Religion

[Marklr]

My wife is from Northern Ireland, was taught in a convent, and she has no respect for the church..she had a bad experience with a priest, a family member.. I can not argue with that or with you because you are right.

Being told, as a teenage boy, that I can't masturbate...
Or that i'm going to hell to burn for eternity if i do. And I DID!! Many times.
Hell must be full of masturbators...but heaven will be full of wankers.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

I read Spinoza for enjoyment.

A great post and I was particularly impressed by this sentence as I would personally admit to finding some of the great philosophers to be quite intimidating, Spinoza being one of them. I once came across a copy of Ethics in the CharingX Road bookshop and just thought it was going to be too demanding to get my head around.

But anyway, I have been doing a bit of digging and found this.




Haven't watched the video but have read the BBC book which includes a full transcript of it. A quick scan of the text earlier this evening did not reveal any references to pantheism but it's a fascinating conversation.

My reason for mentioning it is because Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher is one of my favourite books. He is such an elegant and clear prose stylist, someone else who can definitely be read for pleasure.

The other publication I had a quick dip into was Jonathan Ree's Witcraft. In a brief section on Spinoza the author includes a couple of telling sentences:

'To all appearances the Ethics was pious but unorthodox; but there were rumours that Spinoza's arguments for the existence of God were really cover for anti-Christian propaganda.'

Spinoza is also said to have 'refused the solace of faith' when facing death, and apparently his disciples considered him to be 'the greatest atheist ever.'

Witcraft also includes a couple of paragraphs on D'Holbech, one of which includes a witty and irreverent quotation from the Baron's account of an imaginary encounter with God after death ('Pardon me if my limited understanding hath not been able to know thee...mine ignorance was excusable, because it was invincible.' )

 

[bluejon]

A great post and I was particularly impressed by this sentence as I would personally admit to finding some of the great philosophers to be quite intimidating, Spinoza being one of them. I once came across a copy of Ethics in the CharingX Road bookshop and just thought it was going to be too demanding to get my head around.

But anyway, I have been doing a bit of digging and found this.




Haven't watched the video but have read the BBC book which includes a full transcript of it. A quick scan of the text earlier this evening did not include any references to pantheism but it's a fascinating conversation.

My reason for mentioning it is because Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher is one of my favourite books. He is such an elegant and clear prose stylist, someone else who can definitely be read for pleasure.

The other publication I had a quick dip into was Jonathan Ree's Witcraft. In a brief section on Spinoza the author includes a couple of telling sentences:

'To all appearances the Ethics was pious but unorthodox; but there were rumours that Spinoza's arguments for the existence of God were really cover for anti-Christian propaganda.'

Spinoza is also said to have 'refused the solace of faith' when facing death, and apparently his disciples considered him to be 'the greatest atheist ever.'

Witcraft also includes a couple of paragraphs on D'Holbech, one of which includes a witty and irreverent quotation from the Baron's account of an imaginary encounter with God after death ('Pardon me if my limited understanding hath not been able to know thee...mine ignorance was excusable, because it was invincible.' )

I read that very line last week, but what's really interesting is it's commonly accepted apparently that d'Holbech didn't write all of it. Diderot helped d'Holbach a lot with that piece, a writer who along with Bayle and Spinoza is the writer from that era that I have read the most of. Diderot builds on a lot of the implications of Spinoza, and is arguably one of the most influential thinkers in terms of what we now think of as 'European' ideals. Systeme de la Nature, you can tell every now and again the writing style changes, and pretty sure the quote you mentioned is in fact him. When it goes fully bombastic, that's probably diderot.

I got into all of this due to reading a book about 10 years ago, A Revolution of The Mind by Jonathan Israel. It's an overview and it sparked all sorts of things into life for me, especially the discussion as to how the emergence of science as a discipline became a fundamental threat to the various churches and their associated clergy in europe. Prior to experimental science, theologians got to decide "what was" and "how things are". They would tell the lay people what they believed to be the case based on their interpretation of theology, which funnily enough, was different between all of them. Experimental science comes along however, and oh shit. Suddenly the theologians can be proved wrong and that instantly became a threat to the all encompassing power of the clergy. I could babble on about all this for hours, it's fascinating.

As for Spinoza, Ethics is tough going, but i've read it four times now and each time i take a little bit more out of it than previously. The argument alone he presents is a thing to be genuinely in awe of. The complexity of his argument via the multiple connections between ideas is gobsmacking. How the hell one guy was able to have that all in his head is something else. You don't read Ethics linearly. You have to keep referring back to previously stated propositions, axioms etc. First time i read it, took me about half way through reading it to fully understand 'how' to read it. But, if you're a stubborn fucker, which i am, getting glimpses of his argument, which come more into focus the more times you read it.... Well worth it in my opinion.

