Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Politics & Current Affairs => Topic started by: Hope on January 25, 2016, 10:21:58 PM
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I am posting this for 2 reasons. I recently received notification of this from the campaigning community Avaaz, and thought It was worth bringing to folks' attention. However, unlike many of the other Avaaz campaigns I've seen, I haven't seen anything about this elsewhere on the net.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/denmark_bill_of_shame_c/?pv=77&rc=fb
So, I leave it to your own judgement as to what you do with it.
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Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it. Hopefully Schengen will fall as well. Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants. Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?). It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.
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Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it. Hopefully Schengen will fall as well. Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants. Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?). It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.
And polluting our precious bodily fluids, right?
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I don't understand what "cultural integrity" means, which may mean I don't have any. Ah well, I haven't felt deprived because of it.
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And polluting our precious bodily fluids, right?
Sigh! Have a day off, Shakes. Culture and ethnicity is what makes a people. Lose either one of those they cease to be a people, in this case the Danes. Neither does that have to imply any sense of superiority. If it was anything other than Europeans no one would batter an eyelid.
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Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants.
Evidence please. Most of these people are coming from countries currently being destroyed by war so it isn't really justifiable to claim they are necessarily economic migrants.
But I actually think the crude distinction between refugees and economic migrants is untenable and unhelpful. Many of these people know their towns and previous life is destroyed and won't be restored for years if not decades. The are therefore refugees. But they have also made a decision that given the destruction back home their best option for themselves and their families is a new life somewhere else where they can live work, raise their families and contribute to that new society (which may make them economic migrants) - but what is so wrong with that.
Think about the late 1930s - Jewish people fleeing persecution in central Europe - many decided to make a new start somewhere else and even when Germany and other countries become stable (and safe) again had no intention of returning, their lives were, by then, elsewhere. And think about the contribution those people have made to society and the economies of the countries they moved to.
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When it happens on a massive scale, as is now, the multicultural fantasy of the no-borders brigade comes crashing down, a clash of cultures and home is no longer identifiably home anymore but alien, because our cultural and ethnic identity as Europeans will have been lost. It's ok when it happens to Europeans, it seems. Were it Europeans going elsewhere it would be deemed European imperialism and arrogance. Islamisation is ok though. ::)
And again, why aren't these men of fighting ages fighting to protect their homes and their women and children from ISIS?
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I don't understand what "cultural integrity" means, which may mean I don't have any. Ah well, I haven't felt deprived because of it.
Living in a country that has had such a huge variety of ethnic and therefore cultural forebears as we do in the UK and especially England, I think we can forget that there are some parts of Europe where the culture is far less diverse. Now, whether having what might be deemed a 2- or 3-tone culture is better or worse than having a highly diverse culture is probably a topic for a separate thread, but (a bit like France and its determination to see its language not being 'contaminated' with foreign words) there are those nations that wish to protect their cultural identity.
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And polluting our precious bodily fluids, right?
Good to see your blinkered thinking coming to the fore again, Shakes. We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh. There may well be others.
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And again, why aren't these men of fighting ages fighting to protect their homes and their women and children from ISIS?
One needs an army to do this, ad_o, and for some of these folk, the only army available to them to join would be so antagonistic to their ways of thinking that they would be as much at war with that army as they would be with ISIS. At the same time, some would probably be refused entry into that army because of their ethnic and/or religious backgrounds.
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Good to see your blinkered thinking coming to the fore again, Shakes. We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh. There may well be others.
There's somebody on this thread wearing blinkers, and I don't think it's me.
Perhaps you just have an innate tone-deafness to sarcasm and/or irony, which indicates either that (a) you're somewhere on the autism disorders spectrum or (b) American.
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Perhaps you just have an innate tone-deafness to sarcasm and/or irony, which indicates either that (a) you're somewhere on the autism disorders spectrum or (b) American.
The problem is that - with your posts - it is hard to tell whether you are being sarcastic/ironic or not, as historically you have been accused of being so and responded adamantly that you weren't - or vice versa. As for my being 'somewhere on the autism disorders spectrum', I'd be worried if I wasn't.
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We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh. There may well be others.
"Fighting to retain their unique identities"? Give me a break. This is Britain, which means that that entails heavy tutting potentially escalating to a pretty stiffly-worded letter to the local paper, I can tell you.
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Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it.
Strip those who've abandoned their homes and their lives on a hope of something better of the last vestiges of anything they have.
Hopefully Schengen will fall as well.
Why? How is the free movement of people, goods and capital a bad thing?
Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants.
Firstly, no.
In other words, citizens from countries that usually obtain protection in the EU account for fully 75% of illicit arrivals by sea this year. Crunch the numbers further and we find that at least 81% of those migrants entering Greece can expect to receive refugee status or some other form of protection in the EU.
http://tinyurl.com/pd48rr9
Secondly, for those that are 'economic migrants'... why are they a bad thing? Why do we have a right to have opportunities for a health income just because we are fortunate enough to have been born in Western Europe? Why are these people supposed to accept poor living conditions, few opportunities and rampant corruption just because they aren't born in a postcode?
Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?).
Because they don't want to be soldiers? Because they want to be plumbers or electricians or doctors or vets or bicycle couriers? Around 60% of the migrants arriving in Europe are men, which is hardly surprising given that they will typically leave first to earn sufficient money to bring their families after them.
If they remain they are targets because they are young men who could, conceivably, take up arms against (or for) Isis or any of the other groups that are taking up arms and turning these places into the sort of war zones that any rational person would not want to be in the middle of.
It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.
What 'cultural and ethnic integrity'? The Roman Empire roved across North Africa, Western Asia and the expanse of Europe two thousand years ago and pretty thoroughly mixed up the 'cultural and ethnic' mix, and that intermixing has consistently continued ever since. European nations - and Europe as a whole - aren't ethnic or cultural monoliths, eternally independent of each other and isolated from influence until refugees sneak in and undermine our purity.
Ethnicity is an irrelevancy. Culture is a continuously growing, changing, mixing milieu, as it always has been. Just look at this paragraph, and pick out the mix of purely linguistic influences that are present: Germanic languages, probably a few bits from Saxon or Angle, some French, all with ancient Greek and Latin threads running through it.
