tree_and_leaf | Amusing, in a headdesky way, or headdesky in an amusing way?

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Amusing, in a headdesky way, or headdesky in an amusing way?

Dawkins and Sherine back bus ads reading "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

.... yeah. Atheist says: stop thinking and take my word for it!

(Actually, that's a little unfair, because the ads are intended as a response to a series of evangelical ones threatening non-Christians with hell-fire. All the same, the fear of hell is not exactly integral to the faith of most of the religious people I know†, and I cannot say that a sudden loss of my faith would improve my enjoyment of life; quite the reverse.)

On a side note, buried in the article is the information that Dawkins supports a Tory humanist group. I didn't know he was a Tory, but for some reason I'm not entirely surprised. (ETA: see comment from

lizw below; this appears to be a misunderstanding.

† The only sense I can make of Hell is total alienation from God, and therefore all that is good, of becoming lost in myself and in hatred, which does indeed scare me quite a lot, but I suspect that's not the sort of thing Dawkins et al think I'm scared of.

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suspect that people are more likely to be insulted by the former than the latter.

Strange, but probably true!

And yes, it's the soundbitiness I find annoying, rather than the expression of atheist sentiment. I tend to cringe when I see Alpha Course ads (although at least they generally play up the 'asking questions' aspect). But the hell-fire sort of thing makes me mutter 'get off my side, damnit' (although I'm not sure that they would see me as being in their club, anyway!).

The problem I have with the Alpha posters aren't the 'asking questions' aspect - it's the strongly-hinted 'we have all the answers' aspect!

As a sort of Anglican agnostic (I'm an Anglican, but I couldn't tell you I'm certain there's a God - I don't think faith deals in certainty anyway, but still) I really do heartily dislike the suggestion that I'm a) worried b) 'can't make my mind up' (which I've had levelled at me by believers and atheists).

I've also been told that someone would have asked me out were I 'stronger in the faith'. Lucky escape for me, though I didn't have the heart to say that to his face.

the problem I have with the Alpha posters aren't the 'asking questions' aspect - it's the strongly-hinted 'we have all the answers' aspect!

Oh, I agree. They're better than the hell-fire type, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they're good.

I really do heartily dislike the suggestion that I'm a) worried b) 'can't make my mind up' (which I've had levelled at me by believers and atheists).

Yeah, that's offensive (and stupid) - and really, any believer who doesn't have moments of doubt is almost certainly doing something wrong.

I've also been told that someone would have asked me out were I 'stronger in the faith'. Lucky escape for me, though I didn't have the heart to say that to his face.

Bastard - still, you clearly weren't missing much.

The assumption that I'd have said 'yes' was pretty nauseating, anyway!

His current plan (he is at the moment 'called to be single', which in this case does actually mean 'can't find a girlfriend') is that he'll meet a woman (he says 'girl', which tells you a lot) at church, God will tell him she's the right one (hopefully communicating this to her, as well, I presume) and then he'll invite her out for coffee and propose. The engagement period is when they get to know each other a bit (but NO KISSING! because that could lead to lust) and then they live in wedded bliss with him as head of the household until death does them part.

So overall, I'm not so sad I'm missing out on that.

The advantage of having Christian friends who run the spectrum between crazy fundamentalists and high-~~camp~~ church Anglicans, taking in folk-mass-and-guitars Roman Catholics is that at least I can invite them all round at once and then watch the fireworks.

Oh dear. Well you did have a lucky escape.

He's in for a heck of a shock if he does get married.

Clearly, there is absolutely nothing that could go wrong with that plan. I didn't think anyone actually bought that idea (especially the kissing†) outside the pages of 'Christian romance'... Still, I suppose if his plan is to propose to her, rather than to her father, it could still be worse.

The advantage of having Christian friends who run the spectrum between crazy fundamentalists and high-camp church Anglicans, taking in folk-mass-and-guitars Roman Catholics is that at least I can invite them all round at once and then watch the fireworks.

Sounds like a recipe for a memorable evening, if not necessarily a good one.

† Am inclined to think that if the kissing doesn't lead to lust, you shouldn't be getting married, but clearly I am a wicked liberal ritualist, and thus probably doomed anyway....

I met my fiancé at church - well, chapel. He's an agnostic.

I really kicked up a bit of a fuss when I saw Alpha course literature being left in our firm's canteen, next to the cutlery and the condiments.

The fuss would have been bigger if I hadn't a) personally liked the bloke behind it b) not being a Christian hadn't already caused me enough problems with senior management c) the firm weren't in the midst of a major redundancy downsizing and d) I had more of the spirit that martyrs are made of

"The fuss would have been bigger if ... not being a Christian hadn't already caused me enough problems with senior management"

Eek. I don't think anyone in any firm I've ever worked in has ever known if I'm a Christian or not (except the chap I had a flaming row with about the Lambeth conference a couple of months back, who presumably thinks I don't count). I thought that was pretty standard for the UK.

