Skip to Main Content (access key 1)
Skip to Search (access key 2)
Skip to Search GO (access key 3)
Skip to comments (access key 4)
Skip to navigation (access key 5)
Skip to top of page (access key 6)

Comments by phil rimmer


501. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #159722 by phil rimmer on April 13, 2008 at 1:22 am

Bit late sorry..

Comment #159533 by myarbrough61

Yeah, I always hated the rather crushing "Dust to Dust" thing the church would do to keep us humble. Far nicer, on a clear night, to look up at the heavens and sing to yourself THAT Joni Mitchell song.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990625080416.htm

502. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #159025 by phil rimmer on April 11, 2008 at 10:56 am

IBIJesus

I'm here for political reasons. I don't care what wisdom or nonsense people may or may not hold in their heads. It is their behaviour in the public space that counts.

I am deeply shocked that some people fail to see that a Secular State protects all, that it must be morally the least bad and that it will probably (bringing us full circle) prove the most fertile ground for the cultivation of empirical and personal spiritual wisdom.

Top of my To Do list to solve the world's ills- Get you to join my political cause.

Next, come up with possible slogans.

"The Secular State, A Cure for Pride?" (The question mark is necessary!)

Or suggested by one of my Christian friends, an extension to Oliver Cromwell. I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken…and act accordingly..


I guess Hitchen's "Mr Jefferson, Build up that Wall" really gets it.

503. Get out of here, atheists!

Comment #157839 by phil rimmer on April 9, 2008 at 3:35 pm

how I hate that phrase with a passion.


Hmmm! You're right, of course....I didn't think it through. I'd delete it but I think my shame should stand for all to see....

504. Get out of here, atheists!

Comment #157829 by phil rimmer on April 9, 2008 at 3:19 pm

We are our brothers keeper...The job is here, the time is now.


I think a pro-Atheist ad campaign with this in it might be nicely engaging. We need to consistently needle religites about whether they are freer to act morally than we are.

EDIT We are our sisters keeper etc. would make a further point.

505. The Atheist Next Door

Comment #156907 by phil rimmer on April 8, 2008 at 11:37 am

They found this family in America where ALL FOUR of them are rational human beings ?? This is some real weird shit.


Nah! It was faked. You could see when they turned away, they had glinty red eyes....

506. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #156884 by phil rimmer on April 8, 2008 at 11:08 am

Quetz

Yes. Please keep us posted. I really do find it fascinating. Was the problem with us at RD.net that we were too honest about our emotional reactions? Or that our moral tone was too diverse (EDIT not enough like a properly ordered religion)? Are we just too much like hard work? Its important to know.

Re Zarbi. :) Junior executives have little clout in their company and only little respect. As they get promoted they get more of both and become more dangerous. Most dangerous is the CEO, with most clout and most to prove. One more promotion, however, to chairman and all is sweetness and light. Your work is done and you can lord it over all others, basking in their praise and they in your reflected glory.

I think we should make jibes at fundies about their middle-management god.

507. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #156830 by phil rimmer on April 8, 2008 at 10:01 am

Quetz.

Fascinating link.

http://www.fcosonline.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=79bce46b434b28dc7336ebb5c9952d17&topic=5.msg246#msg246

I roared with laughter, then felt more than a little sad at the sight of someone trying to bash the irritation of coherent thought from their head.

I think the man just needs a cuddle and for some reason he thought this group, linked as it is, only by an absence of belief, was the place to get it.

He even brought gifts, his (really rather good) music.

This is a fascinating reminder of what is possibly a key aspect to the mindset of a religite (albeit lapsed)- Belief (common values?) in a setting of companionship.

508. Get out of here, atheists!

Comment #156790 by phil rimmer on April 8, 2008 at 9:03 am

Doc.

We need a sexy, smart black dude. We need sent2null in there.


He'd get my vote.

Or the Dream Ticket, sexy smart black dude paired with a sassy, brainy chick, preferably with a doctorate and an unerring ability never to mis-speak.

509. Get out of here, atheists!

Comment #156470 by phil rimmer on April 7, 2008 at 3:41 pm


It wasn't always like this.

