The Hazards of Belief

Bannasidhe · 05-06-2014 09:25PM

Turtwig wrote: »

Bannaside banned for mentioning the 'b' word.

Poor Bannaside.

endacl · 05-06-2014 09:45PM

Turtwig wrote: »

Bannaside banned for mentioning the 'b' word.

Booblie ooblie?

Oh knickers. There's me banned too....

:mad:

endacl · 05-06-2014 09:47PM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Poor Bannaside.

Chin up!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Bannasidhe · 05-06-2014 09:56PM

endacl wrote: »

Chin up!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Oh I'm fine. It's poor Bannaside who got bannabanned for saying bannaboob.

Hotblack Desiato · 06-06-2014 08:04AM

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/crucifix-erected-in-kerry-county-council-meeting-chamber-1.1822912

F*ck's sake :rolleyes:

A crucifix has been erected in Kerry County Council meeting chambers in Tralee after council authorities acted on a controversial resolution passed by the outgoing council at its last meeting.

Mr Culloty said he wanted to ensure the greatest symbol of Christianity was erected in the new chamber in case he should not be re-elected.

Democracy in action... there were only nine councillors present and six voted in favour.

However, Mr Culloty and his supporters said they were tired of apologising for their religion; local Muslims had no objection and one councillor suggested the erection of the cross might even encourage more “truth-telling” in the Kerry chamber.

However, yesterday a spokesman for the council said it had been decided to follow the wishes of members and a standard-size crucifix had been erected.

Standard size....??

SebBerkovich · 06-06-2014 08:08AM

ninja900 wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/crucifix-erected-in-kerry-county-council-meeting-chamber-1.1822912

Standard size....??

I absolutely love the term "Standard size crucifix" - i'm gonna try and use it in a sentence today.

Bannasidhe · 06-06-2014 09:41AM

SebBerkovich wrote: »

I absolutely love the term "Standard size crucifix" - i'm gonna try and use it in a sentence today.

I am betting some insane mediaeval pillar of the church actually worked that out by searching scripture for references to Jesus' height and then used that to calculate the size of his cross - because of course it was bespoke.

'And lo the Lord our God did stand close to the Pillar of Astropod and he did rest his flagon upon it'
'Jesus did say onto Zebedee, thou art blocking my view'.
'The wailing of the children was woeful to the Lord and so he did comfort them and retrieved their inflated goat's bladder from the olive tree.'
'and the Magdalene did bring a dish of water to wash the Lords feet and was shamed for his feet were too big to fit so she asked the Lord if he threwth away the sandals and kept the box and did then crack upith with mirth.'
'Jesus approached the home of Nechzekial and did say 'Ow! Feck!' for the Lord was higher than the entrance.'

Hotblack Desiato · 08-06-2014 02:20PM

From a 20th century Irish schoolbook

endacl · 08-06-2014 08:52PM

ninja900 wrote: »

From a 20th century Irish schoolbook

I know we like to take the piss sometimes here. Is that serious?

robindch · 08-06-2014 09:42PM

^^^ I've seen 'shopped versions of that. Not sure which one was the original, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this was it.

anothernight · 08-06-2014 10:04PM

robindch wrote: »

^^^ I've seen 'shopped versions of that. Not sure which one was the original, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that this was it.

There was an article in the Irish Times where the journalist talked about her old religion books, and included pictures. Iirc, she took a picture/scan from her book that was identical to that one.

Hotblack Desiato · 08-06-2014 11:35PM

It's from twitter. I've no reason to doubt it's real. I got the 'hippy dippy post vatican 2 god is love' religion books in school in the 70s, but I have no reason to doubt the veracity of that scan.

Ironically the 'post vatican 2 hippy dippy peace and love man' religion books just created a huge cognitive dissonance between what the books preached and what we observed every day in the activities of the 'religious' arseholes who beat and belittled us.

