Waters, Waters everywhere ...

MoominPapa

I'm struggling to think of example of agressive secularism in the country (except this board of course:p ). Complete straw man crap, worthy of bertie, who will bring up anything to deflect attention away from the economy\jobs\crime\everything which his govenrment is making a rocks of, but this halfwit then comments on it as if Bertie is sincere and brave
Anyway, I'm off to get pissed , buy loads of crap I don't need, "do" drugs and maybe get a bit of dogging in before I collapse in a pile of vomit and ennui

Zombrex

Waters wrote:

Alcohol, drugs, rampant consumerism, sex crimes and countless related phenomena tell us that there is something in the human being that is voided by secular, material society.

Sometimes you have to ask is everyone just mad apart from the atheists?

I am never not surprised when I hear this line of thinking, that societies ills can be traced back to abandonment of religion, either at a personal level (he didn't believe in God, that is why he raped those women) to a social level (HIV is God's punishment for homosexuality).

The simple fact is that in the last 300 years since Enlightenment, and a move away from the state and the church being co-dependent, the over all state of humanity, from health to morals and freedom, has increased dramatically.

There is no evidence I'm aware of that atheists display any more tendency towards violent or immoral behaviour than a religious person, and quite a bit of evidence that they don't.

One statistic I find very interesting and never tire of rolling out to theists is that in the US divorce rates for atheists and agnositics are lower than the national average, while rates of conservative Christians is higher.

Dr Pepper

robindch wrote:

hmmm... I see a local contributor <ahem> got a note into today's Irish Times:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/letters/2007/0308/index.html

Would you mind posting this note please. I'm not paying €2 for 24 hours access.. Don't want to be accused of 'rampant consumerism'!

Myksyk

Yes ... another good example of his frustratingly superficial analysis. But maybe the punters buy it. Saying 'the loss of religion is why your life is crap' is on a par with 'foreign nationals are the reason your life is crap'. Idiotic.

Dades

Dr Pepper wrote:

Would you mind posting this note please. I'm not paying €2 for 24 hours access.. Don't want to be accused of 'rampant consumerism'!

Seconded!

Myksyk

Here are today's letters:


Madam, – Bertie Ahern deserves warm applause for the recent speech in which he highlighted people’s religious dimension. It was praiseworthy both for what he said and because it was he who said it. Not only has a leading politician now declared in favour of the recognition and promotion of the transcendent. He has also gone on to imply that social development and, by extension, public policy would benefit from such recognition. It seems reasonable to presume that Mr Ahern, true to his Europe-wide reputation for pragmatism, has reached this conclusion by simply observing what is happening all around him: that the Gadarene gallop of recent years away from God has made the social development of Ireland difficult to the point of intractability. In other words, far from representing a retreat into the past, a vibrant belief in God is the best guarantor of the social development of our peoples.It will be interesting, indeed, to see how this debate is joined. – Yours, etc, FERGUS KILLORAN, Granville Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Madam, – John Waters warns that if we discard religion, we risk creating a world without hope, meaning or freedom. Why should any of these human qualities need to be supported by a set of archaic religious dogmas? – Yours, etc, ROBIN HILLIARD, Dublin 2.

Madam, – If I had religious faith I would ask God to give me the understated erudition of a John Waters. His column on Monday was a prime example of Pope’s line, “What ere was thought but ne’er so well expressed”. – Yours, etc, KEVIN HEALY, Hampstead Avenue, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.

Madam, – It was difficult to engage with John Waters’s woolly article of March 5th, in which he elaborated upon a recent speech by Bertie Ahern (himself a master of the fleecy flight of fancy). There was more innuendo than argument in the Waters thesis: “Our society seems merely to put up with people who believe in God because such ‘tolerance’ is part of our liberal ideology,” he shrewdly observes. I have to concede that he is right: we do tolerate religious people because we believe we should tolerate them! Shame on us! Another difficulty with the Waters exposition was that it was entirely given over to telling Irish society what it is short of, while failing entirely to explain what he wants it to be. Should we abandon the principle of the separation of Church and State? Should we all become Roman Catholics? Should we try to forget that millions of people all over the world believe in a wide variety of religions, all different in their tenets? Should we outlaw atheism and agnosticism? Perhaps Mr Waters could let us have the second half of his exposition some time soon. – Yours, etc, COLIN BRENNAN, Nutley Square, Dublin 4.

