Hipsters repaint bike lanes in brush off to Hasids - Brooklyn, NY

The best way to tackle religious debates in general is to use the religion in itself. Religions which are mostly full of good stuff about bringing people together are nit-picked for minor arbritray details which are then sexed up and used by people with a specific agenda. To control people, for politics, for money etc etc. A good example is Wahabi's in Islam whom have made their own version of the Quran which contains details about AK47's & Tanks.

I want to believe this - I do !

But . . . once you have read the Hadiths, the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, you realise that these people have it right.

Of course you are not wrong when you say they employ a "sexed up" version of Islam with AK47's & Tanks (in particular Wahhabism) - but they have not got a book that espouses love and kindness at it's core and turned it into a manual for war, all religions have started with a book that espouses totalitarian tribal law and violent misthanthropy.

In that respect Christian fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists (indeed any fundamentalists) are doing just the thing that we label them with - sticking to the letter of scripture, sticking to the fundamentals - where it says homosexuals should be stoned to death - this is taken by them as meaning that homosexuals should be stoned to death - and in this respect they are quite right - that is exeactly what the book says should be done.

The problem with these people is not that they employ a distorted version of their religion, but that they employ an entirely honest and unfiltered version of their religion.

You will often get a secular non-religious westerner (like a politician or journalist for instance) with no knowledge of a religion - telling one of it's adherents (a fundamentalist for instance) that they are following a distorted view of that religion.

This adherent may have grown up in that religion, have read and studied and re-read and studied and researched and studied . . .(ad nauseam) the holy books of his religion - since birth - and everyday - and at school and at college and at work and in church/mosque/synagogue and be surrounded by a culture of ongoing schooling in this religion, have his whole life guided and steered by this religion, and all his family and all his friends and work colleagues will be from this religion and his wife and children . . . and so on . . .

. . .and with all this in mind, our hypothetical politician or journalist - who has never done so much as turn a single page of the Torah or the Old Testament or having once stepped in side a church - is tacitly saying "Yeah, whatever but I know your religion better than you do and you have got it wrong".

What he is really saying is that these religious ideas do not sit well with his own Western liberal values, which brings me back to "religions which are mostly full of good stuff about bringing people together" - which religions are these !? Perhaps Buddhism (at a push), but certainly not the Abrahamic monotheisms, if they can be seen in any way to be 'inclusive', "mostly full of good stuff" or "about bringing people together" it is only through the lens of a liberal non-religious "re-writing", with the removal of the malevolence and misthanthropy - or the cherry picking of the good (and in nature non-religious) parts, a modern interpretation informed by exo-biblical ideals - and to those ends it is the real distortion of holy scripture, the meek and mild Jesus, the Victorian view of Christianity - these all are not an honest reflection of the holy books.

The problem - when a group of men blow up a night club because it is frequented by scantily dressed women - or a child dies in modern America because her parents refuse to give her insulin - or a theocracy puts another homosexual to the noose - is it not that they have misread their holy books, it is that they have read them all too well.

Sorry, rambling a bit now . . Ya' get me ?

Religion's full of shit

Are tealeaves an acceptable primary source?

Only if backed up by corroborative goat entrails.

It is indeed a fight, religion seeks to install it's influence in every part of our lives, many - like myself - think religion's rightful place is in the confines of one's mind, an entirely personal enterprise, it you want to spend Sunday afternoon on your knees worshipping the creator of the universe through what you believe is telepathy - then that is all good and well, but if you want your superstitions to be part of the national curriculum for under 10 year-olds then we have a problem.

Not being funny but how does religion seek to install it's influence on every part of your life? (Serious question - give me 3 answers and I'll agree with you)

I've had a think and can't really come up with of an example of a religion trying to influnce a part of my life...

...oh maybe extream muslims fucking up the time it takes to board an areoplane...

...but that's really a policy reaction... i don't think that was a religious aim.

On the other point - I honestly don't know anything about the RE/RS nat. curriculum for under 10yo....

...but the idea that religion shouldn't be 'taught' in schools seems silly to me.Whether you like it or not Christianity has had a profound impact on the make up of European society - why wouldn't you teach it?

not to stereotype/generalize an entire group of people, but the dislike of the hasids for cyclists in this neighborhood is sooo obvious. when you're riding around there the hasidic ladies will look you right in the eyes and then push their strollers out into your path. or if they're in their vans they seem to delight in cutting off a cyclist, or passing you with a half inch clearance. it's kinda ridiculous, i know people who have had wrecks as a result of this.

racist.