The idea of 'ethnic and cultural' purity, if not explicitly racist, supports the sort of institutional racism and factionalism that is leading to the conflicts in the other regions that people are trying to escape by coming here because they think this is a better place. Maybe they were wrong.
O.
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Good to see your blinkered thinking coming to the fore again, Shakes. We, in the UK, have a two or three cultures that are fighting to retain their unique identities even today; Kernow, Gaelic and Welsh. There may well be others.
And in every case those 'unique identities' have been massively shaped by migration.
A culture that can only survive by putting up walls and preventing the completely normal evolution of cultures and societies thought natural migration is, quite frankly, a culture not worth saving. No let's be charitable, it is a culture that deserves only to exist in a museum.
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Outrider,
As I said, culture and ethnicity is what makes us what we are and for most people it matters. Lose that and we cease to be. As I said, if it was anywhere else in the world apart from Europe and Europeans no one would think anything wrong of it, but then this not happenning by accident. The whole thing has been orchestrated. Europeans are fed up with it which is why anti-immigration parties are making massive gains. May they continue.
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Outriuder,
As I said, culture and ethnicity is what makes us what we are and for most people it matters. Lose that and we cease to be. As I said, if it was anywhere else in the world apart from Europe and Europeans no one would think anything wrong of it, but then this not happenning by accident. The whole thing has been orchestrated. Europeans are fed up with it which is why anti-immigration parties are making massive gains. May they continue.
But the whole point is that for pretty well every European culture where we are now - the culture and ethnicity you think so precious - is a result of centuries of migration, in which earlier cultures have merged, been superseded, been influenced by other cultures and so on.
It is poor thinking to the n-th degree to consider that the history of migration and cultural shift that occurred in the past to create the culture and society we so value is fine and great - yet further evolution in the future is bad.
I wonder how many of those signing up to 'anti-immigration' politics are themselves where they are now due to migration by past generations of their own families. Rather a lot I suspect.
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Well, something needs to be done and the Danish government is doing it. Hopefully Schengen will fall as well. Most of the people coming into Europe are economic migrants. Most are men of fighting age (why are they not fighting ISIS protecting their families and homes?). It seems Europe is being set up for the biggest wave of economic migration we've ever seen, undermining its cultural and ethnic integrity.
What an unpleasant post, your faith is a JOKE! >:(
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What an unpleasant post, your faith is a JOKE! >:(
You're a joke. Piss off, you old bat!
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You're a joke. Piss off, you old bat!
As I said your faith is a JOKE! >:(
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The whole thing has been orchestrated.
By whom?
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By whom?
Anti-Christian forces.
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As I said your faith is a JOKE! >:(
And I said you're a joke. Out of all the posters here you're the worst, the first to condemn anything and anyone that doesn't meet with your batty old approval.
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Anti-Christian forces.
Who are these and where are they supposed to be?
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Who are these and where are they supposed to be?
Neo-con/libs, CIA, Mossad but ultimately the devil.
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Neo-con/libs, CIA, Mossad but ultimately the devil.
You're an utter, utter lunatic. Absolutely no surprise to see the Mossad mentioned, of course.
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CIA and Mossad work as one. The lunatics are the ones that think they're not up to dodgy stuff, like having a hand in the creation of ISIS.
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CIA and Mossad work as one. The lunatics are the ones that think they're not up to dodgy stuff, like having a hand in the creation of ISIS.
Let me guess - RT has the skinny on all this, right?
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Let me guess - RT has the skinny on all this, right?
Among others. I also linked on another thread an Israeli news source quoting an Israeli minister saying they preferred ISIS to Iran and Syria, but you dismissed it off hand.
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Neo-con/libs, CIA, Mossad but ultimately the devil.
Oh dear! ::)
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As I said, culture and ethnicity is what makes us what we are and for most people it matters.
Cultures evolve, constantly, and a major factor of that evolution is the influx of trends and ideas from other places, never more so than in the modern era of instantaneous communication.
Lose that and we cease to be.
No, because you can't 'lose' culture, you can simply change cultures. We don't cease to be, we cease to be part of what we were before and become part of something new, but that's the case regardless of whether ideas come from inside or outside - culture IS change.
As I said, if it was anywhere else in the world apart from Europe and Europeans no one would think anything wrong of it, but then this not happenning by accident.
I see, so other cultures don't matter if they're 'lost', just so long as ours remains, because we're special?
The whole thing has been orchestrated.
What paranoid nonsense.
Europeans are fed up with it which is why anti-immigration parties are making massive gains. May they continue.
European culture - the one that you're so desperate to protect - is the open, warm, welcoming arms of peaceable people. It's freedom of movement, the eradication of artificial boundaries between the one species on Earth that divides itself by language and politics. The irony, here, is that you advocate dismantling the last thirty years and more of cultural evolution in an effort to protect that culture from people who would rather join it than remain in their own.
O.
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Anti-Christian forces.
Anti-Christian forces don't need outside agitators to signal the end of organised Christianity in Europe, organised Christianity is doing a fine job of driving itself into irrelevancy all on its own, ably assisted by the ready availability of good quality education in most places.
To bring in agents from outside whom - as I interpret your thinking - are likely to try to spread Islamic ideals through the continent to supplant Christian ones would only make sense if secularists were somehow losing ground to Christianity. They aren't.
O.
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Anti-Christian forces don't need outside agitators to signal the end of organised Christianity in Europe, organised Christianity is doing a fine job of driving itself into irrelevancy all on its own, ably assisted by the ready availability of good quality education in most places.
Interestingly enough, the newly available good quality education in many parts of the world is actually helping boost the numbers of Christians in many parts of the world. This suggests that the availability or otherwise of good quality education doesn't necessarily have that great an impact on the strength or weakness of a religion, and that there are other factorts at work. Remember that Europe and the West don't have the monopoly on 'what is best for humanity'.
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CIA and Mossad work as one. The lunatics are the ones that think they're not up to dodgy stuff, like having a hand in the creation of ISIS.