Completely agree.
It's not an American quirk.



And yet...and yet,,,that graph, a few weeks ago, showing increasing religiosity on a vertical axis against increasing GDP per capita on the horizontal. All countries clustered around the negative sloping line except Kuwait at the poorer end and the US at the rich end. Way off they were. Job security and health-care concerns were the offered explanation. Has this changed over the period?

(EDIT The other theory that has something going for it, is the lack of a national religion coupled with a wildly successful free-market, consumerist mindset. Maybe?)

Or, maybe the Hippies were a blip...?

It can happen in your country, too.
True. Its happening and from here it certainly feels like a fearful response.

EDIT EDIT "Way off they were." For pity's sake! Turning into fucking Yoda I am...

510. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #156163 by phil rimmer on April 7, 2008 at 1:43 am

Darwin's badger.

Many thanks for this. It hadn't occurred to me that it had gone to DVD. I urge others to go check it out in about one days time, after I have secured my copy. :)

511. Russell T Davies: Return of the (tea) Time Lord

Comment #156072 by phil rimmer on April 6, 2008 at 3:57 pm

Russel T Davies is truly someone we can be proud of in the UK. An unashamed creator of popular culture, he has done more to help us grow up and use our brains than very many more "serious" writers. "Queer as Folk" genuinely changed things and was hugely impressive, but Russel T really kicked off my journey from flaccid agnosticism to a morally-intentioned atheism with his astonishing two parter, "The Second Coming."

For me this still stands as the ultimate response to the religious on how they could lead a more moral life. I wish ITV would repeat it.

512. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155603 by phil rimmer on April 5, 2008 at 3:40 am

I roared with laughter at the sheer slapstick of the image then felt the pain of the wood on my own head (it still rather haunts me) and the bottomless well of despair.

I have had brushes with schizophrenia in two of my friends (both astonishingly bright). Both involved God. The first (thirty years ago now), sublimely and "comically" mad ended in tragedy the second became a thoroughly positive experience for the chap involved, yielding the insight that we have something akin to a "saliency volume control", whose setting at any given time it is useful to know.

I have always believed that a more general acknowledgment of the prevalence of mental illness, its smoothly distributed gradations in the population and its involvement in helping to define the nature of being human, could alter, beneficially, the way we see it. It could make us, at once, more sceptical of the lone voice telling others what to do and more appreciative of the lone voice exploring the edges of human experience.

Lori's post on her personal experience with schizophrenia delighted me. I have been recently pondering the completeness of personality of my subconscious. I now quite deliberately give it/him problem solving work to do. When I have such a problem, I load up with a whole bunch of material I guess might be involved then go to bed. "Subby" often appears to oblige next morning with some solution pretty much thought through. I wonder if I had access to "his" thought processes directly my experience would be the same as Lori's?

513. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155530 by phil rimmer on April 4, 2008 at 5:04 pm

From Surf Dude's smashing link. (Thanks by the way)

Pascal's Wager with the right conclusion

The only way to truly test human beings is to see if we will become nontheists after serious and sincere inquiry into these matters: to see if we have the courage and fortitude to choose morality over faith or loyalty, and be good without fear or hope of divine reward. No other test will ensure a result of the genuinely good being self-selected into a predictable belief-state that can be observed in secret by god.


I'm proud of us. No, wait. Damn, damn, damn! Now we KNOW! Its the fiery pit for us.

514. Beware the Believers

Comment #155523 by phil rimmer on April 4, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Corylus, for later..

whilst at the same time I seek to investigate why people feel the way they do and whether or not it is rational for them to do so.


I find there is great comfort (and quite some self-empowerment) that comes from knowing what makes us tick. Acknowledging gender predispositions in the nineties was almost as liberating as the Women's movement from the seventies. The continual finessing of self-knowledge lets us, for instance, better understand the extent and nature of Harm. I feel sure this is the key to making more moral decisions.

But what it says about being half Vulcan I just don't know....

515. Beware the Believers

Comment #155505 by phil rimmer on April 4, 2008 at 3:37 pm

Mark Smith, spot on.

Corylus, agreed.

