How about suggestions for Jesus’ response? Like:
“On second thought…” or
“Let me help you!” or
“Let’s ask Moses to contribute, too!” or
“We’ll publish your list and make it mandatory school material!”
The average religious person sees no contradiction in this sequence of statements. It’s just assumed that free speech excludes certain topics that nobody would want to discuss anyway. As George Orwell might have put it, the Department of Free Speech is in charge of censorship.
JoJo, good link. How anybody could present a show entitled Free Speech at a mosque and think they could follow it with a debate rather eludes me. Is the BBC really that naive?
O joy another conference on free speech
Where the oppressed are allowed to screech
They rant and they rave
Not knowing how to behave
But insist that they know what to preach.
Ah, yes, interfaith dialogue, a true oxymoron if ever there was one!
All interfaith dialogues end up arguing the count of angels on the head of a pin. And/or the inanity of transubstantiation. And/or how much more of the various holy books need to be taken in context, and so on and so forth…
Hey, I just realised something. Here at the C&B, I don’t need to use nearly as many quotation marks, air or otherwise! It’s an Aquotist establishment!
Hmm. The Edit Monster just gobbled up my beautiful elucidation. If the timer expires while you’re editing, poofsie! You’re done. Ditto, I suspect, if anyone else dares to post while you’re still editing.
However, I have faith that Author will be on top of it like a refugee on a lifejacket… (or flack jacket, for non-boat-based refugees).
Speech is always free, it’s the repurcussions of speech that can be so costly.
Or, as Mrs. o’Sagan is always quick to remind me, ‘When I want your opinion I’ll give it to you’. 🙂
Hello all, I’ve finally got some time to catch up with my friends. I suppose it’s my round?
This may apply to some areas of interfaith work – international groups established by Saudi Princes for example – but if you get up to speed with contemporary interfaith work in the UK you will find the opposite is the case. Good dialogue work in this area is about creating processes that enable wide areas to be covered and difficult questions asked. That is a primary objective.
Winslow, any chance you could give an example of those difficult questions asked by interfaith groups?
I missed the chance to comment on the recent cartoon about the compatability of science and religion (nice to see Moses again, by the way), but I remember hearing once that a noted – though often over-looked – 20thC. British scientist once claimed that science and poetry were incompatable. A pint to the first miscreant who names that scientist, and a bonus chaser for the reasoning behind the claim.
AoS, I hope to win the pint, and maybe the chaser. However, while I was looking for the answers to your questions, I found that Donald F. Patterson, who teaches medical genetics at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine, would disagree that science and poetry are incompatible. See http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p223y1983.pdf
AoS, were you thinking of physicist Paul Dirac? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac , “He criticised the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s interest in poetry: ‘The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.'”
If I got it right, I’d like a pint of Pepsi tomorrow morning (to keep me awake at work) and a chaser of Asti Spumante tomorrow evening (to help me unwind and get ready for the weekend). Can you tell that I don’t frequent pubs other than the Cock & Bull 😉 ?
Acolyte – It is not so much the groups ask the questions but set up processes in which they can be asked by individuals, this is about people talking to each other within across and beyond shared faith positions. “Do you think I’m going to burn in hell?” “How would you feel about an openly gay Muslim attending your Mosque?” might be examples. There is good and bad interfaith work but best not to tar in all with the same brush.
The thing I’ve never worked out about interfaith dialogue is: why would anyone bother? I mean, I don’t care what processes we’ve all agreed to and what formats we are going to play under, my lot KNOW your lot are wrong and quite possibly destined for hell (or equivalent) and your lot are deluded into thinking that my lot are wrong and quite possibly destinged for equivalent (or hell). What is left about which to dialogue?
This is the only forum I regularly read (though rarely contribute to), because the level of dialogue here is both interesting and thought provoking. I don’t usually feel I have much to contribute but I have to say, I love that Dirac quote.
Now, I don’t agree with it – I think poetry is about elegance, which science has plenty of. I even see it in my own field – I am an engineering designer – especially in the clever, elegant little solutions to little problems, some of them are things of pure, elegant beauty (engineers like elegance, they just have their own ideas about what it is…).
But I like the quote anyway. I may be reading too much into it, but it reads to me like a reminder that “incompatible with science” doesn’t really have to be an insult (unless you are making truth claims, of course). After all, I think it’s fair to say that the experience of being in love, as opposed to simply loving someone, isn’t “compatible with science” – one hinges entirely upon the pursuit of rationality, the others flees gleefully from it. But I hardly feel that this is a slight on either.
Sorry to depart from the general topic of discussion, sometimes I have Things to Say, and I’m just arrogant enough to think that they might be interesting.
I like it, Blakey. There is a lot of science involved in romantic love; researchers have investigated physiological responses and so forth. Where the incompatibility comes in is in the practice. For instance, if a scientist who is falling in love decides to analyze what is going on, and apply his findings in the new relationship, he is likely to fuck it up. It’s not practical.
Possibly one could look at religious faith that way, too, if it is viewed as a relationship with God. The questionable aspect of that relationship, for those of us who employ rationality, is that the object of one’s religious affection shows no sign of being an real entity. It is reasonable (or at least understandable) for you to be somewhat irrational about the object of your affection, if that person actually exists and seems to care about you.
Which goes to Winslow’s point. I’m sure there are some interesting discussions going on between faiths, and that can’t be a bad thing. It seems to me that, if serious questions are allowed and really considered, questions that go to the heart of the basis of faith, that there is a chance that some people of faith will come to understand that their faith is baseless. That would be progress.
