Do you feel the need to pick a religion?

[solidgoldbrass]

this might help.

OK, I misunderstood you. It sounded to me like you were saying the different deities were merely differing and equally distorted perceptions of the same thing. If that's not what you were saying, what did you actually mean?

I agree that you shouldn't force your beliefs or disbeliefs on others. But I don't agree that it follows that you cannot mock the beliefs of others. Why on earth not?

If we're not allowed to mock others for their religious beliefs, what else are we not allowed to mock? Political beliefs? The belief that homeopathy is anything but placebo? The belief that ear candles actually remove ear wax? The belief that the Cottingley Fairy pictures aren't painfully obvious fakes? The belief that the royal family are lizards? Where is the line drawn between beliefs that can be mocked and those that cannot?

I don't see why someone can say that belief X is more valid than belief Y, and that therefore it's OK to mock belief Y.

There is a difference between belief, ie the acceptance of something unprovable, such as the existence or non-existence of deity, and the acceptance of empirically proveable fact.

TBH I feel uncomfortable with mockery in general. Though I find it perhaps more acceptable when it's over an issue where blind faith ignores proveable fact.

As for the names, what I'm trying to say is that it is in human nature to give names to things we try to understand. The giving of a name eventually gives the thing substance. But the name is not the thing itself.

I read a book by a respected, mainstream scientist in which he tried to explain what came before the big bang. He called it the Singularity. Now, I'm not denying the big bang (I'm no Creationist), but how is his inexplicable "Singularity" any different to my "Deity"? Neither has proven existence, neither has proven involvement, both are a way of trying to explain the inexplicable.

Humans have a long history of torture, imprisonment and killing people because of their faith or their lack of faith or their difference of faith. It is not something particular to the religious.

well if "just let them get on with it" is your take on it then why don't you fuck off and "just let them get on with it?"

David Icke sincerely believes (or he did at one point anyway) that the royal family are shape-shifting alien lizards. Can you prove they're not? BNP members sincerely believe that anyone non-British should be deported. Can you prove they're wrong? Should we not be allowed to mock such ridiculous beliefs?

Sorry, I still don't see what you're getting at regarding names. You seem to be talking in riddles. If you can accept no proof and yet still believe in one god, why not all gods for which there is just as much proof?

The difference between a scientist talking about a possible singularity that came before the big bang and a believer talking about that singularity being god is how those beliefs are handled.

You could take the mickey out of his belief and he will probably laugh along with you. He won't expect his belief to be treated with particular reverence or to be immune from dissent and neither will be expect that there should be people who have seats in the House of Lords simply by virtue of what brand of cosmology they prefer. He won't insist that his children can only possibly go to a school where all the other children hold the same belief and he won't ostracise people who don't share that belief. And he certainly wouldn't threaten violence towards people who think something different.

Most importantly though, if you go up to that scientist and say "I think you're wrong because..." and come up with a good enough reason, he'll change his mind.

My problem with mockery is that it achieves nothing. You can try to convince by way of argument or debate. By adopting mockery, you simply entrench that view in believers which is not the desired result and what is the point of that?

The physicist's Singularity isn't by definition 'inexplicable'. Currently unexplained yes; maybe will never be comprehensible to the human brain (in the same way that just beacause calculus is inexplicable to my dog) but that doesn't mean its inexplicable in the way that Dieties are.

I think maybe what it boils down to, for me, is all about mockery and nothing about religion.

When I read the bit about David Icke all I thought was "Does he really?". It doesn't bother me what he believes, as long as he doesn't impose that belief upon me. But it didn't occur to me to mock him for that belief, any more than it would occur to me to mock someone for believing that Jesus died for them. Both ideas are to my mind equally silly, but I won't mock people for holding those beliefs.

You don't agree with me over my understanding of deity. We don't feel the need to revere each other's beliefs, but we are treating each other with common courtesy, neither mocking the other.

I don't think the flowchart in the OP was particularly mocking of religion (well, it was a bit rude to scientologists and the JWs and Mormons, but then the latter two are a bit rude doorstepping people).

It was a joke about how people might decide what religion to follow. Of course there's a serious point that people don't choose like this - its to a very high degree dictated by what family you happen to be born into.

I don't care if someone wants to believe in god(s). I don't care that David Icke believes that the royal family are lizards. I'm not going to put that much effort into changing their minds because it's a free country and they can believe whatever they want.

I do reserve the right to take the piss just as I accept some people might take the piss out of my atheism. It's no big deal. My sense of self is not so wrapped up in my religious non-belief that someone cracking a joke at the expense of atheists will cause me mortal peril. Make it a good enough joke and I'll likely laugh along with you.

What I care about is when someone else tries to use their beliefs to affect other people. If someone gets to vote on legislation that affects me purely because their alleged belief in a particular brand of a particular religion has earned them a seat in the Lords then that's not fine. If someone tries to stop gay people getting married because their book of collected bronze-age myths says they shouldn't then that's also not fine. If a church conspires to hide known paedophiles from the full force of the law then that's seriously not fine.

I think occasionally taking the piss is quite mild compared to those injustices, don't you?

The thought occurs that Father Ted probably gives people a less negative view of the Irish Catholic church than it would otherwise have at the moment.

I agree with pretty much everything you say, heresiarch, apart from the bit about taking the piss. Perhaps my sense of self is less robust than yours.

And, yes, occasionally taking the piss is quite mild wrt injustices. Of course injustice should be fought. Doesn't mean the courtesy should be discarded.

Are we allowed to link to Ship of Fools where christians of not-too-delicate disposition are wont to take the piss out of themselves?

I thought this was going to be a link to the BeliefOMatic till I saw it was SGB

The hummus question is definitely wrong, but I like the others, and don't feel the least bit insulted.

I do not believe that mockery is the same as making a joke. FWIW, I did find the original link very funny.

It's my sincerely held belief that everyone's sincerely held beliefs are fair game for pisstaking. Get out of that one...

that is simple logic, and not clever or big, sgb. posting this in chat, for eg, would make your posting look less like trolling than it does.

Pretty much every societies have a long and (often) glorious history of satirical humour about all sorts of beliefs. Look at some of the ancient Greek and Roman plays. I used to work with a bloke who was a practising Jew and he had a huge store of very funny jokes that took the piss out of Judaism as a religion and Jewishness as a culture.

I don't think people should be mocked for things that are outside of their control such as disabilities or skin colour. But supernatural beliefs that you choose to hold? That's different.

If your sense of self is so fragile that you cannot cope with someone taking the mickey out of a single one of your beliefs then I gently suggest that the solution to the problem lies within you rather than in trying to get the rest of the world to regard your beliefs as untouchable.

Trolling? A mild piss-take (which perhaps would be better in chat) - but then again maybe a gentle invitation to consider how people do choose their religion.

Trolling? Hardly!

Even this delicate little soul with the fragile sense of self doesn't think STB is trolling.

People can take the piss out of themselves or their group. Not IMO delicate opinion nice to do so about others.

Satirical humour is not the same as mockery. Humour is meant to be funny, mockery does not have such an intention.

My sense of self is more than robust enough to accept People taking the piss. Hell, it's robust enough to deal with the insults and attacks that I have experienced because of my religion.

However it's not robust enough to allow me to ridicule the beliefs of others because they differ from mine. That would demean me.

I like bacon AND hummus, I object to being sent down one path! Although it did peg me as a boring generic Christian and I do go to a middle of the road CofE church...

I like pork, hummus, Chinese and Indian food.

That must be why Belief-o-Matic suggested Universal Unitarianism for me..