Madam, – John Waters writes with an undisguised sense of reverence for the Taoiseach with regard to his speech warning against “aggressive secularism”. Mr Waters goes on not just to defend religion, but in effect to make the audacious claim that tolerance towards religion is not enough, and that society should afford it more respect. He finishes on the depressing note that “in the absence of a religious consciousness, there is, ultimately, no hope, no meaning and no freedom”.In his disparagement of secularism he seems to be confused as to what it means. People’s personal beliefs and practices, from believer to atheist, should be afforded respect and tolerance, but religious groups should have no more nor less influence on society than any other communities, groups or individuals.This is the secularism that best serves a democratic state; it is not a refusal to accept and respect religion, but a refusal to allow matters of State and society to be unduly influenced by any one sectional interest group. – Yours, etc, DARREN HENRY, Iveragh Road, Whitehall, Dublin 9.

Dr Pepper

Waters wrote:

Alcohol, drugs, rampant consumerism, sex crimes and countless related phenomena tell us that there is something in the human being that is voided by secular, material society.

How can a journalist make accusations like this about athiests? What is it about us athiests that makes us fair game for sweeping, baseless accusations like this? If this article was about members of any other 'religious' group... or travellers... or Polish people, there would be bloody uproar (or there wouldn't because it wouldn't/couldn't be published in the first place!).

PS - I am actaully looking for answers (or theories) to these questions if anyone can tell me, thanks

Scofflaw

Allow me to posit a rather more sinister possibility than the standard "brains of a flea" explanation...

Have a read of this paper: Atheists As “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society.

Now, consider that Ireland is becoming a multicultural society - or rather that Ireland is currently absorbing a lot of immigrants with different faiths and cultural backgrounds - with faith seen as the strongest marker.

One way of 'papering over' the differences between, say, Muslim and Christian, is to give them a common enemy. Well, why not atheists?

We're few in numbers, disorganised, invisibly yet disturbingly different. We have no agenda, but have become increasingly seen as the puppet-masters behind a shadowy yet omnipresent campaign of 'aggressive secularisation' - a campaign which is actually being carried out by the state.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new Jews - the atheists...

pass me my tinfoil, dammit,
Scofflaw

Dr Pepper

Scofflaw wrote:

Allow me to posit a rather more sinister possibility than the standard "brains of a flea" explanation...

Have a read of this paper: Atheists As “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society.

Now, consider that Ireland is becoming a multicultural society - or rather that Ireland is currently absorbing a lot of immigrants with different faiths and cultural backgrounds - with faith seen as the strongest marker.

One way of 'papering over' the differences between, say, Muslim and Christian, is to give them a common enemy. Well, why not atheists?

We're few in numbers, disorganised, invisibly yet disturbingly different. We have no agenda, but have become increasingly seen as the puppet-masters behind a shadowy yet omnipresent campaign of 'aggressive secularisation' - a campaign which is actually being carried out by the state.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new Jews - the atheists...

pass me my tinfoil, dammit,
Scofflaw

Way to link to a 24-page paper Scofflaw :rolleyes: I'll be back in a week (v. slow reader=me)

Just kidding, thanks! I'll have a good read of it later.
I think your 'common-enemy' theory is a good one.. But what happens to Waters' suggestion that '"tolerance" is part of our liberal ideology' when it comes to athiests? How does he sneer at (what he believes to be) "today's secular society's limited/artificaial tolerance of religious belief" and treat athiests with absolutely no tolerance?.. Oh never mind - Suffice it to say "I don't like him!".

Scofflaw

Dr Pepper wrote:

Way to link to a 24-page paper Scofflaw :rolleyes: I'll be back in a week (v. slow reader=me)

Just kidding, thanks! I'll have a good read of it later.
I think your 'common-enemy' theory is a good one.. But what happens to Waters' suggestion that '"tolerance" is part of our liberal ideology' when it comes to athiests? How does he sneer at (what he believes to be) "today's secular society's limited/artificaial tolerance of religious belief" and treat athiests with absolutely no tolerance?.. Oh never mind - Suffice it to say "I don't like him!".

In essence, that's what the paper looks at:

"We demonstrate that increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to the nonreligious, and present a theoretical framework for understanding the role of religious belief in providing a moral basis for cultural membership and solidarity in an otherwise highly diverse society."

That idea the theists (including this board's posters) put forward that atheists have no religious basis for morality, therefore no morals? That's why it's possible to exclude us from the consensus. For the same reason, all the immoral bits of modern society can be laid at our door, because we are the immoral bit of modern society.