BUT, we may have to expect that in instances of making a "least harm" judgement, harm of some sort will ensue not least because we are merely human rather than Vulcan. We may as parents, for instance, hurt forever more after making the right choice to terminate a foetus with a strong possibility of severe disability...

516. Beware the Believers

Comment #155492 by phil rimmer on April 4, 2008 at 2:58 pm

You can take knowledge of conception as a cutoff point if you wish, but if you do this you still have the problem of deciding what to do in the case of non-viable conception. (I am talking about eptopic pregnancy and cases of severe disability here).


But isn't the range of other factors to be considered wider than this?

If, let us say, the Balance of Harm is the deciding factor, there may be quite other Harms to be considered. In a wealthy society, the Harms to the mother and the family and society as a whole might rightly be judged negligible and the Potential Person for all their current non-sentient existence might be judged in danger of the greatest harm.

But consider a society living on the brink of extinction through the paucity of resources. A birth may prove catastrophic for the survival of other youngsters....There is always a scenario...

The fact is we don't do judging net harm well (like being able to push the one person off the bridge to save five others.) and we'd not be human if we were good at it...we'd be Vulcan.

(No offense Enlightenme..)

517. Beware the Believers

Comment #155476 by phil rimmer on April 4, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Burning widows on a funeral pyre is still wrong


And should be avoided at all costs, providing that is the lesser of two evils...

But, there is always a worse scenario possible, at least in the mind of a Hollywood producer.

EDITED

518. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155259 by phil rimmer on April 4, 2008 at 9:29 am

I don't think you can attribute Newton's passion for theology only to the fact that Darwin was not around yet to remind him of the fact that it was not actually intellectually respectable any longer to study such a non-subject


My understanding of Newton's Christianity was that he was one of the first to start to unpick it. He was an anti-Trinitarian and had to keep his heretical views strictly to himself for fear of censure. Like Priestley after him, he was well on his way to becoming a Unitarian.

It seems to me that the Gospels represented to him a great, juicy puzzle that was full of inconsistencies. He started on a journey that took him in the right direction. Alas, the sheer isolation such a journey forced on him, probably slowed him down. On this matter, at least, he could not "stand on the shoulders of giants".

EDIT. Looking at the religious affiliations of the great minds of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals an astonishing number who counted themselves Dissenters and Nonconformists. A key group were the Rational Dissenters. (I rather liked the sound of them.) There's a good book to be written about this. Any takers? John Gribbin? Jenny Uglow?

519. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #153318 by phil rimmer on April 1, 2008 at 11:36 am

The point was that inaction may lead to the death of citizens of our countries and/or the deaths of many Muslims


But this is not the big issue! I believe Brian is right about the numbers give or take an order of magnitude. The big issue is the creeping loss, through accommodation, of freedom, democracy, human rights, creativity, happiness.

520. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #153303 by phil rimmer on April 1, 2008 at 11:15 am

You qualified for the al-Rawandi Genius medal of freedom and honor.


I'll wear it with pride, even though you're frightening me and the kids a bit at the moment....

521. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #153296 by phil rimmer on April 1, 2008 at 11:07 am

I particularly like these paragraphs...

Begin supporting genuine development in the Muslim World. End one sided support of the Israelis. Call for independence for Chechneya. Deal mercilessly with the Serbs (neo-Nazis for the most part). This will show our commitment to justice and self determination for Muslims, and will make it harder to call us hypocrites.

Turn our military into an instrument of relief not oppression. Assist suffering peoples.


Positive reinforcement is more powerful than negative reinforcement. (Always a problem for libertarians and those on the right to understand, despite B.F.Skinner's evidence...I have that problem myself...)

So, to add to our "To Do" list

Reduce our dependency on oil THEN
Help well-behaving Muslim countries invest in Solar Energy Plant.
Put in HVDC long distance power lines so they can sell their power throughout their own country and over their borders.
Find any and every reason to invest in them.
The Chinese will, otherwise, with zero collateral gain.

522. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #153238 by phil rimmer on April 1, 2008 at 9:14 am

Doc.Benway

By "challenge" I meant suppress via threats of criminal and civil litigation. It's seriously no fun being charged with a crime. Legal fees can bankrupt you, even if you're innocent.