And that is likely a scenario as Saudi Arabia becoming a Christian nation within the next 12 hours, ad_o.
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Anti-Christian forces.
Oh no!! AO has turned into Vlad.
Seen any grassy knolls recently guys.
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Cultures evolve, constantly, and a major factor of that evolution is the influx of trends and ideas from other places, never more so than in the modern era of instantaneous communication.
No, because you can't 'lose' culture, you can simply change cultures. We don't cease to be, we cease to be part of what we were before and become part of something new, but that's the case regardless of whether ideas come from inside or outside - culture IS change.
I see, so other cultures don't matter if they're 'lost', just so long as ours remains, because we're special?
What paranoid nonsense.
European culture - the one that you're so desperate to protect - is the open, warm, welcoming arms of peaceable people. It's freedom of movement, the eradication of artificial boundaries between the one species on Earth that divides itself by language and politics. The irony, here, is that you advocate dismantling the last thirty years and more of cultural evolution in an effort to protect that culture from people who would rather join it than remain in their own.
O.
That's bollocks. What you're referring isn't European culture but a self-destruct mentality. Your modern Europe is killing itself and you're actively encouraging it. It might well be too late and the result won't be your multicultural wet dream but an Islamic Europe.
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That's bollocks. What you're referring isn't European culture but a self-destruct mentality. Your modern Europe is killing itself and you're actively encouraging it. It might well be too late and the result won't be your multicultural wet dream but an Islamic Europe.
Guess what - there would have been people with exactly the same attitude in 1966 and in 1916 and in 1866 and in 1816 etc etc. So the great european culture you are so wedded to has evolved constantly to the point we see it today. And it will continually evolve, thankfully, in the future too. Cultures that don't evolve stagnate and eventually die or get replaced. So if you value your culture, let it evolve because that's the best way to preserve it in a real sense, rather than as a museum piece.
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And that is likely a scenario as Saudi Arabia becoming a Christian nation within the next 12 hours, ad_o.
The CIA and Mossad certainly did have a hand in creating ISIS, just as they had a hand in creating Al-Qaeda. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The US, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all had a hand in it. It takes the pressure off them, their regimes and their misdeeds. It consolidates their power by creating instability among their rivals. Don't you also find it strange that Russia did more damage to ISIS within an week than the US did in God knows how long?
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Interestingly enough, the newly available good quality education in many parts of the world is actually helping boost the numbers of Christians in many parts of the world.
Good education is more than just literacy rates and mathematics - unfortunately, that realisation seems to be going out of favour here, as well as in the developing world.
This suggests that the availability or otherwise of good quality education doesn't necessarily have that great an impact on the strength or weakness of a religion, and that there are other factorts at work.
Perhaps it is something that's unique to Western Cultures, which are the only ones we have sufficient figures for to make the judgement - statistics is always on slightly dangerous ground when it moves outside of the sampled areas, but certainly even when ethnic and economic factors are accounted for, educational achievement has been shown to have a fairly strong negative correlation with religiosity. I guess we'll have to wait a while to see if that holds in other places as well.
Remember that Europe and the West don't have the monopoly on 'what is best for humanity'.
No, they don't, but they do have much, much better success rates than other places so far. They have happier, healthier, wealthier, better educated people living in freer, fairer societies; they've provided scientific and technical developments, legal frameworks and concepts like personal liberty and human rights. They've not done that in isolation, and there are still more than enough examples of where they are far from perfect, but whilst we shouldn't dismiss other cultures out of hand as merely 'primitive' and therefore unworthy, we shouldn't fall prey to the idea that all cultures are equally valid and decent.
The West isn't the only possible good way, but it's the best we have at the moment.
O.
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Guess what - there would have been people with exactly the same attitude in 1966 and in 1916 and in 1866 and in 1816 etc etc. So the great european culture you are so wedded to has evolved constantly to the point we see it today. And it will continually evolve, thankfully, in the future too. Cultures that don't evolve stagnate and eventually die or get replaced. So if you value your culture, let it evolve because that's the best way to preserve it in a real sense, rather than as a museum piece.
There is a difference between organic growth, such as a seed growing into a tree and hacking the tree down and planting an altogether new tree. It is the latter which is happening.
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The CIA and Mossad certainly did have a hand in creating ISIS, just as they had a hand in creating Al-Qaeda. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The US, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia all had a hand in it. It takes the pressure off them, their regimes and their misdeeds. It consolidates their power by creating instability among their rivals. Don't you also find it strange that Russia did more damage to ISIS within an week than the US did in God knows how long?
Just because some organisations are wedded to the notion that the enemy of my enemy is my friend (a view I have long derided) doesn't mean that this was somehow a policy aimed at de-christianising Europe. The latter view is frankly nonsense.
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No, they don't, but they do have much, much better success rates than other places so far. They have happier, healthier, wealthier, better educated people living in freer, fairer societies; they've provided scientific and technical developments, legal frameworks and concepts like personal liberty and human rights. They've not done that in isolation, and there are still more than enough examples of where they are far from perfect, but whilst we shouldn't dismiss other cultures out of hand as merely 'primitive' and therefore unworthy, we shouldn't fall prey to the idea that all cultures are equally valid and decent.
The West isn't the only possible good way, but it's the best we have at the moment.
O.
Hear hear, huzzah and a hearty handshake on a superb post.
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Interestingly enough, the newly available good quality education in many parts of the world is actually helping boost the numbers of Christians in many parts of the world. This suggests that the availability or otherwise of good quality education doesn't necessarily have that great an impact on the strength or weakness of a religion, and that there are other factorts at work.
Whatever those other factors may be, we need much more of them.
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There is a difference between organic growth, such as a seed growing into a tree and hacking the tree down and planting an altogether new tree. It is the latter which is happening.
There have always been ebbs and flows in terms of the degree of migration over the years - I don't see this as anything out of the ordinary, it is just as much 'organic' growth as there was before and after WW11 and many other times.
