Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: ippy on August 27, 2015, 01:28:56 PM
-
There's so much bad news nearly every time we listen to any of the media outlets and then I found this article, as follows:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11531005/Britain-one-of-the-worlds-least-religious-countries-says-poll.html
ippy
-
Not that I'm complaining but this has been known for donkey's years, ippy.
-
Not that I'm complaining but this has been known for donkey's years, ippy.
Yes maybe, but it does cheer up a lot of people, I haven't got a link but it comes up quite easily on google with the simplest of English, try this it'll warm up your cockles no end:
Win/gallup polls on world atheism, looks like there's a way to go on that yet, while not quoting them verbatim it gives some revealing figures on how religious belief is hung on to mostly by the poorest and most uneducated people in this world and lots of other similar links.
It's a mission, if we can't cure them then at least try to demoralise these people as much as pos.
ippy
-
I find the aim of trying to demoralise people repulsive and negative. I have no intention of demoralising me sainted old mother and if anyone else tries they may find themselves exsanguinated.
-
Yes maybe, but it does cheer up a lot of people, I haven't got a link but it comes up quite easily on google with the simplest of English, try this it'll warm up your cockles no end:
Win/gallup polls on world atheism, looks like there's a way to go on that yet, while not quoting them verbatim it gives some revealing figures on how religious belief is hung on to mostly by the poorest and most uneducated people in this world and lots of other similar links.
America remains the sore-thumb exception to that, although - as I'm sure we all know - even that is changing fast of late. Several hypotheses have been put forward for this anomaly - one that seems persuasive to me is that the colonials have been so unusually religious amongst highly affluent, developed, educated, technologically-advanced nations because Americans have a remarkably low level of social security as compared to many other comparable nations and European countries especially. I know from personal experience of American friends and relatives that employment law over there, as compared to here, is utterly atrocious - you can pretty well be fired from your job on spec for no real reason whatever. There isn't anything like the same safety net of a welfare state that civilised countries have for the unemployed, the ill, the very young and the retired - especially the ill. The can-do, manifest destiny and self-reliant spirit on which the USA as we know it was founded omitted compassion for those who can't be self-reliant (much the same as present-day Tories in this country; these types all piss in the same pot, as 'twere).
Perhaps the greater factor, I've always thought, is simply time. Europe has had the time to grow out of religion; American hasn't, and so has some catching up to do. Here in Britain we've seen and done it all - the Reformations, counter-Reformations, persecutions and executions and all the rest of it; we saw human beings lashed to a big stick and set on fire in the middle of Oxford because they didn't believe the right things while the Americans of the time were still wiping their arses on leaves and wondering where the lightning came from. People are apt to forget just how young a nation the USA is in historical terms; as I say, they have some catching up to do when it comes to discarding religion, but it's clear that the process is well underway.
-
It's a mission, if we can't cure them then at least try to demoralise these people as much as pos.
ippy
Is it an evangelical mission, ippy? ;)
-
I find the aim of trying to demoralise people repulsive and negative. I have no intention of demoralising me sainted old mother and if anyone else tries they may find themselves exsanguinated. humour
I suppose it would seem that way, but if you go into that world survey Gallup poll, I found it a bit of a surprise here and there, it does seem to me to be more religious in the poorer parts of the world even without doing a survey, some of the results and the thorough way this survey was conducted, well I think it was a very good effort.
Oh and by the way the atheists didn't come out on top so if you take a look you can come to your own conclusions.
By the way your exsanguinated gets, a red line, chucked out by my spell checker set to British English.
No good asking me I can't spell very much anytime without spellchecker.
ippy
-
Perhaps the greater factor, I've always thought, is simply time. Europe has had the time to grow out of religion; American hasn't, and so has some catching up to do. Here in Britain we've seen and done it all - the Reformations, counter-Reformations, persecutions and executions and all the rest of it; we saw human beings lashed to a big stick and set on fire in the middle of Oxford because they didn't believe the right things while the Americans of the time were still wiping their arses on leaves and wondering where the lightning came from. People are apt to forget just how young a nation the USA is in historical terms; as I say, they have some catching up to do when it comes to discarding religion, but it's clear that the process is well underway.
