Gabriella,
Anecdotes do not constitute data. It’s clearly the case that those immersed in religion as children are more likely to be religious adults than those who are not. Multiple sources (legislature, education, media etc) all contribute to that to varying degrees.
Firstly, it looks pretty desperate when you have to piggyback off Davey's anecdote response and try to run with it. I never said anecdotes constituted data, nor was I presenting data. But if you are confused and you want to reassure yourself, yes you have correctly understood that anecdotes do not constitute data. Stunning piece of deduction on your part.
Secondly, how does this answer the point that CofE numbers and influence are falling?
Again, anecdotes do not constitute data. You’re also setting up a false binary there: religious education good; secular education bad.
Again I never claimed to present data. How am I setting up that binary - I'd be interested to see you quote me given that I support secular education but I don't have a problem with faith schools existing as a choice of school if they are regulated by Ofsted and if their exam results are good.
Oh, and surely “preventing a child from having a choice” is what happens when the parent insists on a faith school isn’t it? Why not wait until she’s 18 when she can make up her own mind? Would you be as sanguine about parents sending their kids to, say, Marxist-Leninist schools (if there were such a thing)? Why not?
I/m fine with a Marxist-Lenin school if it is regulated by Ofsted, taught pretty much the same curriculum as non-Marxist-Lenin schools, did not create extremists who break the law of the land, and got good exam results. I am fine with parents making choices for their children about the school they go to - no need to wait until the child is 18 to start their education. Plus sending them to a non-MArxist-Lenin school is also making a choice for your child because other schools have their own particular ethos and culture.
Because…?
Because they hold a different opinion from you and are not as bothered about religious privilege as you seem to be and probably have more important issues to worry about than the Archbishop.
Nice use of the non sequitur there. What I actually said was, “This from a paid up member of a faith that embraces killing people for drawing cartoons of its “prophet”?” (in response to a comment you’d made about free speech by the way). That, “then as a "paid up member" of this faith I must be embracing killing people for drawing cartoons” though is an invention all of your own.
Seriously? No but seriously though - you're just embarrassing yourself by trying to weasel your way out of explaining the reason for you linking my faith to a faith that you claim embraces killing people for drawing cartoons. Still waiting for an explanation of what you meant when you said I am a paid up member of that faith? Given that my faith does not embrace killing people for drawing cartoons. No it isn't an invention of my own - but you already knew that.
You do this often by the way. I carefully refer to “some” Muslims (or whatever) and you reply with a, “so you think all Muslims…” etc. It’s your choice, but it does you no credit.
No I don't by the way, and it does you no credit to pretend I do. But your choice. If someone writes "some Muslims" as opposed to generalising about Muslims or Islam then I am fine to leave it at that, especially given I have criticised some Muslims for their behaviour and when I write about Islam I say it is my personal understanding of Islam. You must be getting desperate as you appear to have resorted to making stuff up.
Oh dear. Why are you doing this to yourself? The point was that “faith” is the common underpinning to certainty, that thinking faith is an epistemically valid method is bad thinking, and that so therefore acting on it accordingly is a bad idea. What those acts happen to entail (gay rights, gender equality etc) is a secondary matter.
You’re struggling with the difference between principle and content here.
No, what I am doing is saying that the principle worth upholding here is that people whose faith leads them to be certain that God exists and who act accordingly, are not a problem to society unless they are breaking the law of the land, in which case there are processes to deal with law-breaking. That you have a personal problem with society making room for faith just means that in a liberal democracy you are free to voice your opinions as are the people of faith.
Please try to keep up. When people think their actions are validated by “holy” texts then they’re acting on faith. If there was reason or logic or evidence or anything instead to support them then the faith bit would be redundant. And when those people make claims of objective fact about the world – “God is” for example – then faith is all they have. That’s why in those cases faith is the beginning and the end of the matter.
I suspect you don't really understand how thoughts and morals work. People derive an ought based on a mix of emotional responses and reason - intuition, beliefs and the sub-conscious play a large part in how people act and then justify their choices and actions. But given you believe that people choose their beliefs, I'm not really surprised by your muddled thinking.
See above for my falsification of it. I might expect to be carried around in a sedan chair while Felicity Kendall feeds me grapes, but that’s not the point is it.
Except you haven't falsified anything so there is nothing to see.
Again – using pejoratives like “nonsensical” with no attempt to argue them just makes you look out of your depth.
Wishful thinking on your part.
When authority figures have their views privileged in the main offices of state and society, in what way do they not provide intellectual cover for those who would go just that bit further? Think of the rise of the far right in the US if that helps, emboldened as they are by their President to think, “Hey, you know what? Maybe my racism isn’t so bad after all”.
Firstly, you have used your "intellectual cover" nonsense on here to describe my posts when I am arguing against your position - and I am not an authority figure.
Secondly, you need to post a statement by Trump that you think provides intellectual cover for the far right and then show how that corresponds to statements made by Welby if you me to take your claim seriously.
Fancy beating up a gay man on the street tonight? Well. If those clerics I keep seeing on the telly think they’re “sinful”, an “issue” etc then maybe it’s not such a big leap to violence after all.
For violent people in the habit of committing assaults, it is rarely a big leap to violence. The rest is just speculation. We'll just have to agree to disagree that Welby provides intellectual cover for gay-bashers. His right to express an opinion has not been curtailed by your speculations so not much point continuing to argue a point we are unlikely to agree on.
Possibly you missed the extreme members of your faith recently cheer led by their imams into throwing gay men off tall buildings? Would they have been quite so emboldened do you think if instead those imams had told them that those acts were despicable?
