to be cross with my elderly fil about the meaning of easter

[nickschick]

Bit tongue in cheek really.

FIL was today bemoaning the fact that he couldnt go to tesco for his cigar supply as they were shut for Easter.

Its only Easter he said they could have had usual Sunday hours ,its not like Christmas or anything.....

ONLY EASTER?????? i SHOUTED - JESUS DIED ON A CROSS FOR US!!!! EASTER IS MORE SPECIAL THAN CHRISTMAS - YES EASTER IS IMPORTANT.

and that sais dh is why you should never discuss religion with a catholic especially not one who sat in a cold church for an hour and a half last night at the easter vigil.

get back to work

Okay, you're saying the shops have to be closed in case a religious person works in a shop, doesn't want to waste his annual holiday or might be required to work because the other religious ones already booked theirs.

By that argument power stations must close on those special days too (all the special days for all the religions remember) and so must hospitals. No taxis, no planes, no trains.

If you try to say "but those are vital" then I'd say that in fact a taxi to visit someone is not vital nor a plane to go on holiday. There are plenty more examples.

Someone said "I don't go around saying, Oh, your an atheist so therefore I reject your non-beliefs and think you're damned etc."

Actually that is what many religions do all the time. Some of them are known for it.

"Maybe a bit of spiritualism might help them think of others more?"

Is that the table tapping? "is anyone there....is that aunt mabel and if it is can you tell me where you put your will so I can make our Sharon give me the best dinnerware back"
Not sure how that makes people think of others.

Or maybe you mean the healing. That thing where people lay on their hands and cure anything that is not visible to others (like at lourdes where you never get a new limb)

You shouldn't intrinsically respect my beliefs, however it would be the open minded thing to respect my belief of my beliefs IYSWIM. I'm not asking you to agree with me, just respect that i have different views to you and not openly mock them, as I don't yours.
I think you'll find the majority of the agressive posting on here is by non believers of christianity, and yes i got frustrated by the tone of it, who wouldn't?
I'm not asking you to agree with me, just not to be so agressive with your put downs of a well respected (by some) religion.

This is the usual small-minded dogmatic Christian syndrome - if you don't share OUR spiritual values and OUR beliefs, then you are a moral vacuum, you have no joy in your life and your spiritual life consists of a big hole where OUR beliefs ought to be

In fact there are many different forms of spirituality. Personally I value and love my human spirituality, rather than needing to see the spiritual aspect of me as being a shard of something non-human, belonging ultimately to somebody else who is invisible and holds all the power

[falling-a-little-bit-in-platonic-love-with-greensleeves]

SO I shouldn't intrinsically respect your beliefs. Good. We agree on that. In that case you need to stop calling atheists 'aggressive' for disrespecting them. We agree that we should say what we like about them.

Right, I'm not trying to take the piss here - just trying to explain...

I try to respect peoples beliefs, I really do. My problem is that I genuinely cannot understand how anyone with any intelligence can believe in a God.

I know some scarily intelligent people who would count themselves as Catholics and yet, while I respect their intelligence in every other area, when it comes to religion, I'm just baffled. I'd have the same reaction if one of them came up and told me with absolute sincerity one day that there were fairies at the bottom of thier garden

It's just so obviously wrong to me that I cannot comprehend believing it. It's like sometimes I just want to shake them and go "just look, it's obvious, how can you be so blind!"

Imagine trying to have a deep in depth discussion with someone about a Fairy Tale. Imagine watching them make decisions and live their lives based on the story of Rapunzel or Hansel and Gretel.

I can't speak for everyone but I try to respect them but it's just so hard when they are so obviously wrong!

It's the same the other way round too. The way religious people talk about Atheism as if it is a hole to be filled because they cannot imagine a life without a god is just as close minded and disrespectful. Like when my PIL's wanted me and DH to get our DC's baptised as Catholics because they were Catholics. My lack of faith left a space to be filled and they saw their religion filling it. The fact that I might mind missed them completely as as far as they were concerned I had nothing to fill that hole instead.

