RIP Chris Hitchens.

[MDV]

 :(

Sad loss of, agree with him or not, a fearless and honest voice.

Imma go get some whisky and revive one of my old online hobbies for the evening - pwning the living shite out of creationists - in his honour.

[Chris]

One of the finest orators of our time - A great mind rests; a great voice falls silent.

Meh, I'm at a loose end - I might join in a bit of creationist bashing tonight too ;-)

[plastercaster]

mere hours later... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16224394
 :lol:

Not always a man I agreed with, but unfailingly interesting. And I can't argue with that.

[Chris]

mere hours later... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16224394
 :lol:

Christian country my a*se!  I'm proud that we're not a christian country and that we don't have real christian values!

[nfe]

mere hours later... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16224394
 :lol:

Christian country my a*se!  I'm proud that we're not a christian country and that we don't have real christian values!

Our Head of State is head of the national Church and 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords, of course we're a Christian country, regardless of what the majority of people would call themselves (which would be Christian anyway). Further, "real" Christian values fit in pretty much fine with any reasonable secular morality, with the possible exception of attitudes to promiscuity.

I'm an atheist, and relatively hostile to modern Western organised religion, but it's annoying when people denigrate something they don't have a proper grasp of. Hitch was great, but very guilty of using a very specific, quite modern approach of a minority to their scriptures as his only example when making an argument against faith. Possibly in part because he (like Dawkins, Dennet etc) tended only to debate fairly "fundamentalist" (a misnomer, they miss the fundamentals of their holy writings)  opposition.

A great loss, though. Always an articulate, interesting and spirited character.

[Philly Q]

Our Head of State is head of the national Church and 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords, of course we're a Christian country, regardless of what the majority of people would call themselves (which would be Christian anyway). Further, "real" Christian values fit in pretty much fine with any reasonable secular morality, with the possible exception of attitudes to promiscuity.

I agree with all of that.  It's a Christian country, albeit one with very few actual Christians in it - in the sense of observing their "faith" in any way or even actually believing in God.

I do wonder what it'll be like in about 30 years, when the last generation who were raised as "habitual" churchgoers will have died off.  I suppose the Catholic church may still be relatively strong, even if the Anglicans go into terminal decline.

[Chris]

mere hours later... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16224394
 :lol:

Christian country my a*se!  I'm proud that we're not a christian country and that we don't have real christian values!

Our Head of State is head of the national Church and 26 bishops sit in the House of Lords, of course we're a Christian country, regardless of what the majority of people would call themselves (which would be Christian anyway). Further, "real" Christian values fit in pretty much fine with any reasonable secular morality, with the possible exception of attitudes to promiscuity.

I'm an atheist, and relatively hostile to modern Western organised religion, but it's annoying when people denigrate something they don't have a proper grasp of. Hitch was great, but very guilty of using a very specific, quite modern approach of a minority to their scriptures as his only example when making an argument against faith. Possibly in part because he (like Dawkins, Dennet etc) tended only to debate fairly "fundamentalist" (a misnomer, they miss the fundamentals of their holy writings)  opposition.

A great loss, though. Always an articulate, interesting and spirited character.

Just because we have a figurehead who also happens to be head of a church and we have representation in the house of lords that are religious, this does not make us a christian nation.  We may also be nominally christian as a country, but since the majority of citizens are not practising any religion by a long way, we cannot be called a christian nation.  The citizens are the most important thing in defining a country in my book.

Also, "christian values" is a vacuous phrase; since there are almost as many different interpretations of "christian values" as there are christians, there is no commonly agreed upon set of values.  And the ones that are generally agreed upon long predate christianity, so they are not really christian values at all, they are human values that religious people mistakenly attribute to their faith.  In fact if you really read the bible in depth the majority of it is positively immoral by today's standards.

Also, you will find that Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. have debated as many 'moderate' religious people as they have fundamentalists, it's just that the fundamentalists get more exposure because of the greater entertainment value  :lol:   I have heard them collectively argue against just about every type of religious position - not just a 'modern minority'.

[nfe]

By pretty much any accepted definition we are a Christian nation. Given that we have a state religion and over 70% of the nation define themselves as Christian. You can't decide what constitutes "practicing".

That was my point regarding "Christian values", it's a meaningless phrase, so how can you attest we don't have them? It's most sensible definition though, would be those espoused by Christ, which as a nation, for the most part, we do hold.

Regards "actually reading the bible" I'll wager I know it better than the vast majority of people, and I'll actually be curious as to what parts of it you think are immoral that are also intended to be a moral code for Christians. James' epistle and Paul's letters will refute pretty much any you care to mention between them, with the exception of promiscuity, which I think is fine but they deny - that said, most people disagree with me on that, too.