Point taken.

I've since researched hate speech legislation and found it wanting. It seems to contain far too many elements. Incitement to harm can be the only test. And does this not already exist in most country's laws already? (Your point I think).

523. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #153236 by phil rimmer on April 1, 2008 at 9:03 am

The method I propose:
1. We give more confidence to propositions that can be corroborated as opposed to those that can't be corroborated.
2. We seek alternative hypothesis, and we try to falsify our hypotheses.
3. We reject propositions that lead to self-contradictions or otherwise violate logic.
4. When several explanations fit the data equally well, the simpler explanation is preferred.


These fabulous time bombs are the sure solution to our problem, if only we could find a way to smuggle them into everyone's head. Leaving them casually by the wayside on RichardDawkins.net isn't a good plan.

I'm not sure, but I feel the first part of the solution is somehow to separate (if only briefly or a little) the religious Exploiters from the Exploited. (The Exploiters can spot the time bombs a mile off.) The Exploited may then innocently pick them up and find them quite useful for all sorts of things. Tick, tick.

524. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152845 by phil rimmer on March 31, 2008 at 4:14 pm

Muslims have used anti-hate speech laws to challenge criticism of Islam.


Bring it on! Another challenge, another opportunity to make a reasonable case.

525. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152844 by phil rimmer on March 31, 2008 at 4:11 pm

Incitement to what? To hate? To riot?


To harm.

526. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152828 by phil rimmer on March 31, 2008 at 3:45 pm

The religious groups would fight such measures


But they seem to smile on the income stream each pupil represents....(those cheques stapled to the application forms...)

527. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152822 by phil rimmer on March 31, 2008 at 3:33 pm

Steve

It seems to me that ensuring churches and mosques are given a legitimate (in secular eyes) task involving education might allow quite a few quid pro quos. But it also begins a gentle redirection. Best of all (in the UK, at least) it involves the nosy participation of OFSTED. (School inspectors.)

528. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152815 by phil rimmer on March 31, 2008 at 3:17 pm

Follow Dan Dennett's ideas, and make sure all children are taught the facts of all major religions.


Elsewhere I proposed that churches should be encouraged to lay on general religious and moral education for children during their normal service and that the presence of children (for the bulk of?) these services should be viewed as inappropriate.

Maybe some of the education budget could be alternately applied to this end?

529. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152808 by phil rimmer on March 31, 2008 at 3:04 pm

Oops!

Edited as, very necessarily, required.

530. Anti-Quran Film Fitna Pulled From Web Due to 'Threats'

Comment #152799 by phil rimmer on March 31, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Secular Western values and Islam in its current form cannot peacefully coexist


And Islamic values are those best able to survive an eco-catastrophe.

Sad that we shall be plunged into a new dark age, when collective wealth and creativity will be decimated and our ability to survive (as the human race) the really big threats that are out there, will be brought back to near zero.

EDITED

531. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #150100 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 1:00 pm

an enlightened church might be a good idea but if they can't recruit or indoctrinate they eventually go to the wall surely?


Sshhh!

532. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #150089 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 12:52 pm

In fact, I've just been reminded that Sunday School in my village was run after the service so junior could do bible studies whilst mum and dad nipped home and got biblical in peace and quiet....(shudder)

533. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #150079 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 12:45 pm

Prankster

Sunday school classes were rarely (in my experience) offered as specific alternatives to the church service itself and run at the same time. (Presumably because the opportunity for exposing impressionable young minds to the theatre and music was too much to pass up for the vampiric classes.) Nor were they of a general religious and moral nature.

An enlightened church (Stop laughing at the back!) might be persuaded that they have a duty to enlighten and not indoctrinate....

534. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #150049 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 12:18 pm

And I have to agree with prankster the chances of legislation are very slight. Even in somewhere like Sweden where it stands a glimmer of a chance it would probably be shot down by the Vegan lobby.

However, I feel RD's meme, about the abuse of labeling children, is key to the problem.

Aside- Wouldn't it be nice if churches didn't allow children in under (say) 14 but instead laid on general religious and moral education separate from the main congregation? Wouldn't it be nice if even one church did it, claiming it to be a more moral and respectful treatment of children?

535. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #150014 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 11:56 am

I wonder if such monstrous derelictions of parental duty might not be prosecuted under a new law? Such a law could be based on Richard Dawkin's profound and subtle point that labeling your child as a follower of your own faith is an abuse of that child's rights.

Creating a legal principle that a belief, and the practices that flow from it, are not to be forced on others against their will, whilst in the abstract unenforceable, may nevertheless create the opportunity for an intervention by a concerned doctor or a relative.

Simply knowing that others are watching critically may be sufficiently effective in deterring such behavior in people prone to looking over their shoulders anxiously.

536. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #149939 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 10:47 am

In early 2001-FEB, Amanda Bates, 13, died from diabetes in Grand Junction, CO. Her parents withheld medical treatment. Her death was ruled a homicide by the Mesa County coroner, Dr. Rob Kurtzman.


Her parents were from the "Church of the First Born".

From Double Bass's link

537. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #149916 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 10:29 am

Happy birthday, Prof.

You have achieved a huge amount in the past year, and I, for one, am sincerely grateful for all your hard work.

Might I also sneak in here birthday wishes for Steve Zara?? Prodigious effort too! Courteous, helpful and always a good read.

538. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #149883 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 10:14 am

The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected


Prosecute by all means, but I fear they might get off on the grounds of diminished responsibilities.

539. Gay scientists isolate Christian gene

Comment #149862 by phil rimmer on March 26, 2008 at 9:58 am

Now if they can find the gene that makes people muslims...


or Welsh.

540. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #149295 by phil rimmer on March 25, 2008 at 12:05 pm

I know its not focussing cold. I meant that bit as a joke. But I did mean that you could use reflectors to create an image of a low temperature surrounding and thereby alter the net flux.

EDIT- And just to be clear, you can't lower the temperature by use of the reflectors alone, given a uniform ambient temperature environment. A reflector will substitute equivalent energy (temperature) irradiation to before, wherever they are placed. (However, if the body's own radiation is returned to it, it will heat up.) If, on the other hand, the (colder) ice is placed at the focus of a collimating reflector and the parallel (focussed!)beams of lower energy (colder!) radiation directed towards an identical collimating reflector, at whose focus is the hotter body, then (and only then) will the hotter body cool down. The ice will, ipso facto, melt faster due to the higher than ambient radiation from the hotter body.

There adding it after means no-one need ever know how nerdy I can be....shhh!

541. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #149286 by phil rimmer on March 25, 2008 at 11:49 am

Just to be utterly nerdy and not to in anyway increase Steve's abject humiliation, cold can indeed be focussed.

Considering heat transfer by radiation only, an objects temperature is regulated by the net flux of photons to/from it. Replacing irradiation of the object from ambient sources by lower average energy photons from say a block of ice will improve net outward flux pretty nicely, thereby lowering its temperature. Two parabolic reflectors of polished copper (so as not to add much of their own radiation)will allow a block of ice to become a virtual icy shell around the object to be cooled....

I know...I should be ashamed...

542. The Emptiness of Theology

Comment #149028 by phil rimmer on March 25, 2008 at 1:54 am

Could these be completely dispersed into social anthropology, history, sociology and psychology?


Include philosophy, literature and politics and the answer is yes.

543. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148934 by phil rimmer on March 24, 2008 at 5:08 pm

and that is why it pains me to see it bastardized...


But in fairness people who stick around this site do seem to want to learn. (I had my wrist fairly "slapped" just the other day.) And there are patient teachers here too...

EDIT I don't think you intentionally restricted the discourse, but I do worry that our various potential objectives frequently get muddled here.

544. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148929 by phil rimmer on March 24, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Spinoza-

There are two possible objectives here-

1) Demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that an interventionist, rule-making God is highly unlikely and

2) Demonstrate believers in the same are transgressing the rights of non-believers or alternate believers.

The first is possibly an endless task requiring great finesse and subtlety of thought, in other words, a perfect pastime for academics. The second is a problem requiring political action. With the latter, the problem is plain to any of us Plebs. Our rights have been compromised by others who make claims without proof, (or, at least, proof that could stand up in a court of law) and then seek preferential treatment for those claims.

