". So it would be a post-theist society, where it just wasn't an issue.

cheers Ollie.

"Bullseye !!"

Johnjackgilbert

My position is: I am against the indoctrination of religion as a certainty - and for open debate and discussion. I feel that by banning RE from school a large part of intelligent and informed discussion on the subject would be lost. Children are influenced by their parents to some extent but as they grow they are exposed to other sources of influence - school is a small part really - which colour their views. In a multi-cultural society being aware of other faiths and cultures is important, whether a person is strictly devoted to their own religion or completely atheist.

Yes, the examination of moral dilemmas is NOT religion and IS ethics - BUT as RE (at the schools that my children attend) include these debates then I am not against religion being taught. Especially as RE in this case is NOT just about GOD - as Atheisism and Agnosticism also crop up.

They also get to have wide and varied debates in PSE (Personal and Social Hygiene) in a similar way, although these tend to focus on sex.

Withdrawing a child from RE (and sex education lessons) is a matter for the parent and does not necessarily lead to bullying. Once they have chosen their options (end of Yr 9/age 13) for their GCSE subjects, they have the option to drop RE. And most do.

Ascoyne D'Ascoyne

I wonder if a lot of the problem with discussion about God doesn't stem from the idea that he created man in his own image. Maybe the creator of everything that is, was and ever shall be really doesn't bother( if indeed he/she/it has a propensity to bother) if someone has a period of suffering during his brief stay of existence on earth or some slap-and-tickle outside of the married state. A lot of the intolerance, cruelty and oppression that marks the history of some religions seems to me to stem from the attribution of petty human characteristics to the particular God they worship, including that of petulance, anger and revenge when he doesn't get his own way.

Johnjackgilbert

How true.

Referring to "in man's image" - there are still people out there who believe that men have less ribs than women because God took one of Adam's to make Eve...

Ascoyne D'Ascoyne

Yes, and that is probably what worries people like Dawkins above all - the fact that absolute nonsense is being fed to millions of people around the world by different religions as the truth.

foha80

Is there an argument for religion-a belief in the afterlife brings comfort to many when they have to confront the loss of a loved one.Are not the faith based volunteers working with the sick starving of the world perfoming a service to humanity.
Are all the trillions of people who went to their death convinced of the existance God deluded,this life for the majority of the world's population is a vail of tears and religion seems to help..
Only a fool could deny the horrors commited in the name of religion.If we are going to declare God dead-I think we would have to have something to replace it,this world needs a opiate or panacea and yes even a means of control.

Terry