Britain's new cultural divide is not between Christian and Muslim, Hindu and Jew. It is between those who have faith and those who do not.

[bossykate]

fascinating article in today's guardian.

here

I'm rather late in this discussion, but I would like to agree that the divide is between tolerant and intolerant. Neither science nor religion can have all the answers and it seems supremely arrogant when either side claims it has. I think Dawkins is annoyed that he hasn't converted us all to atheism.

Edam is right in that we are in danger of losing our tolerant CofE. In fact I'd go so far as to say we have lost it. As someone who once considered myself a liberal Christian I bought the argument that you could change it from within. You can't. Leaving aside the whole Anglican Communion thing, the CofE alone is so beaurocratic a simple decision can take a decade. At a local level the vast majority of parishes are concerned with buildings and coffee rotas. I served on my local PCC and when the gay clergy issue came up there was stoney silence - not a nice subject - but we happily spent half an hour talking about the materials used for resurfacing the path to the new toilet. Too many people spend their time looking no further than the end of their noses leaving the field clear for the likes of Phil Giddings and his anti-gay poison to spread throughout the CofE. And b/c that line is official church teaching anyone who puts their shilling in the plate is endorsing this, even if their church happens to be nice and liberal.

I like a lot of pagan ideas - worshipping with the seasons seems far more natural to me, and I like the idea of believing in something I don't have to 'prove'. But historically pagans were just as capable of mass murder as any other group of people. And in terms of the people most likely to kill me or someone close to me - the drunk after a fight on a Friday night or the drugged-up mugger - I shouldn't think either give a great deal of thought as to the existence or otherwise of a deity. People kill each other and whether they are atheirst, pagan, Christian or anything else makes little difference.

I do think that religion can stop someone from hurting others - I've read enough testimony from those who have given up destructive lifestyles on converting to believe thsi can be the case. In most cases religion makes them feel loved and worthy of love - whether b/c they believe God loves them or b/c of the people at their church making them feel that way, who knows?

Sorry, not sure how relevant this is - feel free to ignore!

He has pancreatic cander because he has had chronic pancreatitis for the last 10 years. It was not caused by a toxin, but rather a malfomation of his anatomy.

the reason that we have more cancers now is that we live longer. If you look at the rates of cancer in people below the age of 50, the rates are not signifivcan;y higher than they have ever been.

And more and more people are being cured by science. Sadly not dh this time, but I meet them every day.

People got cancer in the olden days alright - IF they lived long enough. Cancer is overwhelmingly a disease of age, and when life expectancy was 35, and you died of pretty much any opportunistic infection, not many people died of cancer. Not that anyone realised it was cancer anyway.
Fags (herbs?), growing older and loafing about do more to bring on cancer than anything else.

Oh, snap!

But Dawkins isn't trying to stop anyone from expressing their personal spiritual needs - just to keep religion and science apart; or more specifically to stop religion slandering science.

Some one asked me the other day if science wasn't just another type of faith! I nearly ruined the atmosphere at toddlers with my response.

Cancer is predominantly a disease of older people.

Dh and I are the youngest people in the unit by about 10 years.

Most cancers occur in the over 50s. Bfeore 1900 most people were dead by that age!

Like aloha I've needed science to save my childrens' lives. But I expect I'm like a lot of people in that I use a mix of conventional and complementary therapies. My dcs have heavy colds atm and they are dosed up to the gills with Calpol and Tixylix. But they are also breathing a mix of essential oils to help unblock their noses and get them to sleep (hasn't worked for ds who's on my lap but hey...)

Mb, still wishing you well.

Menthol oil is part of conventional medicine though, not alternative medicine. The fact it's a non synthetic substance isn't here nor there, is it?

There are two lovely people who run the local health food shop where I buy lovely organic bath stuff. They are the nicest people you could ever meet, but they look terrible

Off to have a nice warm bath (thermatherapy), with some nice smellies (aromatherapy) and then some sleep (narcotherapy) Just because they all feel nice

Sophable, I think you are a game bird for sticking to your guns. I think you are wrong, but that is all part of life's rich tapestry

Night all!

Anyhoo, I'm off. Hope I haven't offended too many people. In RL I like people who believe in all sorts of things I think are tosh but smile at, and it's rather bracing to have a proper argument here. Perhaps a little too bracing at times!

I love this!

big pharma is fab.

religion is evil.

the fact that scientific 'progress' or rather its use by people only interested in making money has all but taken us to the brink of a planet wide catastrophe is either disbelieved (despite all 'hard' scientific evidence to the contrary) or repeatedly ignored on this thread.

I am not anti science or anti atheism.

but science is not my particular holy cow. it has done at least as much damage (more if you're not ignoring the state of the planet) as religion.

and i'm the loon for being interested in astrology!

and may i doff my cap to you both and invite future thread starters and posters to come and look at a very heated debate that touched on the rawest of nerves and didn't disintegrate.

i salute you both. MB, you especially.

x

I'm not using menthol, dd1 is allergic to it.

Dh has a terrible allergy to tea tree, he ended up at A&E with it, drives me nuts the way it's put in everything w/o an allergy warning.

Anyway, night night!

I said menthol off teh top of my head - there are other essential oils that are part of conventional medicine.

Soph, I'm not making any such false dichotomy - science can be and has been misused by people. There are pros and cons to everything. Without sewage systems, heat, hot water and light many more of us wouldn't be around.

I said menthol off teh top of my head - there are other essential oils that are part of conventional medicine.

Soph, I'm not making any such false dichotomy - science can be and has been misused by people. There are pros and cons to everything. Without sewage systems, heat, hot water and light many more of us wouldn't be around.

Maybe - but then I would say if the essential oil is in its natural state then it would fall in both camps? Menthol isn't an essential oil, it's a constituent of many oils though.

