Gav's View

I’ve followed your progress for some time now. I represent a non judgemental organisation but feel that you insist on pushing your values and beliefs on others, and completely reject anyone having a different point of view. With age, instead of growing in maturity, knowledge and wisdom, you become more and more blinkered.

People who go through life like this, grow old lonely and achieve little.

My progress or Sam Harris’s?

The point of Mr Harris’s speach is that whatever we think of religions, they should never be given special treatment under the law and should never be given credence in a debate on morals etc. because their basis really, really is illogical.

Belief is a healthy and genetically natural state of being, but it does not mix with politics or other people’s lives without causing friction and/or hatred.

Your progress.

I’d love to know exactly what you mean!

I very carefully don’t push my opinions on others — you have to come here to read them and people who know me personally know I have strong opinions but only share them when asked.

When it comes to religion, I would love to know what it is that makes me blinkered when I read more and more religious texts and find almost all religions that haven’t come out of India or China violent and unpleasant with a veneer of Western culture mixed in for the sake of acceptability.

I don’t feel as though I’m missing out, but it fascinates me that otherwise intelligent people can genuinely believe that their particular religion is true and that (by implication and necessity) all others are false. That sort of faith is something I know I will never experience.

And yes, I do anti-evangelise to some extent on this website because, frankly, these people who put so much effort into their religion could do so much good if they weren’t wasting time teaching the evil of condoms or funding the repair of stained glass windows that any alternative use of the building would fund through normal means.

You are narrow-minded. Of course there is good and bad in all societies, communities and religions. You can’t generalise and roll all religions into one and declare them as evil. You forget the fundamental point that there is good in the world too. Religion is not just books or scriptures; you don’t have to see or read to believe. True knowledge is gained from real life experiences. ‘Intelligent’ people are those who see things from both sides. You don’t show this intelligence. Instead you are quick to be critical. Religious buildings can act as sanctuaries, where anyone is welcome, religious or otherwise.

There are also people who have a faith, who do good by voluntarily helping in third world countries, caring for the sick and elderly, or by simple holding someone’s hand to let them know they are not alone. Even you with your blinkered vision would be welcomed to a church, for example, if you had nowhere to turn regardless of your belief.

If you met and fell in love with someone who had stout religious views, would you respect them and their family, or would you sneak around behind their backs?

Instead of speaking with astuteness, you speak as someone with fear of the unknown, or who has experience something that you couldn’t rationalise and therefore ignore.

You may be good with computers but at 28 you show no emotional maturity.

Gav, you say you find “almost all religions that haven’t come out of India or China violent and unpleasant”. Sorry, but that betrays a distinct bias. You make exceptions for religions that, for example, burned widows alive on their husband’s funeral pyres and that denies the admittence of (presumably “inferior”) non-Indians – Hinduism. Or believe that women are a lower form of life than men, worth less than some animals – Buddhism. And yet you cannot recognise the essential decency of those with liberal Christian beliefs?

And please, don’t start quoting the Old Testament. Because the Christian message is held within the New Testament, not the Old, and supercedes everything said within the Old Testament.

I am an atheist, but even I, admittedly shaped by a Christian upbringing, can recognise that a religion that believes in the fundamental goodness of God, the equality of all humans regardless of colour, gender and sexuality and in finding a personal relationship with God that is not dictated by either a religious caste or obsolete words written down centuries ago has got to be superior to just about anything else!

I’m a Humanist. I believe in Human Beings. Do you have any spiritual beliefs that you are actually in favour of, as opposed to just an (incomplete but growing) list of things that you reject?

Yes I am biased.

I don’t believe it matters whether or not someone who is religious is a good person. The fact that I know more loving and genuinely nice agnostics and atheists than Christians is probably because there are not many Christians my age rather than because Christians are necessarily bad people.

But that doesn’t mean that their religion is not based on what in today’s society is considered evil principles. Anyone who has read the bible all the way through will know it is not just the Old Testament that is homophobic. And it is not just the Old Testament that advocates the death penalty for infidels.

If you met and fell in love with someone who had stout religious views, would you respect them and their family, or would you sneak around behind their backs?

I don’t see why I would need to sneak around behind their back! I respect people’s beliefs and recently prayed for someone not because I believe that there is anything there to pray to, but because the act of praying made that person happy and, in the unlikely event I am wrong, might make a difference.

If religions taught respect for all other people, if they taught that you can learn about the world through looking and investigating, if they taught people that their life is short and that they should take advantage of the time they have and if they didn’t cause a minority to hate, vehemently then, and only then, would they be a de facto good thing.