I'd love to see links to them debating more moderate Christians other than the odd Dawkins appearance on the likes of Sunday Morning Live and similar. The problem in these seldom appearances though, is that they still make a point of arguing the same lines, which are generally irrelevant (Hitchens was less guilty, he did tend to be better at tackling the specifics of the people with whom he was conversing, but he was often still at fault). For instance, in almost any argument against faith they'll bring up Creation being incompatible with science (which is acknowledged by every major church, never applied to Islam, was abandoned by Jews in the Middle Ages and was never intended to be a literal story in the first place), the binding of Isaac (a story of sacrifice from oral tradition, absolutely not ever meant to have been an example to anyone or of morality) and things like Jonah and the Whale (a satirical story) as proof of the Bible's nonsensicalness.

I'm happy to see them debate relevant stuff, the Intelligence Squared debate with Fry and Hitchens was excellent for example, since it presented such a specific remit, but all too often they drop to tropes which simply don't apply to the majority of religious people outside a few small independent churches and the Bible Belt. It's often embarrassing to watch, and really, really disappointing as an atheist with great respect for the people's academia.

[Chris]

By pretty much any accepted definition we are a Christian nation. Given that we have a state religion and over 70% of the nation define themselves as Christian. You can't decide what constitutes "practicing".

I don't need to decide what constitutes "practicing" - people themselves have spoken on that:

In the UK overall, a Guardian/ICM poll in 2006 found that 33% describe themselves as "a religious person" while 82% see religion as a cause of division and tension between people.[20] The Ipsos MORI poll in 2003 reported that 18% were "a practising member of an organised religion".[12] The Tearfund Survey in 2007 found that only 7% of the population considered themselves as practising Christians. Ten per cent attend church weekly and two-thirds had not gone to church in the past year.

All taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_Kingdom#Statistics.  As I say - definitely not a christian nation in any real sense.  The statistics are much more realistic when people are not simply asked about their religion but about their religious practice.

  That was my point regarding "Christian values", it's a meaningless phrase, so how can you attest we don't have them? It's most sensible definition though, would be those espoused by Christ, which as a nation, for the most part, we do hold.

The point is that if it is a meaningless phrase, you can't attest that we DO have them!

Regards "actually reading the bible" I'll wager I know it better than the vast majority of people, and I'll actually be curious as to what parts of it you think are immoral that are also intended to be a moral code for Christians. James' epistle and Paul's letters will refute pretty much any you care to mention between them.

Just because parts of the bible contradict the teachings of other parts does not mean that they can provide apology for it. This is one of my biggest bugbears - people cherry-pick the parts that are good, and say that the rest is obviously only allegory or was never meant to be used as a moral code.  If you are going to cherry-pick, then the moral code is that of the cherry-picker, and not that of the text.  One thousand years ago the parts that were cherry picked as the moral code were different than the ones today, purely because the moral zeitgeist of the time was different.

I'd love to see links to them debating more moderate Christians other than the odd Dawkins appearance on the likes of Sunday Morning Live.

There are thousands, but these should get you started, Dawkins alone has debated professors of theology, archbishops, chief rabbis and more.  I have extensive collections of them if you want more, these are just the first few that I found from google video search:

http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL011F711D91FA1560&feature=plcp
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6474278760369344626

There problem in these seldom appearances though, is that they still make a point of arguing the same lines, which are generally irrelevant (Hitchens was less guilty, he did tend to be better at tackling the specifics of the people with whom he was conversing, but he was often still at fault). For instance, in almost any argument against faith they'll bring up Creation being incompatible with science (which is acknowledged by every major church, never applied to Islam, was abandoned by Jews in the Middle Ages and was never intended to be a literal story in the first place), the binding of Isaac (a story of sacrifice from oral tradition, absolutely not ever meant to have been an example to anyone or of morality) and things like Jonah and the Whale (a satirical story) as proof of the Bible's nonsensicalness.

I think this is a by-product of you only watching the debates with fundamentalists, in which case those are relevant points to bring up as they are genuinely part of their belief systems.  If you watch some of the debates with more moderate people you will see more nuanced arguments surface.  Also the point about the incompatibility with Science is an important one - it applies to every faith as they all make claims about the natural world that are incompatible with science - without exception.  This will not go away no matter how much individual churches might claim to have no argument with Science.

  I'm happy to see them debate relevant stuff, the Intelligence Squared debate with Fry and Hitchens was excellent for example, since it presented such a specific remit, but all too often they drop to tropes which simply don't apply to the majority of religious people outside a few small independent churches and the Bible Belt. It's often embarrassing to watch, and really, really disappointing as an atheist with great respect for the people's academia.

