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

[tree_and_leaf]

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.

Comments

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

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.

[tree_and_leaf]

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.