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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Bluestocking - your Richard Dawkins story?

75 replies

yama · 11/08/2007 22:34

Well?

OP posts:
yama · 11/08/2007 23:46

Scamp - can you imagine undestanding what these guys are up to? Btw, Dawkins is not a physicist.

We, (imho) are much more qualified in undertanding extistentialist angst!!!

OP posts:
UnquietDad · 11/08/2007 23:47

Trust me, scamp, that's really not how they do it!

I don't do name changes - but UnquietGod sorely tempts me...

scampadoodle · 11/08/2007 23:47

& stuff the discussion - I want to know the goss!

scampadoodle · 11/08/2007 23:51

Hmmm...existential angst...yes you could be right But JP Sartre was a bit of a twat as well, wasn't he?!
UnquietGod (do change your name, please!) I know it's not how they do it but that's how it seems. I was shit at physics - good at latin, chemistry & history though!

I've really got to get to bed!

WideWebWitch · 12/08/2007 00:33

lol at "I am as convinced as it is philosophically possible to be that there are no "gods" - love the qualificiation, what, just in case there are and they hear you?

LazyLineLegilimens · 12/08/2007 10:52

It is not lazy to compare the concept of god to something like the tooth fairy. How something so preposterous (religion and the idea of a god) got so much credibility is beyond me.

The idea of god is, to me, as ridiculous as someone claiming the easter bunny exists.

I am happy to tell my child this and do not think I should be criticised for it.

Sobernow · 12/08/2007 11:31

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

UnquietDad · 12/08/2007 11:51

www, no I just phrase it like that because, if you say "there are no gods", people will inevitably (and tiresomely) say "PROVE IT".

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 = zealous happy-clappy evangelical with a "relationship with god" and 1= Richard Dawkins, I am about a 1.5.

LazyLineLegilimens · 12/08/2007 16:37

Great link, sobernow, I do love a bit of Brooker

hunkermunker · 12/08/2007 16:56

By yama on Sat 11-Aug-07 23:01:18
Anyone who is so sure, anyone that can't quite conceive that they night be wrong, anyone that can write to their 11 year old daughter telling her that there is no God is a teansy bit arrogant.

Is it arrogant to tell your 11-year-old child that God exists if that's what you believe?

Kathyis6incheshigh · 12/08/2007 17:34

I am intrigued by the fact that this is in the AIBU topic.

Peachy · 12/08/2007 17:55

Ah this one agin

Its veryy simple in my mind, and after talking to people from every religion from Christianity to jainism

either you believe, in which case no amount of evidence will challenge what you 'know'

or you don't, in which case you can't conceive how anyone else can believe.

both viewpoints fairly inarguable- either 'prove it' or 'I just know'

Pruners · 12/08/2007 18:01

Message withdrawn

policywonk · 12/08/2007 18:01

I dimly remember from my remedial pre-O-Level science 'education' that it is not possible to prove a negative - ie, it is not possible to prove that there is no God. That doesn't mean that those of us who believe that all religion is just a great big plate of crazy are not entitled to say so loud and clear.

UnquietDad · 12/08/2007 23:33

Peachy - there are shades of grey, surely. One of the biggest points RD makes in "The God Delusion" is that you can be an agnostic without being a febnce-sitting 50-50 person - you will almost always lean more one way rather than the other, even if it's 51-49. He constructs a 7-point sliding scale of belief.

What about if you used to believe but no longer do? I know people to whom this has happened. I think it's happened to Jonathan Edwards, from what I have read. And I used to be a vague believer.

(Who's going to be watching his new series? I'll be taping it as it clashes with "University Challenge"!)

gess · 12/08/2007 23:41

I used to believe (until about 14/15) and now don't. My father is atheist, mother agnostic so believing was a choice iyswim. It was the 'the only way to heaven is to believe in Jesus Christ' that did it for me. i asked the vicar (this was during confirmation classes) about other cultures with different gods and didn't it depend on where you were born. Were there not other ways to heaven. Absolutely not he said- they were all doomed to eternal hell etc.

Decided I didn't really buy it at that stage. It's all there in the creed though isn't it.

I often wish I could believe, as I remember how comforting it was to have that, but nope I can't it's gone

gess · 12/08/2007 23:42

Still not sure about spirituality, wider universe stuff though. Just know I don't believe the christian version.

gess · 12/08/2007 23:43

know someone who works on this. Funnily enough spirituality and religiosity don't go together. Being religious is apparently related to things like being conventional and power. Not sure what spirituality is related to.

bigmouthstrikesagain · 12/08/2007 23:49

I find it difficult to understand vague believers agnostics, lapsed catholics and the like. I am probably a bit dogmatic in this element - or lazy? Tbh I get fed up with religious people who cherry pick the stuff they like out of their particular religion - If you sign up to something then you have to do it properly... lots of catholics in my family, taking the pill, getting divorced and frankly they should either give up the religion or the fornicating iykwim?

Equally I find vague pronoucements of 'I know their is sommat out there bigger than us' etc v irritating - if that the best you can come out with i can do without the spiritual insights cheers!

Sorry a bit spiky i know but we all have our bugbears i suppose.

looking forward to the dawkins series though, and bluestockings story???

UnquietDad · 12/08/2007 23:49

We were born in a narrow geographical and historical window - in our case, 2000-odd years which are currently being numbered according to a particular system - in part of a Western World which is, for now, dominated by the culture of one powerful and popular monotheist religion. Powerful not just in religious terms, but - crucially - economically and politically too. And it has, whatever one thinks of it, shaped an enormous amount of the art, culture and thought of this end of the world over the past 2000 years.

I always find it incredible that, given this perspective, people can find this belief system universally applicable.

If you happened to have been born a few millennia earlier/later - a mere finger-click in the billions of years of the history of the Universe - you'd believe something entirely different, because that was/will be the dominant culture.

One thing atheist and Christian can surely agree on is that Christianity has not yet peaked. In fact, it may be only just getting going. Where we'd part company is that I'd argue it will eventually fade and die, as all religions and "gods" throughout history have done.

All that has survived long-term is this planet, and this human race.

gess · 12/08/2007 23:58

I thought chritianity had peaked- with the inquisition and witch burning......

Peachy · 13/08/2007 11:00

UD there are probably loads of shades of grey- when you spend your time studying religion as I do, meeting Jain Nuns. Hindu Saddhus, etc you tend to meet the most devout, and to encounter those with the biggest axes to grind . I would imagine a huge eprcent of the worlds population is grey, but I like the greys- they don't judge or threaten or cause inquisitions. I'm a grey, i've tried to find a definite but can't, and imo its the poeple who admit they can be wrong (as in alla spects of life perhaps?) that are the most tolerant.

Peachy · 13/08/2007 11:03

Christianity hsn't peaked yet, it's spreading quickly in some areas of Africa for example, and because it ahs so many offshoots can claim to be the fastest growing religion- eg Mormonism. Course, if you only have 3 members and yu get 1 more you can claim an asronomical growth rate...... LOL

Peachy · 13/08/2007 11:04

UD ahve they allfaded and died, or just been absorbed? jainism for example- hugely ancient religion, possible pre-dates hinduism 9depending on the scholar), lots of evidence to suggest a feeding into Buddhism and Hinduism for example, both again huge current faith systems

tranquilamanana · 13/08/2007 11:10

have we had this story yet?

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