Bellatori · 09-06-2014 07:45AM

My wife comes from an RCC family. Her grandmother was a convert, her grandfather was Irish and her mother was pretty religious and a regular Sunday mass person. She was brought up a catholic and went to Virgo Fidelis Convent School. She was married in the church attached to the convent. (I have just suddenly realised that both she and her mother with RCC upbringings BOTH married atheists!). As she has got older her attachment to catholicism dwindled though she used to go to church to keep her mother company when we visited her or she visited us.

We don't discuss religion much because it does annoy her if I pull overplay the atheism. She believes in some sort of God if no longer the RCC one. We have discussed Tuam and also the child abuse scandal and she expressed neither surprise nor disbelief. On the contrary she I got a somewhat surprising 'What did I expect' response. Yesterday I made an astonishing discovery which somewhat illuminated the answer she had given. I showed her the picture above thinking she might find it amusing in an ironic sort of way. The response was, to say the least, astonishing.

She burst into tears of anger and rage. The things that she said about Nuns (RCC... convent school... hence Nuns of course... I'm an idiot to miss that) beggared belief. I have never heard my wife swear but now I know she has a pretty complete command of anglo saxon language... I also understand what the expression 'incoherent with rage' means.

Anyway, she did calm down after a few minutes and told me that she remembered something similar in the 50s in a colouring book at her primary school but by the time she started teaching at a catholic school in the 70s these had disappeared. Some of the pictures were quite racist as well she recalls.

My wife HATES Nuns. She thinks they are totally evil. Her experience of them at primary and secondary school was that they were deliberately spiteful and sadistic. They would determinedly provoke girls until they answered back and then punish them with beatings. Day girls would take pack lunches but boarders had to eat food that was totally unfit for human consumption. The Nuns had a completely different kitchen and would force girls to eat the food and regularly they would be sick and have to scrub the floor on their hands and knees.

I shall be a little more circumspect in future.

Bannasidhe · 09-06-2014 10:53AM

Bellatori wrote: »

My wife comes from an RCC family. Her grandmother was a convert, her grandfather was Irish and her mother was pretty religious and a regular Sunday mass person. She was brought up a catholic and went to Virgo Fidelis Convent School. She was married in the church attached to the convent. (I have just suddenly realised that both she and her mother with RCC upbringings BOTH married atheists!). As she has got older her attachment to catholicism dwindled though she used to go to church to keep her mother company when we visited her or she visited us.

We don't discuss religion much because it does annoy her if I pull overplay the atheism. She believes in some sort of God if no longer the RCC one. We have discussed Tuam and also the child abuse scandal and she expressed neither surprise nor disbelief. On the contrary she I got a somewhat surprising 'What did I expect' response. Yesterday I made an astonishing discovery which somewhat illuminated the answer she had given. I showed her the picture above thinking she might find it amusing in an ironic sort of way. The response was, to say the least, astonishing.

She burst into tears of anger and rage. The things that she said about Nuns (RCC... convent school... hence Nuns of course... I'm an idiot to miss that) beggared belief. I have never heard my wife swear but now I know she has a pretty complete command of anglo saxon language... I also understand what the expression 'incoherent with rage' means.

Anyway, she did calm down after a few minutes and told me that she remembered something similar in the 50s in a colouring book at her primary school but by the time she started teaching at a catholic school in the 70s these had disappeared. Some of the pictures were quite racist as well she recalls.

My wife HATES Nuns. She thinks they are totally evil. Her experience of them at primary and secondary school was that they were deliberately spiteful and sadistic. They would determinedly provoke girls until they answered back and then punish them with beatings. Day girls would take pack lunches but boarders had to eat food that was totally unfit for human consumption. The Nuns had a completely different kitchen and would force girls to eat the food and regularly they would be sick and have to scrub the floor on their hands and knees.

I shall be a little more circumspect in future.

Thankfully my mother saw the graffitti on the wall and removed me from a large convent school aged 7 and sent me to a gloriously secular private school.