I wonder whether the greater reason is that the US was founded on the principle of religious liberty, with the early settlers leaving Europe in order to practise forms of Christianity that were proscribed by the authorities.
Interestingly, there was a similar 'experiment' in Patagonia, when 150 years ago, a large number of Welsh non-conformists left Wales to establish a 'New Wales ' where they could worhip in freedom.
It would be interesting to compare the respective proportions of religious to non-religious to see whether it has anything to do with time since setting up the project or the poverty/wealth divide.
-
It's a mission, if we can't cure them then at least try to demoralise these people as much as pos.
ippy
Is kit an evangelical mission, ippy? ;)
At least you got the little, but not that brilliant, touch of humour there; Our Lord Dawkins Etc.
ippy
-
Darwin bless His holy name.
-
Not sure why you inserted 'humour' into my post, ippy, there was no joke and in this case my spelling, or rather my typing, was correct.
-
Darwin bless His holy name.
There is a joke about Darwin, Dawkins, and Hawking being a trinity somewhere to be made
-
I wonder whether the greater reason is that the US was founded on the principle of religious liberty, with the early settlers leaving Europe in order to practise forms of Christianity that were proscribed by the authorities.
Religious liberty is one of those dog-whistle phrases that without too much (or any) examination strikes most people as A Good Thing, until you learn on closer inspection that - as in this case - what it actually means is a bunch of swivel-eyed fundamentalists taking their ball and going to a new home because they were unable to make everybody else dance to their tune, as religionists and monotheists especially are apt to do.
Interestingly, there was a similar 'experiment' in Patagonia, when 150 years ago, a large number of Welsh non-conformists left Wales to establish a 'New Wales ' where they could worhip in freedom.
Hm. That worked out well for them. I mean, people are always banging on about that world superpower, Patagonia.
-
I despise those atheists that strut around polluting the world their rotten arrogance, looking down their ugly beaks, and slithering around in their self proclaimed superiority. The reason faith is growing in Africa, Asia and South America is because the people are poor and stupid. That is basically what these godless, smarter than they, atheists are preaching. Get some money in the pockets of those Africans and N American Aboriginals, send them to our godless Universities to be educated by us and they will drop their faith. And the world will be a better place. They may not have the money and education of the godless ones spewing that crap but I'll tell ya this, even though they may not know as much they sure know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. Thanks to LBJ for that line of thought.
-
The reason faith is growing in Africa, Asia and South America is because the people are poor and stupid.
Well, one doesn't necessarily wish to state matters quite as bluntly as that, but since you bring it up ...
By the way: "godless atheists" remains, as it has always been, a redundancy. One or the other will do just fine; both is a pleonasm, i.e. poor use of English.
-
until you learn on closer inspection that - as in this case - what it actually means is a bunch of swivel-eyed fundamentalists taking their ball and going to a new home because they were unable to make everybody else dance to their tune,
Shaker, the Plymouth Brethren who made up the early settlers were no more 'fundamentalist' than most mainstream groups today. What made them fundamentaalist in 17th century terms was their insistence that church tradition wasn't the prime means of discerning God's purpose, and that the Bible was. Nothing swivel-eyed about that, unless you happen to subscribe to a faith that is similar to ad-o's.
Interestingly, there was a similar 'experiment' in Patagonia, when 150 years ago, a large number of Welsh non-conformists left Wales to establish a 'New Wales ' where they could worhip in freedom.
Hm. That worked out well for them. I mean, people are always banging on about that world superpower, Patagonia.
[/quote]And that is why I suggested the comparison; are the descendents of those non-conformist emigrants, who currently enjoy a fairly OK lifestyle, but nothing that much to shout out about more religious in their comparative poverty than the the descendants of another bunch of non-conformists in their comparative wealth. After all, in his post #7, ippy posits that it seems (to him) that "(it seems) to be more religious in the poorer parts of the world".
