Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
The Hitch is dead.
Options
Comments
-
-
-
MagicMarker wrote: »The Devil's Advocate is on RTE 2, and Charlize Theron (swoon) was just drinking her own JW Black.
Coincidence, or proof of a higher power?
Third option; smokin' hot
0 -
According to gizmodo twitter never pulled the #GodIsNotGreat tag from trending.
Just a lot of people that don't understand how the twitter trending function works (include myself in that list
). If you can read this, you're too close!
0 -
Well, back from the resto and time for the Midleton Very Rare. No idea how it stacks up against JW, but I'm inclined to think it's worth it. This bottle, btw, was the last pressie I gave my grandad the christmas before he died in 2005, aged 99 and it sees action perhaps once, twice a year. I don't believe he ever knew of Hitchens, but the two were contrarians and in the permanent absence of both, I'm raising this glass to their memories.
Cheers!
0 -
Advertisement
-
-
I shall be moderating solo, tomorrow.Well, back from the resto and time for the Midleton Very Rare. No idea how it stacks up against JW, but I'm inclined to think it's worth it. This bottle, btw, was the last pressie I gave my grandad the christmas before he died in 2005, aged 99 and it sees action perhaps once, twice a year. I don't believe he ever knew of Hitchens, but the two were contrarians and in the permanent absence of both, I'm raising this glass to their memories. Go Robin!
(Moderating?! Yes apparently it happens here every now and again...)0 -
-
An actual quality quote on youtube, a true miracle
"If Hitch got his after-life surprise, some poor God somewhere is debating its own existence. And losing.... badly."
An inspiration and a hero. His unapologetic desire to live life to it's fullest is something I can only aspire to. The best I can say is that if the world had more Hitch's in it it would be a brighter and better world to live in. I raise my can of cider to you and not Jonny Walker because I prefer it and damn it if the roles were reversed and I was the dead genius you sure as hell wouldn't have traded your JW for a can of loony soup to pay tribute and that's a good thing 0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Spirit = books, essays, TV/youtube clips, and of course an inspiration to all of us who believe that we should "never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity."
Ah yes, Youtube, the essence of spirit.
Fair-well to a neo-con and inventor of false polemics. May God bless him!
On a more serious note, I'm sorry to hear he died and my condolences to his family. It's a pity the new treatment for cancer he tried was not successful
0 -
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
I'm pretty sure many atheists' ratio of time spent on anti theistic pursuits versus say humanistic (from humanism? Hitch could have told me if that's the right word) ones is directly related to the amount of influence theism has on their life. Much like how people in a totalitarian dictatorship spend most of their time trying to fight that regime than to give thought to what improvements they want from a democracy; but when the regime is overthrown their focus will change.
Right now in Ireland the church still has it's crud invested nails dug in; ok we may have loosened a few fingers but we're no where near complete separation of state and church and while that continues to be the case we'll still invest time and energy in the pursuit of pointing out the flaws in religion in the hope of turning enough heads to get our freedom, democracy while it has many merits is still the subject of majority rules and humankind's flaw of biases, then we can start looking deeper on the grey area subjects (e.g abortion) and discuss them in the grown up way they need to be discussed without reference to laws from unquestionable unverifiable super beings.
Well in regards to separation of Church and State in modern times, I think it's now rather impossible, because as we well know the church is not really about teaching religious principles anymore, but is a mere business interest. The advertising of the practice of 'genuine' religion in regards to this organisation seems to be just a 'selling point' or product' for people (I'm not saying that Catholics don't practice religion, I believe they do and it's a good. thing to voluntarily undertake for themselves)
Business interests, including the church, and the state will forever be entangled, and so the church and the state will not be separate until something changes. The thing is, I believe the church will continue to integrate economically and politically into the state/representatives of the state as it centralises in order to preserve its power. So the 'economic' nature of institutionalized religious organisations (rather than being interested in religion) and the increasing outsourcing of services by the state are the two problems.
Yet I believe the views of the people of the state should be represented within the state, and carried out by the state, no matter if you are Christian, Atheist or Muslim etc, just as is liberalism, conservationism, socialism and anything else. Currently both Christians and Atheists are heavily discriminated against. Both should actually be concerned with taking back their government, and taking back their Churches from the scum who now inhabit them, but both are apathetic and interested in false polemics, religion vs atheism
Talk about getting trolled.. Yes, some people 'worry' that political Islamic fundamentalist might take over the govt in some place or here or wherever but people also worry about liberals or conservatives taking it over etc. It's no different, it's all political ideology.
To the last part of your post: It's not a religious problem per se, as in religion isn't the problem in itself. Religion is just about internal self-ordering and right action in relation to a universal power or intelligence in its basic, realistic form (from which it has deviated heavily, see the churches as we acknowledge..).
If we were to point out that the religion the church disseminates just ain't religion any more, that it is only a business interest, that Catholics should take action against 'their' Church for this fact, then perhaps things will change for the better and the Church will then focus rightly on religion within the scope of all the people the state, and not mingle needlessly with the state itself.
