Aspects of the feminine divine in 'modern' religions

[Barry Shnikov]

Uhhh…?

Humour (attempted) worry not.

[Dreadful Scathe]

That’s a father’s prerogative.

As is the slipper acros the backside. Oh hang on, thats child abuse now isnt it

The point I was making was that the atheist stance may not be pleasing to any god, whatever religion you consider

You said it. MAY not. Chances are they'd hate you worshipping the false god (how could you be so stupid) but only MAY not like the lack of belief. After all, not succumbing to all the false gods is some feat is it not ?

Belief that comes from faith, yes. Belief because you see it and it is proven, no.

Does pretending to believe count?

That’s a good question about Hell, is it not a common thing across all religions (that have Hell as a concept) that it is down?

Not really, I think its relativly modern - on par with most of the pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary etc.. deriving from the paintings of Raphael.

I concede that point. If we’re looking on a global scale, then two-thirds of the population clearly don’t identify with Christianity from the afore-mentioned pie-chart, so you make sense there.

No I dont. I conceded I was wrong in the next paragraph. You really should read everything

(84%, from memory)

82.5% of statistics are completely made up.

So we’re back to where we started…that there is a bias, whether or not you believe.

There is no bias if you dont believe in something. I thought we'd discussed this ?

Bet I’ve got nicer hair than you too….naaa naaa naaa naaaa naaa.

I'll bet its a quiff I have a manly vulcan haircut. Well, I did. I just got it cut

Well, I want to know where in the world you’re in education for 30 years for a start…and while you’re at it, can you tell me how many people DO come to religion because of other (assumedly domineering) religious people?

are you being deliberately obtuse? Religious Education, happens throughout your entire life. Just as language and social education do, we are not talking "school" here. If you are born into a family of religious people, or even "worse" ,in a heavily religious community - then you are more likely to become strongly religious. I wouldnt use the word "domineering" as every society has "something" to teach its children beyond religion, but its very hard for a child to grow up without some sort of religious experience. Religion is everywhere. Its hard to "unlearn" what you think is fact when you have grown up in such a way.

[andystyle]

You said it. MAY not. Chances are they'd hate you worshipping the false god (how could you be so stupid) but only MAY not like the lack of belief. After all, not succumbing to all the false gods is some feat is it not ?

My belief is that there’s only one God, so what the above may or may not do is irrelevant to me - they don't exist. At any rate, the above is speculation…but their ain’t nowt wrong with that.

Does pretending to believe count?

Tell you what, if I see you in Heaven, we’ll talk about it over a coffee.

Not really, I think its relativly modern - on par with most of the pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary etc.. deriving from the paintings of Raphael.

Makes sense - so much of our mental images of what happens when we die are just artist’s impressions, after all.

No I dont. I conceded I was wrong in the next paragraph. You really should read everything

Oh, ok – my bad. You finished off stating that my argument wasn’t logical…use terms like that with an engineer and it’ll get you in trouble…

There is no bias if you dont believe in something. I thought we'd discussed this ?

I’m not sure I agree, but I don’t really think it’s worth going into.

I'll bet its a quiff

*Sniff* We’ve managed so well without getting personal…well, here’s what I think of YOU…

I have a manly vulcan haircut. Well, I did. I just got it cut

How come? Were the ears not working out?

are you being deliberately obtuse?

It’s been known to happen However, 30 years? Where’s that come from? I’m not being pedantic, it’s just a really random number to pull out of the hat!

[Baruch]

you mean like this ?

Good one This thread has officially "arrived" now - it has a link to Monty Python!

[Baruch]

Oh come on, that's just silly. Excluding books from "The Bible" doesn't amount to removing them? Of course it does - that's what censorship does, it excludes things.

How can excluding a book from a collection to which it has never belonged amount to removing it? You can only remove something from the Bible if it was part of the Bible in the first place.

The Gnostic gospels, for example, were no more "removed" from the Bible than the Bhagavad Gita was. Both, however, are excluded from the Bible for the simple reason that they are neither Christian nor Jewish in character.

