AC Grayling gets it bang on re faith group daftness.

[SolidGoldBangers]

There's a pint on the bar for him all right. Good effort.

Sorry MorningPaper, the gangs of Muslim boys is a personal observation. I worked for many years in the area with the boys in question. They are quite open with me about what they get up to and their feelings on gays (chop them up with a machete) and women (If they dress like that what do they expect?) It's also not only Muslims behind the attacks. I just fail to see where homophobia comes from apart from religion. I accept that many of these people who carry out the attacks may have no religious belief in themselves or not explicitly associalte religion with their homophobia, but they got these ideas from somewhere? If they got them from their parents, then where did their parents get them from? The law discriminated against gays until quite recently, but these laws were justified on religious grounds.

I'm also not the only person Brixton boy singled out, he was a bit of an equal opportunity bigot.

I agree with mp, the tarring everyone with the same brush is the crux of the matter. We should condemn acts of homophobia, and those who attempt to justify their homophobia on religious grounds. But it makes no sense whatsoever to condemn an entire religion (or even Religion generally) because of those individuals that use it to defend acts that run contrary to the rule of law.

As David Mitchell said (re the expenses scandal but I think it applies here too), if someone does a shit in the swimming pool, you don't automatically conclude from that that swimming is a bad idea.

Btw, the blood donor restriction has nothing to do with religious groups does it?

Well partly they come from our religious background as a society, just as a large number of our viewpoints come from our religious background: hatred of women/people with mental health problems/epilepsy for starters. Homosexuality was always a taboo. Over time we learn more about it and as a society, we put aside those prejudices - one hopes, although we have a long way to go for gay people and women of course. Hopefully the religious institutions will also follow this path as we grow and develop as people.

I worked in a school that was almost entirely black, seeing as they were the majority in that country, many of the older student (who were either the same as me or just a few years younger - as I was on a gap year) thought i'd be up for it because I was white............and the attention from the black male staff, and other blacks I met out there often wasn't much better

Does that mean that all black men think that white women are "easy".............nope. Just means that a group of them had some strange ideas of what they thought they could get from me other than a detention or lines or being told to f*ck off

alwayslookingforanswers, you misstake my point. My friend connot hold hands with his partner in the street for fear of being attacked. I'm pretty sure poverty, alienation and boredom have as much to do with the attacks as a deap seated homophobia. The point is that, because they hold religious beliefs and these religious beliefs include a belief in the religious texts and the religious texts dismiss homosexuality as a valid life 'choice', then they feel able to use the religion as a way of justifying the assult.

Morningpaper, I suspect I'm an easy target for the religious evangelicals. I was brought up to be polite to people, talk to them if approached and I have, due to the old religious studies degree, a slightly unhealthy knowledge of far too many religious books. I'm always up for a discussion if I have the time. Despite nearly two decades in the big smoke I still can't shake my colonial upbringing and develop a rhinocerous hide.

re: Jehovah Witnesses . . .

I think they keep records of who lives where. I live in a house of four flats, three of which get called on regularly, we are ignored though the most accessible of the three. They visited once, DP told them he was Jewish, and they've NEVER returned to our door.

I have a theory they consider Jews sacrosanct and categorically unconvertable, so have crossed us off their list. Try it on yours and let me know if it works.

Slug, I agree with MP, awful though I think these attacks are that you linked to.

Positive traits such as kindness to others are an intrinsic part of human nature. I wouldn't for a minute argue that atheists are inherently horrible people. But in the same way I would also argue that negative traits such as homophobia are open to people of all beliefs and none. They cannot be pinned on the religious.

well I suppose the "cultural" homophobia that I experience abroad could have been from a religious one - from African Witchcraft and such like. But the people I met out there simply thought it was disgusting, unatural, and all the other commonly used insults. Nothing that came from a starkly "religious" viewpoint.

MP has it spot on when she says "Over time we learn more about it and as a society, we put aside those prejudices".

DH's homophobia when he first moved to the UK was from both a cultural and religious viewpoint (though the cultural definitely played stronger). 10yrs after we've moved here I think he'd still be pretty mortified if one of the DS's is gay but would "get over it" now I think (and they reckon there's a 1 in 3 chance and we've got 3 of them ), but he is certainly much more tolerant and less inclined to switch channel/make comments than he used to be.

I'm sure this is because he's been living in a soceity which in general is much more tolerant and open.

Tolerance of others in our soceity is still very young in terms of history - 50yrs ago women, blacks, irish, gays etc etc were all treated in a much worse way than they are today. But we've moved forward. It took centuries before changes started to be made, and it will take generations to improve I think - as don't forget that many people still alive today were born and grew up in a MUCH less tolerant soceity - and it's not always so easy to stop those views getting passed on down, but they will hoepfully do so.