And just to check there aren't double standards going on here - I gather you live in Finland - I trust you are native Finnish born and that all your natural family for generations are also Finnish born. Would seem to be rather unreasonable if this were not the case to be denigrating others (or their families) who have chosen, or been compelled, to migrate to another country, while being in the same boat, so to speak, yourself.
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There have always been ebbs and flows in terms of the degree of migration over the years - I don't see this as anything out of the ordinary, it is just as much 'organic' growth as there was before and after WW11 and many other times.
And just to check there aren't double standards going on here - I gather you live in Finland - I trust you are native Finnish born and that all your natural family for generations are also Finnish born. Would seem to be rather unreasonable if this were not the case to be denigrating others (or their families) who have chosen, or been compelled, to migrate to another country, while being in the same boat, so to speak, yourself.
My mother is Finnish but I was born in London and moved to live eith my mother's people. Perfectly legitimate. The people and the land are part of who I am. The same blood runs through my veins. For some blood is important and my forefathers shed their blood for this land. The same cannot be said of the wave of migrants from the Middle-East. This is not their land, not their culture and neither have they shed their blood for it. They do not shed their blood for their land and then they come here a d sexually assault our women. Yet again over the weekend a group of assylum seekers were arrested for gang raping a woman in Helsinki. That is the wonderful culture they bring.
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My mother is Finnish but I was born in London and moved to live eith my mother's people. Perfectly legitimate. The people and the land are part of who I am. The same blood runs through my veins. For some blood is important and my forefathers shed their blood for this land. The same cannot be said of the wave of migrants from the Middle-East. This is not their land, not their culture and neither have they shed their blood for it. They do not shed their blood for their land and then they come here a d sexually assault our women. Yet again over the weekend a group of assylum seekers were arrested for gang raping a woman in Helsinki. That is the wonderful culture they bring.
Most Brits had ancestors who were immigrants at one time or another!
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Finland created ISIS Ad O, I promise. (snork)
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Most Brits had ancestors who were immigrants at one time or another!
So should be in favour of assaults on local women?
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Anyway, looks as if the Danes have approved these measures.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35406436
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Good education is more than just literacy rates and mathematics - unfortunately, that realisation seems to be going out of favour here, as well as in the developing world.
The places I was referring to are those where quality education has been provided by British and other Western nations' aid agencies.
No, they don't, but they do have much, much better success rates than other places so far. They have happier, healthier, wealthier, better educated people living in freer, fairer societies; they've provided scientific and technical developments, legal frameworks and concepts like personal liberty and human rights. They've not done that in isolation, and there are still more than enough examples of where they are far from perfect, but whilst we shouldn't dismiss other cultures out of hand as merely 'primitive' and therefore unworthy, we shouldn't fall prey to the idea that all cultures are equally valid and decent.
And on who's backs have they managed to do all this? Remember that much of Europe's success and liberality has come on the back of destroying competitors' industries and monopolising their markets by dumping cheap product into them. Our 'freer/fairer societies' are often based on unfair international trade practices and sharp industrial practice. We have societies where individuals are forgotten and ignored, elderly 'put to the side', etc - situations that some of those uneducated and backward societies put us to shame.
The West isn't the only possible good way, but it's the best we have at the moment.
Not sure that that 'best' is that much better then many other cultures.
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The places I was referring to are those where quality education has been provided by British and other Western nations' aid agencies.
And it still tends to be measured in terms of literacy and mathematics, with no eye for any sense of history, geography, politics, ethics etc.
And on who's backs have they managed to do all this? Remember that much of Europe's success and liberality has come on the back of destroying competitors' industries and monopolising their markets by dumping cheap product into them. Our 'freer/fairer societies' are often based on unfair international trade practices and sharp industrial practice. We have societies where individuals are forgotten and ignored, elderly 'put to the side', etc - situations that some of those uneducated and backward societies put us to shame.
Absolutely agree - the outright theft of resources and people from 'the colonies' by European powers (and their inheritors in places like Canada, Australia and the US) still needs to be redressed, and puts an onus on us to support the places that we wronged. One of the ways we can do that is to export not just the material things that we stole, but the cultural harvest that we've reaped from it.
We made our culture better at their expense, the least we can do is share the benefits of that with them.
O.
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And it still tends to be measured in terms of literacy and mathematics, with no eye for any sense of history, geography, politics, ethics etc.
Can't say that the examples I refer to have had this narrowness.
One of the ways we can do that is to export not just the material things that we stole, but the cultural harvest that we've reaped from it.
We made our culture better at their expense, the least we can do is share the benefits of that with them.
Sounds like cultural imperialism, and is no more than the exporting of culture that we Europeans used to practise in the 16th/17th/18th centuries.
After all, many of the ideas that we borrowed, still exist in those other cultures and are sometimes more honed then their borrowed versions.
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My mother is Finnish but I was born in London and moved to live eith my mother's people. Perfectly legitimate.
And in what way would choosing to move to Finland had your mother not have been Finish been illegitimate, which is the clear implication of your consideration of your own circumstances being 'legitimate'.
And you haven't fully answered my question. So your mother is Finnish, what about her parents, their parents and so on. Has her family always lived in Finland or were they perhaps, themselves, migrants to that land hundreds of years ago.
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This is not their land, not their culture and neither have they shed their blood for it.
Hmm - lots of rather nasty connotations there AO - particularly the notion that you need to shed blood to 'join the club'.
But also on the cultural aspect - I thought you religion (which seems to be be inherently a part of your culture) was orthodox christianity, which from a brief check is the religion of just one in one hundred Finns - just 1% - so it is a bit rich for you to claim that your culture is Finnish culture when one of the most important aspects to your life doesn't align with mainstream Finnish culture whatsoever. So there are a greater proportion of muslims in the UK than there are of your religion in Finland. Yet according to you - you are part of the club and they aren't - there is a rather unpleasant smell that emanates from views of that type.
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And in what way would choosing to move to Finland had your mother not have been Finish been illegitimate, which is the clear implication of your consideration of your own circumstances being 'legitimate'.
And you haven't fully answered my question. So your mother is Finnish, what about her parents, their parents and so on. Has her family always lived in Finland or were they perhaps, themselves, migrants to that land hundreds of years ago.