[Baruch]

One aspect of the feminine divine in modern religons is the idea that the confrontational and aggressive manner in which religion is often debated serves to alienate women and discourage them from undertaking serious study of their religion. How much truth is there in that? I'm interested in both male and female responses to that.

To answer from my own experience, when I was at theological college there were more men than women in my year group, but not overwhelmingly so. Women were well-represented.

Of course, in the British church as a whole the numbers are very different, and women outnumber men overall.

[Baruch]

It's amazing how those with faith assume that those without are suffering from some form of balancing bias, or that they simply hold a different set of 'beliefs'. It's also wrong.

Here we go again.

I wasn't talking about the whole atheism versus belief thing, nor (I believe) was Martin. The context was about interpretation of the meaning of passages of scripture which are debated, not on their validity as divine revelation.

Nobody can come to any discussion of scripture (or anything else) without some form of bias, whether it be religious, cultural, historical or whatever. That's the point I was making.

[Baruch]

Hmm. Most people consider Dawkins rather gentle and restrained.

You're joking, right? I have the same problem with Dawkins that I guess many people would have with an ultra-fundamentalist evangelist: he is such a "crusader", so utterly convinced that he is right and everyone else should (de)convert to his point of view that he utterly turns me off. I don't even give his message the time of day because I can't get past the obnoxious attitude of the "messenger".

[Baruch]

Also, the suggestion is that you "choose" God rather than believe naturally through any sort of evidence - someone "choosing" to avoid hell is entirely selfish and, we can assume, may end up in hell anyway

From what I remember of Dawkins' argument (I read it in Tesco but didn't buy the book - naughty!) he makes the point that one cannot simply decide to believe something. One either believes it or not.

[MartinHarper]

From what I remember of Dawkins' argument (I read it in Tesco but didn't buy the book - naughty!) he makes the point that one cannot simply decide to believe something. One either believes it or not.

If I recall correctly, this is a counter-point to Pascal's Wager that was first made by Pascal. In response to his own counter-point, Pascal argued that by choosing to act according to Christianity, over a period of time, one can acquire and internalise that belief. Last I checked he was supported in this by today's science.

I wonder if Dawkins addressed this centuries old response from Pascal.

[Dreadful Scathe]

From what I remember of Dawkins' argument (I read it in Tesco but didn't buy the book - naughty!) he makes the point that one cannot simply decide to believe something. One either believes it or not.

well I agree with him. I also think Pascals argument mentioned by Martin "that by choosing to act according to Christianity, over a period of time, one can acquire and internalise that belief" may have some merit, with some people, some of the time

[Barry Shnikov]

It’s been known to happen However, 30 years? Where’s that come from? I’m not being pedantic, it’s just a really random number to pull out of the hat!

It's quite simple, chaps. I wasn't referring to 1 child, but to a bunch of children. Of course by the time the first kids are leaving school, having been thoroughly indoctrinated from the age of about 3 into whatever religion I wish, I will have had 12 more 'school year's worth of intake, and by the time that last of my victims leave school, that will cover about 20 'school year's worth of intake altoghether.

Obviously indoctrinating one child wouldn't be enough; they'd get out into the outside world and be laughed at. You'd need to follow similar paths to the thousands of quietly racist, quietly self- satisfied, quietly superior missionaries who travelled the world causing social mayhem all over Africa, South America and the Pacific.

[Barry Shnikov]

You're joking, right? I have the same problem with Dawkins that I guess many people would have with an ultra-fundamentalist evangelist: he is such a "crusader", so utterly convinced that he is right and everyone else should (de)convert to his point of view that he utterly turns me off. I don't even give his message the time of day because I can't get past the obnoxious attitude of the "messenger".

Crusader, yes; convinced he is right, yes; obnoxious - not at all. You are, in that, confusing the message with the messenger.

It does take a long time, but you might view the video of his visit to Lynchburg in the USA. He was invited by Randolph-Macon Women's College and was to read from TGD and then answer questions. Lynchburg is where Jerry Falwell's so-called Liberty 'University' (all lecturers carefully vetted to ensure no rationality taints their belief) is situated, and they bussed in a bunch of 'students' to try to ask questions to trip Dawkins up. He deals with them all very politely, only at the very end (when someone tells him that LU has 'dinosaur bones' in its museum labelled as being 4,000 years old) becoming sufficiently annoyed to suggest that everyone should leave Liberty University and enrol in a real university instead.