But I don't think that today intolerance can be attributed directly to religion. And there is still work to be done, and that includes work making sure that religious groups are able to function day to day next to each other without the hate crimes that we currently see.

Hence - I assume - the government creating yet another Advisory group to try and glean some ideas.

"The point is that, because they hold religious beliefs and these religious beliefs include a belief in the religious texts and the religious texts dismiss homosexuality as a valid life 'choice', then they feel able to use the religion as a way of justifying the assult."

But where is your evidence of this - I would be VERY surprised if any of the people involved in those attacks had been anywhere near a religious service for a LONG time - if ever.

MP - what are we still doing here - we did our AGES ago .

Actually I should get on - need to find about a million slips and letters from the schools "Somewhere" on the kitchen worktop, fill them in and get up to the schools to hand in/pay vast sums of money for pantomime visits, violin lessons, school discos and gawd knows what else

Yes, I seem to remember I slapped my down some time ago too

Did mine with my first post

From wikipedia

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, the awareness of one's behavior, and facts.

A powerful cause of dissonance is an idea in conflict with a fundamental element of the self-concept, such as "I am a good person" or "I made the right decision." The anxiety that comes with the possibility of having made a bad decision can lead to rationalization, the tendency to create additional reasons or justifications to support one's choices. A person who just spent too much money on a new car might decide that the new vehicle is much less likely to break down than his or her old car. This belief may or may not be true, but it would likely reduce dissonance and make the person feel better. Dissonance can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of disconfirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms.

To whit: I hold religious beliefs. I am a good person, my religion encourages me to be kind, tolerant and caring. Some people commit violent act. These people claim to be the same religion as me. This cannot be because I am a good person, I try hard to be kind and I belong to the same religion. Therefore when I think about people who commit these acts and use my good religion as a justification "I would be VERY surprised if any of the people involved in those attacks had been anywhere near a religious service for a LONG time - if ever."

So you're basically saying that we are in denial?

I'm now £45 poorer than I was an hour ago..........still my DS1 will be happy

I'm in denial PSML.

If it's not OK to take the piss out of and use flippantly insulting and condemnatory names for groups (not personal attacks on named individuals) of people whose opinions you disagree with (I think I'm going to start referring to all the superstitions as 'opinions'. That's a factual term and I'd love to see someone try to redefine it as perjoritive) - how much do you feel obliged to tiptoe round the feelings of racists? ANd just because your (hypothetical you, not aimed at any specific individual) particular version of the faith-type you go in for is free from misogyny, homophobia, etc, is your approach to the members of the same faith type who do display, and rant about, and demand acceptance of and legal protection of, their racism, homophobia and misogyny that a) they are nutters and not proper members of same faith type or
b) they don;t exist, you're just making it up to discredit us!

SGB: I don't think it's helpful to name-call racists, either, TBH. Surely calm and rational argument is the way to win over people's hearts and minds?

Of course there are people within my religion whose opinions I think are very wrong. I help campaign for my opinions and there are lots of pressure groups within the church who do so. Reform from within, as it were.

Hi, I'm back to catching up on this thread so bear with me.

Spero: "Well tough. I don't respect you, I don't respect your beliefs, the same way you don't respect my lack of belief." - I am almost stunned into silence by this statement. Are you writing to the theists on this thread (if so, please provide evidence of this lack of respect for your lack of belief), or are you venting at other theists that you've encountered elsewhere? You are clearly lumping us all into the same bracket with this statement.

SGB, I think you are wrongly assuming that because you have a problem with other people's religious beliefs, all theists must as well. There's only so many times a person can repeat to you: MANY OF US GENUINELY ACCEPT AND WELCOME OTHER PEOPLE'S RELIGIONS.
As I've said before here and on other threads, the people who I've been able to have open convos about religion have been 'moderate' people who have a faith/ agnostics. That's it. So your unwillingness to accept the open-mindedness of the religious is more about your unwillingness than about our lack of open-mindedness.

SGB again: (rephrasing your own words) 'If you adhere to atheism, you have chosen to do so and can choose, at any point, to swap it for a different one or decide the whole lot is bollocks, and no one but you will necessarily know.' Does that statement more or less represent your commitment to atheism? I doubt that you'd say yes. This sentence is meaningless in the context of this convo; it demonstrates that you clearly have no idea what it means to have a faith - and I don't mean this as a criticism of you, it's just something you clearly don't connect with. It's a bit like asking a question about Spanish grammar in a lesson on biophysics: it is not connected to the subject matter and is therefore irrelevant.