It's as if our currency is backed by nothing in a world of God-backed currencies - while people may think the 'Islamic dinar' is only worth a 'Christian penny', the 'atheist pound' is worth nothing at all, because it isn't even a currency. We are 'flooding the market with worthless paper'.

Actually, I find this worryingly convincing.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Actually, I find this worryingly convincing.

Which bit, that atheists have no basis for morality, or the theory why theists think atheists have no basis for morality?

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Which bit, that atheists have no basis for morality, or the theory why theists think atheists have no basis for morality?

The more general theory that atheists are being used as the "other".

A further point is that the word "secular" is being redefined to mean "atheistic", rather than the rather more correct "tolerant". This actually allows you to pretend that being tolerant of all faiths is nothing new, and that what is new is the attempt to remove religion from public life.

Now, as far as I am aware, no-one is actually attempting to remove religion from public life, but it seems a reasonable thing to suggest atheists might want to do - and almost any request for tolerance of atheism can be made to look like it, as can most scuffles between believers.

For example, all of the "war on Christmas" stuff - where it isn't actually simply untrue - almost every case where, say, Christmas trees have been taken down, is actually the result of complaints by other believers - but it is always laid at the door of 'agressively secular atheists'. Subtext: it's not Muslims trying to spoil your Christmas, it's those darned atheists!

cordially,
Scofflaw

Myksyk

... the current fashionability of atheism, agnosticism and secularism

Yes ... fashionable ... as if nobody comes to dump belief in the supernatural through a process of learning, reflection and deep consideration ... no, we're just being fashionable.

faith comes from within

This is said as if it is 'intrinsic', not reliant on any inculcation. It is patently the result of inculcation.

and without these we are less than human.

Deeply held, ignorant, dangerous bigotry. No matter how oblique the reference, this can only be interpreted as meaning those without religion (including people here) are less than human. Let's see ... what other groups were deemed 'less than human' ... Jews? Blacks? Poles? Tutsis? Armenians? Kurds?

The world on its own does not offer sufficient hope to carry the average human being through an average life.

Not if they've been inculcated to believe otherwise. There are millions of people for whom the world without religion remains a glorious, wondrous, awe-inspiring place ... which carries us through well enough thank you very much.

The baubles of the marketplace do not for long serve to quiet the longing in the human heart.

John thinks that if you're a materialist then you must be materialistic. We all (more or less) need and seek the same John ... love, relationship, passions, knowledge, happiness ... how does non-belief in a supernatural being change these needs or how they are met. Does he honestly expect us to believe that if he found out tomorrow that there definitely wasn't a god, all his relationships, passions and various concerns would 'mean' nothing? What kind of substance is there to the minutiae of his life???

And the promise of earthly freedom fails to address the issue of how we are to free ourselves from our instincts, our weaknesses, our egos and our selfishness.

Surely we free ourselves from these things by simply growing up? GROW UP JOHN!

Myksyk

Letter from the AIH in the IT today:

Madam, – I heard the full speech by the Taoiseach at the launch of the new dialogue process. I was part of the Humanist Association of Ireland (HAI) delegation. Many commentators have focused on Mr Ahern’s criticism of “a form of aggressive secularism” which allegedly argues that the State should be intolerant of religious belief. This reference, unclear as to whom it referred, was a very small part of a wide- ranging speech.


The Taoiseach also said the Government had to respect and provide for the important and growing non-religious section of Irish society. The HAI has not sought and will not be seeking, a State which is intolerant of any belief but will, through the dialogue process, be seeking to ensure that the State treats religious and non-religious people in a fair, equal and neutral manner.


Currently the Constitution, a number of laws and several areas of State policy discriminate against those of no religion. We look forward to engaging with the Government regularly to address these deficiencies and to put the respect the Taoiseach referred to into practice. – Yours, etc, BRENDAN SHEERAN, Director, Humanist Association of Ireland, Glenageary, Co Dublin.

5uspect

Have you seen the "Thinking Anew" column underneath that letter? Its one of those poorly argued Faith is as good as science rants. Very depressing stuff.

Myksyk

5uspect wrote:

Have you seen the "Thinking Anew" column underneath that letter? Its one of those poorly argued Faith is as good as science rants. Very depressing stuff.