But one of my abiding memories is of how the nuns treated one particular family when I was in 'Babies' -aka Junior Infants.

Up until 1st class the school was mixed and as I was only 4 everybody in the class was 'older' from my perspective but there was a group of siblings/cousins whose ages ranged up to 7, but hey - first day at school, what did I know - this could have been perfectly normal like.

The oldest being a boy with the reddest hair I had ever seen and on our first day the nun asked him a question and he looked at her in confusion. She repeated the question - getting louder and louder and more verbally abusive until she was spitting insults into his face. Finally he stuttered out 'Ní thuigim' through the snot and tears. Which stopped her in her tracks for a second. Then a rapid conversation took place in Irish.

Turns out, although he could speak English, it was very much their second language and they rarely used it so when she spoke to him - in an aggressive manner from the get-go- he was so taken aback he wasn't able to 'translate' in his head. The more she roared- the more puggleised he became. He was so terrified he wet himself. The nun made sure we all knew about that.

I just couldn't understand the naked hatred she was displaying towards those children while (relatively) being sweetness and light to the rest of us. I thought once she realised his first language was Irish - mad for the ol Gaelige the nuns as I had already discovered when I needed a wee and wasn't allowed to go to the loo I didn't say, 'will cad agum amock maw shea duh hull ay?' (that's what it sounded like to me anyway and I had never heard it before in my life). In the end I said 'sister, I am going to wet myself' and just left. When I got back she asked who 'my people' were - so I told her. It just so happened my paternal grandfather and his brothers had founded the local GAA club...The target was removed from my back.

Now, we lived with my maternal grandmother who was very socially liberal and from a wealthy background with solid republican credentials in a nice middle class respectable area of Cork so we were fairly protected from the nasty aspects of the world.

After school I related what happened to Me Nan. She said that family are 'itinerants' and explained that they moved around and lived in caravans and often didn't get to school until they 'settled' in a house or a halting site so they tended to all start school together. That's fine I thought but it doesn't explain what I saw...

This was 1968. In our house Dr Martin Luther King was a hero so I was aware of 'racism' - but I thought that was all stupid people who hated other people because of their skin colour... these kids were Irish and white and spoke Irish fluently so surely the nuns would love them???

My very first day in school I saw the naked face of bigotry.

I asked Me Nan what I should do. She said I could join in/say nothing/object - the choice was mine...

Paudie with the red hair was my best friend in Babies, he taught me Irish, I helped him with English and he used to come for tea in our house. He didn't come back to school the next year...:(

Edit to add : About two weeks after this incident my cousin asked me if I knew why 'Me Nan' (that was her official title) was at the school - she saw her in the corridor. First I heard of it. By coincidence we got a new nun teaching us the next week. A dotey pet named Sr Carmel who was about 700 years old....

robindch · 09-06-2014 12:19PM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

I just couldn't understand the naked hatred she was displaying towards those children while (relatively) being sweetness and light to the rest of us.

One of my two sisters was in a Mercy Convent-controlled school down the country in the mid-seventies. She was being bullied by a couple of louts in the class and the nuns did little or nothing to resolve the situation, either because they couldn't, or they didn't want to.

After my parents had met the Mother Superior several times to discuss what was happening, and seeing nothing changing, they decided to move my sister to another school. As soon as she heard this, the Mother Superior went ballistic as my family's name is well-known in the town and news would get around about why she'd moved.

So, the Mother Superior, being a typical nun of the time, instead of doubling down and trying to fix the problem, immediately threatened to cancel the convent's contracts with my dad's large shop, so he told her "no need to be nasty about it but if that's what you want to do, then go right ahead".

This being towards the end of the school year, my parents decided to leave my sister work out hew few remaining weeks in the old place, but immediately booked her into another school starting the following September. In late August -- not having heard anything from the new school in months -- phoned the new school to find out that the Mother Superior from the old had rung up during the summer to tell them to revoke my sister's place, which they had done. The new school immediately reversed the decision and she started there and enjoyed it.