For as long as we've been able to trace back they're from Finland, Karelia to be precise.
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Hmm - lots of rather nasty connotations there AO - particularly the notion that you need to shed blood to 'join the club'.
But also on the cultural aspect - I thought you religion (which seems to be be inherently a part of your culture) was orthodox christianity, which from a brief check is the religion of just one in one hundred Finns - just 1% - so it is a bit rich for you to claim that your culture is Finnish culture when one of the most important aspects to your life doesn't align with mainstream Finnish culture whatsoever. So there are a greater proportion of muslims in the UK than there are of your religion in Finland. Yet according to you - you are part of the club and they aren't - there is a rather unpleasant smell that emanates from views of that type.
Orthodoxy arrived in Finland at least two centuries before Roman Catholicsm and received by the Karelian Finns. Both Roman Catholicism and later Protestantism was imposed upon us by the Swedes.
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Orthodoxy arrived in Finland at least two centuries before Roman Catholicsm and received by the Karelian Finns. Both Roman Catholicism and later Protestantism was imposed upon us by the Swedes.
Johnny-come-lately upstarts and interlopers compared to the pre-existing indigenous pagan religions, of course.
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Orthodoxy arrived in Finland at least two centuries before Roman Catholicsm and received by the Karelian Finns. Both Roman Catholicism and later Protestantism was imposed upon us by the Swedes.
And represents a teeny, tiny proportion of the population of Finland, so hardly part of the prevailing culture.
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For as long as we've been able to trace back they're from Finland, Karelia to be precise.
Well what was she doing in London then - don't tell be she was a migrant in the UK when you were born - surely that (according to your argument) shouldn't have been allowed. And there's you so terribly anti-migrants and yet it would appear your mother was one when you were born - tut, tut.
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Well what was she doing in London then - don't tell be she was a migrant in the UK when you were born - surely that (according to your argument) shouldn't have been allowed. And there's you so terribly anti-migrants and yet it would appear your mother was one when you were born - tut, tut.
I never said I was completely against migration. It's not healthy to completely close oneself off. I am, however, against migration from cultures which are completely opposed to ours, in this case Islamic countries. Islam by its nature imposes itself on everyone else by any means necessary, usually the sword. It's in its very DNA, right from the founder himself. Europe is Christian, or at least it's supposed to be. Apostasy is the reason why we're in this mess. We need to return to the faith which made Europe into the light of the world surrounded by darkness. We need a new Constantine.
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Islam by its nature imposes itself on everyone else by any means necessary, usually the sword.
See also: Christianity.
Europe is Christian, or at least it's supposed to be.
It isn't, and is becoming less so by the year, thank goodness. When given a free choice (historically recent and hard won) people don't want your dismal death cult in their heads or in their lives.
We need to return to the faith which made Europe into the light of the world surrounded by darkness.
Burning bodies give off quite a bit of light don't they, especially en masse.
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Mass migration is the problem. Migration in the past has been more of a dripfeed but when the numbers are in the millions it is possible to see why people have concerns.
Migration from Europe is also less problematic as we are cuturally similar however the further you travel the more diverse this becomes.
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See also: Christianity.It isn't, and is becoming less so by the year, thank goodness. When given a free choice (historically recent and hard won) people don't want your dismal death cult in their heads or in their lives.Burning bodies give off quite a bit of light don't they, especially en masse.
Christianity from its beginning was pacifict whereas Mohammed spread his religion with the sword. And yet again, what has burning heretics have to do with Orthodoxy or even pre-schism Rome?
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Christianity from its beginning was pacifict whereas Mohammed spread his religion with the sword. And yet again, what has burning heretics have to do with Orthodoxy or even pre-schism Rome?
Whether or not christianity aimed at being a non violent religion it, like most other religions, completely failed to achieve that pacifist aim and it and its adherents have been involved in countless acts of religiously motivated violence over the centuries. And this isn't just from centuries ago.
Don't forget that it was orthodox christians who perpetrated the most recent genocide on european soil, just 20 years ago in Serbia and Bosnia. And before you claim that this had nothing to do with the church, think again - the church were willing cheerleader to the ethnic cleansing - indeed Metropolitan Nikolaj, the primate of the Orthodox Church in Bosnia, proclaimed at Easter 1993 that those who accepted the leadership of Karadžić and Mladić were 'following the difficult road of Christ.'
While the murderous leaders regularly made it clear that their plans were religiously motivated:
Mladić stated that the problem of Bosnia would be solved if only the Muslims would convert to Orthodoxy.
Karadžić declared in 1994, 'Our faith is present in all our thinking and decisions, and the voice of the Church is obeyed as the voice of supreme authority'.
Karadžić proclaimed at a rally, 'Tonight even God is a Serb!'
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It isn't, and is becoming less so by the year, thank goodness.
As I've said in the past, I'm not sure that the idea of a 'Christian' (replace with whichever philosophy one cares to choose) nation or continent is even valid. I appreciate that it is a convenient shorthand, but a pretty meaningless one.
When given a free choice (historically recent and hard won) ...
If figures for the early part of the 20th century are anything to go by, I'm not sure that this is a particularly recent development, Shakes. I don't have the sources to hand, but (iiirc) it is thought that, in the early years of the 20th century here in S. Wales, the number of Christians was at about the same level as it is now. Over the years, there has been a steady growth, then fall; then growth, then fall over generations. As for anything being hard won in this arena, it is basically personal choice. One might be forced - by law, as is technically still the case - to practise one's archery at least once a week, but that doesn't mean one is interested in archery. The same goes for religious faith.
... people don't want your dismal death cult in their heads or in their lives.
They're not obliged to belong to the Nazi Party.
Burning bodies give off quite a bit of light don't they, especially en masse.
That certainly seems to have been the experience of the Romans and their treatment of the early church. Not sure that the church has ever managed to provide that level and consistency of illumination over a long period of time for all the horrors committed by the Inquisition and its likes.