As Chiefy points out, real interfaith dialog would expose religious differences for what they are; arbitrary superstitions, obsessively asserted to be changeless truths. Every religion is, after all, predicated on all the others being in some sense fundamentaly wrong – or as Tom Lehrer so eloquently put it, in ‘National Brotherhood Week’:
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.
Given that no-one is going to change their beliefs in the slightest, the only possible result of these ecumenical gabfests is to confirm the intolerance they share – in various permutations, poofters, pork, foreskins, menstrual blood, evolution and thinking for yourself.
two cents’ worth, it was indeed Dirac. Enjoy the drinks.
Blakey & JoJo, in Dirac’s defence he was a very literal-minded man (possibly autistic according to Robert Uhlig, author of Genius of Britain) who more than likely really didn’t understand why somebody would write a piece of poetry – no matter how elegant and beautifully written it may be – simply to say ‘I love you’ or ‘War is bad’ ( a view I can sympathise with without agreeing completely). In fact, Nils Bohr described him as ‘not having a single trivial bone in his body, as the following examples seem to suggest;
In 1929 Dirac was on a cruise ship to Japan with fellow physicist Werner Heisenberg and had watched Heisenberg flirting and dancing with women on the ship. Dirac, who had an aversion to socialising and suchlike, asked Heisenberg why he danced, and got the reply ‘When there are nice girls, it is a pleasure’.
Dirac gave it some thought, then asked ‘But how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?’
Despite his social shortcomings, Dirac did marry, and one day his wife asked him what he would do if she left him. Again after a moment or two in thought, Dirac replied ‘I would say: “Goodbye, dear.”‘
Back to the interfaith discussion, I get the feeling that for interfaith groups to achieve anything of real importance – rather than settling questions of who goes to hell and who won’t stone a gay believer – then they have to put all faith aside, but then they’d be just like us.
Blakey, nice to hear from you. I enjoyed your thoughtful comment. Don’t ever worry about being arrogant (From the Latin, to claim for oneself.) around this crowd. We all have egos to feed. Anybody who finds our discussions both interesting and thought provoking is the kind of lurker we definitely like.
I must say, I’ve become very fond of the regulars here. When I get rich again, I’m going to send everybody a plane ticket so we can gather in meat space. Don’t laugh. It could happen, and what fun it would be.
White Squirrel, horses do not make shoes for cobblers only because the French boil up the bits that would have been made into shoes and feed them to the English as “haute cuisine”.
On the general subject of “interfaith dialogue”, this place isn’t so very far from any other self-protecting clique. One only need mention that Empires could have their good points to be ganged up on by the greenie, anti-discrimination, tree-huggy, pro-equality, anti-free-speech liberal lobby and told to bugger off to Wordpress.
You don’t even let the poor bleeders explain their thoughts before condemning them.
And now I am barred, yes?
Can’t have anyone in this nice, clean, authoritarianism-free zone even considering supporting a fascist.
“There are True Believers and False Believers. The decision as to who is which is always made by the True Believers.”
“I am a True Believer. I truly believe that arguing with the True Believers is not conducive to long life and prosperity.”
Those two aphorisms from the Reverend John apply equally well to “pro-free-speech” liberals as to demented religious zealots. Neither can see any side but theirs.
[No, belittling the French isn’t racist. There are Frenchmen of all races. At most it’s patriotic.]
We die of a million diseases
This death they say YWH pleases
For its sadistic plan
Means torturing Man
With volcanoes and heat-waves and freezes.
The cancer that ate up her brain
Drove her stupid and slightly insane
But we shouldn’t be sad
For this gift wasn’t bad
It was a blessing she suffered the pain.
They say it’s till death do we part
And the losing was only the start
Of her endless joy
With YWH’s pet toys
Though to me it’s a stab in the heart.
Why did it take her?
There is a kind, gentle plan.
We just can’t see it.
HalfMade: And now I am barred, yes?
Can’t have anyone in this nice, clean, authoritarianism-free zone even considering supporting a fascist.
No, you won’t be barred. But if you keep (apparently) promoting discrimination and inequality, misrepresenting what was actually said, and accusing one of the most easygoing and inclusive forums on the net of being intolerant and dogmatic, you will be advertising the fact that you are a smug, intolerant arsehole.
You can’t even rant consistently – are your demon liberals pro- or anti- free speech? You have them down as both. Oh, and far from being banned, you are cordially invited to reply – your position is untenable, and it will be entertaining to watch you dig an even deeper pit for yourself.
Halfmade, it’s late at night while I’m reading this so maybe I’m being a bit slow but I don’t get your point. Can you please explain?
You seem to be saying that we are an ‘in-group’ who does a lot of agreeing with each other and believes those in the ‘out-group’ are wrong. My response: well, YES! Of course; like any group of like-minded people, we are a group of like-minded people.
“One only need mention that Empires could have their good points to be ganged up on by the greenie, anti-discrimination, tree-huggy, pro-equality, anti-free-speech liberal lobby and told to bugger off to WordPress.”
This bit I don’t understand at all. Are you suggesting somehow that we are the greenie …. liberal lobby and that someone who came here and promoted ‘Empires’, by which I am assuming you mean colonisation or monarchy or similar, would be told to go away? I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone seriously promote ‘fascism’ as you call it. Give it a go. I think you’re a little early with the victimhood statements, though. I think the outcome is much more likely to be that you will have anywhere from 3 – 9 different people argue with your views but, rather than kick you out, knowing the old hands here, I’m pretty damn sure they would rather you stick around and keep arguing. I know I love nothing better than a challenging discussion.
P.S. Look at some of our back catalogue. You’ll see we’ve had plenty of robust discussions with one-off visitors and between regulars. A warning, though: you had better be on your game, a couple of the regulars are pretty cluey.