(NB it's all reading in the first video; the Q&A is all in the second one.)

[andystyle]

Of course by the time the first kids are leaving school, having been thoroughly indoctrinated from the age of about 3 into whatever religion I wish

I wonder, why would an atheist want to indoctrinate people into any religion?

You'd need to follow similar paths to the thousands of quietly racist, quietly self- satisfied, quietly superior missionaries who travelled the world causing social mayhem all over Africa, South America and the Pacific.

This is a personal view, which you are perfectly entitled to. However, why would missionaries devote part or all of their lives to spreading their religion to people of all cultures, creeds, nationalities and ethnicities if they were racist?

[Barry Shnikov]

I wonder, why would an atheist want to indoctrinate people into any religion?

I don't want to do that; I was making the point that it would be possible to resurrect the ancient religions (which we now consider twee and quaint) under such circumstances. The implied parallel is that without this indoctrination there'd be a damn sight fewer 'believers' than there are.

why would missionaries devote part or all of their lives to spreading their religion to people of all cultures, creeds, nationalities and ethnicities if they were racist?

You can't seriously think that question deserves an answer? Anybody else help him out?

[David Bailey]

You can't seriously think that question deserves an answer? Anybody else help him out?

I don't think that all missionaries were imperialist colonialist racist dogs - in fact, I think they were mostly people of faith who wanted to spread that faith, and who generally did a lot of good.

So yes, I think it's a good question, what makes you assume they were all (or even mostly) racist? Were they all called Goody or something?

[Baruch]

It does take a long time, but you might view the video of his visit to Lynchburg in the USA.

Cheers. I'll have a look later.

[Baruch]

You can't seriously think that question deserves an answer? Anybody else help him out?

Yes, it does deserve an answer. Granted, some missionaries in the colonial days may well have been motivated by wanting to spread their own culture and eradicate "lesser" ones, but most missionaries that I've come into contact with have a very different motivation. The emphasis these days is on introducing Christianity to unreached people and encouraging them to express their faith in a way that is culturally relevant to them.

An atheist might argue that this is still unnecessary interfering with someone else's way of life because of the way they are encouraged to change their religion, but that is a moot point depending on which side of the theist-atheist divide you happen to be. However, it is most certainly not racist. These missionaries believe that Christianity is universally true and that people can only get to God and be saved from their sins through Christ, so they are giving up their home comforts to help other people to do that and experience what they (we) believe they have received. That's not racism; that's self-sacrifice on behalf of others.

[Barry Shnikov]

Yes, it does deserve an answer. Granted, some missionaries in the colonial days may well have been motivated by wanting to spread their own culture and eradicate "lesser" ones, but most missionaries that I've come into contact with have a very different motivation.

I'm really not talking about missionaries you may have met!

There were missionaries in Florida and Peru in the 1530s - that's less than forty years after Columbus landed in the West Indies. And more than 400 years before you were born.

Anyway, the question he asked was why would anyone do blah blah blah if they were racist. Frankly, I can't imagine how anyone can ask such a question seriously. There were plenty of good, kind plantation owners who nevertheless believed that black people simply weren't capable of anything more than menial work.

[andystyle]

There were missionaries in Florida and Peru in the 1530s - that's less than forty years after Columbus landed in the West Indies. And more than 400 years before you were born.

And 400 years before you were born, too.

Anyway, the question he asked was why would anyone do blah blah blah if they were racist. Frankly, I can't imagine how anyone can ask such a question seriously. There were plenty of good, kind plantation owners who nevertheless believed that black people simply weren't capable of anything more than menial work.

Simply because you can't imagine why someone would want to pose a question, Barry, does not mean the question is not worth answering. As you were the one who ventured the opinion in the first place, I would have thought you would have had the consideration to provide a constructive answer. Your posts have been treated with the respect due to that of someone participating in a debate with a worthwhile view. Please extend me (and others) the same courtesy.