These Acidic Jews should just sit their asses down and chillax with a nice glass of ....

Or a nice sausage roll

I want to believe this - I do !

homosexuals should be stoned to death - and in this respect they are quite right -

the holy books of his religion

Homophobic and sexist. Right on!

+1 to tynan's long post.

Reminds me a bit of that Louis Therou with the most hated family in America (I think), where on the bit I watched he was pretty screwed bc the girl he was taking to just said:

• "I belive the bible is the word of God, this is what it says about X..."
  
  

and basicaly you can't argue with that.

sausage rolls? the renowned PH balancing snack...

racist.

well yeah, that's why i'm on this forum.

Why are religious people so sex obsessed!

They are the ones that go on about it far more than the rest of us, the filthy perverts.
Me thinks the god botherers doth protest too much.

How do those people live in Golders Green feel about those cyclists too... or is it possible they're "westerned" to care here?

I've had a think and can't really come up with of an example of a religion trying to influnce a part of my life...

Just about everything that can be campaigned against and opposed on religious grounds has at one stage been - and often successfully (we have of course unelected Bishops sitting in the House of Lords), drugs policy, pornography legislation, foreign policy, liscencing laws, schools policy, the stymying of embryonic stem cell research, rights of adoption, rights for homosexuals, women's rights, Sunday trading, access to contraception, sexual education, . . . . etc.

Randomly and off the top of my head . . . 12-13 years old girls can only receive the HPV vaccine (a triumph over cervical cancer in women) only if they do not receive safe sex advice at their school - this fantastic deal was struck between the Catholic Church and Scottish health officials. (The thinking here is that sexual education promotes promiscuity) . . . believe it or not Hassidic Jews are imposing road planning - based on superstition - across 14 blocks of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY. . . being homosexual in any number of theocracies brings with it the death penalty, the noose being the chosen execution method . . . the rapid (and accelerating) growth of faith schools - where one must be a member of the faith to ensure a place - is continuing unhindered . . .the stymying of sexual education - through abstinence only programs - in the US has seen a blooming of sexually transmitted disease . . . the papal edict against condom use (and the naked lie that their use increases HIV transmission) is fuelling an AIDs catastrophe in Africa, killing millions and orphaning a generation . . . around the world plays are protested or simply closed down due to religious people's 'offence', publishers have their offices firebombed for considering publishing works that are offensive to religious people, newspapers now regularly check with religious groups before publishing anything of a religious nature, film makers are killed in the street, publicists of such material stabbed and left for dead, authors threatened with death . . . doctor's clinics protested and closed down . . . and so on.

Of course this is just the bad stuff - I would say on the whole we manage very well to keep a check on what religion tries to entitle itself to have a say over - but if given free reign I have no doubt that religion (some more than others) would seek to influence all parts of our lives.

It doesn't take much thought to understand that to make 'The Life of Brian' these days might bring with it much more controversy and 'offence' than surrounded it originally, to make a Islamic version 'The Life of Muhammad' (my idea, don't go stealin' it :P) would be very very difficult (at the low end) and a death sentence for any number of the crew and cast if things really got going. The writers of 'Father Ted' (a TV show no more than 11 years old) have said that they would certainly consider whether to make the series now in light of modern cultural sensitivities (basically every fucker is offended by everything, none more so that the religious) and in light of the new Irish Blasphemy laws. The point I am trying to make here is that this thing (religions influence over certain areas of society) is not dissipating, in some respects it is tightening.

...but the idea that religion shouldn't be 'taught' in schools seems silly to me.Whether you like it or not Christianity has had a profound impact on the make up of European society - why wouldn't you teach it?

Teach children about Jainism, Islam, Voodoo, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam . . . (and so on) - no problem, it would even be a good idea to put an emphasis on Christianity as it has - as you say - had the most impact on our culture.

But in a religious education class, not in biology or physics or geography.

Shinto is fairly benign, ne?

Possibly, I don't know too much about it to comment to be honest.

What a rubbish thread.

Oh, OK. Hm, Michael Jordan will do.

My dad? Good choice.

Basketball Mike, or baseball Mike?

Or IT Mike?

How do those people live in Golders Green feel about those cyclists too... or is it possible they're "westerned" to care here?

they're haredi-Jewish which isnt as hardcore, I think - my boss tried to explain it to me once but all i could hear in my head was *"dradle dradle dradle i made you out of clay" *

well yeah, that's why i'm on this forum.