“There are True Believers and False Believers. The decision as to who is which is always made by the True Believers.” Nice. No True Scotsman or “History is decided by the victor” Adolf Hitler.
Hotrats remembered a verse from Tom Lehrer’s song “National Brotherhood Week” earlier, but here’s another segment that reminds us of why we live in a divided society:
“It’s fun to eulogize
The people you despise,
As long as you don’t let ’em in your school.”
So here’s a reminder of what we can do about that, as if you needed one.
This is funny but to be more accurate they should both be taking notes on what people can’t say. I have to laugh a little when people think it is just one side that is limiting. Oh well this was still a funny story, thank you.
AoS: Loved the Dirac anecdotes. Sitting here having coffee with Mrs Unco (who isn’t Unco actually) and got to the last line, gave such a loud guffaw that it caused both her and her mother to look around to see what the problem was, then had to explain it. Unfortunately, it lost something in my translation, not helped by mother in law having dementia, of course.
Good topic this week. The interfaith domain looks quite interesting as well said by Winslow, Chiefy and Hotrats. There may be more behind interfaith efforts than just the wet wings of various religions having a talk-fest. I have relatives who are Baptist clergy. An eon ago when I was growing up, the Baptists hated the Catholics more than anyone, although of course anyone but diehard Baptist fundies are still bound for hell. However, they love the current Oz prime minister. For those who don’t know, he’s a hardline Catholic, who contrary to his Wikipedia listing has a history of making faith-based political decisions and appointing his co-believers to commissions of enquiry so they will come up with the right answers, while being able to say that he consulted.
Maybe the believers understand that if they co-operate, there’s a better chance of e.g. getting into schools to indoctrinate kids who don’t get enough of it at home and to get funding for other parts of their empires.
I.e. look for the interests behind the principles as I seem to recall Mr Marx writing.
Halfmade, I do not have the power to bar you, but I’d like to be the first to invite you to fuck off. I do not have the tolerance for trolls that Hotrats and Mary2 display.
I’m “lucky” enough to come from a part of the world where the British empire managed something rather unique – the absolute and wholesale extermination of, not just a culture, but an entire ethnic group. They (Or we, I’m of anglo descent myself) also managed to destroy dozens of unique, interrelated culture/language groups belonging to a second ethnic group, by killing all the members, or by taking their children and raising them to be “more white”, or by enslaving them or through any number of other acts of genocide.
That’s empire. That’s what empires do. We wouldn’t be expected to listen to the arguments of someone who came in talking about the “good points” of child murder, or kidnapping and torture, or slavery, or any other sort of horrific crime. Empires are founded upon the annexation of other states. Empire building is a crime upon humanity, and I don’t think anyone should be expected to listen to nostalgia for its products.
Fair to say I’m with DH on this; betting I’ve given away my general location to at least one or two of you, as well.
HalfMade, would your ‘And now I am barred, yes?’ be a half-arsed attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy? If so, you’ll have to try harder than a mere incoherent rant. I think I’m correct in saying that in the entire history of J&M there has only ever been one person shown the door for good, and even that took a good month or so of trying to engage him in civil discourse.
Gasp! A single person banned in seven years. What a bunch of intolerant bastards we must be, eh?
UncoBob, nice theory about interfaith grouping being less about mutual understanding and more about pushing a joint agenda on the wider world. If there is indeed strength in numbers then I suppose it makes sense that as the number of adherents to individual faiths continue to dwindle, they need to make like the Borg and assimilate if they’re going to have any say in how things are done.
Fortunately, their basic doctrines are so different that they behave just as any other committee and achieve sod-all of any great importance.
Darwin, I love the idea of a get-together even though when I suggested it some months back I was asked if I was mental; something to do with security risks, apparently. Anyway, there was one thing you wrote in that offer that intrigued me, namely the ‘if I get rich again‘ part. Again?
Repeat (but apt) posting:
Christian: “The Muslims and the Jews are wrong.”
Muslim: “The Jews and the Christians are wrong.”
Jew: “The Christians and the Muslims are wrong.”
Atheist: “All of you are right!”
Acolyte: “Anyway, there was one thing you wrote in that offer that intrigued me, namely the ‘if I get rich again‘ part. Again?”
Ah yes, there was a time. I suppose I wasn’t really rich by jet setter standards, but I was certainly in better shape than I am now. Had the trappings. More money to play with certainly. Blew the lot in a spectacular crash and burn about ten years ago but I’m slowly getting started on a comeback. Just for fun. Don’t really need more than I have now, but subsistence doesn’t allow for enough plane tickets. 🙂
Security risks? I suppose there could be but I’d gladly chance it. We could all keep our anonymity, travel incognito, wear dark glasses and trench coats and pack heat. Assuming we could get him to come along, imagine meeting NBH in the flesh. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Of course there’s the huge risk of finding out that we are all rather bland and uninteresting folks. That could completely destroy the C&B as we all have come to love it. Maybe it’s a bad idea. Many attractive fantasies are bad ideas in reality. Buying a yacht one can’t afford or having a fling with that beautiful but batshit crazy woman come to mind from my own experience, all part of the crash and burn.
Darwin: We could all keep our anonymity, travel incognito, wear dark glasses and trench coats and pack heat.
Heh! Reservoir Atheists, but with one wee change; instead of using colours as names, we could each take the name of a biblical character 🙂
Can’t say I have, botanist, but I do hope it wasn’t about the most common definition of burning bush. However, if it was then I sincerely hope the antibiotics worked 🙂
I’d been trying to decide on my name with little success, but thankfully nature provided inspiration. The after-effects of the sage and onion stuffing I made with dinner yesterday have convinced me that I should be Joshua’s Horn. I haven’t exactly destroyed any walls but I swear the windows have shook in their frames a time or two this evening.
