The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #150410   Message #3504947
Posted By: Jim Carroll
17-Apr-13 - 03:32 PM
Thread Name: BS: Non-belief in a god is not a religion
Subject: RE: BS: Non-belief in a god is not a religion
"Compare Frans de Waal and Richard Dawkins"
You people really are something else
What you seem to be objecting to is that Dawkins and de Waal are indulging in something that happens in every pulpit in every country in the world where religion is practiced - the difference being that up to comparatively recently it was compulsory for the vast majority of believers to attend these gatherings on the threat of public humiliation and even physical violence (one of our elderly singer friends has spent her life with a burst eardrum from a blow administered by a priest for attending a dance that went on past midnight, into Sunday morning).
It doesn't auger well for the rest of us if you evangelical inquisitors ever manage to get a voice in the world.
I don't attend church - feel free not to listen to Dawkins or de Waal if you don't wish to.
I've just realised that, despite my father's experiences at the hands of the church, had I written something like "sky fairies and bogey men" while he was alive, as I did above, I wouldn't have been able to sit down for a week.
I was taught tolerance, a fact which stood me good stead when I started recording singers in Ireland thirty odd years ago. Many of the people we met were devout Christians who never have dreamed of questioning or interfering with our beliefs (or non-beliefs, as you bigots would describe them".      
I get on fine with my Christian neighbours, but when you religious, bullying (not to mention deeply dishonest) fanatics get going it really gets to me.
You need to get into your thick, superstition-riddled skulls that some of the most viciously bloodshed in the world today is done in the name of God, or Allah, or Jehovah, or whatever brand you care to label your toxic product - religious persecution nowadays means persecution by the religious.
Should this planet ever get itself into a major war again it is quite likely to be a 'Holy' one.
How about a little tolerance, love and understanding yourself, eh lads

Jim Carroll