Was that the one with Anne Widdecombe?  That was a good one, I agree.  It is telling that even in these good debates with more reasonable people of faith the religious arguments fail hard.  IIRC the auidence on that one swayed wildly toward the atheists after the talk.

[nfe]

Bugger the rest cause I'm not going to search for references when I'm reading other stuff at the minute and I'm genuinely sad about Hitch's passing so don't want to bash him. But this bit is the most key in terms of how I think the new atheists fall down and why they're not really taken seriously by philosophers, religious scholars and theologians. Yeah I did mean the Widdecombe one, though, her and the Bishop whose name I'll never spell right made a fool of themselves. Worth noting though, a recent one with Hitchens and Willian Lane Craig, Hitchens comes off terribly, and he should have ripped Craig to pieces, the monstrous bigoted clown that he is.

Regards "actually reading the bible" I'll wager I know it better than the vast majority of people, and I'll actually be curious as to what parts of it you think are immoral that are also intended to be a moral code for Christians. James' epistle and Paul's letters will refute pretty much any you care to mention between them.

Just because parts of the bible contradict the teachings of other parts does not mean that they can provide apology for it. This is one of my biggest bugbears - people cherry-pick the parts that are good, and say that the rest is obviously only allegory or was never meant to be used as a moral code.  If you are going to cherry-pick, then the moral code is that of the cherry-picker, and not that of the text.  One thousand years ago the parts that were cherry picked as the moral code were different than the ones today, purely because the moral zeitgeist of the time was different.

I'm not talking about parts that are contradictory. I'm talking about specific passages which refute earlier ones. At the council of Jerusalem James specifically says that henceforth NONE of The Law applies to non-Jewish followers of The Way except dietary and promiscuity concerns. So NO Christian is compelled to follow any rule set down in the Pentateuch except those that concern promiscuity or food. One of those has nothing to do with morals so you can bin that and are left with the only biblical moral stipulation that any sensible person could question is about sex out with a prolonged relationship. Paul and Jesus both earlier repeatedly make the case that it is the message that matters, following the rules does not make one a follower, belief does and so the rules are secondary, if a concern at all.

Now, regards what was meant to be used as a moral code - the ENTIRE Hebrew Bible is a collection of oral traditions. Compiled through great effort to retain all the inconsistencies. They're not accidental contradictions that are present, they're deliberate to show the breadth of traditional folk tales of the Jewish people. Like in Herodotus' Histories, it's not a moral code, it's just folk stories that helped construct their identity.

The wisdom literature might have been included because it presents some nice ideas as might the wisdom psalms but all the horrible stuff is in the Historical Books, the ones which are purely meant to be a grouping of the different ways in which the history of the Jewish people remember their own history. No one was interested in a literal reading at all until very recently. The rise of that understanding pretty quickly led to The Enlightenment, just as the more recent rise in fundamentalism over the past thirty years or so has brought about this new atheist rejection of faith altogether.

Now some people have made a total arse of reading this stuff sensibly, but that is neither the book nor the faith's fault. Only of (some of) the adminstrations which have appropriated it.You'd be as well blaming Thus Sprach Zarathrusta for the Holocaust, The Illiad for the Greco-Persian wars or Helter Skelter for the Manson Cult.

[Chris]

Bugger the rest cause I'm not going to search for references when I'm reading other stuff at the minute and this bit is the most key in terms of how I think the new atheists fall down and why they're not really taken seriously by philosophers, religious scholars and theologians. Yeah I did mean the Widdecombe one, though, her and the Bishop whose name I'll never spell right made a fool of themselves. Worth noting though, a recent one with Hitchens and Willian Lane Craig, Hitchens comes off terribly, and he should have ripped Craig to pieces, the monstrous bigoted clown that he is.

Regards "actually reading the bible" I'll wager I know it better than the vast majority of people, and I'll actually be curious as to what parts of it you think are immoral that are also intended to be a moral code for Christians. James' epistle and Paul's letters will refute pretty much any you care to mention between them.

Just because parts of the bible contradict the teachings of other parts does not mean that they can provide apology for it. This is one of my biggest bugbears - people cherry-pick the parts that are good, and say that the rest is obviously only allegory or was never meant to be used as a moral code.  If you are going to cherry-pick, then the moral code is that of the cherry-picker, and not that of the text.  One thousand years ago the parts that were cherry picked as the moral code were different than the ones today, purely because the moral zeitgeist of the time was different.