Yes thanks AoS 🙂
It’s a shame we don’t have a ‘search by date’ facility. Or a ‘search by contributor’.
When I have a mo I’ll try to find it for you, but it might take some time.
I hope for Mrs oS’s sake you are feeling better 🙂
I really love J&M’s strip:
An artwork which aims to rip
The piss from those fools-
Sanctimonious tools-
Oh bugger, I can’t get this to rhyme or scan so I’ll try beat poetry next time…
I suppose it could be pronounced phonetically to make Omega, and who was it in the Bible that said ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’?
Oh my God! It was God.
There you go, omg, your Reservoir Atheist
name is………Omg.
Botanist, much better, thank you. However, if it’s true that a butterfly flapping it’s wings in China can cause a tornado in Australia, and as the wind last night was in a westerly direction, then any wind-based destruction on the East coast of America over the next day or so might just be down to me.
Still, it’ll make a nice change from them blaming God and the gays for the weather. 🙂
Last Hussar, I missed Newsnight; did Author get another mention on the TV?
Undeluded, I finally got around to reading your link and now I need a shower and I may follow it up with shaving all my body hair and ingesting a purgative. WTF is the British Law Society thinking?
Interestingly, in Ontario, Canada, a Muslim faction applied to have Sharia family courts recognized by the province. Another group of Muslims protested, saying we left all that shit behind us where we came from and we don’t want it here. The end result was that the government took family courts away from the Jews and the Catholics, who never should have had them in the first place. One for the win.
If anybody should be protesting creeping Sharia in Britain it’s the expat Muslims.
AoS, I kile yhat, so from now one my name should be pronounced Omega. It could be funny when people call me Omega since here we use abbreviation to refer to others. So, for people that are not familiar to this post, they could have hard time to figure out who the hell you are talking about. It would be a kind of reverse abbreviation.
DH, I’m very please to find out that Ontarion withdraw the privilege from the Jews and the Catholics to interfere with the court.
AOS, A get together would be amazing. I’ve told you all I am more fond of the old hands here than I am of many people in the real world. It would be interesting: I wonder how any of us would stack up to our public personae?
“Get rich again?” – yeah, I was too polite to ask.
DH. I don’t get the security risks thing. There are security risks in crossing the road. Besides, most people who are murdered are killed by people they know well – much more interested to be murdered by a stranger one knew from the internet and travelled the world to meet … 😉
“Of course there’s the huge risk of finding out that we are all rather bland and uninteresting folks” – I love it! Having spent up to 7 years building up a picture of a person only to find out that it is easier to be witty and charming when you have a 5 minute edit button!
The Rationaliser, thank you for the link! It’s saved me some adrenaline that I can now use to cope with real emergencies, such as the looming deadline for my project at work. (I hate to waste adrenaline on false alarms, especially since I seem to have less of it now than I once had 😉 . )
@Mary2 “… it is easier to be witty and charming when you have a 5 minute edit button!”
Very astute. So now level with us. Do you use/need the aforementioned button? Despite my initial hacking around with even short comments like this one, I know it has saved me embarrassment on at least one occasion
JohnM, Not sure I fit the ‘witty and charming’ category but I freely admit to being an obsessive editor of even short comments. I never achieve any real ‘outcomes’ at work as it has been known to take me half an hour to compose a simple ‘for your information’ email – but I do write a bonza ‘FYI’ note!
(without really thinking about it, I just counted myself re-reading these two sentences at least four times – and I wonder why the years go so fast!!)
Only four times, Mary. I can only dream of re-reading my work a paltry four times. And then there’s the editing and re-editing …
Oh, Author. Can you perhaps expand the 5 minute button to a half-hour.
Damn. Only thirty seconds left. I’m going to run out of t
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December 19, 2008
Item 1 on Mo’s list: Free Speech!
How about suggestions for Jesus’ response? Like:
“On second thought…” or
“Let me help you!” or
“Let’s ask Moses to contribute, too!” or
“We’ll publish your list and make it mandatory school material!”
@Undeluded: It’s freedom FROM speech, not freedom OF speech.
Mo will be busy. He’ll have to make up large, clear signs saying ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ for the segregated seating areas, too…
I’m free, but you’re not, because you’re an infidel!
Freedom from speech, or how to get decapitated!
Interfaith dialogue means ‘here is a list of the questions that you CAN ask’
…a list of shoes to throw.
And doesn’t this need a link to a source?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/tv-radio/bbc-criticised-for-preventing-debate-on-homosexuality-in-islam-to-take-place-in-birmingham-mosque-9190824.html
The average religious person sees no contradiction in this sequence of statements. It’s just assumed that free speech excludes certain topics that nobody would want to discuss anyway. As George Orwell might have put it, the Department of Free Speech is in charge of censorship.
JoJo, good link. How anybody could present a show entitled Free Speech at a mosque and think they could follow it with a debate rather eludes me. Is the BBC really that naive?
I’d say something but it’s probably on Mo’s list.
O joy another conference on free speech
Where the oppressed are allowed to screech
They rant and they rave
Not knowing how to behave
But insist that they know what to preach.
Everyone knows how free speech goes. I can talk about whatever I want. You can talk about whatever I want.
Mo will be busy. He’ll have to make up large, clear signs saying ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ for the segregated seating areas, too…
and where will transmen and transwomen sit?
Ah, yes, interfaith dialogue, a true oxymoron if ever there was one!