Perhaps that's why, in the UK, Europe and the US, church attendance, and therefore likely faith, seems to be something regarded as a middle- to upper-class preserve.
-
Globally atheism is going right down the toilet and this trend shows no signs of reversing. A couple hundred thousand new Christians and Muslims a day while each day there is about 1000 fewer godless atheists. Oh and it doesn't help that western secularism is losing it's influence around the world. That's definitely the cherry on top!
-
I despise those atheists that strut around polluting the world their rotten arrogance, looking down their ugly beaks, and slithering around in their self proclaimed superiority. The reason faith is growing in Africa, Asia and South America is because the people are poor and stupid. That is basically what these godless, smarter than they, atheists are preaching. Get some money in the pockets of those Africans and N American Aboriginals, send them to our godless Universities to be educated by us and they will drop their faith. And the world will be a better place. They may not have the money and education of the godless ones spewing that crap but I'll tell ya this, even though they may not know as much they sure know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. Thanks to LBJ for that line of thought.
Yes, Christians have always been so supportive of aborigines. Let's ask the Tasmanian aborigines...oops no we can't because they've been exterminated
-
Globally atheism is going right down the toilet and this trend shows no signs of reversing. A couple hundred thousand new Christians and Muslims a day while each day there is about 1000 fewer godless atheists. Oh and it doesn't help that western secularism is losing it's influence around the world. That's definitely the cherry on top!
Good to know how supportive of ISIS that you are.
-
By the way: "godless atheists" remains, as it has always been, a redundancy. One or the other will do just fine; both is a pleonasm, i.e. poor use of English.
Except that he didn't refer to 'godless atheists', he referred to " godless, smarter than they, atheists", which is a somewhat different grammatical construction. If anything, it's unnecessary hyperbole, emphasising the godlessness of atheism.
-
A couple hundred thousand new Christians and Muslims a day while each day there is about 1000 fewer godless atheists.
Looks like you'll be basing this on the appearance of babies, then. (Here I refer to actual babies, not foetuses - canoe generally elides the difference between the two). The issues with this are obvious. One is that a baby can't be any religious identity, and only an atheist in the barest, sparest sense of someone who doesn't believe that gods exist. (In this context sometimes called implicit atheism). A baby can, at most, ever only be the child of parents who might happen to be religious. A religious identity pertains to the parents, not the baby.
A second issue is that even by the time an individual reaches the stage at which it makes sense that they have sufficient understanding of the concepts involved to regard them as a religious individual, the point is - do they remain one? The evidence coming from (especially, but very far from exclusively) the United States over the past decade and a half or so says that increasingly they do not.
Daily Mail types who chew their fingernails down to the knuckle about what they perceive to be the number of "Muslim babies" born in the UK lump the two categories together and still manage to get both wrong.
Oh and it doesn't help that western secularism is losing it's influence around the world. That's definitely the cherry on top!
(1) What's the difference between "Western secularism" and "secularism"?
(2) Evidence for this assertion?
-
By the way: "godless atheists" remains, as it has always been, a redundancy. One or the other will do just fine; both is a pleonasm, i.e. poor use of English.
Except that ht
jc, not ht.
refer to 'godless atheists', he referred to " godless, smarter than they, atheists", which is a somewhat different grammatical construction. If anything, it's unnecessary hyperbole, emphasising the godlessness of atheism.
Yes, unnecessary. Which is exactly what I already said - a pleonasm. The godless are atheists. Atheists are godless. One or the other is good English; both is bad English.
-
Darwin bless His holy name.
There is a joke about Darwin, Dawkins, and Hawking being a trinity somewhere to be made
One ex-forum fundamentalist actually formed a binity of two of them called Hawkins.
-
Yes, Christians have always been so supportive of aborigines. Let's ask the Tasmanian aborigines...oops no we can't because they've been exterminated
If history is anything to go by, this kind of disease-related extermination occurred long before Christianity arrived anywhere.
