Would you say you were a rabid antitheist?
I already said, in the sentence where I mentioned it, that I wouldn't, but then what other people tell you about their stance doesn't really seem to get through to you very often, does it?
Some people would wear that with a badge of pride and I would say they the rabid antitheists, were you to be one, are bloody lucky to have you.
Some people? Really? Are these the people that rocked up to Donald Trumps inauguration? Those people....
What I think we are all victim of is the misrepresentative premises used by the Humanists UK and the NSS. Namely that there haven't been, for hundreds of years, the lion share of seats reserved for secular Lords.
Life peers were introduced, as I recall, in the late 1950s, so for hundreds of years in fact the Lords the lion's share of the seats was for entrenched families of influence, but don't let a little thing like reality get in the way of your nonsense. NOW, yes, the majority of the seats are representative of everyone in equal measure given that they are secular; that still leaves you failing to adequately justify the continued presence of the Lords Spriritual representing a portion of a continuously diminishing minority of the nation.
Well perhaps this would be less of a problem if one of the privilages of the Lords Secular/temporal has which the Lords spiritual don't have and that's the privilage of extending it's membership.
So your logical response to 'you've still failed to justify the existence of the Lords Spiritual' is to complain that you can't expand the tradition...
What? That view has never formed the main part of the rationale I think.
It's the foundation of your continued railing against the Lords Temporal, that as 'secular' representatives they need something explicitly religious to counter the explicitly atheist stance that only you appear to be aware of.
Human beings a part spiritual and part secular, they are complimentary.
No, we aren't, secular and spiritual are ideas about different things. That's like saying we're part sportsman and part liver. Secular is about how we organise institutions, and does not exclude or privilege the notion of spiritual. As to whether humans are 'part spiritual', you could believe that, but I'd be inclined to disagree.
They are not considered opposite, hence 26 Lords spiritual and around a thousand secular places reserved for the secular.
So if they aren't opposed, why can't the seats of the Lords Spiritual be absorbed into the broader house and represented from amongst the broad representation of the Lords? Why does the CofE need special reserved seats?
And no one is purely spiritual and they also have a secular side...even Bishops.
See above, where you said that spiritual and secular are not opposites? You need to remember that two sentences later when you write nonsense like this.
We will have to disagree on that one.
You can disagree if you want, but unless you can justify that disagreement that's just you being contrary because it doesn't help your arbitrary cause. The point of secularism is that it represents everyone equally - if you think a group is somehow 'excluded' then make your case, but you need to make the case before you can justify things like the Lords Spiritual as a defence against that inequality.
When I first became a Christian I would have been happy to believe that your person entering the Lords or most of them would be people who knew they had and cultivated their spiritual side.
I would be happy to never here anyone witter on about 'spiritual' again, and instead focus on reality, but there you go.
As it turned out, People arrived on the scene who wanted to repudiate spirituality and govern and be governed on the principles of scientism and who called for a public repudiation and humiliation of spirituality and worse, people who acknowledged their spirituality.
Really? Who? When? In the Lords? Are you sure?
Sinister because of how they want the place to run, that they assume are at the forefront of rights, that spirituality denies them stuff, that only they can vouchsafe the good ( a kind of militant self righteousness ), Dishonest in how they have distorted the actual privilage going on in the House of Lords etc, etc. And frankly wanting a transfer of church soft power in their favour when they are still in a smaller minority than those they seek to receive transferred authority from.
The history of equal rights in this country over the last, say, 150 years does have The Church of England fairly consistently on the side of maintaining unjustifiable restrictions on people's freedom, maintaining inequality, and if you're looking at the Lords Spiritual being representative of the broader Christian (i.e. worldwide Anglican, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox etc) or religious (i.e. Islamic) stance then they are hardly pushing at the forefront of the battles against homophobia, transphobia, misogyny or even, in some instances, racism.
The lords secular and temporal are only there for there secular input, You have already admitted that the focus should be entirely on the secular to the exclusion of the spiritual
Secular does not exclude spiritual, it just doesn't afford it special privilege.
And there I think we have exactly what the game is,
Yes, that's where 'the game' is, where EVERYONE is represented, and no particular outlook or group has a special privilege. Now, do you have a better attempt at justifying that current special privilege that the Church of England has in the form of its 26 reserved seats, in addition to the number of Christians elected as Lords Temporal?
O.