All interfaith dialogues end up arguing the count of angels on the head of a pin. And/or the inanity of transubstantiation. And/or how much more of the various holy books need to be taken in context, and so on and so forth…
Hey, I just realised something. Here at the C&B, I don’t need to use nearly as many quotation marks, air or otherwise! It’s an Aquotist establishment!
Free Speech – or as a fiend once put it, I’ll thank you to keep a polite tongue in my anus.
Hmm. The Edit Monster just gobbled up my beautiful elucidation. If the timer expires while you’re editing, poofsie! You’re done. Ditto, I suspect, if anyone else dares to post while you’re still editing.
However, I have faith that Author will be on top of it like a refugee on a lifejacket… (or flack jacket, for non-boat-based refugees).
@Cephas Apart from the two comments from you above, there is nothing in the trash or spam folders. Did you lose something? Very sorry if so.
Speech is always free, it’s the repurcussions of speech that can be so costly.
Or, as Mrs. o’Sagan is always quick to remind me, ‘When I want your opinion I’ll give it to you’. 🙂
Hello all, I’ve finally got some time to catch up with my friends. I suppose it’s my round?
Cobblers do not make shoes for horses.
Horses do not make shoes for cobblers.
Said some blacksmith.
This may apply to some areas of interfaith work – international groups established by Saudi Princes for example – but if you get up to speed with contemporary interfaith work in the UK you will find the opposite is the case. Good dialogue work in this area is about creating processes that enable wide areas to be covered and difficult questions asked. That is a primary objective.
Welcome back Acolyte. Mine’s a large Calvados, no ice.
We used to have a joke that in communism you have freedom of speach, but freedom after speach is not guaranteed. It seems it applies now to religion.
Winslow, any chance you could give an example of those difficult questions asked by interfaith groups?
I missed the chance to comment on the recent cartoon about the compatability of science and religion (nice to see Moses again, by the way), but I remember hearing once that a noted – though often over-looked – 20thC. British scientist once claimed that science and poetry were incompatable. A pint to the first miscreant who names that scientist, and a bonus chaser for the reasoning behind the claim.
AoS, I hope to win the pint, and maybe the chaser. However, while I was looking for the answers to your questions, I found that Donald F. Patterson, who teaches medical genetics at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine, would disagree that science and poetry are incompatible. See http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v6p223y1983.pdf
AoS, were you thinking of physicist Paul Dirac? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dirac , “He criticised the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s interest in poetry: ‘The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.'”
If I got it right, I’d like a pint of Pepsi tomorrow morning (to keep me awake at work) and a chaser of Asti Spumante tomorrow evening (to help me unwind and get ready for the weekend). Can you tell that I don’t frequent pubs other than the Cock & Bull 😉 ?
tcw – You certainly have a sweet tooth, if you have any left after drinking that lot.
Oh Lordy! Where does this leave the barmaid? Her two most regular regulars are going to be unbearably smug…..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26671221
Religion and free speech. GREAT!
‘When I want your opinion I will give it to you”.
Acolyte – It is not so much the groups ask the questions but set up processes in which they can be asked by individuals, this is about people talking to each other within across and beyond shared faith positions. “Do you think I’m going to burn in hell?” “How would you feel about an openly gay Muslim attending your Mosque?” might be examples. There is good and bad interfaith work but best not to tar in all with the same brush.
The thing I’ve never worked out about interfaith dialogue is: why would anyone bother? I mean, I don’t care what processes we’ve all agreed to and what formats we are going to play under, my lot KNOW your lot are wrong and quite possibly destined for hell (or equivalent) and your lot are deluded into thinking that my lot are wrong and quite possibly destinged for equivalent (or hell). What is left about which to dialogue?
This is the only forum I regularly read (though rarely contribute to), because the level of dialogue here is both interesting and thought provoking. I don’t usually feel I have much to contribute but I have to say, I love that Dirac quote.
Now, I don’t agree with it – I think poetry is about elegance, which science has plenty of. I even see it in my own field – I am an engineering designer – especially in the clever, elegant little solutions to little problems, some of them are things of pure, elegant beauty (engineers like elegance, they just have their own ideas about what it is…).
But I like the quote anyway. I may be reading too much into it, but it reads to me like a reminder that “incompatible with science” doesn’t really have to be an insult (unless you are making truth claims, of course). After all, I think it’s fair to say that the experience of being in love, as opposed to simply loving someone, isn’t “compatible with science” – one hinges entirely upon the pursuit of rationality, the others flees gleefully from it. But I hardly feel that this is a slight on either.
Sorry to depart from the general topic of discussion, sometimes I have Things to Say, and I’m just arrogant enough to think that they might be interesting.
Anyone who thinks that art, elegance, poetry, maths and science can’t all be compatible should just stare at a snail’s shell. For a start.
I like it, Blakey. There is a lot of science involved in romantic love; researchers have investigated physiological responses and so forth. Where the incompatibility comes in is in the practice. For instance, if a scientist who is falling in love decides to analyze what is going on, and apply his findings in the new relationship, he is likely to fuck it up. It’s not practical.
Possibly one could look at religious faith that way, too, if it is viewed as a relationship with God. The questionable aspect of that relationship, for those of us who employ rationality, is that the object of one’s religious affection shows no sign of being an real entity. It is reasonable (or at least understandable) for you to be somewhat irrational about the object of your affection, if that person actually exists and seems to care about you.
Which goes to Winslow’s point. I’m sure there are some interesting discussions going on between faiths, and that can’t be a bad thing. It seems to me that, if serious questions are allowed and really considered, questions that go to the heart of the basis of faith, that there is a chance that some people of faith will come to understand that their faith is baseless. That would be progress.
