Is being pubicly atheist a recent thing, especially re. collective worship?

[wanderings]

Firstly, I'm taking no sides - I had strong atheist views when I was younger, but gradually changed my mind.

There are many threads on MN about this, especially annoyance by atheist parents about collective worship in schools, and I have been wondering if it's recent that people have felt so strongly about it. I find it hard to imagine buses in the 1980s and 90s saying "there probably is no God", or parents taking their children out of assembly, or people muttering and sneering in the back row when attending baptisms (under duress): if it happened I was blissfully ignorant.

Speaking for myself, I rebelled with my heart and soul when my parents suddenly dragged me to catholic church every Sunday when I was 9. I saw the whole thing as utter nonsense, and a waste of valuable weekend time. However, I gradually changed my mind as an adult, but went CofE rather than catholic. I took the view that you did not have to take a literal view of the Bible and the church's teachings; as a child I was very literal-minded. I also love the sense of community in church.

Does anyone think it is because a generation of young adults are remembering being forced to obediently sing hymns, hear prayers from their school days, had to learn "impossibilities" such as the great flood, and are now making sure their children won't have to do the same, now that they have the right to say something which they didn't as a child?

Yes they are selective. Did anyone read the link I posted upthread about another report saying that they are still behaving outside the rules / illegally with this stuff? I honestly thought that they'd all sharpened their acts up after the last report about 8 years ago or whenever it was.

I get

Islamophobia
Homophobia
Transphobia
More? Feminists seem to be not in favour either.

Maybe those words are too strong? But, not nice attitudes. So much for Jesus being all peace and love, man.

If we left the whole lot to charity in this country there would be groups on their knees

Quite probably, given the current climate.

However, the nice thing about genuine charitable help is that it is help, not enforced 'intervention'. Charities often will not push their help upon people, they help because they genuinely care. Whereas, as you have said, governmental motivations are often quite different. They care more about potential problems in society which can mean people are treated as potential problems, before they actually are. It can mean the tone of the people, dealing with the people who need help, is less caring and more disapproving, more demanding of results. This could heighten problems, if it causes heightened anxieties.

Wellllll yeeeessssssss

But OTOH

Some groups give a message with the help, don't they. Some groups trying to "help" are actually trying to push a very strong message indeed.

So yes it is nice to have people helping because they want to but in addition to state assistance I would say, not instead of it. And to be sure there isn't an ulterior motive, that the help is genuinely freely given.

Disco re. message. Hmm, again very complex. If my Christian beliefs ultimately lead me to help others does that mean I have an ulterior motive?

I'm not in the habit of handing out tracts when I help people but if people get to know me I will probably share my beliefs. Advice, that I give, cannot be separated from my beliefs either, since my beliefs affect the way I think, solve problems, overcome difficulties and the hope I possess regarding what is possible.

"If my Christian beliefs ultimately lead me to help others does that mean I have an ulterior motive?"

Well yes I see your point - it's an interesting conversation / thing to think about (is any help given truly selfless) - but except in unusual circs it's not very relevant for what's actually going on.

I was talking more of the direct "I will help you if you do X / listen to this talk / attend this meeting" etc or even more concerning when groups with a hidden agenda pretend to be impartial so as to make contact with and influence people who might otherwise not have chosen to interact with them.

And again it's not about you (or me) but more general behaviour. Do religious groups around the world help people and then use that as an opportunity to prostelyze? Yes they do. Is this OK? I say not. The people who do it would say what's the harm, it's only a pamphlet, free religious book, hour listening to a leader, whatever it might be, if people don't like it they don't have to adopt the religion do they. Same as the arguments on this thread actually. A captive audience. A potentially vulnerable audience.

Then there are the groups who pretend to be neutral but are anything but, and try to influence people again when they're vulnerable.

The bits about spreading the word in the various religions have a lot to answer for, if those bits weren't there things would be a lot more peaceful.

I can only really speak from my own experiences though, Disco.

I can imagine how some religious groups would see the pamphlets, talks and books as further help. They believe what they are saying helpful.

If dysfunctional thinking did lead a person into trouble this thinking needs to be replaced by functional thinking at some point. Otherwise that person remains vulnerable.

However, I accept not all groups have totally benevolent motivations, some leaders just enjoy the power they can have over others unfortunately. Church audits and regulations can be of use here. Corruption, in terms of exploiting the vulnerable, is by no means exclusive to religious groups though.

Do religious groups around the world help people and then use that as an opportunity to prostelyze? Yes they do.

