The wrong end of the telescope

[Samuel]

Outrider

I think there is a fundamental difference between how we understand religion. I think I can see where you are coming from but I actually find it hard to fully assimilate. I'm going to be thinking on this for a while I think. Good stuff!

It probably revolves around the ideas that religion is based on nothing and contributes nothing, both of which I regect. Not because I believe in their supernatural claims, but because they are intrinsically human. To me they are simply expressions of the various ways people attempt to solve the problems of living life. That is their power, for good or ill. Dismissing them because their claims can not be substantiated seems to miss the point. I can't do better than that to articulate it.

I reckon that's it from me on this thread. I'm leaving confused, as usual. Thanks for the brief chat outrider  'twas a goodun (for me anyway!)

[Samuel]

Shaker, BA, I hope you have both realised my reply was sarcastic. I just couldn't be bothered to get dragged into a petty exchange and it seemed a quick way of sidestepping it.

I dont know what I sound like on here, or what people think of me! If I sound like a smug Pratt then fine. I can live with that. Maybe I am really like that. You'd have to ask my wife. All any of us have of our fellow posters is text on a screen. Any opinions we have on each other really don't amount to much. That goes for mine as well. Even though they are superior opinions 

[BashfulAnthony]

Shaker, BA, I hope you have both realised my reply was sarcastic. I just couldn't be bothered to get dragged into a petty exchange and it seemed a quick way of sidestepping it.

I dont know what I sound like on here, or what people think of me! If I sound like a smug Pratt then fine. I can live with that. Maybe I am really like that. You'd have to ask my wife. All any of us have of our fellow posters is text on a screen. Any opinions we have on each other really don't amount to much. That goes for mine as well. Even though they are superior opinions 

What you don't realise is, that I am a cuddly, highly popular, nice guy, off this forum.

[Shaker]

Shaker, BA, I hope you have both realised my reply was sarcastic. I just couldn't be bothered to get dragged into a petty exchange and it seemed a quick way of sidestepping it.

I dont know what I sound like on here, or what people think of me! If I sound like a smug Pratt then fine. I can live with that. Maybe I am really like that. You'd have to ask my wife.

I will do, at the weekend.

All any of us have of our fellow posters is text on a screen. Any opinions we have on each other really don't amount to much. That goes for mine as well. Even though they are superior opinions 

Snap! 

[Samuel]

I'm sure you are nice and cuddly BA but on here you are often shrill and unpleasant.

But listen, I don't expect you to give two flying figs about what I think of you. Like I said, I am just text on a page.

[Samuel]

I will do, at the weekend

 

[BashfulAnthony]

I'm sure you are nice and cuddly BA but on here you are often shrill and unpleasant.

But listen, I don't expect you to give two flying figs about what I think of you. Like I said, I am just text on a page.

Very harsh.  I prefer: accommodating, clever,   ethical, helpful, meritorious, refined,  temperate:  but, then, not wishing to blow my own trumpet!

[Nearly Sane]

Shaker, BA, I hope you have both realised my reply was sarcastic. I just couldn't be bothered to get dragged into a petty exchange and it seemed a quick way of sidestepping it.

I dont know what I sound like on here, or what people think of me! If I sound like a smug Pratt then fine. I can live with that. Maybe I am really like that. You'd have to ask my wife. All any of us have of our fellow posters is text on a screen. Any opinions we have on each other really don't amount to much. That goes for mine as well. Even though they are superior opinions 

Just to note that I would certainly count Gonnagle and Gordon as excellent friends having met them frequently irl. Also met King Oberon a couple of times and he is an excellent chap. And met Fast flint and Lapsed Atheist and wigginhall.

[Outrider]

It probably revolves around the ideas that religion is based on nothing and contributes nothing, both of which I regect. Not because I believe in their supernatural claims, but because they are intrinsically human. To me they are simply expressions of the various ways people attempt to solve the problems of living life.

Religion isn't based on nothing, but what it's based on is internal rather than external - people don't profess 'gods' because of gods, but rather because of a want or need within them. We need to appreciate and understand what those wants and needs are, but it's amply demonstrated that it's possible to build communities - even nation-sized communities - that don't require that belief with its negative potential.

That is their power, for good or ill. Dismissing them because their claims can not be substantiated seems to miss the point. I can't do better than that to articulate it.

And this is the danger that comes from my view; that dismissing people's religious claims, given how devoted they are to them, is interpreted as somehow dismissing them. It's cheap talk to say 'all people have worth', but it's much harder to convince them that you believe that, especially when you're targetting pretty fundamental world-views that they have.

O.

[Jack Knave]

If you don't have an overall plan, an aim and goal, and just do what is myopically in front of you, then you end up going round and round in circles and that would be pointless, and a waste of energy. You need the intelligence to have a reasonable birds eye view of things.