As Chiefy points out, real interfaith dialog would expose religious differences for what they are; arbitrary superstitions, obsessively asserted to be changeless truths. Every religion is, after all, predicated on all the others being in some sense fundamentaly wrong – or as Tom Lehrer so eloquently put it, in ‘National Brotherhood Week’:
Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.
Given that no-one is going to change their beliefs in the slightest, the only possible result of these ecumenical gabfests is to confirm the intolerance they share – in various permutations, poofters, pork, foreskins, menstrual blood, evolution and thinking for yourself.
two cents’ worth, it was indeed Dirac. Enjoy the drinks.
Blakey & JoJo, in Dirac’s defence he was a very literal-minded man (possibly autistic according to Robert Uhlig, author of Genius of Britain) who more than likely really didn’t understand why somebody would write a piece of poetry – no matter how elegant and beautifully written it may be – simply to say ‘I love you’ or ‘War is bad’ ( a view I can sympathise with without agreeing completely). In fact, Nils Bohr described him as ‘not having a single trivial bone in his body, as the following examples seem to suggest;
In 1929 Dirac was on a cruise ship to Japan with fellow physicist Werner Heisenberg and had watched Heisenberg flirting and dancing with women on the ship. Dirac, who had an aversion to socialising and suchlike, asked Heisenberg why he danced, and got the reply ‘When there are nice girls, it is a pleasure’.
Dirac gave it some thought, then asked ‘But how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?’
Despite his social shortcomings, Dirac did marry, and one day his wife asked him what he would do if she left him. Again after a moment or two in thought, Dirac replied ‘I would say: “Goodbye, dear.”‘
Back to the interfaith discussion, I get the feeling that for interfaith groups to achieve anything of real importance – rather than settling questions of who goes to hell and who won’t stone a gay believer – then they have to put all faith aside, but then they’d be just like us.
Blakey, nice to hear from you. I enjoyed your thoughtful comment. Don’t ever worry about being arrogant (From the Latin, to claim for oneself.) around this crowd. We all have egos to feed. Anybody who finds our discussions both interesting and thought provoking is the kind of lurker we definitely like.
I must say, I’ve become very fond of the regulars here. When I get rich again, I’m going to send everybody a plane ticket so we can gather in meat space. Don’t laugh. It could happen, and what fun it would be.
Blakey, Definitely interesting.
DH, good plan.
Cobblers do not make shoes for horses.
Horses do not make shoes for cobblers.
sounds like blatant discrimination and specieism to me
White Squirrel, horses do not make shoes for cobblers only because the French boil up the bits that would have been made into shoes and feed them to the English as “haute cuisine”.
On the general subject of “interfaith dialogue”, this place isn’t so very far from any other self-protecting clique. One only need mention that Empires could have their good points to be ganged up on by the greenie, anti-discrimination, tree-huggy, pro-equality, anti-free-speech liberal lobby and told to bugger off to Wordpress.
You don’t even let the poor bleeders explain their thoughts before condemning them.
And now I am barred, yes?
Can’t have anyone in this nice, clean, authoritarianism-free zone even considering supporting a fascist.
“There are True Believers and False Believers. The decision as to who is which is always made by the True Believers.”
“I am a True Believer. I truly believe that arguing with the True Believers is not conducive to long life and prosperity.”
Those two aphorisms from the Reverend John apply equally well to “pro-free-speech” liberals as to demented religious zealots. Neither can see any side but theirs.
[No, belittling the French isn’t racist. There are Frenchmen of all races. At most it’s patriotic.]
We die of a million diseases
This death they say YWH pleases
For its sadistic plan
Means torturing Man
With volcanoes and heat-waves and freezes.
The cancer that ate up her brain
Drove her stupid and slightly insane
But we shouldn’t be sad
For this gift wasn’t bad
It was a blessing she suffered the pain.
They say it’s till death do we part
And the losing was only the start
Of her endless joy
With YWH’s pet toys
Though to me it’s a stab in the heart.
Why did it take her?
There is a kind, gentle plan.
We just can’t see it.
HalfMade:
And now I am barred, yes?
Can’t have anyone in this nice, clean, authoritarianism-free zone even considering supporting a fascist.
No, you won’t be barred. But if you keep (apparently) promoting discrimination and inequality, misrepresenting what was actually said, and accusing one of the most easygoing and inclusive forums on the net of being intolerant and dogmatic, you will be advertising the fact that you are a smug, intolerant arsehole.
You can’t even rant consistently – are your demon liberals pro- or anti- free speech? You have them down as both. Oh, and far from being banned, you are cordially invited to reply – your position is untenable, and it will be entertaining to watch you dig an even deeper pit for yourself.
Halfmade, it’s late at night while I’m reading this so maybe I’m being a bit slow but I don’t get your point. Can you please explain?
You seem to be saying that we are an ‘in-group’ who does a lot of agreeing with each other and believes those in the ‘out-group’ are wrong. My response: well, YES! Of course; like any group of like-minded people, we are a group of like-minded people.
“One only need mention that Empires could have their good points to be ganged up on by the greenie, anti-discrimination, tree-huggy, pro-equality, anti-free-speech liberal lobby and told to bugger off to WordPress.”
This bit I don’t understand at all. Are you suggesting somehow that we are the greenie …. liberal lobby and that someone who came here and promoted ‘Empires’, by which I am assuming you mean colonisation or monarchy or similar, would be told to go away? I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve ever had anyone seriously promote ‘fascism’ as you call it. Give it a go. I think you’re a little early with the victimhood statements, though. I think the outcome is much more likely to be that you will have anywhere from 3 – 9 different people argue with your views but, rather than kick you out, knowing the old hands here, I’m pretty damn sure they would rather you stick around and keep arguing. I know I love nothing better than a challenging discussion.
