Gills
Respect and religion, remember? Grayling on respect and religion, Blackburn on respect and religion, and now Dawkins on respect and religion. He got a good reception at McGill.
I am under no illusions that I deserve these enthusiastic receptions personally, or that they reflect the quality of my own performance as a speaker. On the contrary, I am convinced that they represent an overflowing of bottled-up frustration, from masses of decent people pushed to breaking point and heartily sick of the sycophantic ‘respect’ that our society, even secular society, routinely and thoughtlessly accords religious faith. Time after time, people in the signing queues thank me for doing no more than say in public what they have, in private, long wanted to say, and probably could say more eloquently than I can. I think people are fed up to the gills with the near universal expectation that religious faith must be respected.
Exactly. And that’s what I keep saying when people rebuke or reproach or make fun of me for being rude about religion – there’s such an avalanche, such a torrent, of the other thing, and such a shortage of the blunt apology-free ‘why should I believe a word of it?’, that people feel cowed and intimidated and silenced – not of course by fear of the stocks or a whipping or decades in the slammer, but by this universal expectation of respect. Believers get to hear lots and lots and lots and lots of sycophantic respect; most non-believers fall all over themselves apologizing and stipulating before they’ll venture to admit that they’re actually not quite entirely altogether believers themselves though of course they do consider themselves spiritual – believers get to hear what they want to hear pretty much all the time, and there’s a famine of the other thing. When I be rude about religion I’m performing a service. Everyone should give me sycophantic respect for it.
But all religions kill, enslave and torture.
And
All religions are blackmail.
THAT is why they try to demand respect.
The mopment the veil slips (yes, that was deliberate) we can see the power-hungry and repressive, torturing face beneath the surface of the good book/works/religion, and then the whole rotten structure is called into question, at the very least.
Shouldn’t that be “when I be rude about religion I *is* performing a service”? You are Ali G, aren’t you?
Just channelling John Humphrys [see aldaily]…
respeck!
[I am under no illusions that I deserve these enthusiastic receptions personally, or that they reflect the quality of my own performance as a speaker. On the contrary, I am convinced that they represent an overflowing of bottled-up frustration, from masses of decent people pushed to breaking point ]
Oh my god, Dawkins appears to be on course to start a religion of his own some time around 2020. Believing that you are the human expression of world-historical forces is an early symptom of whatever it is L Ron Hubbard had.
Shouldn’t that be ‘when I be rude about religion I *is* performing a service’? You are Ali G, aren’t you?
Yo nevah heard o’ de subjunctive, man?
“Dawkins appears to be on course to start a religion of his own some time around 2020.”
LOL: ‘There is no God! But Dawkins…’
“Believing that you are the human expression of world-historical forces”
It’s quite common for Marxists and literary theory academics as well. I can understand how Marxists come to believe this…
“is an early symptom of whatever it is L Ron Hubbard had.”
Scientology is a religion, you cannot criticize it, remember? Unlike the older religions it is at least up to date, what with its nuclear weapons and evil aliens. And jazz bands. And clams.
I have heard o’de subjunctive, man, o’course. I is also thinkin’ that that sentence is makin’ more sense as “When I am rude…” ‘Tis a simple declarative point, to my way of thinkin’. But maybe it is just ‘cos I is fick?
An’ you forgot to close your italic tag.
Allow me.
(I thought David T from Harry’s Place was commenting for a minute then…)
G. Tingey write:
But all religions kill, enslave and torture.
I would reformulate this as follows:
All religions kill some of the time, some religions kill all of the time, but never do all religions kill all of the time.
After the mass killing, mass enslavement and mass torture perpetrated in the 20th century in the name of non-religious ideologies, such as Communism, Nazism, nationalism or racism, humanists should be a bit wary about singling out religion as the source of virtually all evil and oppression.