See below. i wuz asked. BTW, have photos from holiday to send. Will it eat your bandwidth if I use the usual email, or is that ok?

That sounds like a difficult situation, and not one I've encountered; sounds more like America.

not being a Christian hadn't already caused me enough problems with senior management

Do they network during bible studies, or what? At any rate, they've no business making it an issue. Bother them.

No; about five years ago there was a merger and the night it was finalised the senior people in my dept went out to dinner with the senior people in the corresponding dept. The person from the other firm who was tipped to become (and did become) my boss specifically asked at dinner whether I believed in God, and when I finally couldn't evade answering his increasingly direct questions and admitted to being agnostic told me I was illogical. He subsequently blocked my promotion for two years, though this may have been unrelated.

Oh dear. That's beastly - dreadful behaviour on several counts. I do wonder if such people ever think about what their behaviour says about their God.

... it's episodes like that that make me thing that there's maybe a point to the 'no religion or politics at the dinner table' rule after all. I normally cheerfully ignore it, but then I don't think it's on to put people on the spot and then insult them, let alone then hold it against him (if that was indeed what happened)

It felt like sexual harassment, oddly enough; there was the bit where you aren't quite sure what's happening, and the bit where you go 'Oh, shit, not again' when you realise no, your perceptions are quite right and it is, and that yes, your job is being made part of someone else's power play and by that stage, it doesn't really matter if it's a cock or a cross, you are so fucking angry that you know you will remember the outrage you felt at the violation of your personal integrity to your last breath.

The Jewish colleague sitting next to me (and no; Yaweh didn't count as God for these purposes) seemed equally uncomfortable with the question.

I suspect if you scratch any given rabid atheist, there'll often be an incident like this in their past that they would tell you if only they trusted you enough.

I, personally, started to lose my faith (an intensely personal, painful and on-going process) when a primary school teacher who was of the "literal truth of the Bible" fraternity told me that my belief (which was, in the tradition of my family, along the "Beautiful stories told by archaic, unscientific peoples as metaphors for the truths behind them" version of Anglicanism) was "wrong". I was nine. I believed in God, then. But I didn't believe in God the right way, so I was told it didn't count unless I swallowed wholesale a load of arrant bollocks which didn't make any sense at all, even for a nine-year old: "Where did the other people come from?" "What other people?" "Adam and Eve had two boys. One killed the other. Where did the other people come from?".

But the worst example didn't happen to me. At school a close friend lost her father to lung cancer (he was a non-smoker, but that didn't stop people being judgemental about that, too) in our lower Sixth form year. He had been an ideological Communist and atheist, and she adored him. During her grief, our head teacher, a low-church Anglican (and Conservative), chose to take it upon herself to "enlighten" Carole as to why her beliefs - which were part of her memories, were wrong, and why her father was undoubtedly regretting having had them now, too.

Our Headmistress exercised a great deal of power over our chances of applying for University, and I'm sorry to say that she used them - badly - when Carole's response was not what she had anticipated.

I, personally, started to lose my faith (an intensely personal, painful and on-going process) when a primary school teacher who was of the "literal truth of the Bible" fraternity told me that my belief (which was, in the tradition of my family, along the "Beautiful stories told by archaic, unscientific peoples as metaphors for the truths behind them" version of Anglicanism) was "wrong". I was nine. I believed in God, then. But I didn't believe in God the right way, so I was told it didn't count unless I swallowed wholesale a load of arrant bollocks which didn't make any sense at all, even for a nine-year old: "Where did the other people come from?" "What other people?" "Adam and Eve had two boys. One killed the other. Where did the other people come from?".

But the worst example didn't happen to me. At school a close friend lost her father to lung cancer (he was a non-smoker, but that didn't stop people being judgemental about that, too) in our lower Sixth form year. He had been an ideological Communist and atheist, and she adored him. During her grief, our head teacher, a low-church Anglican (and Conservative), chose to take it upon herself to "enlighten" Carole as to why her beliefs - which were part of her memories, were wrong, and why her father was undoubtedly regretting having had them now, too.

... On the whole I believe it's presumptuous and wrong to anticipate nasty fates for people, but that sort of hideous and shameful behaviour makes me recall what a certain Jewish bloke, who these people claim to think of some importance, had to say about those who cause children to stumble; and I think the same applies to abuse of power more generally. That they claim they're doing it in the name of God just makes it - at least from my point of view, as a Christian, worse than it is already.

, it doesn't really matter if it's a cock or a cross, you are so fucking angry that you know you will remember the outrage you felt at the violation of your personal integrity to your last breath.

Yes - that sort of thing is vile. Good for you for sticking to your guns, anyway. I may disagree with you about God, but I had rather see every church in the country deserted than them kept open by 'faith' secured by any of the kinds of methods you describe,† and I cannot imagine what sort of service they thought they were doing the God of truth.

† Except, of course, I don't believe that they would work, even in the short term and certainly not in the long, for which I thank God.

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