Monday 23rd of December 2024
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stale loaves and rotten brains....

q&a9

The clergyman remained unmoved on gay marriage and climate change, but he said evolution was ''probably'' right, and that atheists could ''certainly'' get into heaven. Professor Dawkins declared he was ''trying to be charitable'' by suggesting there was no way Cardinal Pell meant the body would literally be resurrected.

The clergyman's view that people would return after death in some kind of physical form earlier had been dismissed by Professor Dawkins. ''The brain is going to rot, that's all there is to it,'' he said.

Cardinal Pell said: ''Mr Dawkins, I don't say things I don't mean.

 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/dawkins-and-pell-battle-it-out-in-one-hell-of-a-debate-20120410-1wlkg.html#ixzz1raJcLVFX

Thus we're all going to heaven whether we believe or not... idiot...

I could not bear watch the silly easter stouch on the night... so I watched it in drabs on the net at iview, with grandiose boredom nonetheless... Yes Darwin was a "christian" as stated in his "Origin of Species". In his days, even when more enlightened people could suggest that the idea of god was only a delusion, he still played it safe... Same with Einstein. For these men, to refute the god conandrum outright would have led to being ridiculed and quartered like communists — with their funding cut fortwith and their priceless work would have been banished to the dustbin of human misery, like Galileo's... 

And yes, humans can have ethical behaviour without the prop of religious fear nor with the carrot of an eternal lolly...

the dirty grey pants...

 

Given the choice of panellists, last night's Q&A was destined to be what it was: the vacillation of opposing monologues, interspersed by tediously predictable questions, and smattered with a derisive and frankly disgusting Twitter-feed. It is hard to shake the impression that, instead of genuinely informing and contributing to our public conversation, Q&A brazenly went after ratings. If that was the object, then as a stunt it worked magnificently.

But, I feel compelled to ask - perhaps appropriately given the season - "what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

In a time when so many of our civil institutions have collapsed, when moral and political disagreement has descended into a state of agonistic hyperpluralism, doesn't the ABC now have a well-nigh sacred vocation to protect and indeed to enrich public debate, to make all things virtuous and excellent available to everybody, rather than to debase it even further by succumbing to sensationalism?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-10/stephens-questions-without-answers-in-the-kingdom-of-whatever/3941740?WT.svl=theDrum

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Hey what do you expect, Scotty?... This controversial thingy has been going on for centuries, actually possibly since Constantine, Emperor of the Roman Empire, as explained in "Constantine's Sword" where James Carroll shows the birth of anti-semitism and Constantine's apropriation of the cross symbol — and in many other studies, such as the destruction of the Cathars... and the crusades against the Muslims, and the infighting between the Christians of this and that colour of the bible.

So, the debate will go on for yonks as some people do not believe in the soul, like me. I do not believe in spiritual thingies...

And no, the ABC does not have a "sacred" vocation to enrich the debate... To pit Dawkins against Pell was not the smartest thing to do: the ABC should not bore the pants of us with sensationalism that failed to sizzle... For example, the ABC used to have a program designed to tell it as it is, called the Hungry Beast, that delivered info as close to reality as possible, but it got the boot... That program was far superior to the Q&A silliness of protagonist ideology. Q&A is always going to end up looking dirty grey.

And please note that "our civil institutions have not collapsed".... That was a cheap shot.

 

and on another point...

 

Richard Dawkins is not only the most theologically illiterate of the non-believing ultra-Darwinists, but he is also notoriously unsophisticated on questions of ethics and moral obligation.

Cardinal Pell, on the other hand, was almost the least ideal counterpoint to Dawkins (I'll cede that place to Steve Fielding): this is both because of his recent and regrettably unsurprising remarks on the science and mitigation of global warming - which were ill-advised, and which, along with the Church's handling of sexual abuse and outright predation on the part of some clergy, and the increasingly gaudy antics of the glorified life-coaches and pay-per-view hucksters that accumulate under the banner of "pentecostalism", have set the moral authority and intellectual credibility of Christianity in Australia back by decades - but also because his writing has become increasingly arthritic and unengaged of late (in contrast to his audacious and often quite brilliant earlier work on theology and politics, such as that gathered God and Caesar).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-10/stephens-questions-without-answers-in-the-kingdom-of-whatever/3941740?WT.svl=theDrum

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Being theologically "literate" is like being an expert on fairy tales from Perrault to the Brother Grimms... Applied theology is pushing inane targeted incidentalism with a dash of sociopathy thrown in for power to get traction over other people... I am "reasonably" theologically literate, thus I know what I'm talking about. I've followed mass in Latin, rung the bell as an altar boy, seen the theatre of mass in vodoo and other languages — in which the adaptation can sound quite hysterical. Like many of my older generation, I've had my calling and threw it in the bin. Illusions of the grandest perversion of mind — only surviving in humans through the most deceiving of constant brainwashing to become the brainwashers... We become beasts of beliefs when beliefs are our only crutch... Many people I have known flocked from this belief to another, because none filled the bill as far as reality is concerned... They lost oodles of cash to gurus who got chauffeur driven in Rolls-Royces and fucked wives with husbands blessing... But this is another story, in which something like scientology has nothing of science in it... 

"God and Caesar" was nearly 2,000 years ago... and "agonistic hyperpluralism" has come in since that time... Or has it? Was not Pell at bit selective about his depiction of the times of godly hyperpluralism?... History is what we wish to interpret, and the bits that could dilute our vision are diminished conveniently... But we live now, today, a time in which a Pell is out of his depth and totally lacking. 

And by the way, there is a non-holy "war" going on within the ranks of the "atheists"... Dawkins VS R. Joseph Hauffman... It's quite hilarious really... Hauffman is a hard character to define — a bit like the devil's advocate in a non-god discussion... Probably like many people who know too much, he easily contradicts himself by criticising others who don't know as much but have a clearer understanding of the narrative nonetheless...

 

welcome from the conference about the nothing...

Before the conference I was informed that I would be sent a newspaper, which I duly received. Prayers were said to save the souls of the speakers. At the conference, both Christian and Muslim groups demonstrated, expressing their shared conviction that we were all going to spend an eternity rotting in hell. This common bonding seemed to be our contribution to world peace. It made our day to deserve such attention and to be such a threat to God that he was going to torture us until the end of time. You can't beat the theatre of a threat of eternal damnation. It was the final inspiring touch to one of the world's biggest godless conferences.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/blogs/godless-gross/the-atheist-jamboree-20120416-1x2lw.html#ixzz1sC3HesQy