What has that got to do with Welby's non-violent statements? Try and stick to the point rather than rambling off on another irrelevancy just because you can't back up your claims about Welby with any actual evidence.
So? The point rather is that it’s the best way they can think of at least to try to slow the process down. If not, why bother with religiously segregated schools for primary age children (primary age children!) at all? Not for nothing do the Jesuits say, “Give me the child until seven and I’ll give you the man.”
The reason for bothering is that someone who has decided to set up a school, regulated by Ofsted, decides they want to run the school in the way that they think will achieve good outcomes for its pupils, in collaboration with those pupils' parents and the school governors. Meanwhile other people running schools, also regulated by Ofsted, have other ideas about how to run a school to provide the best outcome for pupils in the opinion of its teachers, governors and parents. You then end up with a choice of schools regulated by Ofsted, with a choice of ethos that suits the needs of diversity, which I think is a better outcome than not having a choice.
Don’t be silly. Find me one who doesn’t also say, “but if the facts or evidence changed than I’d have to change my mind”. Now find me a cleric who says that about “God”. You’re just dicking around with the ambiguity in the word “faith” here.
Are you stating that such a cleric does not exist or are you admitting that it is possible that a cleric exists who had doubts and would change his mind about God but you expect me to locate him? Strangely enough I have better things to do with my time.
Your apparent perception that everyone on both sides of the Brexit argument are prepared to consider facts that contradict their strongly-held beliefs is either you being naive or dishonest.
You’re bordering on dishonesty here. Suggest you read through what’s actually been said from both sides.
You’ve explained nothing. Getting you to address an argument that’s actually been made is like trying to push fog through a keyhole.
Right back at you. And to be honest this is getting boring just going over the same arguments.
You’re not “pointing it out”, you’re asserting it – wrongly so as it happens. Take the statement “God is” – in what way is that not entirely a faith statement? What counter-arguments even conceptually could be used against it?
You do realise that that’s just the same irrelevance you tried before repeated? Why would people “not flocking” to them address the issue that they still have many more adherents and recruits than they would if they were just a private members’ club? That secular societies may be increasingly able to see through their claims doesn’t change that one jot.
Making unqualified and un-argued assertions isn’t addressing something, as I suspect deep down you know.
Given that I support free speech too, perhaps you’d be good enough to stop accusing me of trying to stifle it when I argue that sometimes the weight given to some speakers is unsupportable, and that their faith-based claims of fact are epistemically worthless.
Actually as a general principle yes it does. It’s what that certainty represents that troubles me – if you think it’s valid in one area that’s relatively harmless, how would you argue against it in areas that are anything but? It’s the privileging of faith over guessing as a general principle rather than its objects on a case-by-case basis that’s the problem.
The issue isn’t about unicorns. Or gods. It’s about faith and certainty as a general principle. For some reason I can never get you to address this; you prefer instead endlessly to dive down rabbit holes of specific examples of what that certainty might concern. Why?
See above.
No you didn’t. You just argued that it wasn’t particularly effective given the dwindling numbers. You didn’t though address the relevant issue of the difference between membership of a deeply embedded church and of a private members’ club.
Why not?
But you still (presumably) think the Quran contains inerrant facts. And presumably too you think that there are correct and incorrect interpretations of those facts. And if instead you think that all is interpretation, then what use have you for a supposed inerrant text in the first place when we’d have no way to know for sure its true meaning?
Stop avoiding. I’m asking you whether you think that authority figures whose opinions are afforded special status in all the main institutions of public discourse are likely to be more successful (or less unsuccessful, it doesn’t matter which) than they would be if they were just the heads of private members’ clubs.
It’d be good if you’d stop ducking and diving around this and just benefit us with a simple yes or no.
Wrong question. It’s not that they “prevent the democratic will of the people” at all; its that the democratic will of the people is to a significant degree determined in the first place by the influences upon it – legal, educational, media, whatever.
Actually often they don’t – they’ll quote Leviticus to validate their homophobia for example – but that’s not the point in any case. Again, you’re confusing the object of a belief (god, homosexuality = sinful etc) with the principle of faith as a rationale for it.
Would it kill you finally actually to address that?
Seriously? You want me to find a court case when the homophobic thug used as his defence, “It was that Justin Welby wot made me do it”? Seriously though? We're talking about a phenomenon here – and a well documented one when those in authority embolden the societies they influence or control. Do you think that those fanatics would have thrown gay men off buildings without religious authority, that the Germans would have become Jew-haters without the nazis in charge?
Seriously though?
If you give me your address I’ll arrange to have an, “Anecdote ≠ data” T-shirt sent to you in reverse writing so you can be reminded of it every time you clean your teeth.
And finally, your:
Was in response to my:
“Now imagine too that we lived in a country where the arguments from ASH (the anti-smoking people) were called "blasphemous", they were locked up (or worse) etc. How many more smokers would there be then do you think?” (emphasis added)
Why do you do this kind of thing?
As I said this is getting boring just going over the same arguments. Your imaginations about getting locked up for blasphemy in relation to smoking are relevant why exactly?
Also not seeing the relevance of a violent Nazi government and Welby's ponderings in a liberal democracy with rule of law. I suggest you wear the t-shirt yourself and write “My imagination, flights of fancy about Nazis and my unevidenced claims ≠ data” in reverse writing so you can be reminded of it every time you clean your teeth.
Are you asking me to compare the influence of the CofE with that of a private members club, such as the Freemasons? Or are you asking me to compare the CofE's influence to the influence of Sky or Apple or Google or Twitter? Do you have any data ?