-
Yes, Christians have always been so supportive of aborigines. Let's ask the Tasmanian aborigines...oops no we can't because they've been exterminated
If history is anything to go by, this kind of disease-related extermination occurred long before Christianity arrived anywhere.
What history specifically?
-
A baby can, at most, ever only be the child of parents who might happen to be religious. A religious identity pertains to the parents, not the baby.
Don't tell a lot of parents this, religious and non-religious, Shaker. ;) In many parts of the world, it is believed that one is born as whatever belief system is in control.
-
until you learn on closer inspection that - as in this case - what it actually means is a bunch of swivel-eyed fundamentalists taking their ball and going to a new home because they were unable to make everybody else dance to their tune,
Shaker, the Plymouth Brethren who made up the early settlers were no more 'fundamentalist' than most mainstream groups today. What made them fundamentaalist in 17th century terms was their insistence that church tradition wasn't the prime means of discerning God's purpose, and that the Bible was. Nothing swivel-eyed about that, unless you happen to subscribe to a faith that is similar to ad-o's.
Which all sounds fine and dandy until you see what this actually entailed, which is much as Shaker said. They may indeed have had gripes about the relative importance of church tradition, but essentially they were much concerned that the Anglican church was all too liberal, and allowed many practices that they considered sinful and indeed unbiblical (this may be one reason why they made such a pig's ear of their original settlement, particularly with regard to their food supply: in an area where the seas were overflowing with lobsters, crabs, mussels and the like for the taking, they practically starved. All that forbidden shell-fish, you know.). They were quite reluctant to accept the help of the natives too - the latter being ones who they considered needed saving, not themselves. Basically a bunch of naive, impractical blunderers.
-
Trust me on this Mr. Nearly. There were atheists involved in bringing your European diseases to my Cree ancestors. We never looked at those blankets full of your diseases as a Christian enterprise. And since you are looking down your beak again, I'm thinking of the millions slaughtered under the boot of atheists. I'm also thinking of those atheist rulers in China that are filling up the prisons with people guilty of attending home churches.
Why would you make a stunted comment about me supporting ISIS? How does making up lies about me help reverse the decline of your blessed atheism? Are you claiming that every Muslim that wants their faith to grow is a supporter of ISIS? Is every one of you godless that wants atheism to grow a supporter of FARC, ETA, and Shining Path?
-
A baby can, at most, ever only be the child of parents who might happen to be religious. A religious identity pertains to the parents, not the baby.
Don't tell a lot of parents this, religious and non-religious, Shaker. ;) In many parts of the world, it is believed that one is born as whatever belief system is in control.
Why shouldn't I tell them this? I can't help that silly people believe silly things. Are they - the parents, not the babies - babies who have to be swaddled and coddled?
-
Trust me on this Mr. Nearly. There were atheists involved in bringing your European diseases to my Cree ancestors. We never looked at those blankets full of your diseases as a Christian enterprise. And since you are looking down your beak again, I'm thinking of the millions slaughtered under the boot of atheists. I'm also thinking of those atheist rulers in China that are filling up the prisons with people guilty of attending home churches.
Why would you make a stunted comment about me supporting ISIS? How does making up lies about me help reverse the decline of your blessed atheism? Are you claiming that every Muslim that wants their faith to grow is a supporter of ISIS? Is every one of you godless that wants atheism to grow a supporter of FARC, ETA, and Shining Path?
I think you will find NS's attitude to religion is a little more subtle than that. And his atheism is a bit more subtle than that too.
-
Undoubtedly there were, Johnny, I am the last person to argue that atheists have clean hands. It seems to me we have as precisely dirty hands as theists. As to the wipe out of the Tasmanian aborigines, while some of it was disease related, much of it wasn't. And much of it was thuggery. Trying to portray it as disease related in its entirety is specious.
-
I linked ISIS to you, Johnny, because you claimed Muslims as part of your fallacious argument up ad populum. I don't think you support them, but if you claim all Muslims as part of your fallacy then you are claiming they are part of that.