I hate to think those of you reading my thoughts think I am a hateful or bitter person — I feel for people, love people and really want to play my part in making other people’s lives better (I’m not a Councillor for the money or fame!)

But I hate (there’s the word) to see people devoting themselves to fairies when they could do better for themselves by listening to their doctor. When the Pope, in his ivory tower, calls for the death of millions of people in Africa with no medical advice to listen to except Missionaries, we should feel revulsion. We should be campaigning as people did about Nestle’s baby milk but we’re not. The reason? Because religions have somehow become so important, so above logic and removed from scrunity or criticism that they are able to visit this evil on people.

I am sure (really, really sure) that there would be conflict (lots of conflict, and millions dying) in the absence of religion, but I contend that those deaths would be negotiated to an end much quicker were people able to debate the facts.

Bill O’Reilly on Fox News sometimes uses Stalin as an example of someone who was an atheist and killed many. But I wonder how much of the Cold War was fed my American dislike of a “godless people”… (link).

I hope you don’t write non-theism off as a bad thing because you think that I am somehow missing out on the joy that belief brings — I am very happy, thank you very much, and that despite my being an evil non-believer!

On David’s last question, I find metaphysics fascinating and wish I had more time to study it. That said, I also find great reward in reading about the physics of creation, the foam of multiple universes and fundamental questions like “Why is pi 3.14…. not 4 or 5?”

Now that I’ve asked that question is occurs to me that you may like to know that we may know why e is 1.60217733·10-19 C and not some other amount as a result of the Large Hadron Collider. I’m genuinely excited!

Well Mr Ayling, you truly have the knack to waffle like a party leader and actually not say anything at all. I stand fast by my previous points. You demonstrate narrow mindedness.

Unfortunately I also know your third paragraph to be false.

The ‘act of praying’? I hope for your sake you friend never finds out that this gesture held nothing for you.

You will indeed offend many people with this views should you political career escalate.

Where on Earth do you get the idea that “the Pope, in his ivory tower, calls for the death of millions of people in Africa with no medical advice to listen to except Missionaries”?

I can only presume this is the “Don’t use condoms” message. Except that if you were fair, you would concede that the full message is “No sex before marriage, stay faithful i.e. only sex within marriage and don’t use condoms”. If that message was followed the majority of HIV cases would be rapidly wiped out.

And if you say that people don’t listen to the message that says to have sex only when married, then why should you claim they having ignored the first message they will follow the second?

I’m a “Protestant” Atheist rather than a “Catholic” Atheist (to use the old Northern Ireland joke), but even I think this attack is unfair and a complete travesty of logic from someone claiming to follow the precepts of science!

The Pope’s missionaries say “Condoms DO NOT STOP AIDS”. There is no way that is anything but papally mandated murder. Sorry.

Do you have any proof of this assertion? Or is it just hostile re-wording (not by you) of the actual message I have already stated?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3176982.stm is just one accusation.

Quoting from the article you linked: “The Vatican is opposed to contraception and has advocated that people change their behaviour instead.” – which is exactly what I said.

The rest of the accusation is based more on the actions of individuals within the Church rather than the official Church position.

Let me guess, when a Minister in the South African government knowingly has sex with an HIV positive woman and follows this with “a shower” in order to keep himself safe, do you condemn the entire South African government? What if the *Leader* of the South African government extolls the virtues of traditional (“witch doctor”) medicines in combatting the virus – does this mean that every South African MP is now guilty by association? (Both taken from real examples of course!)

There are a lot of stupid people and a lot of stupid advice out there. But that doesn’t mean that such people are necessarily representative of every one of their co-religionists, because that is a very dangerous track to start and follow.

I can’t believe I’m being forced to defend the Catholic Church of all institutions! Normally they’re one of my LEAST favourite organisations. I’m going to shut up now.

Aside from the more extreme example I chose to highlight in order to further my side of the discussion, I agree that the main position of the Catholic Church is to a change in behaviour. A change, incidentally, that is irresistable for many people as is evidenced by the growth of HIV despite the ‘advice’ of the church.

Surely the more morally acceptable position is one of where the risk is reduced rather than one in which the risk is reduced until someone that God gave a strong sexual drive to, succumbs to it and effectively kills someone else?

Similarly the South African parliament is responsible to some extent if they do not condemn or criticise the poor, if well-meant advice about non-scientific medicine given by its leader.