Onagar - when you mention honour killings, I hope you're not writing about this as an example of religious practice. Because it's not. It's not Islam, it's nutters who hate women. We have our own woman-hating nutters in the West, some of them happen to have religious beliefs, some don't. Some weakly link their hatred to their religion in order to sublimate it into something 'holy', but people who actually understand those religions understand that that is a lie. Same goes for abortion clinic bombings, etc, which someone mentioned earlier. If any atheist seriously sees such behaviours as evidence of the baseness of religion, rather than evidence of how some human beings are f***ed up, then that is yet more evidence of those atheists' bias 'informing' their understanding of the world.

flock: "Going off on a tangent a bit, I find it odd that 'the church' in the UK is generally taken as meaning the church of England and the view of the vocal minority within it that usually hit the headlines with their anti gay adoption views, etc. Even within the CofE there is a heterogenous group of people with widely differing views about gay adoption, ordination of women, etc. Christians in the UK are a very diverse group, with large numbers belonging to other churches." Jolly well said. I've seen this assumption made several times on this thread; there are many, many denominations of the Church in the UK and abroad, but here people only see the CofE.

By the way, I wish the CofE would get out of bed with the State, I don't care what Henry VIII said.

Slug - I don't get accosted that much, actually - maybe because I always spot them a mile off and run! But being accosted by anyone about any religious belief (including my own, and including atheism) is a right PITA. To an extent I can therefore understand why you would make the assumptions you've made about believers shoving it in your face, but at the same time I hope you can understand why you're wrong to assume that all believers are like that. To give a personal example, one of my good friends recently went when I told her I was a Christian. She literally had no idea, despite the fact that we talk every week and meet up most weeks so that our children can play together. There are LOTS of believers like me, the reason why you don't know it is precisely because we're NOT shoving it in your face. See how that works?

I've just read your second post - flippin' eck that's a lot of accosting. It's really horrible as well when it's people who are clearly not totally compus mentis (sp?), not least because, combined with their aggression, they would seem to be more unpredictable. How awful for you to have to put up with it. It's not the same thing, but I once challenged Mr 'Why Be A Sinner When You Can Be A Winner' - remember him? Can't recall what it was I challenged him about but he claimed that because I wasn't out on the streets with a sandwich board I was clearly backsliding (i.e. slipping down towards the fires of Hell...mwaahaharrr). Unsurprisingly he wasn't interested in engaging in discussion (why oh why didn't I just keep my mouth shut?!). Also he most definitely is not in control of his mind, bless him, and it really gets up my nose to hear people SHOUTING about my faith, because they are doing such damage to the way people view it. But what can one do about people like that? Can't lock them up unless they're a danger to someone. Can't have a conversation with them. It's one of those uncomfortable realities of life, like the BNP and George Dubya Bush.

RofL at "equal opportunity bigot"!

The horrible observations you've made about homophobia and misogyny in East London - that is also evidenced in rap music and a whole range of other subcultures. I'm not going to pretend that religion has not been responsible for hatred against LGBT people to some extent, but neither is it the only possible source, tbh I think you're being a bit unimaginative here. Also you should ask yourself: why is it that many religious people do love, accept and welcome LGBT people? You seem to only be looking at the stuff you want to see. It's no news that Christianity teaches us to love everyone in the same way as we love ourselves; to my mind this means love has to come first and foremost above everything, no matter what that person is like (Dubya: - my faith clearly has its limits ). It enrages me when people try to come up with doctrinal 'evidence' of this, that and the other in order to essentially justify their hatred of some group or other.

I've just remembered a convo I once had with a group of colleagues (who professed no faith as far as I know). One of them asked another how they would really feel if their child turned out to be gay. The answer was "Well, I wouldn't really be all that happy about it, to be honest.' These were young liberal London media folks, by the way. I was because I'd wrongly assumed that it was only people of faith who had a problem with homosexuality, and that non-believers genuinely fully accepted it. Bet they wouldn't have given that answer if a gay person had been round the table.

Re rhino hide - slug, do stand up for yourself! You're not obliged to engage with these people, and chances are they won't want to engage with you, just fire missiles. So what's to be gained? Just look straight ahead and keep walking. Or pretend you're foreign and speak no English. OR shout back and pretend to be a nutter - actually, that might be quite funny! Could you send a video link?

Cognitive dissonance - an incredibly powerful aspect of our psychological make-up, which beautifully explains a lot of the bullshit we humans try to get away with.

SGB - in response to your last question. Some people (whether believers or not) are mentally unstable, full-stop. This will heavily influence the way they try to connect with people, no matter what the subject matter. Some people (believers or not) genuinely wish to self-improve through the context of their beliefs about religion, and from time to time they screw up - sometimes in big ways, sometimes small. Some people (believers or not) are not mentally unstable but are emotionally messed-up and as a result of this are discriminatory, intolerant, vicious, hypocritical, liars, etc etc - the whole gamut of immoral human characteristics. Does that explain why some believers are prejudiced and some aren't? You'll find the same among atheists.

apols for essays!