-
By the way: "godless atheists" remains, as it has always been, a redundancy. One or the other will do just fine; both is a pleonasm, i.e. poor use of English.
Except that he didn't refer to 'godless atheists', he referred to " godless, smarter than they, atheists", which is a somewhat different grammatical construction. If anything, it's unnecessary hyperbole, emphasising the godlessness of atheism.
which as Shaker pointed out is tautology. Your post is an elegant foot, rifle, bang.
-
Not sure why you inserted 'humour' into my post, ippy, there was no joke and in this case my spelling, or rather my typing, was correct.
The spelling was as I said, I'm among the worlds worst people at spelling so all I related to you was that my spell checker was picking out your word and I also mentioned the setting it was on.
The not very inspiring humour was mine "demoralising" was a weak challenge offered out as a mild wind up, like I said not a belly laugh.
ippy
-
What history specifically?
No doubt, when you and I were at school, it was generally thought that the indigenous North American tribes were decimated, if not eradicated by the intentional acts of the 'invaders'. It is now generally believed that the majority of such deaths were as a result of diseases that were introduced accidentally and that is was only once the accident had been recognised that it was 'artificialised' by some - for instance by intentionally infecting blankets that were handed out. I'm not disputing that there weren't some horrendous acts of deliberate decimation by disease, but more often than not this was a reflection of what had happened naturally prior to such events.
Interestingly, there is one disease which it is thought was transmitted the other way rond, from North American Indians to Europeans and brought back with them - syphilis.
At the same time, Europeans back as far as the Romans and beyond going into the interior (and not so interior) of Africa often died of a condition that they had no immunity to - malaria. The indigenous African weren't 'intentionally' exposing them to the disease.
-
Globally atheism is going right down the toilet and this trend shows no signs of reversing. A couple hundred thousand new Christians and Muslims a day while each day there is about 1000 fewer godless atheists. Oh and it doesn't help that western secularism is losing it's influence around the world. That's definitely the cherry on top!
Except where the populations are getting a higher standard of education Woody.
You still don't get secularism Woody, you can be a devout holder of any religious belief and still be a strident secularist, what is it about secularism that you're finding so difficult to understand.
Secularism isn't anti religious or pro religious it's neutral or blind to religions, crudely religion is, or should be, invisible to the state and secularist states protect religious freedom and give the rest of us freedom from religion for those not interested.
ippy
-
Not sure why you inserted 'humour' into my post, ippy, there was no joke and in this case my spelling, or rather my typing, was correct.
The spelling was as I said, I'm among the worlds worst people at spelling so all I related to you was that my spell checker was picking out your word and I also mentioned the setting it was on.
The not very inspiring humour was mine "demoralising" was a weak challenge offered out as a mild wind up, like I said not a belly laugh.
ippy
dinnae fash yersel
-
Oh dearie me, Hope, this is revisionist revisionist history. No one is claiming that disease did not have an effect, so strawman.
-
People were well aware of the effects of disease previously but read up about the violence and war against the Tasmanian aborigines before touting this it was all the common cold pish that you have gone for. And Johnny is right, it doesn't really matter about what your belief system it was an atrocious example of genocide (in this case literally) but it does disproof any claim to Christians being lovely to aborigine populations unless you want to go down the No True Scotsman fallacy
-
I am sorry, but to extrapolate the result of a poll of 64,000 people to a world population of 7.3 billion seems a bit far-fetched and probably terminally inaccurate.
-
Actually your Tasmanian thingy has nothing to do with the thread but to change the channel Mr. Nearly. And in your atheist arrogance you look down your pointy beak at Hope. Too funny you.
-
Not sure why you inserted 'humour' into my post, ippy, there was no joke and in this case my spelling, or rather my typing, was correct.
The spelling was as I said, I'm among the worlds worst people at spelling so all I related to you was that my spell checker was picking out your word and I also mentioned the setting it was on.