Actually, Easter was originally a Jewish festival (Passover), not a pagan one. Passover celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from slavery/oppression in Egypt. Passover is celebrated at around the same time as Easter every year. Easter as a theological concept is based on the idea of release from the oppression of sin -- there's a philosophical link to the idea of Passover.

In the Orthodox churches, Easter is still the major religious festival, with Christmas enjoying the secondary place it once had in western Christian religious observance also.

I worked in the US for a while in the hotel industry and got no extra pay for weekend work (wouldn't have got any extra anyway as I was salaried, not hourly). And I was entitled to the grand total of one week off (vacation) plus 5 sick/personal days a year, which was standard in the industry, at the time anyway. To those who wish for 24/7/365 opening -- be very careful what you wish for unless you're very sure you won't end up working a schedule that could conceivably be 10 days in a row with two days off bookended at either side, just for the sake of customer convenience. Easter/Christmas/4th of July/Thanksgiving were no exceptions to the scheduling. It's not a good thing to make customer convenience (aka money making opportunities) sacred. Somebody loses, and it's usually the lowest paid employees.

Would also like to add that the general Christianity-bashing is something I find appalling. I have been on threads where Muslim veiling of women has been discussed and the tone of debate has been polite and restrained. It is not ok to fling pejoratives around where other people's religious beliefs are concerned -- if this can be avoided on threads featuring other religions, why not about Christianity?

When does the festival of passover date from then?

'I can't speak for everyone but I try to respect them but it's just so hard when they are so obviously wrong!'

This is what I mean, exclamation point included. GoldenSnitch, it is your opinion that other people are wrong, nothing more. It is not a fact, just an opinion. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but nobody is entitled to judge others and find them lacking (in intelligence for instance) just because your opinions and theirs on religion don't coincide. Everyone is entitled to respect, whether you agree with them or not.

Way to miss a point Math!

Following math's post, I'd echo GS's and say I don't know how an educated person can be religious. It seems like wilful delusion.

Passover dates from the disputed date of the (also disputed, archaelogically) exodus from Egypt, about 1450 to somewhere in the 13th C bc.

What point about 'they are so obviously wrong!' have I missed GS?

"My problem is that I genuinely cannot understand how anyone with any intelligence can believe in a God.

I know some scarily intelligent people who would count themselves as Catholics and yet, while I respect their intelligence in every other area, when it comes to religion, I'm just baffled. I'd have the same reaction if one of them came up and told me with absolute sincerity one day that there were fairies at the bottom of thier garden

It's just so obviously wrong to me that I cannot comprehend believing it. It's like sometimes I just want to shake them and go "just look, it's obvious, how can you be so blind!"

I never said it was anything other than my lack on understanding and comprehension.

I've just done a bit of googling and it would appear that most Christain websites would disagree with you Math, stating that the origins of Easter are clearly of Pagan origin.

Some of the most important scientists in the country are Christian who believe in the Bible as it is and I'm not talking about Creation Scientists (although they are Creationists) I mean those in mainstream science. I'd be interested to see the people who it's so obvious that it's all wrong debate it with some of the most intelligent people, scientists, in this country.

Like who?

Passover and Easter are theologically linked, (redemption/freedom from oppression) and are celebrated at around the same time each year. The NT story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection states that what is now Christian Holy Thursday was originally the Passover feast/seder, with Jesus gathering with his disciples to celebrate in an upper room, and all the other events that Christians commemorate following. There is a clear link to Passover, both in terms of timing and philosophical significance.

Whether the original Jewish celebration of Passover was accurately placed at the exact time of the exodus from Egypt (assuming such an event happened all at once) is debatable, and debated by archaeologists and Torah/OT scholars alike. It is celebrated beginning on 15 Nissan, (Jewish calendar explained here). The Torah and Old Testament may seem unwieldy and less than reliable as historical documents, but they deal in their own style with the origins of the Jewish religion and people, as well as providing the basis of Christian beliefs concerning Christ.

That a religious festival might occur on or around the time of a former non-Christian festival does not say anything about the relevance of otherwise of the religious belief surrounding the festival. Pagan festivals were not unreligious, as far as we can ascertain. The pagan festivals we know about were probably the top layer of thousands upon thousands of layers of festivals commemorating different seasons. There is nothing in the seasonal aspect of modern religious observances that negates them as expressions of faith or proves that the religions themselves are a load of bumph.