We should have a racist subforum.

How do those people live in Golders Green feel about those cyclists too... or is it possible they're "westerned" to care here?

English Jews, on the whole, tend to be cultural Jews rather than religious Jews, so probably don't really give a shit.

This seems a better way of creating hasid-hipster-harmony
Give the hasids a bike and some free cycle training

**http://tinyurl.com/yet5rmx

**

How do those people live in Golders Green feel about those cyclists too... or is it possible they're "westerned" to care here?

Golders Green - look out for Parkway Pattersie, ops the Bus Station, magnificent (kosher) croissants.

Ta, but I think Croissants have eggs in them. I'm allergic, haha. I dunno never eaten one!

Did we see then Grauniad today?

This is where Gregory Paul and his research come in. I have often quoted his earlier, 2005, research which showed strong positive correlations between nations' religious belief and levels of murder, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and other indicators of dysfunction. It seemed to show, at the very least, that being religious does not necessarily make for a better society. The real problem was that he was able to show only correlations, and the publicity for his new research seemed to imply causation. If so this would have important implications indeed.

In this latest research Paul measures "popular religiosity" for developed nations, and then compares it against the "successful societies scale" (SSS) which includes such things such as homicides, the proportion of people incarcerated, infant mortality, sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and abortions, corruption, income inequality, and many others. In other words it is a way of summing up a society's health. The outlier again and again is the US with a stunning catalogue of failures. On almost every measure the US comes out worse than any other 1st world developed nation, and it is also the most religious.

For this reason Paul carries out his analysis both with and without the US included, but either way the same correlations turn up. The 1st world nations with the highest levels of belief in God, and the greatest religious observance are also the ones with all the signs of societal dysfunction. These correlations are truly stunning. They are not "barely significant" or marginal in any way. Many, such as those between popular religiosity and teenage abortions and STDs have correlation coefficients over 0.9 and the overall correlation with the SSS is 0.7 with the US included and 0.5 without. These are powerful relationships. But why?

The critical step from correlation to cause is not easy. Paul analyses all sorts of possibilities. Immigration and diversity do not explain the relationships, nor do a country's frontier past, nor its violent media, and so he is led to his conclusions: "Because highly secular democracies are significantly and regularly outperforming the more theistic ones, the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis is rejected in favour of the secular-democratic socioeconomic hypothesis"; "religious prosociality and charity are less effective at improving societal conditions than are secular government programmes".

He draws implications for human evolution too. Contrary to Dan Dennett, Pascal Boyer and others, he argues that religion is not a deep-seated or inherited tendency. It is a crutch to which people turn when they are under extreme stress, "a natural invention of human minds in response to a defective habitat". Americans, he says, suffer appalling stress and anxiety due to the lack of universal health care, the competitive economic environment, and huge income inequalities, and under these conditions belief in a supernatural creator and reliance on religious observance provides relief. By contrast, the middle class majorities of western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have secure enough lives not to seek help from a supernatural creator.

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Did we see then Grauniad today?

The outlier again and again is the US with a stunning catalogue of failures. On almost every measure the US comes out worse than any other 1st world developed nation, and it is also the most religious.

The correlation between religiosity and poor societal health goes even deeper, within the US itself - those states with a higher religious adherence (the 'red' states) are where we find the highest incidence of violent crime, murder, theft, burglary - as well as somewhat vague category of "most dangerous cities" - the 5 most dangerous cities topping that list being in the 'capital' of American religiosity, Texas.

As Gregory Paul says - (I am guessing this is what he means by ""Because highly secular democracies are significantly and regularly outperforming the more theistic ones, the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis is rejected in favour of the secular-democratic socioeconomic hypothesis""??) - there is an argument worth considering of whether poor societal health drives the uptake of religion or whether religion promotes poor societal health ?

He draws implications for human evolution too. Contrary to Dan Dennett, Pascal Boyer and others, he argues that religion is not a deep-seated or inherited tendency. It is a crutch to which people turn when they are under extreme stress, "a natural invention of human minds in response to a defective habitat".

I have to go with Daniel Dennett, Gregory Paul is far too simplistic here (and I suspect wrong), the whole thing is so much nuanced than his simplistic cause and effect hypothesis - he fails to even address why - when in such a stressful environment - people find relief in superstition rather than any number of other distractions/comforts.

[goes to the pub]