Spotted by chance today, I thought it interesting.

[Hope]

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.

[Dicky Underpants]

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.

[OH MY WORLD!]

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?

[Shaker]

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?

[Dicky Underpants]

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.

[Nearly Sane]

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.

[Nearly Sane]

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.

[Nearly Sane]

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.

[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

[Hope]

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.

[ippy]

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

[Nearly Sane]

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

[Nearly Sane]

Oh dearie me, Hope, this is revisionist revisionist history. No one is claiming that disease did not have an effect, so strawman.

[Nearly Sane]

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

[Owlswing]

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.

[OH MY WORLD!]

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.

[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

[Dicky Underpants]

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"

[Hope]

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.

[Hope]

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.

[Shaker]

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.

[Nearly Sane]

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

[Hope]

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.

[Hope]

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. 

[Shaker]

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.