Mrscrocoduck, if you can't see how telling someone their religious beliefs are 'willful delusion' might be offensive, then there's probably no point in my spelling it out for you. But here's a start: do you know what the three little letters IMO stand for? Same goes for you, GoldenSnitch. In my opinion comes across as a lot less arrogant and rude than your recent post. Here's how you could rephrase one sentence of yours to give credibility to your claim of respecting people who hold beliefs that are different from yours -- 'I can't speak for everyone but I try to respect them but it's just so hard when in my opinion they are so obviously wrong!'

MrsCrocoduck, you and some others are being agressive, in the forceful way you rubbish other views.
Mathanxiety, well said! Thank you.
I will bow out now, I've tried to be reasonable and open minded, respecting others views as well as my own, but i won't stay around to carry this on. It's just become a slanging match from some who won't accept that other people have other views to be tolerated, but not necessarily agreed with in a polite manner.

Yes Math. In every single other sentence, I included a phrase to note that it was my issue or my problem that I didn't understand but you carry on picking up on the one I missed it out on. That helps! It's like you're missing the point on purpose!

So I think five is right. People are becoming aggressive in rubbishing views that they don't understand and the best thing to do would be to leave you to it now.

I will never understand you, you will never understand me and I have better things to do than argue with someone on the internet who is only reading the bits of my posts that she wants to hear. It's pointless.

IMO is tautological when discussing pretty much anything. Of course its In my Opinion, who elses opinion will it be? And since its all subjective, it can't be anything other than an opinion.
I notice you don't pick up your religious friends for not writing IMO before any point? Odd.

What I just don't understand is the idea that it's ok to assert an unqualified opinion as the truth, as many have done on this thread, about someone else's belief system, despite a very apparent lack of historical knowledge and perspective.

I don't understand the sense of personal grievance that I perceive throughout this thread on the part of many non-religious posters, the sense of personal insult, even about the National Anthem, and the massive amount of umbrage that has been taken, apparently because the UK has a Christian past and certain days are reserved as holidays during which some shops sometimes shut. What is behind the level of anger? Closing shops at Easter (or Christmas or whenever) is not a form of persecution of atheists, by any stretch of the imagination.

I am puzzled by the lack of courtesy. 'IMO' goes a long way towards keeping a discussion civil, imo. As far as I can see, Runnybottom, nobody has cast aspersions on the intelligence of atheists or non-religious posters on this thread. Nobody on this thread has used venomous, vitriolic, sarcastic and mocking language (fairy tales, fairies at the bottom of the garden, etc.) to describe the beliefs of non-religious posters.

I think people have been harsh on both sides.

People without religion have been spoken about as if they have no morals.

lol @ 'creation scientists' there's an oxymoron if ever I saw one.

Why shouldn't my views on religion offend you when your beliefs offend all rational thought?

You think "Fairy Tales" is venemous and vitriolic? Wow, oversensitive much? Fairys in the garden is an old quote, it doesn't belong to anyone here?

Who has asserted unqualified opinion as truth? There is no such thing as an objective truth on these matters anyway.

You wouldn't understand the personal grievance, since you are making no effort to see it from the point of view of someone who doesn't share the religion that these things are based on. Promoting one religion to the exclusion of others is rather offensive to many. Having a song about one person and one deity that is meant to represent the entire country is offensive.

Like I said, you don't seem to mind the Christians not riddling every post with aredundant IMO's do you? You don't jump on posts like this one from claig
"if you think that Christ said nothing of note which hasn't been said a million times before then you haven't understood what he said. The Muslims know that what Christ said was very profound, and they revere him and his teaching"
or this one from faddle;
"Fact - a man called Jesus died on the cross.
Fact - according to the writings about him, he suffered this so that our sins may be forgiven. This is generally accepted as historical fact"

Facts? I don't think so. But we are the ones who are nasty and agressive?
Whatever, like I said, Christians whining at being persecuted is like middle class white men wondering "wheres my parade?". Don't you get it?