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I don't have the sources to hand, but (iiirc) it is thought that, in the early years of the 20th century here in S. Wales, the number of Christians was at about the same level as it is now. Over the years, there has been a steady growth, then fall; then growth, then fall over generations.
Convenient that you don't have 'the sources to hand' because what you are saying is simply non-sense. Unless south wales was exceptionally peculiar (and I don't see why as it was a hot bed of 'Chapel', then the experience in this part of the Uk is likely to be the same as the rest. So largely level but with very gentle decline through the first half of the 20thC and then a much more accelerated and continuing decline from about 1960 onward.
And if you understand the reasons why then you can confidently predict this decline will continue for another 60 years at the very least. The only perturbing factor would be mass immigration of highly religious people - but that isn't actually an increase in the number of christians merely a redistribution from one part of the world to another.
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I never said I was completely against migration. It's not healthy to completely close oneself off. I am, however, against migration from cultures which are completely opposed to ours, in this case Islamic countries. Islam by its nature imposes itself on everyone else by any means necessary, usually the sword. It's in its very DNA, right from the founder himself. Europe is Christian, or at least it's supposed to be. Apostasy is the reason why we're in this mess. We need to return to the faith which made Europe into the light of the world surrounded by darkness. We need a new Constantine.
What culture you represent is as foreign to me any Muslim. In the UK we have marched a path towards more equality for women, homosexuals, people of different races, cultures and the Christian faith in some form has opposed every step.
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What culture you represent is as foreign to me any Muslim. In the UK we have marched a path towards more equality for women, homosexuals, people of different races, cultures and the Christian faith in some form has opposed every step.
But then so have ordinary members of society who have no Christian faith, even no faith at all, jakswan. At the same time, 'the Christian faith in some form' has often been at the forefront of the very developments you mentioned. To dismiss anything on the strength of what it 'in some form' does on certain issues is too simplistic and ultimately unhelpful, as we could dismiss every aspect of and grouping in society if we were to follow this argument to its logical conclusion.
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But then so have ordinary members of society who have no Christian faith, even no faith at all, jakswan. At the same time, 'the Christian faith in some form' has often been at the forefront of the very developments you mentioned.
Very, very few individuals have stood in the way of progress on all these issues, but the organised religions have.
To dismiss anything on the strength of what it 'in some form' does on certain issues is too simplistic and ultimately unhelpful, as we could dismiss every aspect of and grouping in society if we were to follow this argument to its logical conclusion.
On women's rights, gay rights and racial equality the formal religious structures have consistently acted against the forces of progress. In the most recent of times where they've finally, in this country, come to stand closer to the cultural norm, it has resulted in a fragmentation of the church as they move away from what the traditionalists consider the 'true' teachings. Christianity is still, in the main, a homophobic, misogynistic organisation, and they consider that to be divinely inspired. It's questionable whether the Anglican acceptance of women and gay people is part of their Christianity or in spite of it.
O.
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Very, very few individuals have stood in the way of progress on all these issues, but the organised religions have.
Yup!
On women's rights, gay rights and racial equality the formal religious structures have consistently acted against the forces of progress. In the most recent of times where they've finally, in this country, come to stand closer to the cultural norm, it has resulted in a fragmentation of the church as they move away from what the traditionalists consider the 'true' teachings.
Prime (and recent) example:
http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=11445.0
Christianity is still, in the main, a homophobic, misogynistic organisation, and they consider that to be divinely inspired.
I could well have put it better myself, but not nearly as politely.
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What culture you represent is as foreign to me any Muslim. In the UK we have marched a path towards more equality for women, homosexuals, people of different races, cultures and the Christian faith in some form has opposed every step.
This is a very good point. Ad-O's views strike me as alien in the extreme. When I'm in London, I am surrounded by Muslims, neighbours, shopkeepers, school-kids, mums pushing push-chairs; one of my best friends was a Muslim. To me, they are civilized people, whereas Ad-O's stuff sounds primitive and from the backwoods. And also like something out of the 30s.
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This is a very good point. Ad-O's views strike me as alien in the extreme. When I'm in London, I am surrounded by Muslims, neighbours, shopkeepers, school-kids, mums pushing push-chairs; one of my best friends was a Muslim. To me, they are civilized people, whereas Ad-O's stuff sounds primitive and from the backwoods. And also like something out of the 30s.
Yeah, the 1430s.
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Or 1543, Luther, 'The Jews and Their Lies'. Quote, 'the Jews are a base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.'
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Or 1543, Luther, 'The Jews and Their Lies'.
Great minds, wiggles (or is it fools seldom differ? :D Anywho). I was thinking of Luther just a day or two ago, although in relation to Alan Burns rather than ad_o, thinking how much they have in common despite Alan's Catholicism - specifically reason being the devil's whore and what have you. The same appraisal of rational thought as a tool of Old Nick.
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Convenient that you don't have 'the sources to hand' because what you are saying is simply non-sense. Unless south wales was exceptionally peculiar (and I don't see why as it was a hot bed of 'Chapel', then the experience in this part of the Uk is likely to be the same as the rest. So largely level but with very gentle decline through the first half of the 20thC and then a much more accelerated and continuing decline from about 1960 onward.
Sorry to disappoint you, PD; whilst attendance at church and chapel was reasonable, many of those who attended did so because it was the done thing to do, much as was the case in the latter part of the 20th Century. The fact that some 100K people became Christians over the period of a year tells its own story. What is also interesting is that the revival 'coincided with the rise of the labour movement, socialism, and a general disaffection with religion among the working class and youths. (Wikipedia)
And if you understand the reasons why then you can confidently predict this decline will continue for another 60 years at the very least. The only perturbing factor would be mass immigration of highly religious people - but that isn't actually an increase in the number of christians merely a redistribution from one part of the world to another.
The problem with your prediction is that faith doesn't necessarily follow statistical norms. Just because our generation and that following us have decided to discard religion, there is no automatic dscarding of it by the next. Currently, there is a belief amongst many that science is, or at least will be able to answer all our questions. If that certainty becomes less 'certain', then interest in matters spiritual could return and become more influential in people's lives. Similarly, if religious groups are seen to be at the forefront of working on issues that the government can't or choose not to - and in many places, that is what is happening even today, things could change.
