4 Replies to “Discuss… or not”

  1. These kinds of artcles bug me. Faith or the lack of it is a personal choice and should be kept as such. Personal! It bugs me that it has to be talked about, defended or whatever. It shouldn’t have to be. It’s my business if I want to sweep my driveway on a Sunday morning. Should I dress nice while sweeping to make it look like I’m going to church right after? It bugs the hell out of me when in a neighborly conversion someone has complimented me on how I take care of my home. I say, well, I love my home, I want to take care of it. This nice neighbor then asks if I have a second home. Puzzled, I say, no, one is enough. Then the truth comes out and they start talking about their second home is the house of God and would I like to make that my second home. She then invited me to worship with them. I picked up my broom and said I was busy and had somewhere else to go. Why do the faithful, church-going people feel they have to get everyone under their wings to follow them and their beliefs? Why do they feel you are a lost soul if you’re sweeping on a Sunday instead of getting ready for church? As long as someone doesn’t want to kill me, children or animals, I don’t care what they believe in or what church they go to.

  2. Peter A Leonard writes:

    “Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks. They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.”Ulysses“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManJoyce highlights the importance of Thoth, God of learning, invention and magic, usually depicted with an Ibis’s head crowned with horns of the moon; he is keeper of the divine archives, patron of history, and the herald, scribe, clerk of the gods (“Ra hath spoken, Thoth hath written). When the dead are judged before Osiris, it’s Thoth who weighs the heart and proclaims it wanting or not wanting.I have no more problem with Thoth than I do with a primitive Hebrew skygod (or Arab skygod, come to that). The problems come, when they come, out of the voices of the highpriests, who would have us believe their particular god is the TRUE GOD!! Suddenly it’s all a power thing. Everyone must convert…or else! I think of the “blessed” Mother Teresa whose belief in the spiritual goodness of poverty meant funding for the poor was diverted to missionary work with a view to converting more souls to Catholicism. She devoted so much of her time to baptising people from other religions, one could be forgiven for believing she was on some sort of bonus scheme…!It is no different when a modern scientist proclaims “this is it! This is the answer! Science has all the answers!!” We’re s’posed to think: Yes, yes, it’s the true god, infallible of course. This is where we must worship! Forgetting perhaps Chernobyl still glows in the dark and still kills people daily.I have huge respect for Jainism and Buddhism, too, I believe to be robust in the message it delivers to its followers. Ultimately, I feel, there’ll always be more questions than answers. People should be free to believe what they will – providing they don’t force that belief down anyone else’s throat. Equally, we should all be free not to believe in anything –that’s a right (or should be)!

  3. I have no more problem with Thoth than I do with a primitive Hebrew skygod (or Arab skygod, come to that). The problems come, when they come, out of the voices of the highpriests, who would have us believe their particular god is the TRUE GOD!! Suddenly it’s all a power thing. Everyone must convert…or else! I think of the “blessed” Mother Teresa whose belief in the spiritual goodness of poverty meant funding for the poor was diverted to missionary work with a view to converting more souls to Catholicism. She devoted so much of her time to baptising people from other religions, one could be forgiven for believing she was on some sort of bonus scheme…!I’m not a fan of missionary work, at all. My middle name is St.John. To my horror I discovered I was named after the vilest and most despicable character in Jane Eyre. You know the one.I think, as you say, the ‘true god’ belief is the big problem. One way or another it rears its head, and causes conflict.

  4. As long as someone doesn’t want to kill me, children or animals, I don’t care what they believe in or what church they go to. I basically agree that faith or lack of it is a private thing and should on no account be discussed publicly. Having said that, I’ve done quite a lot of discussion of it on my blog over the years. I probably have no excuse, but if I do have one it’s that nobody has to read my blog.I attempted to write about it a week or two ago, but it seems like ideas, independent of people, have a rabid tendency to fight each other to death. Ideas always seem to think that the world is not big enough for different ideas. If people simply never expressed any ideas, they might find each other quite pleasant. Oh… if they didn’t have to share the same room as each other, either. But, sadly, one way or another, people do tend to let on what their beliefs are. When that happens I think discussion is preferable to persecution.

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