As I have probably written a hundred times already, it is all a matter of proportion: for example, veil or no veil, Christianity today isn’t what it was in the Middle Ages, and it certainly isn’t what Islam (even in its so-called open sneer quotes ‘moderate’ close sneer quotes version) is today. Humanists would be well advised to consider siding with the Christian Beelzebubs to drive out the Muslim demons.
Are barricades and banners going to crop up next?
‘The Church Militant (but not as homicidal as we used to be)’ is an unconvincing rallying cry for most atheists.
“Humanists would be well advised to consider siding with the Christian Beelzebubs to drive out the Muslim demons.”
Of course, christianity doesn’t have any extremists. So let’s side with the creationists who want our kids to be taught superstition as truth; let’s side with the prudes who would rather have unwanted pregnancy and STDs than sex education in schools; let’s side with the homophobes who think that AIDS is God’s punishment; let’s side with the bombers of abortion clinics; let’s side with the Christian Zionists, who want to have a war in the Middle East to bring the Apocalypse closer and never mind the slaughter on the way.
To say it is all a matter of proportion is surely disproportionate. It’s partly a matter of proportion. But the fact that Xianity isn’t as bad as it was in the Middle Ages does not mean it is not bad at all. There are reasons to resist its public claims even if they do fall short of demands to burn heretics.
About “when I be rude about religion” – it’s very odd that one can’t express that properly in English. I meant be, not am – be as something close to enact or perform. (To illustrate: my mother would sometimes ask me, when I was being [there it is again] histrionic or peculiar in some way, “What are you being?” Family dialect; but it’s a perfectly sensible question. Sometimes I be polemical or rude about religion, which is different from saying I am polemical or rude about religion.)
Surely “When I am being rude…” meets the bill?
No. For the same reason that when one wants to say, oh, when I walk to the store, or when I eat quiche, ‘when I am walking to the store’ or ‘when I am eating quiche’ won’t meet the bill. They’re different. (That’s a distinction that can’t be made in other European languages, which is another lack. And they can’t do the ‘be’ thing either – I shouldn’t have said that was an English lack, because it’s much wider than that.)
Mind you, it is closer. But it isn’t quite it. Oh well. In other languages people don’t even get to say ‘when I am being/walking/eating – can’t use ‘to be’ and gerund – terrible thing! We should pause every day and feel thankful for our ability to use the gerund. I am typing. You are reading. Perhaps later you will be typing, then I will be reading. Lucky us to be able to. Gerunds of the world unite!
Dawkings: “On the contrary, I am convinced that they represent an overflowing of bottled-up frustration, from masses of decent people pushed to breaking point.”
dsquared: “Believing that you are the human expression of world-historical forces is an early symptom of whatever it is L Ron Hubbard had.”
He did NOT say that HE was an expression. He said that what he was HEARING was an expression.
These are two very different things.
“Reading” in sentences like “I am reading” or “I will be reading” is not a gerund; it is a present participle which, together with the verb to “be”, expresses progressive aspect.
A gerund is a kind of verbal noun, and can function as subject (e.g. in “Reading is fun”) and object, as in “I like reading”.
The form (“reading”) may be the same, but the function is different.
Oh dear, Cathal Copeland has fallen for/believes/is stupid and ignorant enough to follow thw “nasty atheistic communist/nazi” line.
Which is completely untrue.
Communism is a classic religion.
( Bertrand Russell noticed this a long time ago – didn’t you know? )
It has the sects, and the schisms and the heresy-trials and the secret police, modelled on the inquisition.
And, of course the evil Stalinists/Trotskysits/Maoists etc are far, far worse than the Capitalists, because they should know better ……
Besides, you have the heaps of bodies, all killed in the name of the holy truth (of whichever form of communism we are looking at this minute) – which is a classic test for a religion:
Does it have a good body-count to justify the holy truth?
Also, Marx made several specific predictions, which have not been fulfilled, thus falsifying his theories, yet the true believers are still “good communists” of one sort or another – which is also a good test of a religion as well – do you still BELEIVE, even though it is patently a collection of lies?