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Currently, there is a belief amongst many that science is, or at least will be able to answer all our questions.
Name names.
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Great minds, wiggles (or is it fools seldom differ? :D Anywho). I was thinking of Luther just a day or two ago, although in relation to Alan Burns rather than ad_o, thinking how much they have in common despite Alan's Catholicism - specifically reason being the devil's whore and what have you. The same appraisal of rational thought as a tool of Old Nick.
Of course, Luther conversed with the devil whilst on the cludgie
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Of course, Luther conversed with the devil whilst on the cludgie
Hardly surprising - he had terrible trouble with the Chalfonts, I gather.
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Hardly surprising - he had terrible trouble with the Chalfonts, I gather.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/11/talking-tough-martin-luthers-potty-mouth/
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/22/1098316865171.html
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Very, very few individuals have stood in the way of progress on all these issues, but the organised religions have.
But at the same time, organised religions have often been at the forefront of the developments. For instance, the Baptist tradition in Britain has been ordaining women since the 1920s. The Church of England ordained their first deaconess as early as 1862.
On women's rights, gay rights and racial equality the formal religious structures have consistently acted against the forces of progress.
See above for the matter of women's rights - remembering that matters such as abortion are treated as women's rights but actually impact on men just as much. Racial equality has also been something that the churches have been in the forefront of.
Whilst many like to put gay rights in the same category as these other two, they aren't because they are more of a behavioural issue than a purely genetic one.
Christianity is still, in the main, a homophobic, misogynistic organisation, and they consider that to be divinely inspired.
That might be the case with the Roman Catholic church, but ever since I was born, most Protestant denominations have employed women and non-whites alongside men in the various areas of ministry. They have also encouraged women to take on many of the lay roles without which any church or congregation can't exist.
It's questionable whether the Anglican acceptance of women and gay people is part of their Christianity or in spite of it.
As someone brought up in the Anglican denomnation, I can inform you their acceptance of women clergy is part of their Christianity - men have been pushing for it for over 50 years, and often the stumbling block was the women themselves. So is their acceptance of gay people, who are - after all - human beings like everyone else.
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Christianity from its beginning was pacifict whereas Mohammed spread his religion with the sword. And yet again, what has burning heretics have to do with Orthodoxy or even pre-schism Rome?
Orthodoxy merely happens to be flavour of the month with you pro. tem. but since these things are subject to change whenever the wind changes direction that counts for nought. What Orthodoxy shares with Rome pre or post-schism is the same sclerotic idiocy, the same autocracy and the same tedious, tawdry but ultimately tragic tendency to talk of such nonsensical babble as "heresy" and "schism" - in other words, one set of people here with batty beliefs complaining that another set of people with very slightly different but no less batty beliefs over there don't share their batty beliefs, a dismal phenomenon for which Freud coined the term "the narcissism of small differences."
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So is their acceptance of gay people, who are - after all - human beings like everyone else.
Until and unless they want to get married, right? Since that's a (I quote) "mirage" and a form of "so-called equality" not to be compared to "real marriage."
http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=11463.msg584387#msg584387
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Orthodoxy merely happens to be flavour of the month with you pro. tem. but since these things are subject to change whenever the wind changes direction that counts for nought. What Orthodoxy shares with Rome pre or post-schism is the same sclerotic idiocy, the same autocracy and the same tedious, tawdry but ultimately tragic tendency to talk of such nonsensical babble as "heresy" and "schism" - in other words, one set of people here with batty beliefs complaining that another set of people with very slightly different but no less batty beliefs over there don't share their batty beliefs, a dismal phenomenon for which Freud coined the term "the narcissism of small differences."
You auote Freud and call me batty? The geezer was sick in the head.
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But at the same time, organised religions have often been at the forefront of the developments. For instance, the Baptist tradition in Britain has been ordaining women since the 1920s.
Islam? Hinduism? Shinto? Even then, what proportion of Christianity in the UK is Baptist? What about the Baptist traditions in other countries? And even if ordination was achieved, that doesn't in any way justify the religious depiction of gender roles.
The Church of England ordained their first deaconess as early as 1862.
And yet when did their first lady Bishop arrive?
See above for the matter of women's rights - remembering that matters such as abortion are treated as women's rights but actually impact on men just as much.
No, they don't impact on men anywhere near as much, in part because of social attitudes towards the differences in men's and women's roles in child-care and child-rearing (largely reinforced by traditional religious teachings) and in part because of the biological reality that pregnancy has to involve a woman throughout, whereas men are not required after the first few moments.
Racial equality has also been something that the churches have been in the forefront of.
Really? Is that why so many Christians were actively involved in the slave trade? There is nothing in the scripture that prohibits slavery, whilst there are some references to acceptable behaviour of and towards slaves. Wilberforce - a Christian, admittedly - was motivated to campaign against the slave trade, but I see this as an example of culture civilising religion; certainly, at the time, the establishment church stood against him.
Whilst many like to put gay rights in the same category as these other two, they aren't because they are more of a behavioural issue than a purely genetic one.
Most people put them in the same category as they are areas where people are discriminated against without justification - it doesn't actually matter whether homosexuality is inherited, nurtured, accidental or a combination of all three. Typically, you find, people who try to make that sort of differentiation are people who are trying to justify discrimination - and many of those are religious, particularly Christian.
That might be the case with the Roman Catholic church, but ever since I was born, most Protestant denominations have employed women and non-whites alongside men in the various areas of ministry.
'In various areas'... but not all, right?
They have also encouraged women to take on many of the lay roles without which any church or congregation can't exist.
So they can do the work, but they can't have the say or the influence.
As someone brought up in the Anglican denomnation, I can inform you their acceptance of women clergy is part of their Christianity - men have been pushing for it for over 50 years, and often the stumbling block was the women themselves.
Often the stumbling block was the teaching and the scripture, let's not forget - Timothy 2:12, is it? "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence". You might well suggest that this has been taken out of context, and that may be so, but it doesn't actually change the fact that it has been deployed in that way for centuries, and it's those centuries of formative influence in our culture that modern society has been railing against in order to achieve the first glimmers of parity that you are lauding as somehow equally Christian.