The not very inspiring humour was mine "demoralising" was a weak challenge offered out as a mild wind up, like I said not a belly laugh.
ippy
dinnae fash yersel
What language was that?
ippy
-
Not sure why you inserted 'humour' into my post, ippy, there was no joke and in this case my spelling, or rather my typing, was correct.
The spelling was as I said, I'm among the worlds worst people at spelling so all I related to you was that my spell checker was picking out your word and I also mentioned the setting it was on.
The not very inspiring humour was mine "demoralising" was a weak challenge offered out as a mild wind up, like I said not a belly laugh.
ippy
dinnae fash yersel
What language was that?
ippy
Scots via French. The 'fash' is interesting - since it appears to be connected with the french word 'facher' (which should have a circumflex, only I don't know how to do it) - which means to vex.
"Do not vex yourself"
-
People were well aware of the effects of disease previously but read up about the violence and war against the Tasmanian aborigines before touting this it was all the common cold pish that you have gone for.
From all that I've read and heard from Australians who have studied their history, the decimation took place because of disease. It was only as the white population grew that the remaining Tassies were exterminated by violence.
-
which as Shaker pointed out is tautology. Your post is an elegant foot, rifle, bang.
Looking back at Shakes' posts, I don't see the use of the word 'tautology' anywhere. He uses a number of other words none of which mean quite the same as tautology.
-
which as Shaker pointed out is tautology. Your post is an elegant foot, rifle, bang.
Looking back at Shakes' posts, I don't see the use of the word 'tautology' anywhere. He uses a number of other words none of which mean quite the same as tautology.
I used synonyms for tautology, such as redundancy and pleonasm. Try reading #14 again. As for them not being "quite the same as tautology", thesaurus.com and Dr Roget disagree. I'll stick with the good doctor. He hasn't put me wrong yet.
-
People were well aware of the effects of disease previously but read up about the violence and war against the Tasmanian aborigines before touting this it was all the common cold pish that you have gone for.
From all that I've read and heard from Australians who have studied their history, the decimation took place because of disease. It was only as the white population grew that the remaining Tassies were exterminated by violence.
And exterminated by violence is genocide
-
I used synonyms for tautology, such as redundancy and pleonasm. Try reading #14 again. As for them not being "quite the same as tautology", thesaurus.com and Dr Roget disagree. I'll stick with the good doctor. He hasn't put me wrong yet.
Hi Shakes, I had read post #14. The problem with your chosen words is that they can be used to reference emphasis or refer to fault of style, which isn't the case with 'tautology' which is only used in reference to the latter. Your posts were clearly not referring to jc's use of the words as emphasis; they were critical of his style, so 'tautology' would have been clearer English.
-
Ippy, I thought I'd do a bit of arithmetic on your article's figures, though someone's (Matt's?) comment that the sample size relative to the global population is pretty unrepresentative is worth bearing in mind.
Accoring to the article, 63% of those polled say they are religious, whilst only 11% claim to be convinced atheists. So, on extrapolating that to the circa 7.4 billion global population, a little over 4.55 billion are religious, and 2.85 billion are unbelievers or atheists. Of that 2.85 billion, about 820000000 are atheists (that's about 11% of the world's total population).
The article also says that 61% of the Chinese population - currently running at about 1.4 billion - are 'convinced atheists'. A quick calculation tells us that that means that there are about 855000000 atheists in China.
So, that suggests that there are more atheists in China than there are in the whole world, including China.
Does that sound a valid conclusion to you, ippy?
It certainly seems to suggest that the bulk of atheists live in a single country in the world - a country where atheism was forced upon them from 1948 to the early 1980s.
-
I used synonyms for tautology, such as redundancy and pleonasm. Try reading #14 again. As for them not being "quite the same as tautology", thesaurus.com and Dr Roget disagree. I'll stick with the good doctor. He hasn't put me wrong yet.
Hi Shakes, I had read post #14. The problem with your chosen words is that they can be used to reference emphasis or refer to fault of style, which isn't the case with 'tautology' which is only used in reference to the latter. Your posts were clearly not referring to jc's use of the words as emphasis; they were critical of his style, so 'tautology' would have been clearer English.
