To be annoyed with the Church this time of Year?

[Emprexia]

Halloween is nothing to do with Christianity and it REALLY bugs me that every year without fail you get some bishop or other moaning about people celebrating it.. and how its leading our children astray, or the extremists banging on about it being satanic and encouraging children away from the christian faith!

Hello!!!

Its Halloween, which is infact AKA Samhain to the Pagan population of the country. ITs not evil, its nothing to do with the devil or satan... its Pagan New Year!!!

Is burning the normal way to respond to naked dancing, then?

wsc I am not a victim but the church has a media platform that in my opinion they shouldn't get. They are given access to the media that other groups just would not have and because of this they are able to pontificate on all sorts of matters to all of us about how we should live our lives. Halloween is one petty example of that but their influence can be much more malign than that.
Why should some old bishop get a write up but I couldn't just because he believes in god?

Anyone going up Pendle Hill in this weather needs their head examining

Exactly Andie - even in full weather gear with a thermos of cocoa and some Kendal Mint Cake, never mind bloody naked!

as my fil would say bl**dy hell fire you'll not get me up there

lol @ the media platform the church gets. Wheeled out when the media needs a pious soundbite is about the limit of it, isn't it? Unless you're watching the religious channels and good luck with seeing a bishop on them...

ponders naked dancing

Welll..... the church gets more of a serious media platform than people with other supernatural beliefs, who are (quite rightly) relegated to the crank shows on Five and the like.

To those of us who have no faith, David Icke with his turquoise tracksuits and his lizard royals is no dafter than some bloke coming back from the dead and people drinking his blood in church. Tom Cruise gets a hard time for being a wacky Scientologist, but I bet everbody in the US would be fine if he were a similarly wacky Christian. Etc.

I would argue that the US is a completely different kettle of fish, UQD.

the church does get a media platform they also get asked to join groups to comment on new gov policy etc etc and as UQD says why should they get any more of a platform than david icke
I suppose what I am saying is that I would like a truly secular society ie no faith schools etc

The major religions do get more of serious media platform, not just the Christian Church. But many an idiot gets a much wider media platform.

"The US" is not a homogenous whole.

I'm another one who rather resents the media platform given to some brands of superstition (when they are all equally ridiculous). THough I think 'f off you total irrelevance is about all the response any pontificating bishop merits.
An American friend of mine used to ponder whether the having of a state religion kept the worst excesses of the headbangers at bay, and she may have had a point (dear old fluffy anglicanism, as far as most people are concerned( but unfortunately the supertitious of all brands are getting rather more shrill and tiresome and incapable of quietly gettingon with their own lives and chatting away to their imaginary friends as much as they like, without meddling in the affairs of other people who don;t share their delusions and don;t need to.

No, I was just saying "in the US" because you don't tend to get high-profile Scientologist slebs over here in the UK as a whole.

But look at the treatment Dawkins got from the mainstream media when he was over there - this interview is an assassination attempt, and he is not on top form with defending himself:

here

Interviewer O'Reilly talks about "atheism" and "agnosticism" as if they are some weird cult sweeping the nation (v. telling that he stumbles over them as if they are unfamiliar words from another language).

Kaishay, I am not denying that Halloween as 'celebrated' today has changed in some areas. I am just being as pedantic as you claim to be by insisting on the right name for the right religion.

I have spent years discussing my faith with people and have managed to correct many misconceptions (with some people at least).

The 'hard-core' Christians (for want of a better term), ie those who see Halloween as something evil and dark, try to wash their hands of it by claiming it is a Pagan celebration and therefore nothing to do with them. You can go no further with that argument without first correcting them on the origins of the name and the Christian reasoning behind it AND separating it from Samhain.

Makes it a bit hard when a fellow Pagan rolls in and promptly shouts the opposite .

UQD, we giggled over that interview before. Pure pantomime.

SatanGeorge, I think you've made the case quite well. I think Kaishay is having a jolly good old kick at the straw man, and fair enough. I think she is being unreasonable, but I'm sure I've got chips on my shoulder about some things, too.

Cheers Sue.

'tis me of course with my Bonfire night name change as if you couldn't tell

Now, Bonfire Night, shall we start a religious scrap over that one as well? I can stand on the sidelines and shout 'it wasn't us this time!'

I need to fine tune my scrapping skills, I'm not coming across at all well as a raving lunatic recently. Apart from when I lost my temper on the poppy thread, and I instantly felt awful about it. Someone slap me, I need toughening up.

But plenty of people in the US are incredibly derogatory about Fox "News" and think Bill O'Reilly is a raving loon. Only unfamiliarity with him would lead someone to say he's representative of the US media.

But O'Reilly speaks for the average middle-American, surely, in that atheism is still seen as weird over there and that most people have no problem with "In God We Trust" and all that. It's a country where George Bush Senior could say he didn't consider atheists to be citizens and hardly anyone raised an eyerbow.

Go for it SG, I say burn the Catholics!

"But O'Reilly speaks for the average middle-American"

In what world?!?

Atheism most certainly is not weird over there. Yes there are a lot more overtly religious people over there, but lots of Americans have issues with this. The fact is that a minority religious right wing view has monopolised sections of the media and these things are peddled out by people who love to believe America is a homogenous whole populated by people who all believe the same thing.

I was sucked onto this thread by the last post when I saw the words "O'Reilly speaks for the average middle-American". Oh dear, do you really believe that?

As eloquently stated on www.sweetjesusihatebilloreilly.com:

"Sweet Jesus, I hate Bill O'Reilly, International is an organization dedicated to the dissemination of information that exposes Bill O'Reilly for what he is: an ego-driven, biased individual who spreads fear, hate and misunderstanding. While he sees himself as a culture warrior, his views are firmly anchored to the political right. He works tirelessly to enrage Americans and pit them against anything he considers "liberal" or, worse yet, "secular". Mr. O'Reilly uses highly manipulative forms of presentation, phrasing and, yes, "spin". Also, he's completely nuts."

Also check out: www.oreilly-sucks.com

Is this a red state/ blue state thing?

I always though Bill O'Reilly was kind of like an American Jeremy Kyle.

The problem is that most festivals have a POSITIVE message that the church can encourage people to remember and celebrate

With Halloween it is basically focusing on commercialism, horror and gore and teenagers demanding sweets so you can see why the church comes out against it

A little opposition is a good thing, I think

If atheism isn't seen as weird in America, why are there only 8-12% of people (depending on which survey you believe) who call themselves atheists? How was GHB allowed to get away with saying atheists weren't citizens? And how is the currency still allowed to have "in God we trust" on it? And why is it still "one nation under God"? Why is someone like James Randi, who exposes fraudsters, the subject of so many ad homimem attacks? Don't get me wrong, I know there is a vocal liberal movement who wouldn't let someone like O'Reilly speak for them in a million years. But these things worry me.