1. I listened to a Radio 4 programme on my way home from "work" last night, it was about blasphemy. It really got me thinking, not about blasphemy but what people feel when they are offended by something. I can't recall the last time I was offended, even personally (Rhino skin me), let alone religiously or otherwise. What do you feel when you're offended? Emotionally hurt, defensive, angry, battered pride. It's rejection. You can challenge a person's reasoning, their methods, even their values to an extent but their belief system is often too strong. If you challenge a person's beliefs, it's saying to them, I reject you on the most fundemental level and that's got to hurt. Remember that when you're having a three pint rant at the soft Christian girl in the pub.
Being an athiest dog that I am, I suppose that I do find some of the far right Christian fundamentalist and the Creationists offensive in the sense that they insult my intelligence, but I choose not to listen to them. In the US I guess blasphemy and even religious intolerance is protected by the 1st Amendment? Should we have an equivalent law in the UK? It's a thought.
2. I have adopted Mozilla. So far so good. No pop ups anyway although it's a bit slooooooooooooooooooowwwww.
3. I'm in charge of about 40 distance learning students. Strange, I've always found it near impossible to learn something from a distance. I guess I'm hard of listening.
4. What happens when your belief or value system is shattered? Let's just say for a hypothetical minute that we find irrefutable proof that God is a bunch of baloney (For the record I think the proof is all around us in the same way that they say he is...). I guess what happens is that your beliefs are either reinforced but for the majority watered down over time. Did you see the Second Coming with Christopher Ecclestone last year which was spooky and thought provoking. Either way I'm happier thinking about God as a marketing tool rather than a belief system.
5. I'd like to know more about how an idea or a concept becomes a belief, answers on a postcard.
6. Did anyone catch the end of the Diana Dors program on Channel 4 the other night? I had to go out before it finished. I got to the bit where the techies had decoded the names and the locations. What happened next?
7. Coupland is a nutter. Pages and pages of what people are thinking, nutty conversations and irrelevant background and then in two lines he describes a bank robbery or a car crash. BAM BAM. I love it. These things do happen in split seconds and last for minutes with the result that they affect the rest of your life. Our brains have a tendency to crumble like a badly made Victoria sponge, hence the belief system I guess.
8. If unlike me you have kids, this is a really good site for the holidays. [http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/] As a kid I loved touring museums expounding the virtues of the agricultural revolution. You have a duty to put your kids through the same hell.
9. I need to convince someone that what the world needs is a definitive rollercoaster road movie book. I'll call it "On the Rails."
10. A man goes into a bar and says, "Have you heard any jokes about me?" "No." says the barman.
Last updated on 07-06-2004 at 06:47 am
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Posted Comments
Comment by: Faerie
(Posted on 07-06-2004 at 06:21 am)
Comment: well when you call us christians "nutters".. that's not a very good place to start is it?
what i find interesting about your point is that you complain about religious intolerance and yet your tone is completely intolerant towards christians..i know this might sound harsh but i dont mean it like that.
anyway.. i'm rambling again.. why cant we all just get along? :)
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Comment by: dogfrog
(Posted on 07-06-2004 at 06:46 am)
Comment: Nancy, I'm not intolerant towards Christians far from it actually. A little unsympathetic possibly, but not intolerant. I agree my tone may have been a bit dismissive. :( sorry Nutters was referring to extreme Christian (mainly American right wing) groups. Sorry for any confusion caused. In the course of the discussion that I listened to, it was argued that some far right groups are combining religious language with their hate messages so that in effect any attempt at a blanket blasphemy law in any country (blasphemy in the UK refers to Christian, mainly Anglican, faith), would be pointless. Each to their own is my motto, I've been thinking about what drives us apart and sometimes I think that people need to understand what offends us even before we get to the discussion phase. Alot of atheists dismiss out of hand Christian teachings and beliefs. I don't on the premise that our history tells us that on the whole we need beliefs, heroes, idols, gods etc to stop us going insane and tearing each other apart. On a ph*losophical level, no I don't believe. I'll edit nutters out since the meaning is wrong.
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Comment by: Faerie
(Posted on 07-06-2004 at 06:58 am)
Comment: i guess i am instinctively defensive because of certain personal experiences here in egypt as a christian...
i can understand your being unsympathetic to fanatics of any religion.. can definitely relate to that.. but i think i read your entry as a bit of a generalisation rather than about a specific sect of christianity... anyway.. thanks for explaining your point of view :)
nancy
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Comment by: dogfrog
(Posted on 07-06-2004 at 07:26 am)
Comment: Unfortunately living in a such a secular country as the UK, alot of people have a derogatory view of religion as a whole, Christian, Muslim or otherwise. Even church going Christians are seen by a good deal of the population, as "weird in some way" but if you asked 1000 people in the street I bet 700 would still say they believe in (a)God. I associate it with a number of things. Religion became seriously unfashionable in the eighties. In the sixties, eastern religions were all the rage. In the seventies there was even a healthy CofE that even backed CND. At the beginning of the eighties there were more people going to church on a sunday than football on a saturday. But religion didn't really fit well with Thatcherism and the greed is good message didn't cross back over either. In more recent times, the western media has reinforced ideas that any type of devotion to any religion is somehow wacky or fundamentalist, (see first Waco and then Iraq etc). I think esp, in relation to Islam there is a real war against intelligence. The Muslim faith requires a good deal of resolve, discipline and intelligence and sometimes I think the West finds that very worrying. I find that intensely sad. But now I sense that people are looking for more spiritual things in the West, perhaps things will come full circle one day and we can have those witch burnings you've all been missing. Sorry I'm rambling like an arse trombone today. Ignore me.
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Comment by: discopants
(Posted on 07-07-2004 at 03:13 am)
Comment: Just thought I'd add a note on the intolerance of Christians to atheists. I'm an atheist but I attended a Christian Union meeting at University at the request of a friend with whom I'd discussed religion and why people believe, so that I could understand their viewpoint better. They had a guest speaker whose basic mantra was 'if you don't believe in God, you're a rotter who'll probably end up in prison'. Despite the best efforts of my friend (a staunch Christian) to intervene, he carried on in this vein and I walked out. I realise, of course, that this guy was probably a one-off but he was a guest speaker- I hope they didn't invite him back to spout more rubbish!
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Comment by: dogfrog
(Posted on 07-07-2004 at 04:39 am)
Comment: Michael Palin described himself as "an agnostic with doubts." I like that.
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Comment by: Faerie
(Posted on 07-07-2004 at 05:15 am)
Comment: discopants.. its a shame that there are people like that.. it pisses me off just as much as it does you. what that man was saying was absolute crap and if he actual read the Bible he'd realise that from a christian view point how messed up his opinion is.
but i think you'll find that there are people like no matter their beliefs.. atheists, muslims, jews, christians.. whatever.. no one is faultless.
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