When canoe uses, as he habitually does, the phrase 'godless atheists,' one of those words - it can be either - is redundant. That's what I said and why I said it.
A synonym of redundancy is pleonasm. That's why I used that word, too. The words are clear enough, if you know them anyway.
-
A synonym of redundancy is pleonasm. That's why I used that word, too. The words are clear enough, if you know them anyway.
Pleonasm, eh?..............i'll have what she's having.
-
A synonym of redundancy is pleonasm. That's why I used that word, too. The words are clear enough, if you know them anyway.
Pleonasm, eh?..............i'll have what she's having.
An education? Excellent idea.
-
I used synonyms for tautology, such as redundancy and pleonasm. Try reading #14 again. As for them not being "quite the same as tautology", thesaurus.com and Dr Roget disagree. I'll stick with the good doctor. He hasn't put me wrong yet.
Hi Shakes, I had read post #14. The problem with your chosen words is that they can be used to reference emphasis or refer to fault of style, which isn't the case with 'tautology' which is only used in reference to the latter. Your posts were clearly not referring to jc's use of the words as emphasis; they were critical of his style, so 'tautology' would have been clearer English.
One of the great joys of English, as she is wrote, is the profusion of synonyms. That redundancy, tautology and pleonasm can all be utilised to describe the witless, ignorant stupidity of using the phrase godless atheists is as bounteous as someone trying to defend the phrase could be described as wrong, incorrect, fallacious, spurious, erroneous, specious, mistaken, amiss, misguided, perverse.....
-
... a country where atheism was forced upon them from 1948 to the early 1980s.
If it were possible to force a belief/disbelief on a people, there would be no dissenters in that particular country. No such country exists, which is proof positive of the error of your assertion.
-
... a country where atheism was forced upon them from 1948 to the early 1980s.
If it were possible to force a belief/disbelief on a people, there would be no dissenters in that particular country. No such country exists, which is proof positive of the error of your assertion.
That isn't really what Hope is saying though, in that he is pointing out a country where general religious freedom was suppressed, not that it was successful. The problem as often covered elsewhere is that seeking to equate an ideology such as communism with what atheism is, is as flawed as stating that all theists are like ISIS.
And before the cookie monster reacts that it is what I did earlier, I would point out that it was him Co opting all Muslims as part of his 'team' that lead me to point out that would necessitate supporting ISIS, unless he wanted to indulge in a No True Muslim fallacy. The whole stuff with numbers that people indulge in just leads to this, and in that sense Hope is entirely right. Indulge in the 'we are all atheists/theists/cocksuckers together' pish and you end up effectively supporting any deranged nutter who is part of that grouping.
You also gain nothing since it is either a vacuous ad populum, or a sort of knee hugging smarmy we're winning and you smell to other people.
-
... a country where atheism was forced upon them from 1948 to the early 1980s.
If it were possible to force a belief/disbelief on a people, there would be no dissenters in that particular country. No such country exists, which is proof positive of the error of your assertion.
That isn't really what Hope is saying though...
Then he should have said what he meant.
-
Not sure why you inserted 'humour' into my post, ippy, there was no joke and in this case my spelling, or rather my typing, was correct.
The spelling was as I said, I'm among the worlds worst people at spelling so all I related to you was that my spell checker was picking out your word and I also mentioned the setting it was on.
The not very inspiring humour was mine "demoralising" was a weak challenge offered out as a mild wind up, like I said not a belly laugh.
ippy
dinnae fash yersel
What language was that?
ippy
Scots via French. The 'fash' is interesting - since it appears to be connected with the french word 'facher' (which should have a circumflex, only I don't know how to do it) - which means to vex.
"Do not vex yourself"
I did have a guess at that D U, thanks for the conformation.
ippy
-
A synonym of redundancy is pleonasm. That's why I used that word, too. The words are clear enough, if you know them anyway.
Pleonasm, eh?..............i'll have what she's having.
GROAN