Honest question. Is this site a religious site?

But I don't know what "spiritual" means. Some people would say that this is my problem. Others would say that this is because the word can mean whatever the hell you want it to mean, complete with waving arms and woooooo noises.

Threadworm - exquisitely put.

So you want my acceptance (freely given) that eating a home-made shortbread is far nicer than eating flour, butter and shortbread separately, and/or stating that this is all it is. Fine.

But I don't dispute the existence of the biscuit-maker. If I want evidence for his/her existence, it is easily found.

I still don't get (see, this biscuit thing is actually quite interesting) how this is a religious analogy. It doesn't work.

It is more than feeling better I think - I mean, you could apply that to anything humans do: falling in love, having children...

I think that if you open yourself to the divine through meditation (typed medication there, which may also work...) or prayer then you are opening yourself up to change and thoughtful reflection and perhaps some spiritual event that affects you on a very spiritual level - and that change should help you to be a better human being

rather than, say, write threatening letters to David Attenborough

Yes, I think you've put your finger on it threadworm

Kay, yes quite.

kayharker - as ever yours is a comment worth engaging with. I take full responsibility for the biscuits. That's what you get for using an an analogy...

I know that Lewis comment, but, like his "rusty ships" analogy (in" Mere Christianity") it only works if you believe something is happening at all in the first place. As I've said above, there is nothing wrong with praying to make yourself feel better, but I'd look for evidence if anyone wanted to claim any supernatural happening.

Sorry to be all boringly insistent on evidence all the time! But it does help... otherwise who's to say that the invisible pink elephant in my back garden doesn't exist?

Shortbread: The exquisite sensuality of the melting fat in one's mouth (experienced as a craving for more) is the poignancy of perceiving as a passing ephemeral thing the yearned-for meaning within the aesthetic experience, even as it slips beyond our grasp. Just like the beauty of a liturgy sung to an in-some-sense non-existant God.

eachpeach!

You're a satanist?

Malted Milks? What's the matter with you?

Your religion is... Baptist Church Toddler Group?

Yes IB, but you will still eat the shortbread. You won't decide it's much better all round to just eat a slab of butter, a cup of flour and a cup of sugar instead.

The problem with Threadworm's very clever-sounding analysis above is that people have different ideas about what constitutes this very emotive term "reductionist". Is it reductionist to discount the views of David Icke, or the flat-earthers? If it isn't, then the above is just special pleading. If it is, then we may as well forget rational thought.

If your god can't cope with a bit of sarcasm he must be a touchy bugger.

Malted Milks are my favourite...

My religion is?

Threadworm, as you would expect, I can't quite decide which is my favourite biscuit. Although I am particularly fond of shortbread. Or at least I was until UQD opened my eyes to the meaninglessness of the experience of shortbread eating. Now with every mouthful I will hear in Yaffle like tones "nothing but flour, butter and sugar, you know..."

BTW I hope you all feel suitably guilty - I was going to just have my nice ham salad wrap and a few grapes for lunch... no points for anyone for guessing what else I found I desperately had to have....

UQD, how about CS Lewis's answer about prayer not changing God, but changing us instead? Sorry not to engage you seriously on a thread that is now primarily about biscuits (which I'd point out is your fault )

You'll get lots of sensible answers UQD, most of which will contradict each other

UQD: so in some cases a reductionist analysis rests happily alongside the acknowledged existence of the thing it explains reductively -- i.e it doesn't have to make any claims about the non-existence of the explained thing?

Now tell me how you decide in which cases it does make such claims about non-existence and in which cases it doesn't? If you were to do that then you might not have bought your sarcasm about religion so cheaply.

of course in America the whole thing has gone too far

they have GORGED on biscuits and can't stand up anymore

but that doesn't mean that the English Biscuit is wrong

see its not a religious site by stealth its a baked goods site by stealth.

Personally I don;t beleive in baked goods but try to be tolerant to those who can;t get through the day without them.

Do you think that if I go and ask in the Philly, Reggie and Spirry section what people think prayer is "for" (because I don't understand it, apparently, being all dim and that ) I will get some sensible answers?

oh yes UQD but really is there no moment when you bite into the crumbly biscuit and are instantly transported into the divine? HMM?

It's a conspiracy, follderol. Turn your back for five minutes in this place and your thread gets hijacked by baked goods.

Of course there is a biscuit and of course there is a point to it! But it is an earthly pleasure. No more.

Are you saying there is no biscuit UQD??