P.S. Look at some of our back catalogue. You’ll see we’ve had plenty of robust discussions with one-off visitors and between regulars. A warning, though: you had better be on your game, a couple of the regulars are pretty cluey.
“There are True Believers and False Believers. The decision as to who is which is always made by the True Believers.” Nice. No True Scotsman or “History is decided by the victor” Adolf Hitler.
Hotrats remembered a verse from Tom Lehrer’s song “National Brotherhood Week” earlier, but here’s another segment that reminds us of why we live in a divided society:
“It’s fun to eulogize
The people you despise,
As long as you don’t let ’em in your school.”
So here’s a reminder of what we can do about that, as if you needed one.
This is funny but to be more accurate they should both be taking notes on what people can’t say. I have to laugh a little when people think it is just one side that is limiting. Oh well this was still a funny story, thank you.
AoS: Loved the Dirac anecdotes. Sitting here having coffee with Mrs Unco (who isn’t Unco actually) and got to the last line, gave such a loud guffaw that it caused both her and her mother to look around to see what the problem was, then had to explain it. Unfortunately, it lost something in my translation, not helped by mother in law having dementia, of course.
Good topic this week. The interfaith domain looks quite interesting as well said by Winslow, Chiefy and Hotrats. There may be more behind interfaith efforts than just the wet wings of various religions having a talk-fest. I have relatives who are Baptist clergy. An eon ago when I was growing up, the Baptists hated the Catholics more than anyone, although of course anyone but diehard Baptist fundies are still bound for hell. However, they love the current Oz prime minister. For those who don’t know, he’s a hardline Catholic, who contrary to his Wikipedia listing has a history of making faith-based political decisions and appointing his co-believers to commissions of enquiry so they will come up with the right answers, while being able to say that he consulted.
Maybe the believers understand that if they co-operate, there’s a better chance of e.g. getting into schools to indoctrinate kids who don’t get enough of it at home and to get funding for other parts of their empires.
I.e. look for the interests behind the principles as I seem to recall Mr Marx writing.
Halfmade, I do not have the power to bar you, but I’d like to be the first to invite you to fuck off. I do not have the tolerance for trolls that Hotrats and Mary2 display.
Interfaith? Rather, intra-faith! Sharia and British law!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10716844/Islamic-law-is-adopted-by-British-legal-chiefs.html
Emetic article!
~~shudder~~
I’m “lucky” enough to come from a part of the world where the British empire managed something rather unique – the absolute and wholesale extermination of, not just a culture, but an entire ethnic group. They (Or we, I’m of anglo descent myself) also managed to destroy dozens of unique, interrelated culture/language groups belonging to a second ethnic group, by killing all the members, or by taking their children and raising them to be “more white”, or by enslaving them or through any number of other acts of genocide.
That’s empire. That’s what empires do. We wouldn’t be expected to listen to the arguments of someone who came in talking about the “good points” of child murder, or kidnapping and torture, or slavery, or any other sort of horrific crime. Empires are founded upon the annexation of other states. Empire building is a crime upon humanity, and I don’t think anyone should be expected to listen to nostalgia for its products.
Fair to say I’m with DH on this; betting I’ve given away my general location to at least one or two of you, as well.
HalfMade, would your ‘And now I am barred, yes?’ be a half-arsed attempt at a self-fulfilling prophecy? If so, you’ll have to try harder than a mere incoherent rant. I think I’m correct in saying that in the entire history of J&M there has only ever been one person shown the door for good, and even that took a good month or so of trying to engage him in civil discourse.
Gasp! A single person banned in seven years. What a bunch of intolerant bastards we must be, eh?
UncoBob, nice theory about interfaith grouping being less about mutual understanding and more about pushing a joint agenda on the wider world. If there is indeed strength in numbers then I suppose it makes sense that as the number of adherents to individual faiths continue to dwindle, they need to make like the Borg and assimilate if they’re going to have any say in how things are done.
Fortunately, their basic doctrines are so different that they behave just as any other committee and achieve sod-all of any great importance.
Darwin, I love the idea of a get-together even though when I suggested it some months back I was asked if I was mental; something to do with security risks, apparently. Anyway, there was one thing you wrote in that offer that intrigued me, namely the ‘if I get rich again‘ part. Again?
Interfaith recognition?
http://imgur.com/r/unexpected/qDghIv9
Repeat (but apt) posting:
Christian: “The Muslims and the Jews are wrong.”
Muslim: “The Jews and the Christians are wrong.”
Jew: “The Christians and the Muslims are wrong.”
Atheist: “All of you are right!”
Acolyte: “Anyway, there was one thing you wrote in that offer that intrigued me, namely the ‘if I get rich again‘ part. Again?”
Ah yes, there was a time. I suppose I wasn’t really rich by jet setter standards, but I was certainly in better shape than I am now. Had the trappings. More money to play with certainly. Blew the lot in a spectacular crash and burn about ten years ago but I’m slowly getting started on a comeback. Just for fun. Don’t really need more than I have now, but subsistence doesn’t allow for enough plane tickets. 🙂
Security risks? I suppose there could be but I’d gladly chance it. We could all keep our anonymity, travel incognito, wear dark glasses and trench coats and pack heat. Assuming we could get him to come along, imagine meeting NBH in the flesh. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Of course there’s the huge risk of finding out that we are all rather bland and uninteresting folks. That could completely destroy the C&B as we all have come to love it. Maybe it’s a bad idea. Many attractive fantasies are bad ideas in reality. Buying a yacht one can’t afford or having a fling with that beautiful but batshit crazy woman come to mind from my own experience, all part of the crash and burn.