In relation to my original point, atheists should cease to deal with the structure of theistic belief, because otherwise as with all questions of spiritual cosmology and ontology, they only make atheism look like a religion itself. And the movement of 'New Atheism' as I would call it is a religion for this reason, which is a shame. At the same time creationists need to butt out of science.. because what they say just isn't science and is not valid. Both sides have issues to deal with. Hitchens didn't address them for the atheist side, which is a great misfortune.0 -
-
-
Well in regards to separation of Church and State in modern times, I think it's now rather impossible, because as we well know the church is not really about teaching religious principles anymore, but is a mere business interest. The advertising of the practice of 'genuine' religion in regards to this organisation seems to be just a 'selling point' or product' for people (I'm not saying that Catholics don't practice religion, I believe they do and it's a good. thing to voluntarily undertake for themselves)
Business interests, including the church, and the state will forever be entangled, and so the church and the state will not be separate until something changes. The thing is, I believe the church will continue to integrate economically and politically into the state/representatives of the state as it centralises in order to preserve its power. So the 'economic' nature of institutionalized religious organisations (rather than being interested in religion) and the increasing outsourcing of services by the state are the two problems.
Yet I believe the views of the people of the state should be represented within the state, and carried out by the state, no matter if you are Christian, Atheist or Muslim etc, just as is liberalism, conservationism, socialism and anything else. Currently both Christians and Atheists are heavily discriminated against. Both should actually be concerned with taking back their government, and taking back their Churches from the scum who now inhabit them, but both are apathetic and interested in false polemics, religion vs atheism Talk about getting trolled.. Yes, some people 'worry' that political Islamic fundamentalist might take over the govt in some place or here or wherever but people also worry about liberals or conservatives taking it over etc. It's no different, it's all political ideology.
To the last part of your post: It's not a religious problem per se, as in religion isn't the problem in itself. Religion is just about internal self-ordering and right action in relation to a universal power or intelligence in its basic, realistic form (from which it has deviated heavily, see the churches as we acknowledge..).
If we were to point out that the religion the church disseminates just ain't religion any more, that it is only a business interest, that Catholics should take action against 'their' Church for this fact, then perhaps things will change for the better and the Church will then focus rightly on religion within the scope of all the people the state, and not mingle needlessly with the state itself.
In relation to my original point, atheists should cease to deal with the structure of theistic belief, because otherwise as with all questions of spiritual cosmology and ontology, they only make atheism look like a religion itself. And the movement of 'New Atheism' as I would call it is a religion for this reason, which is a shame. At the same time creationists need to butt out of science.. because what they say just isn't science and is not valid. Both sides have issues to deal with. Hitchens didn't address them for the atheist side, which is a great misfortune.
Firstly I really could do with your definitions of "religion" and "new atheism" but regardless... I don't agree that the views of the people should be represented by the state without limit i.e without a valid reason for those views and religion is not a valid reason, nor is xenophobia, sexism or any irrational biases. The state should be above these things.
"To the last part of your post: It's not a religious problem per se, as in religion isn't the problem in itself. Religion is just about internal self-ordering and right action in relation to a universal power or intelligence in its basic, realistic form (from which it has deviated heavily, see the churches as we acknowledge..)."
I'm assuming this has to do with the discussion of "grown up subjects" and yes it is a religion problem at least to the extent that people can hide behind it as some kind of royal flush hand they can pull out in a debate. Mind you it's not just religion that is used in this way "culture" and "tradition" are two other words that have no place in grown up debates.
We need to eradicate the idea that people can point to these things as their reason for holding a position on a subject.
"that Catholics should take action against 'their' Church for this fact, then perhaps things will change for the better and the Church will then focus rightly on religion within the scope of all the people the state,"
It's not their church though. A democracy has a bottom up hierarchy. A religion has a top down one. The rules are clearly laid out and in any religion I have acquainted myself with at least part of it's rules and codes are revolting. If Christian churches cast off all money making efforts and simply demanded it's followers obey the rules laid out (one of which I believe is to give up possessions) and the followers did so there would be no improvement. Heck it might be worse than what we have.
As far as leaving the structure of theistic belief alone I'm not sure what you mean by "structure". However I will say that until people can separate their theistic beliefs in relation to deities and other harmless issues from their theistic beliefs in relation to what other human beings can and can't do then I sure as hell won't be leaving them alone.
I'd still love to get a full description of "new atheism" as so far I have never been given something clear to attach that label to and labels are only useful shortcuts when both parties understand what they reference. Am I new atheist? What makes it different from an old atheist etc.. though this may be off topic
To tie it back into Hitchens, I'm sure he would have loved to live in a world where we all had great freedoms and the debate was when does one person's increasing freedom begin to infringe on another's rather than a world where freedoms are all too rare and where organisations that look to limit peoples freedoms even more still flourish. But until that time ignoring religions grasp on so many and discussing our own quibbles would be the equivalent of sitting around moaning about first world problems whilst Africa is in turmoil.0 -
Advertisement
-
![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
![[-0-]](https://w9.vanillicon.com/v2/9fe3689003eb73770da7be6d014ea6d5.svg)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xeK7R-TgHI
Advertisement