Here we go:

Science and faith should not be foes
In recent years we have seen a revival of the 19th-century debate between creationist and evolutionist thinkers. Some religious literalists link reports of rising sea levels to the biblical story of Noah. If sea-levels are rising, they say, is because God is displeased with the world and a repeat of the Flood is, as it were, in God’s pipeline. The rising levels are the retribution of God and not the result of human activity.


Such people ignore the point that God promised never to repeat the wholesale destruction of the Flood. Nor do any of these literalists note that Noah was greeted in the story with scepticism similar to that which scientists face today.


Of course the generation of an artificial dispute between faith and science is not helpful. Science, like faith, sometimes uses absolutes – the infinite timelessness of the universe, for example – and faith sometimes employs science, as both disciplines struggle to learn more about the world, its origins and its destiny. Mainstream Christianity accepts the theory of evolution, but for Christians the evolutionary “missing link” has to be the question of how a stimulus-responsive single-cell organism developed into a complex being capable of free thought.


How did a simple organism suddenly decide that it had to move elsewhere in order to get food? The answer of faith is that God planned it that way. The fact that higher forms of life were inevitable does not explain the “why”. This is an example of the futility of a polarisation of science and faith. Science is asking “What?” questions and religion and philosophy are asking “Why?” questions. Ideally both should complement a wider understanding of reality but this cannot happen if they are placed at loggerheads.


As our planet and our race face the rapid changes to our eco-structure it is not helpful that faith and science are not working together. The intelligent thought that Christians believe to have come to us from God needs to be channelled into finding ways to protect our environment. Faith teaches that we have intellect and will. It is these that make us into the image and likeness of God that was declared in Genesis. Using these abilities to save our planet is a moral imperative. As children we sacrificed sweets at this time of year; maybe as adults we should sacrifice car usage or stop leaving too many lights on.

2Scoops

A response from John Waters to the fall-out from his ill-informed article of last week. Those expecting an apology will be disappointed - but at least atheists are no longer "less than human.":) Now it's just that they are too ignorant to differentiate between genuine denial of God's existence and their own negative experiences with religion and the Church. See, we all believe in God really!

Oh yeah, and they have "nothing coherent to offer either society or posterity." :rolleyes: There's even a passing reference to the Scofflaw hypothesis! Something for everyone, to be sure.

[url] http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2007/0312/1173443049962.html[/url]

God is our identity and destiny

I've had an interesting week poring over letters and e-mails in response to last week's column in support of the Taoiseach's criticism of "aggressive secularism", writes John Waters .

In the main my inbox reflected the readers' letters published over several days last week. Some were supportive, others critical, some both, a few demanded apologies and one or two opened windows I hadn't noticed before.

A couple sought to set atheists up as a marginalised minority, demanding retractions of the "offence" taken from my article. Such logic has already circumscribed discussion of most other "lifestyle choices"; for it to hold sway here would recruit us as the accomplices of our own gravediggers.

I heard also from some pleasant and interesting atheists, several of whom assured me that they disagreed with me about God but objected to being lumped in with liberals. The journalistic shorthand one employs in describing social patterns can lead to incorrect conflations, and I may have so sinned in tarring atheists, secularists and liberals with one brush.

Although the Irish media now conducts an unrelenting mob-secularist attack on God and church, one of the defining characteristics of atheism is that it is a solitary business. On reflection, I would say that most of what we recognise as secularism in the public domain is so transparently lacking in philosophical rootedness as to expose itself as a neurotic response to a bad experience of Catholicism.

What distinguishes this from the stream of apparently genuine atheism in the private realm is that the first is driven fundamentally by a collective backlash towards the church, whereas the other has moved on from this obsession.

Some who wrote describing themselves as atheists made mention of a bad experience of Catholicism, but almost invariably as a kind of ancient memory. They had moved on to a new place in which they had found peace but which for me seems the beginning of death.

When I wrote that there is a religious dimension inherent in the human being, without which we are less than human, I was suggesting not that those calling themselves atheists are "less than human" but that it is not possible for a human being to successfully deny the religious dimension. Because God is our identity and our destiny, denying His existence makes approximately the same sense as a daffodil denying the sun.

Oddly, some atheists seem to be closer to understanding this than the passive majority sleepwalking through what they regard as a spiritual existence. Some atheists seem to have looked more closely at reality, and sometimes the intensity of their searching verges on the religious.