The offence in item two is largely independent of item one. (OK, he may exist but what ARE His rules? How do you know? Why not those rules or those rules?) The offence of item two must be incontrovertible with all except the fundamentalists. And yet this is not seen. This is a howling political injustice obvious to any with a little political nous.

The point is, nothing political will happen without a large enough collective howl of injustice creating the pressure for change. Finesse, precision are not what is needed for this.

Sure, finesse is needed later in the political process if change is ever to occur. Like Gerry Adams talking down the maddest of his gunmen/freedom fighters with the blandishments that their pride is intact and their goal achieved. Some of us must engage fully and earnestly with the Bishops (or whomever) who (for the last 200 years) have been slowly coming down from their lofty sniper's positions, doing God's punitive work. We must acknowledge how they have helped steer us to the necessary end state of moral self-sufficiency as, variously, the politics and the truth of the situation demand. But that now it is time for faith to be a truly personal matter, etc, etc.

Restricting discourse to item one (as it seems to me you've done) and ivory towers is a pants idea. That our collection of folks is no different to their collection of folks, it would also seem to me, is a strength. No one is afraid of the ivory tower set. Their squabbles carry on ineffectually for centuries.

545. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148433 by phil rimmer on March 23, 2008 at 4:27 am

The guy wants salvation....

One of yours I think, Plagio.

546. The atheist delusion

Comment #144774 by phil rimmer on March 16, 2008 at 5:52 pm

The various implementations of democracy, in all its forms, are pretty neat experiments in managing societal structures. Our feelings about the various outcomes inform us about how we wish our local experiment to be tweaked.

And I won't be taking the bait about being non-democratic, thank you. As a useful comment I would rate that as "over-egged".

547. The atheist delusion

Comment #144762 by phil rimmer on March 16, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Ok, ok...its democracy. There! A rational (sic) process dealing with feelings.

548. The atheist delusion

Comment #144748 by phil rimmer on March 16, 2008 at 5:15 pm

Ask the question. What's the best way to organise society? You cannot apply the scientific method to this question because the desired result is a value judgement.


Well the answer is pretty scientific-

1. an accurate understanding of reality
2. feelings


We could probably manage all that fuzzy stuff in item two if we could get some sort of corroborative evidence for what the average feeling of the typical citizen might be about the matter. Gosh, I don't know, there must be some rational process by which this could be achieved....but it just eludes me at the moment.

549. The coming religious peace

Comment #132112 by phil rimmer on February 24, 2008 at 7:46 am

Gordon's linked article is a cracker. The essence of its argument for the aberrant positioning of the US in the graph above is this-

America has a large, well educated middle class that lives in comfort�"so why do they still believe in a supernatural creator? Because they are afraid and insecure......

....Rather than religion being an integral part of the American character, the main reason the United States is the only prosperous democracy that retains a high level of religious belief and activity is because we have substandard socio-economic conditions and the highest level of disparity.


I subscribe to this view also like Titus. We have debated this on the site many times before and I don't believe this article offers any more proof about its suppositions than the current article does. But as circumstantial evidence it sure makes you think.

It would seem then that the current US religious malaise may be rooted in a unique socio-political mindset (capitalism in the hands of the self-reliant) to which most, religious and non-religious subscribe. Americans are right to be cautious about disturbing a formula that has been hugely beneficial for their country in the past century. There are solutions other than "going the Swedish route" and I think the US will find one.

The US government has been shameless about using public money to support its private industry through, for instance, its military budget. A way could be found to invest in the removal of the worst excesses of fear from its people....

Perhaps properly taxing religious institutions to raise the cash could prove a win win for US physical and mental health???

550. The coming religious peace

Comment #131829 by phil rimmer on February 23, 2008 at 12:00 pm

But places with a free religious marketplace witness something very different:


If this is truly the only reason for the ludicrous position of the US on the graph, then I must start to re-think my position about the Church of England. My puerile dream will be realized. I shall reverse my thinking and become-

An Antidisestablishmentarianist....

More Pages: Previous | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | Next