Memorable people they were. Those "mercy" nuns.

Bannasidhe · 09-06-2014 12:30PM

robindch wrote: »

One of my two sisters was in a Mercy Convent-controlled school down the country in the mid-seventies. She was being bullied by a couple of louts in the class and the nuns did little or nothing to resolve the situation, either because they couldn't, or they didn't want to.

After my parents had met the Mother Superior several times to discuss what was happening, and seeing nothing changing, they decided to move my sister to another school. As soon as she heard this, the Mother Superior went ballistic as my family's name is well-known in the town and news would get around about why she'd moved.

So, the Mother Superior, being a typical nun of the time, instead of doubling down and trying to fix the problem, immediately threatened to cancel the convent's contracts with my dad's large shop, so he told her "no need to be nasty about it but if that's what you want to do, then go right ahead".

This being towards the end of the school year, my parents decided to leave my sister work out hew few remaining weeks in the old place, but immediately booked her into another school starting the following September. In late August -- not having heard anything from the new school in months -- phoned the new school to find out that the Mother Superior from the old had rung up during the summer to tell them to my sister's place, which they had done. The new school immediately reversed the decision and she started there and enjoyed it.

Memorable people they were. Those "mercy" nuns.

My lot were the Presentation Sisters.

Eventually all of girls in the extended family were moved out of their clutches to the same secular school.

MrPudding · 09-06-2014 02:48PM

Bellatori wrote: »

She thinks they are totally evil. Her experience of them at primary and secondary school was that they were deliberately spiteful and sadistic. They would determinedly provoke girls until they answered back and then punish them with beatings. Day girls would take pack lunches but boarders had to eat food that was totally unfit for human consumption. The Nuns had a completely different kitchen and would force girls to eat the food and regularly they would be sick and have to scrub the floor on their hands and knees.

I shall be a little more circumspect in future.

I experienced nuns in my primary school and would agree with your wife. Evil, evil people.

One of the things in life that makes me really sad is that, because there is no god, there is by extension no hell, so those evil creatures aren't being tortured for eternity.

MrP

Bellatori · 09-06-2014 03:31PM

MrPudding wrote: »

I experienced nuns in my primary school and would agree with your wife. Evil, evil people.

One of the things in life that makes me really sad is that, because there is no god, there is by extension no hell, so those evil creatures aren't being tortured for eternity.

MrP

that is certainly a bit of irony embedded in atheism... ah well.

Hotblack Desiato · 09-06-2014 10:41PM

One of my earliest memories of school (late 70s) is being leathered by a big scary nun for no reason at all. Now that I'm a parent it's quite amazing to think that relatively recently people just accepted it was OK for teachers and 'religious' to belt 4 year old kids for the most minor or imagined infringements.

......

Meanwhile...

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/ireland-the-most-truly-muslim-country-in-the-world-1.1826354

The country in the world most faithful to the values of the Koran is Ireland according to an Iranian-born academic at George Washingon University in the US. Next are Denmark, Sweden and the UK.

Blasphemy law helps a lot, no doubt :mad:

SebBerkovich · 10-06-2014 07:53AM

ninja900 wrote: »

......

Meanwhile...

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/ireland-the-most-truly-muslim-country-in-the-world-1.1826354

Blasphemy law helps a lot, no doubt :mad:

Thier "Islamicity index" seems a little vague.
It's described as "countries in the world most faithful to the values of the Koran" judging by the way interpretation of scripture generally goes, i'd say "values of the Koran" is fairly subjective.

Nodin · 10-06-2014 02:19PM

Turtwig wrote: »

Bannaside banned for mentioning the 'b' word.

https://www.facebook.com/1483854478512179/photos/a.1493363927561234.1073741828.1483854478512179/1499152046982422/?type=1&theater

Wereghost · 10-06-2014 07:33PM

ninja900 wrote: »

Meanwhile...