The herbal medicine thing is interesting, meadowsweet has an aspirin-like compound in it but also has a mucilage that prevents the stomach problems associated with aspirin. So why doesn't aspirin have a similar additive?

Message withdrawn

Thing is with a lot of 'alternative remedies' is they either have no effect at all, or they have a placebo effect on the sort of ailments that a good smack in the mouth would stand just as much a chance of curing. Chanting, scented oils and sacrificing of chickens won't do a lot for septacemia, and they certainly won't reattach a severed limb. Where holistic therapists sometimes appear to succeed is that they offer more time (because they are generally able to charge whatever they like) to listen to patients, glue on an interested and sympathetic face - and then maybe provide some very basic "eat sensibly, rest a bit, take a little exercise" type of advice along with the Blue Penis of Pollywollydoodle cream to rub into your tummy button every day. This sort of treatment "works" particularly well on ailments that are going to get better within a few weeks anyway (stress, tiredness, collywobbles, vague sense that the dark is closing in, desire to throw bricks at the telly when the Trisha show is on...) And the aromatherapy/meditation type stuff certainly doesn't do much harm unless you're someone like me who deeply and entirely loathes being massaged - but some of the more vampiric or cuckoo practitioners, the type that advise you to stop your chemo/antibiotics/insulin/anticonvulsants in favour of sniffing lavendar oil and yodelling at the moon should be treated just like any other trader of dangerous substances or basic con artist.

Sophable, I was hoping against hope that you'd pick something like the native Americans...
If, like me you've visited quite a number of their settlements you will see a profound inability to live in harmony with anything.
In particular the relatively fragile environments of Arizona are littered with self destructed villages.
The horse culture was neither ancient nor wise.
Horses came with the Conquistadors and were mostly used to increase ability at war.
The object of such fighting was rarely to acquire territory, but typicallyto "acquire" women. I don't see how a culture where kidnap and rape are strcutural counts as "wise".

Yes mdwifery in Europe was in a terrible state, but it was not the Victorians. It was the various Christian churces who burned "withches". A woman who could help in childbirth represented a threat to the male oligarchy. The effect of Christian oppression nearly depopulated Europe. Haven't you done any history ? You think they burned real witches ?
But the Victorian Christians did throw a grade one fit when anaesthetics were invented. Women are supposed suffer during childbirth. The Bible is very clear on this point, and the churches tried bloody hard to get it stopped. Ironically it was Victoria herself who told the superstious scumbags to go fuck themselves. She insisted on anaesthetics. So "Victorians" weren't all bad people, though as the widespread child prostitution, slavery, and women as chattels under Christian inspired laws was quite grim, but nowhere near as bad as native Indians.

Bloss: I think the problem with making specifically religious ethical beliefs into law is that, when religious believers want something specifically religious made law it's something that privileges them and inconveniences, disadvantages, or removes the civil liberties of other people Such as allowing the religious the right to refuse goods/services to others on religious grounds and/or to be exempt from safety precuations on the grounds that said precautions interfere with some or other religious custom. Otherwise religious and non-religous people would both be capable of agreeing that whaterveritis should be made law (don't randomly hit other people with tyre irons, for instance).

Yes, alternative remedies, clear and present evidence against the notion that evolution isn't working on people anymore, so we're getting dumber.
My "favourite" was Barry Sheen. Artsgrads in the media made big ews out of his decision to fight cancer using "natural" remedies. Fruit wa big in this. Miultiple page spreads, all lauding his decision.
He went downhill very fast.
Stragely enough, the same papers carried no mention of his choices...

I observe many who subject their kids to "natural" remedies, especially avoiding painkillers. I note with sorrow gthe way so many MNers talk of how they "hate giving DC drugs....". Anytone thin k they don't does themselves when in pain ?

Evolution can be cruel sometimes, but getting the children of dumb people dead does improve the gene pool.

Not only do "alternative" remedies make the human race smarter, but of course by reducing the number of people who are saved by drugs, they increase the number in future generations who don't need them.

Dominiconnor, Native Americans didn't used to have the problems you witnessed until europeans showed up. They are a decent people and your comments do not reflect the culteral values past or presents of Native Americans as a whole.

DominiConnor you talk a fair bit of sense on this and on other threads. But judging Native American culture on your own visits to the places where they live is not a sensible argument unless you're about 150 years old (in which case haven't you got better things to do with your time?). Having been conquered by a warlike culture doesn't automatically make the victims' culture all wrong... however, most of the people who live in developing countries would rather have antibiotics, asepsis techniques and advanced surgery for their ailments than any amount of bark-chewing, star-gazing, circle-dancing traditional stuff.

"trouble with the herbs tho, is that you cannot acuuratly decide on a dose, since the amount of active ingredient will vary from season to season, because of the growing conditions.

And since it is the active ingredient that matter, rather than the herb per se, isn't it better to get it in a know amount, of a known strenth, with no unwanted additives?"

Just in case this was at all in response to my post talking about someone developing a knowledge of herbs being a scientist (I'm not sure, sorry) - I wasn't arguing "herbal medicine is science => herbs are just as good as modern medicine". Rather, I was trying to make the point that herbal medicine can be just as much science in action as yer classic white-coat medicine, and therefore it doesn't make sense to make arguments of the kind "herbs are good and science is bad".

Science is what we all rely on constantly to separate the effective from the ineffective, to work out how the world works - right from when we're children learning by experiment how much of the area of a book, say, that you need to keep on a table to stop the whole thing falling off (learning about centres of gravity by trial and error). 'Reverse-cherry picking' some aspects of science to reject, while deep down relying just as much as anyone else on scientific principles elsewhere (even within the development of supposedly 'alternative' therapies themselves) makes no sense (and is quite hypocritical a lot of the time).