Hmm. I think the bottom line may be that believing in supernatural stuff of any kind might be down to the wiring in the brain - there have been some studies done which show something along the lines of it being possible to induce 'belief' by means of a quick zap of electricity to certain brain areas. I am not sure if they tried zapping the woo out of anyone's head, though that would be equally interesting.
And I'm aware that individual belief systems are, variously, a source of comfort to an individual, a way of explaining stuff that the individual doesn't fully understand, and sometimes an inducement to pro-social behaviour.
But I do wonder why the frameworks of organised religions always have to include unpleasantness, restrictions on behaviour, prejudice, etc. I know the purpose of organised religion is social control and to benefit the shaman class, but that doesn't explain the nastiness.

Mrs Merry Henry, the lectures were very interesting and full of reason and clarity, and have kept me from breakfast plus I agree with every word.

SGB you have no clue. You would be great as a religious bigot if you ever get your brain zapped.

SGB: Yes, I heard about this when the study was first reported - it's the temporal lobe which was identified as the area of the brain that is engaged when people participate in certain religious practices. I'd love to know more about that - since 'religious practice' covers about a gazillion different sorts of activity, some generated externally (i.e. leaders creating an atmosphere) and some not. What research has been done into the brain wiring of atheists/ agnostics? And what about people who, like me, can sit in on a service where an atmosphere is being generated, choose not get drawn into the vibe, yet still retain a faith? What about people who like me, can listen to a sermon by someone who I respect and yet question and doubt the content? Or, like me, who can enquire about science and religion (I am currently reading a book by an atheist about cosmology) but still retain a faith?

And what about different levels of faith - for example, adversity does interesting things to faith. Some give it up altogether; some question and doubt and then grow in their faith and stay on that faith journey; some start off with a fairly superficial level of belief (relying more on external input and simplistic reassurances rather than grappling with the complex questions of life) - yet despite extreme adversity they never seem to question or doubt, and still retain that same type of faith after their trials have ended. I put myself in the middle category. Are these questions which the research has looked into? As a psychology graduate I can see a whole heap of potential for researching brain activity among those three sub-groups of believers, Let alone the many other categories which I haven't detailed. Are they questions that have occurred to you? I doubt it, since you've shown such a lack of understanding of what faith is about - again this is not a criticism, it's a statement of fact (in the same way that I don't understand all that much about Islam).

The reason I'm detailing all of this is just to demonstrate once again how complex is this experience of faith which you are determined to reduce down to abnormal brain activity and superstition.

"But I do wonder why the frameworks of organised religions always have to include unpleasantness, restrictions on behaviour, prejudice, etc" - "Always"? That's an unbiased, objective viewpoint, is it? And then, re the "unpleasantness" which you see in all religions - what, unlike other non-religious organisations, you mean? Come on, stop arsing around and just admit your bias.

It's sad that with one hand you present yourself as an example of open-minded liberal thinking, SGB, while with the other you show your own bias and prejudice with such amazing sleight of hand that perhaps (I say 'perhaps' in order to give you the benefit of the doubt) you don't even see yourself doing it. Countless times on this thread and others, both believers and non-believers have told you that you are being offensive and prejudiced. If you had a shred of integrity you would stop and consider those opinions. But instead, time and time again you've repelled or ignored them and tried to heap the responsibility on the heads of the religious - a remarkable feat of defensiveness that would stand you in good stead in Parliament. As I said earlier, this problem (i.e. the problem which made conversation on this thread so strained) is not about religion, it's about discussion style and personality differences.

The fact is, people are crap whether they follow a faith or not. We all are. We all do crappy things to each other, some on a horrendous massive scale and some on a smaller scale, and most of us somewhere in-between. Some of us admit it, some rely on 'cognitive dissonance' to fool themselves. If you choose to only see the crap stuff done by believers, that's because by doing so you're displaying your own 'crap stuff'.

Rofl at stuffit! I'm glad you've enjoyed my ramblings! I'm so glad to have been able to have some semblance of thoughtful discussion with you and others on this thread despite all the offence and bias. HUGE credit to lots of you posters who I wish I could name individually but then I'd have to exit this post, search through the thread and post again and blahblah - you have provided food for thought and also answered lots of the sillier questions far more wisely than I could have.

I enjoyed reading your posts too, MrsMH

SGB, I think 'opinions' is a better word than 'superstitions'. Please don't assume that all of those that disagreed with you have a faith.

I don't want my DS to grow up in a sanitised, secular UK. Faith is generally more enriching to our society than detrimental and I would hate to see it driven out by a small section of narrow minded people. I am seeing the more militant atheists as trying to take away the freedom that the majority enjoy, without offering anything POSITIVE whatsoever.