So is their acceptance of gay people, who are - after all - human beings like everyone else.
Their acceptance of gay people to the point where they aren't allowed to get married, and when congregations do allow it they are punished and excluded for the temerity of treating people equally...
O.
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You auote Freud and call me batty?
Got it in one.
The geezer was sick in the head.
Oh did RT tell you that too? Must be legit ::)
Since you seem to be big on dismissing a source on precisely zero grounds (although the fact he was not only a staunch atheist but Jewish doubtless feeds into it), consider Swift - arguably the finest exponent of satire in the English language - and his Big Endians and Little Endians for another example of precisely the same dingbat poltroonery.
Knew what he was on about, did Jonny Swift. And not Jewish or an atheist at all.
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Sorry to disappoint you, PD; whilst attendance at church and chapel was reasonable, many of those who attended did so because it was the done thing to do, much as was the case in the latter part of the 20th Century. The fact that some 100K people became Christians over the period of a year tells its own story. What is also interesting is that the revival 'coincided with the rise of the labour movement, socialism, and a general disaffection with religion among the working class and youths. (Wikipedia)
So as I suspected no evidence at all to back up your claim.
There are plenty of credible sources to back up my view of change in religiosity from 1900-ish to today. Here is one such source - not from a 'wicked' atheist site, but a rather overtly religiously oriented source:
http://faithsurvey.co.uk/download/csintro.pdf
Best to check out figure 2 which indicated church membership as a proportion of the overall population - what it shows is exactly as I described, a relatively slow decline from 1900 to about 1960 (declining from about 33% to about 22%) and then a more rapid decline thereafter, with levels currently at about 10%.
The problem with your prediction is that faith doesn't necessarily follow statistical norms. Just because our generation and that following us have decided to discard religion, there is no automatic dscarding of it by the next. Currently, there is a belief amongst many that science is, or at least will be able to answer all our questions. If that certainty becomes less 'certain', then interest in matters spiritual could return and become more influential in people's lives. Similarly, if religious groups are seen to be at the forefront of working on issues that the government can't or choose not to - and in many places, that is what is happening even today, things could change.
Yes faith does follow such statistical norms - why because there are tiny proportions of people who change faith as adults and their effects broadly cancel out (actually a slight drift toward non religiosity). So if you survey the current cohort of 20 to 30 year olds you can be exceptionally confident that their overall levels of religiosity if you survey them again in 40 years time when they are 60-70 years old will be no higher than it is now.
And as currently each younger age cohort is less religious than the next older (so 20-30 year olds are less religious than 30-40 year olds who are less religious than 40-50 year olds and so on) you can confidently predict religiosity for decades to come. And for there even to be a freeze on the decline (not an increase note), the current 10-20 year old cohort are going to need to be as religious as the current 70-80s who they will replace as adults in the next few years. That isn't going to happen Hope and I think you know it.
As I've said previously the only 'perturbing' effect on this entirely predictable situation is immigration of highly religious (or highly non religious groups) to a level that affects overall trends. But this would have to be at an astonishing level to actually change things - so a good example being the massive influx from Poland in the mid noughties. Did this stop the decline - nope, perhaps slowed it a touch and for a brief few years allowed RCC attendance levels to remain broadly static, but the ever onward overall decline continued.
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But at the same time, organised religions have often been at the forefront of the developments. For instance, the Baptist tradition in Britain has been ordaining women since the 1920s. The Church of England ordained their first deaconess as early as 1862.
Sorry but the notion that christianity was (or is) somehow at the forefront of equality for women is laughable.
Let's not forget that the RCC still refuses to allow any women to be priests and therefore not only are they debarred from that role, they also are from higher levels of the organisation where the power resides - so how many women voted for the current Pope (answers on a postcard).
The CofE has only recently (in equality terms) allowed women to be priests and only in recent months allowed them to be Bishops, and still there isn't equality as they give congregations the right to reject being under a woman Bishop.
Virtually every other organisation has, on a point of policy, ensured that there is no difference in the ability to be in a particular role, or the authority in that role, or remuneration depending on gender. Now many organisations don't achieve equality in practice, albeit believe in it in principle and policy. The major christian churches don't even agree on policy, let alone practice.
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Sorry but the notion that christianity was (or is) somehow at the forefront of equality for women is laughable.
Well, there is good evidence that there were women in leadership of the early Church, there is evidence that women were involved in education and healthcare work under the auspices of the church long before they were within any secular such work. The Salvation Army has appointed both men and women to 'official' positions (no 'ordination' in the S.A.) from its inception. As I pointed out in my previous post, the CofE has ordained deaconesses since the mid-19th century.
Let's not forget that the RCC still refuses to allow any women to be priests and therefore not only are they debarred from that role, they also are from higher levels of the organisation where the power resides - so how many women voted for the current Pope (answers on a postcard).
The problem with this argument is that taking the RCC as representative of the Christian Church as a whole is rather like taking Donald Trump as representative of the American electorate as a whole. That said, even the RCC has given women roles of authority in a host of areas of work. I happen to agree that the RCC has no case NOT to allow women into the priesthood, but ignoring the other things tht it has allowed them to do, long before secular society even existed has to be acknowledged.
The CofE has only recently (in equality terms) allowed women to be priests and only in recent months allowed them to be Bishops, and still there isn't equality as they give congregations the right to reject being under a woman Bishop.
The question then is whether or not the ordained priesthood, male or female, in its current nature is actually a Biblical concept. If it isn't then what value the 'new' equality? Remember that we are told that all are equal in God's sight, that there are no male or female in Christ and that the church as a whole is a 'royal priesthood'.
Virtually every other organisation has, on a point of policy, ensured that there is no difference in the ability to be in a particular role, or the authority in that role, or remuneration depending on gender. Now many organisations don't achieve equality in practice, albeit believe in it in principle and policy. The major christian churches don't even agree on policy, let alone practice.
I think I prefer actuality than theoretical policy.