"You claim," wrote one such correspondent, "that without religion there is 'no hope, no meaning and freedom'. Naturally I cannot speak for the entire planet, but as an atheist I promise, I live with hope, I live with meaning and, most of all, I live with freedom. Freedom because I am no longer tortured with images of burning in Hell as I was as a child. It has been the most liberating experience of my life to finally understand that God and religion are nothing but superstitious hangovers from a more base time. I feel more connected to this universe now than I ever did as a believing Christian."

It is a long road for most atheists to reach the spiritual awareness of not believing in God. They tend to think about it a lot and reach their conclusions after much research and self-inquiry. How many of the billions of religious can we say that of today?

Like many in post-Catholic Ireland, this man has taken his negative reaction to Catholicism for a philosophical understanding of the totality of reality. In truth, his experience of Catholicism had nothing to do with faith, religion or God, but was, in common with many such experiences, an encounter with earthly power.

Writing back, I shared with him my favourite definition of religion, from the writings of Fr Luigi Giussani. Imagine, he demanded, that, at this very moment, you have just been born - but with all your faculties, emotions, intellect and other powers of apprehension intact. What, he asked, is your response to reality?

The answer: an intense and radical attraction to reality, combined with a profound sense that you have not yourself created one atom of it. That, he said, is religion.

The distance between this and the idea of religion we have inherited from a dysfunctional church is reflected in the widening gap between Irish society and belief. This erroneous rejection of an erroneous religiosity is deeply damaging to our children's chances of peace and happiness. Atheists may be likeable, interesting people, but they have nothing coherent to offer either society or posterity.

While it is possible for an individual to live a hopeful, meaningful and free life without God, there is no evidence that this can be achieved by a society. I will go further: the "hope" Irish atheists claim to possess derives not from their own philosophical resting place but from the residual background radiation of a once intense, if flawed, cultural faith.

Sangre

*groan*

Scofflaw

KevinMyers wrote:

The answer: an intense and radical attraction to reality, combined with a profound sense that you have not yourself created one atom of it. That, he said, is religion.

The answer: an intense and radical attraction to reality, combined with a profound sense that it created itself. That, he said, is atheism.

cordially,
Scofflaw

2Scoops

Scofflaw, be careful not to mix up your John Waters with your Kevin Myers - though I can understand the confusion:D

Dave!

Seemingly more apologetic than his last article, but the smug c*nt bad person still comes out with sh*t gems like this....

"Atheists may be likeable, interesting people, but they have nothing coherent to offer either society or posterity."

"I will go further: the "hope" Irish atheists claim to possess derives not from their own philosophical resting place but from the residual background radiation of a once intense, if flawed, cultural faith."

Dades

Ahem, DaveMcG, I hope JW doesn't drop by or there'd be issues with your post.

John Waters wrote:

Atheists may be likeable, interesting people, but they have nothing coherent to offer either society or posterity.

What are we not offering, exactly? We don't say "bless you" when someone sneezes?

Zombrex

We can email him?

Whats his email? I might drop him a polite email and attempt to explain to him what atheism actually is.

MoominPapa

Wicknight wrote:

We can email him?

Whats his email? I might drop him a polite email and attempt to explain to him what atheism actually is.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Waters_%28columnist%29
he is a luddite and won't use e-mail, why doesn't that suprise me?

SonOfPerdition

"Because God is our identity and our destiny, denying His existence makes approximately the same sense as a daffodil denying the sun."


But WHICH god Mr Waters?

Beruthiel

Seriously, could he be more condescending.

MoominPapa

SonOfPerdition wrote:

"Because God is our identity and our destiny, denying His existence makes approximately the same sense as a daffodil denying the sun."

But WHICH god Mr Waters?

If there really is a big cheese I just pray its a Goddess and not a God, that would ruin Waters vibe, especially if shes bald:p

coffee_cake

So if I was a journalist who wrote a similar article in reverse, attacking the church, would I still have a job...?

Scofflaw

MoominPapa wrote:

If there really is a big cheese I just pray its a Goddess and not a God, that would ruin Waters vibe, especially if shes bald:p

Nah - he'd just have the next Messiah with her, and whinge for years about it afterwards...

cordially,
Scofflaw

Myksyk

bluewolf wrote:

So if I was a journalist who wrote a similar article in reverse, attacking the church, would I still have a job...?

If you question the validity of religion in any way you are an aggressive secularist extremist. If you question the validity of atheism in any way you are just a great and reasonable defender of the faith. Let's not kid ourselves that this is a level playing pitch.