Unfortunately, given the choice between doing charitable work and complaining that other people are doing the wrong sort of charitable work, too many people choose the latter. Richard Dawkins has a hundred reasons why charitable work done by religious groups is wrong, but doesn't lift a finger himself. There's a lot of churches running food banks, and there's also a lot of political groups running food banks with similar motives (I'd place money that a good proportion on non-religious foodbanks are SWP fronts). Yes, they sometimes have ulterior motives. But the alternative isn't a foodbank with no ulterior motive, it's usually no foodbank.

"I'd place money that a good proportion on non-religious foodbanks are SWP fronts"

OK that is quite a mad assertion...
It can go in the box with the poster who was told that athiests giving people lifts to food banks were up to no good!

I think this comes back to the idea that many religious people seem to have that:

• Faith is the only route to having ethics, compassion etc
• People with no faith are by definition harmful

These are not benign assertions, they are the sort of ideas that result in harm. They are more usually extended to those who are the wrong faith, but the idea is the same. We are right, you are wrong, that's the end of the matter, as we have faith and therefore God is on our side.

Plus of course The Book says to spread the word and so that is what must happen....

It's all a bit lacking in, I don't know, compassion, that sort of thing.

I'm with Capsium I think at least she considers other viewpoints while being comfortable in her own faith and ideas.

OK that is quite a mad assertion...

CAMRA was an SWP front, so I'd put nothing past them...

Disco I share what I believe are good ideas. My faith affects what I see as good ideas. So as I share, ideas I believe are good and beneficial I share my faith.

How does this show lack of compassion?

Compassionate empathy requires that a person does not merely empathise cognitively, or emotionally, or swing between the two, it requires you also are able to see beyond a person's predicament to find solutions to it. The thinking, that remains within what is problematic, has to be extended to find a solution, whilst being empathetic enough to fully appreciate their difficulty, so the person who needs help is not blamed or punished or seen as lesser somehow.

CAMRA was an SWP front?? What did it do, arm the Militant Wing of Hammersmith Morris?

You're not talking about Roger Protz, are you?

I was joking, based on that link. As CAMRA have been quite successful in their aims, given it followed editorships of Militant and SW you might say Protz was third time lucky.

Otherwise, it's coincidental that they're both culty organisations for social inadequates who see themselves as being in a clearsighted vanguard. And let's hope CAMRA don't have the SWP's recent, er, "difficulties".

Still no answer to 'What is an Islamophobe?'

Goodnight, all.

So what? The house of Lords is a revising chamber, and the Lords Spiritual are precisely the sort of people who should be serving in it as currently constituted: people with experience of governance but whose life experience includes dealing with real people in extremis.

if we are looking for people with this kind of life experience, why not just find them? Why restrict yourself to this particular group? I am not saying that we should bar bishops from the house, just not reserve seats for them. In fact, if more are qualified, we should have more.

That's the point. Qualifications over title, something that's often lost on this country.

They have voted, and spoken, generally progressively and thoughtfully and are widely respected. They represent less than 3% of the membership of the House of Lords and do a pretty good job compared to the other 97%, and I don't see why serving bishops should be any more dubious than ex-ministers, rich donors and so on (the hereditary peers are of homeopathic importance these days).

I never criticized their record, nor claimed they were more dubious than ex-ministers. Certainly, in reforming the lords, the spiritual may not be the most that's wrong with it. But the problem of religious exceptions goes well beyond the lords (the discrimination in schools being a big one), and it all needs to stop.

It's interesting that this post seems to contradict your other post from 08/10 12:44. In that post, your essential claims are that these Lords are completely inconsequential (so why have them?), don't change decisions (true for any group of this size) and vote progressively (completely irrelevant), but in this post they same absolutely essential (vote thoughtfully, vote well). Well, which is it? As I said, I don't think the spiritual is where I'd start for reform, but would be part of it.

Your other claim that they wouldn't vote in block for fear of a backslash is more worrying. Why are they not voting with their conscience? Why shouldn't they vote as a block? Because their role as bishops appointed to the House is precisely what's hampering them. In effect, they render those seats less useful for fear of a backlash.

It's all similar to all the arguments you hear about the monarchy (which does in fact cost a huge ton of money). They aren't harmful seems to be their major selling point. Well, that just isn't good enough, or more precisely shouldn't be good enough, for positions of importance and prestige.

There isn't currently a proposal for an elected House of Lords on the table that looks like anything other than stitch-up by its proposers, so we're left with the current system working reasonably well with an entirely irrational basis, rather than moving to a more rational system which would work badly (the US Senate is hardly a reassuring model).

The US Senate is also the deliberative chamber and has enormous power. It functions even though having 1/8 the size for a country 5 times as big. Members voting patterns aren't affected because of their perceived illegitimate route to the senate. Senators have to earn their seat at the ballot box, rather than just having a chum in government.