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/ireland-the-most-truly-muslim-country-in-the-world-1.1826354

Blasphemy law helps a lot, no doubt :mad:

The push to abolish the senate probably didn't hurt either.

Bannasidhe · 11-06-2014 09:11PM

Nodin wrote: »

https://www.facebook.com/1483854478512179/photos/a.1493363927561234.1073741828.1483854478512179/1499152046982422/?type=1&theater

Nipples crack.

Think about that.

Sexy my arse.

endacl · 12-06-2014 12:39AM

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Nipples crack.

Think about that.

Sexy my arse.

I read 'nipples crack' as 'knuckles crack'...

pauldla · 12-06-2014 08:02AM

More on the Church of the Almighty God; six members on trial in Guangdong.

Church of the Almighty God Members on Trial in Guangzhou

PRD residents shocked at the beating death of a Shandong woman by a religious group named the Church of the Almighty God may be surprised to hear they are well-entrenched in Guangzhou.

Seven people belonging to the cult were prosecuted at the Haizhu District Procuratorate on June 6, reports the Procuratorate Daily. Arrested in January of this year, alleged leader Bai Xiujie and six group members were charged with “undermining law implementation through a cult organization”.

...

As China Topix reports, Church of the Almighty God was first established in the 90s in Henan by Zhao Weishan. The cult claims Jesus Christ has been resurrected through Yang Xiangbin, the wife of the cult’s founder, who fled to the US in 2000.

recedite · 12-06-2014 02:14PM

SebBerkovich wrote: »

"Islamicity index" seems a little vague.

"Islamic" values seem to be all the "good" values according to him. In much the same way, they are more often referred to as "Christian" values in this part of the world.
Also the blasphemy laws have probably given us an extra boost compared to otherwise similar western countries.
We should take it as a compliment though, and just ignore the dodgy use of language

robindch · 12-06-2014 03:03PM

Life in a Christian 'fundamentalist' school in the UK

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-27681560

anothernight · 12-06-2014 04:47PM

robindch wrote: »

Life in a Christian 'fundamentalist' school in the UK

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-27681560

There is (or was, idk) one school in Tallaght that uses PACEs. I visited it years ago, after I completed my Junior Cert, at the request of a family friend who is a Baptist pastor.

The classroom was a small, long room with desks lining the sides, and puritan-like children of different ages reading those PACEs. I talked to a few of them, and they seemed a little too brainwashed for my taste. I was asked by the pastor's wife to wear my school uniform for the visit, because that was the only ankle-length skirt I owned.

They offered no language education, and when I asked what happens if one of the children decides to go to university (since their curriculum isn't exactly recognised anywhere), I was told that their usual career of choice after school was becoming a pastor or the wife of a pastor.

The prospect of having to go to such as school was scary. I'm very glad I have reasonable parents.

EDIT: Ohh!!!! I remembered something else! Their list of banned books!!! I was actually handed a little leaflet explaining their values, what to expect from the school, the fees (these were not cheap...) and then at the back there was an actual list of books that are banned for being immoral. Romeo and Juliet is the only one I remember, but it the whole list was just nuts! I'd already read some of them in my childhood too.

Hotblack Desiato · 12-06-2014 10:21PM

robindch wrote: »

Life in a Christian 'fundamentalist' school in the UK

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-27681560

Ridiculous that schools are allowed teach that instead of a proper curriculum. It's tantamount to child abuse and denying them a real education.

bigmo2310 · 13-06-2014 12:56AM

robindch wrote: »

Life in a Christian 'fundamentalist' school in the UK

This thing that I dont get about this is how is there not more fuss over what these schools teach. What do OFSTED do all day? This school teaches that evolution doesnt exist or that homosexuality is wrong! Can you imagine if someone opened an independant school teaching that Hitler was right, or that the second world war never happened, or worse still if this was an islamic school? The Daily mail would jizz in their pants over the amount of leverage they could give that. Its an absolute joke.

The Hazards of Belief

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