Asd for Nazism, there have been plenty of references to Adolf’s continued catholic christianity, and at the same time his indebtedness to Luther for virulent ant-semitism.
Take your strawman somewhere else, Cathal, we know better.
Meanwhile, right now, religion is killing in the thousands per day:
In Iraq, wher the great majority of the deaths are intra-muslim sectarian.
In Sudan, where the muslim government are murdering thousands of non-muslims in the SW.
In India and Africa and S. America, where people are starving to death for want of birth control, and dying from unnecessarily-contracted AIDS, because of the church’s anti-condom stance.
Not to mention the murders of doctors in the USA by christians …..
Ah, thanks, Grammar Tutor. Present participle, I meant. [slaps self]
i A gerund is a kind of verbal noun, and can function as subject (e.g. in “Reading is fun”) and object, as in “I like reading”.
Grammar Tutor has obviously never been to Reading or s/he would have chosen more plausible exemplars.
Oh, poor Reading. Reading’s not so bad – it’s an easy distance from Oxford and London.
snicker
GT: The fact that Bertrand Russell has said something doesn’t automatically mean it’s true. Besides, your definition of religion seems to be based on “whatever ideology causes people to do nasty things to one another”, e.g. “Does it have a good body-count to justify the holy truth?” as a test of religion and some such. In other words, religion is nasty because it is defined as something nasty. I see no basis in this for a compelling criticism of religion.
But…one could easily argue Merlijn that Communism’s belief in inexorable forces of history is somewhat “supernatural” in a way? I think Mr. GT’s point that Marxist-Leninism shares many of the practical and even habits of thought of a religion cannot be dismissed so easily. Look at the iconography, the saints, the holy texts, the damned versus the saved, the unearthly reward of the Communist paradise always another revolutionary purging away. As other’s have pointed out, narrow definitions of religion would exclude things like Budhism as well…and do we really want to do that?
This argument keeps coming up. I promise no more rantings on the topic :)
GT, et al:
I’m a Scott Atran apostle. If an ideology doesn’t involve belief in a supernatural agent, it’s not a religion. The problem is that if you widen the scope of the term too much, you end up defining atheism itself as a ‘religion’. This ‘anything goes’ approach merely confounds the issues. You might as well talk about the ‘religion’ of soccer, golf, etc.
And I’m not trying to defend religion — you (GT) are perfectly right to point out that most atrocities being perpetrated today are based on religious belief (or sheer self-interest with a religious veneer). 99% of the time, the religion in question is of course Islam. What bugs me is putting Christianity in the same basket as the kamikaze brigade.
P.S.
Who’s religion would you prefer:
His?
or his?
Whose, I mean.
Brian,
I certainly believe there are similarities between religion and Marxism – I actually raised them in a reply to OB on some of the threads around here. But to draw the conclusion “Marxism is a religion” and from that “All religions are evil – look at the Moscow show trials!” would be the wrong one. As there are enough Marxists and even Marxist organizations around which have not yet killed or enslaved or executed anyone, and which would firmly reject the very idea of it. But the point is, the same goes for many religious people and religious organizations, too.
I think the real lesson one should draw from the analogies between religious governments and Marxist or Fascist ones is that giving an overarching metaphysic – religious or not – state power, a secret police, etc. is a very bad idea.
What does *Mars Attacks* have to do with this? [2nd picture above]
Ophelia:
Re ‘About “when I be rude about religion”‘
How about “Whenever I am being rude about religion”
“GT: The fact that Bertrand Russell has said something doesn’t automatically mean it’s true. “
Now THAT is elegant understatement.
Thanks, Paul, but no; that doesn’t quite express the shade of meaning I want. Unfortunately the version that does express what I mean isn’t English. (It’s also not Black English, which uses ‘be’ in a non-standard way to express duration in the present – not unlike the way Spanish has two forms of the verb, one immediate and one long-term or essential. One for ‘I’m here’ and another for ‘I’m a woman’. Language is so innaresting…)