 

[SWP's back]

‘The laws extend from God's non contradictory nature. "God can't deny himself " ( 2 Tim)’

a few contradictions , well 565 actually, in the book written by humans:

Contradictions as listed in the SAB book

www.skepticsannotatedbible.com

Some are very minor, but as god is meant to be infallible, it’s rather odd that 565 contradictions exist in a single book about an infallible god.

Tbf the Bible does have some good old fashioned, no nonsense laws to follow:

 

[SWP's back]

Please remember that whilst acceptable to denegrate the Christian faith, doing the same for other faiths would certainly result in a ban or even worse.

That’s absolute bollocks and does a disservice to the mod team. I denigrate all religions equally with an emphasis on all 3 Abrahamic piles of bollocks and I’ve never received so much as a warning for attacking the religion itself.

Islam (which I what I assume you’re referring to) doesn’t get any special treatment. They’re all as irrational, contradictory and non sensical as each other.

You must also remember that it’s only 4-500 years ago that people were burned at the stake as heretics for criticising that lovely, warm bundle of sweetness and light that is Christianity.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Chatted with my boss about religion today. I found out he got chucked out of RE for asking his teacher that if the scriptures say there are only 144000 places in heaven, why do I need to behave myself...?

 

[Marklr]

That’s absolute bollocks and does a disservice to the mod team. I denigrate all religions equally with an emphasis on all 3 Abrahamic piles of bollocks and I’ve never received so much as a warning for attacking the religion itself.

Islam (which I what I assume you’re referring to) doesn’t get any special treatment. They’re all as irrational, contradictory and non sensical as each other.

You must also remember that it’s only 4-500 years ago that people weren’t burned at the stake as heretics for criticising that lovely, warm bundle of sweetness and light that is Christianity.

I don't see which other religions we CAN criticise....it's only Christianity that has affected our lives in the west. I know nothing about Islam, as it hasn't touched my life in any way.

 

[I'm With Stupid]

I don't see which other religions we CAN criticise....it's only Christianity that has affected our lives in the west. I know nothing about Islam, as it hasn't touched my life in any way.

Dara O'Briain had the best answer to this when people ask him why he doesn't do just about Islam.

"One, because I don't know anything about Islam. And two, neither do you."

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Chatted with my boss about religion today. I found out he got chucked out of RE for asking his teacher that if the scriptures say there are only 144000 places in heaven, why do I need to behave myself...?

I'm sure there are lots of great RE teachers out there, but it's the only subject where you regularly hear people with stories about teachers getting angry because someone asked a question related to the subject. That's because it's the only subject where a significant number of the teachers are emotionally invested yet don't really have the answers. It's also the only subject that isn't taught objectively in a large number of schools because they have an explicit belief system in the school.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

I'm sure there are lots of great RE teachers out there, but it's the only subject where you regularly hear people with stories about teachers getting angry because someone asked a question related to the subject. That's because it's the only subject where a significant number of the teachers are emotionally invested yet don't really have the answers. It's also the only subject that isn't taught objectively in a large number of schools because they have an explicit belief system in the school.

Actually, as a retired RE teacher, I can testify to the fact that most of my ex-colleagues that I worked with in a variety of schools during my lengthy career were either atheists or agnostics who became teachers because they were (like myself) simply fascinated by the subject. It really isn’t boring at degree level and I opted for it over Psychology in my second year at university because my own professors and lecturers were so inspirational.

Andrew Rawlinson was one of them. He was big mates with Syd Barrett and Roger Waters out of Pink Floyd. If you watch this clip for long enough he talks about getting rusticated from Cambridge for getting into a fight outside a pub and the effects of injecting yourself with heroin as far as inducing a mystical experience are concerned. There's also a great anecdote about Elvis towards the end. Top bloke in other words.




It is also worth mentioning that some RE teachers (like my former Head of Department) had Philosophy degrees, a subject which naturally lends itself to open-ended sceptical enquiry and does not discourage awkward questions from being asked in the classroom. And the subject itself became more like Philosophy at both GCSE and A Level in the late 90’s until that complete and utter spectacularly uninformed **** of a person Michael Gove introduced his unnecessary curriculum reforms that took effect in 2016. As a consequence, in the case of RE (or RS as it is more appropriately described these days), the subject became comparable to Theology again. I got out shortly afterwards because I could financially afford to do so and didn’t want to teach a boring old load of complete and utter fucking shite (about God in three persons and similarly facile bollocks).

Having said all that, you could be right. RE is a subject that still almost certainly attracts evangelicals and those with a religiously informed agenda. Maybe I just got lucky in avoiding them.