Darwin: We could all keep our anonymity, travel incognito, wear dark glasses and trench coats and pack heat.
Heh! Reservoir Atheists, but with one wee change; instead of using colours as names, we could each take the name of a biblical character 🙂
I know – I’ll be the burning bush. AoS – have you seen my first ever post?
Can’t say I have, botanist, but I do hope it wasn’t about the most common definition of burning bush. However, if it was then I sincerely hope the antibiotics worked 🙂
I’d been trying to decide on my name with little success, but thankfully nature provided inspiration. The after-effects of the sage and onion stuffing I made with dinner yesterday have convinced me that I should be Joshua’s Horn. I haven’t exactly destroyed any walls but I swear the windows have shook in their frames a time or two this evening.
Since everyone use a fake name, just use that name…
omg:
Fine – and just how do you pronounce ‘omg’?
Yes thanks AoS 🙂
It’s a shame we don’t have a ‘search by date’ facility. Or a ‘search by contributor’.
When I have a mo I’ll try to find it for you, but it might take some time.
I hope for Mrs oS’s sake you are feeling better 🙂
I really love J&M’s strip:
An artwork which aims to rip
The piss from those fools-
Sanctimonious tools-
Oh bugger, I can’t get this to rhyme or scan so I’ll try beat poetry next time…
(PS thanks for the nice comments last time 🙂 )
OMG, thanks for the link! I needed a good laugh, and it delivered!
hotrats,
Oh my god, I have not seen this one come. I think that I deserve to pay the next round. 😉
But in any case, I can use my nick since it refer to some guy in the bible…
Also, as some guy say: don’t pronounce my name in vain. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Watching Newsnight. Welcome to fame.
hotrats says:
March 24, 2014 at 9:35 am
omg:
Fine – and just how do you pronounce ‘omg’?
I suppose it could be pronounced phonetically to make Omega, and who was it in the Bible that said ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’?
Oh my God! It was God.
There you go, omg, your Reservoir Atheist
name is………Omg.
Botanist, much better, thank you. However, if it’s true that a butterfly flapping it’s wings in China can cause a tornado in Australia, and as the wind last night was in a westerly direction, then any wind-based destruction on the East coast of America over the next day or so might just be down to me.
Still, it’ll make a nice change from them blaming God and the gays for the weather. 🙂
Last Hussar, I missed Newsnight; did Author get another mention on the TV?
omg, love your link from earlier, but the one immediately following is pure genius; http://imgur.com/r/unexpected/qDghIv9
Undeluded, I finally got around to reading your link and now I need a shower and I may follow it up with shaving all my body hair and ingesting a purgative. WTF is the British Law Society thinking?
Interestingly, in Ontario, Canada, a Muslim faction applied to have Sharia family courts recognized by the province. Another group of Muslims protested, saying we left all that shit behind us where we came from and we don’t want it here. The end result was that the government took family courts away from the Jews and the Catholics, who never should have had them in the first place. One for the win.
If anybody should be protesting creeping Sharia in Britain it’s the expat Muslims.
AoS, I kile yhat, so from now one my name should be pronounced Omega. It could be funny when people call me Omega since here we use abbreviation to refer to others. So, for people that are not familiar to this post, they could have hard time to figure out who the hell you are talking about. It would be a kind of reverse abbreviation.
DH, I’m very please to find out that Ontarion withdraw the privilege from the Jews and the Catholics to interfere with the court.
Got to say, I quite enjoyed the image a few along from the one ‘Omega’ posted:
http://imgur.com/r/unexpected/iMfHed0
AOS, A get together would be amazing. I’ve told you all I am more fond of the old hands here than I am of many people in the real world. It would be interesting: I wonder how any of us would stack up to our public personae?
“Get rich again?” – yeah, I was too polite to ask.
DH. I don’t get the security risks thing. There are security risks in crossing the road. Besides, most people who are murdered are killed by people they know well – much more interested to be murdered by a stranger one knew from the internet and travelled the world to meet … 😉
“Of course there’s the huge risk of finding out that we are all rather bland and uninteresting folks” – I love it! Having spent up to 7 years building up a picture of a person only to find out that it is easier to be witty and charming when you have a 5 minute edit button!
The story about Islamic Law being enshrined in British law from the Telegraph is bogus. Don’t fall for it!
http://therationaliser.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/islamic-legal-principles-to-be.html
The Rationaliser, thank you for the link! It’s saved me some adrenaline that I can now use to cope with real emergencies, such as the looming deadline for my project at work. (I hate to waste adrenaline on false alarms, especially since I seem to have less of it now than I once had 😉 . )
@Mary2 “… it is easier to be witty and charming when you have a 5 minute edit button!”
Very astute. So now level with us. Do you use/need the aforementioned button? Despite my initial hacking around with even short comments like this one, I know it has saved me embarrassment on at least one occasion
Mary2:
…only to find out that it is easier to be witty and charming when you have a 5 minute edit button!
Actually I find it much easier to be witty and charming when not hunched over a keyboard, worrying about my spelling.
JohnM, Not sure I fit the ‘witty and charming’ category but I freely admit to being an obsessive editor of even short comments. I never achieve any real ‘outcomes’ at work as it has been known to take me half an hour to compose a simple ‘for your information’ email – but I do write a bonza ‘FYI’ note!
(without really thinking about it, I just counted myself re-reading these two sentences at least four times – and I wonder why the years go so fast!!)
Only four times, Mary. I can only dream of re-reading my work a paltry four times. And then there’s the editing and re-editing …
Oh, Author. Can you perhaps expand the 5 minute button to a half-hour.
Damn. Only thirty seconds left. I’m going to run out of t
JohnM – 🙂