sharon45

Another belief.

I liked this: "natural evils". Evil really is from a religious belief. Nature is like a machine with neither a good or bad agenda.

Clete

Cool. Thanks for explaining what you meant. I agree that things should be completely hammered out as well. And I think the best way to do that is for all side to try and understand where the others are coming from (my "catching more flies with honey") instead of everyone antagonizing each other.

Clete

How so? My experience with born-agains has been nearly 100% negative, I'd love to hear of some counterexamples to my experience.

Helpmabob

Hi Oolon - I have great faith in your ability to counter-refute my assertions like a good’un. However, my point was that the programme was a solid hour of one-way traffic - that much you will find hard to deny. But this method only tells half a story, maximum. He obviously has allies in Channel 4 who see his point of view.

Hi Clete - For example, they said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But they obviously hadn’t met many Christians. Although whilst I am not saying that my experience has been 100% positive, as we Christians are by no means perfected, neither am I about to judge another’s behaviour.

JPD

Yet you do, in one sense, do exactly that. You talk about spreading the "good news". You assume that this is good for people because they are missing something. This is a judgement that you make all the time.

JPD

Yes, what would be much better would be to pussy foot around saying that, although religious belief has created some problems, most of the followers of any given major world religion are alright really. They believe some weird crap, and can be rather ignorant about processes such as, oh, evolution say, but that is up to them.

The problem is that these weird, completely groundless speculations, are thrust into our faces at every possible opportunity. Every Easter and Christmas is a reminder. I would love to see these being renamed as something neutral. The same thing goes for swearing on the Bible in court. Well if you don't want to hear the truth then perhaps this is a good idea!

Dawkins let the people speak for themselves. He chose influential individuals. He asked questions. He gave his view and they gave theirs.
What did you expect? 10 minutes of hymns and a sermon in the middle just to keep the believers happy? Wake up please.

Oxymoron

Not quite. My argument would be that religion has undermined morality and legitimised deep prejudice.

"Evil" is just a label stuck on things we don't like. Natural disasters deeply unfortunate, and part and parcel of existing in a dynamic and impersonal universe. Whether you stick the label on them or not is up to you, but there is little to be gained in doing so.

Clete

"Hello indigenous population of a third world country. Would you like some health care? Education? Clothing? Food? Well okay, but first you have to renounce the religion and culture of your ancestors and come to Jesus."

Helpmabob, are you saying there is such a thing as a "free lunch" with Christians? I'm sorry but I have to disagree.

Yahzi

Erm... I would say evil is the conscious decision of a moral agent to violate the fairness principle.

Whereas hurricanes and tigers are not moral agents, so they are not evil, merely tragic.

Oxymoron

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was getting at. But people stick the label "evil" on lots of things (often wrongly) - myself included. When I was writing a software development book, I once described a bug as "truly evil". A reviewer came back on this saying "Maybe you could describe Hitler as truly evil, but not a bug". He hadn't, of course, seen the bug wot I saw