I'm not talking about parts that are contradictory. I'm talking about specific passages which refute earlier ones. At the council of Jerusalem James specifically says that henceforth NONE of The Law applies to non-Jewish followers of The Way except dietary and promiscuity concerns. So NO Christian is compelled to follow any rule set down in the Pentateuch except those that concern promiscuity or food. One of those has nothing to do with morals so you can bin that and are left with the only biblical moral stipulation that any sensible person could question is about sex out with a prolonged relationship. Paul and Jesus both earlier repeatedly make the case that it is the message that matters, following the rules does not make one a follower, belief does and so the rules are secondary, if a concern at all.

Now, regards what was meant to be used as a moral code - the ENTIRE Hebrew Bible is a collection of oral traditions. Compiled through great effort to retain all the inconsistencies. They're not accidental contradictions that are present, they're deliberate to show the breadth of traditional folk tales of the Jewish people. Like in Herodotus' Histories.

The wisdom literature might have been included because it presents some nice ideas as might the wisdom psalms but all the horrible stuff is in the Historical Books, the ones which are purely meant to be a grouping of the different ways in which the history of the Jewish people remember their own history. No one was interested in a literal reading at all until very recently. The rise of that understanding pretty quickly led to The Enlightenment, just as the more recent rise in fundamentalism over the past thirty years or so has brought about this new atheist rejection of faith altogether.

Now some people have made a total arse of reading this stuff sensibly, but that is neither the book nor the faith's fault. Only of (some of) the adminstrations which have appropriated it.You'd be as well blaming Thus Sprach Zarathrusta for the Holocaust, The Illiad for the Greco-Persian wars or Helter Skelter for the Manson Cult.

If your particular reading of the bible leads to the only moral stipulation being the promiscuity one, which we both disagree with, then we are back to having no meaningful biblical set of values, which is exactly where I started.  We are back to looking at a historical text and cherry-picking the bits we like to justify our own moral code, which quite frankly I could do with any text - such as The Lord of The Rings - it doesn't matter as the moral code is divorced from the religion until the believer decides to try to tie the two together.

[nfe]

Firstly, I didn't say it's the Bibles only moral stipulation, I said it's the only one that might be considered negative by any sensible reader. There are plenty others which are not disregarded in the book which are wholly positive, about compassion and altruism, for example. The New Testament is full of them.

I'm also not cherry-picking. At all. I'm going totally by what the book says. Leaving everything in.

[MDV]

Good shite. Hitchens would approve of this thread :D

A couple of quick notes -
We are only on paper a christian nation. There are two obvious metrics for this: institutionalised practice/tradition and the beliefs, concerns, practices and sources that inform them of the people. By the former measure the USA is one of the only genuinely non-religious nations on earth. By the latter its by far and away the most religious developed nation, and that has a knock on effect in the rhetoric and posturing of its politicians. Here its the other way around. nfe rightly points out that most people identify, when pressed, as christian here. Thats a shallow misrepresentation of the facts, which are really qutie unclear. What is very clear is that many people that dont practice christianity or reach for the bible for moral and behavioural instruction identify as christian in censuses (censi? Whatever) because they were baptised or they went to church as a kid (by went I mean were dragged) or their parents are christian or they say grace or whatever. Some lip service, or some confusion or unwillingness about identifying as anything else.

Morally, well, christianity appropriated its moral instructions from many other sources. As one cannot claim a clear british culture, one cannot claim a clear christian morality. Same reasons. The sources of the various ethical precepts that we currently find it easy to agree with and a prevelent pretty much anywhere (dont kill, steal, blah blah) are unclear, but we see similar behaviours in chimps, so its likely that the imputus to follow such behaviours is not only older than christianity but older than our species. Specifics pertaining to things like contraception, abortion, sex outside marraige, economics and government are far less clear, and far less easy to agree on. Its quite clear that the average joe in this country doesnt hold a christian view on any of them, however.

Dawkins I believe made a point of going after moderates and apologists, since he says while they arent so obviously egregious themselves, they effectively shield the big time nutters.

[Chris]

The point is that any positive value (and many negative ones) that you can find espoused in any reading of the bible existed before christianity did, even before humans did in some cases believe it or not, so none of these are really christian values, they are secular values that early christians chose to borrow, and therefore it is erroneous to say that we hold christian values dear as a country.

[Chris]

Morally, well, christianity appropriated its moral instructions from many other sources. As one cannot claim a clear british culture, one cannot claim a clear christian morality. Same reasons. The sources of the various ethical precepts that we currently find it easy to agree with and a prevelent pretty much anywhere (dont kill, steal, blah blah) are unclear, but we see similar behaviours in chimps, so its likely that the imputus to follow such behaviours is not only older than christianity but older than our species. Specifics pertaining to things like contraception, abortion, sex outside marraige, economics and government are far less clear, and far less easy to agree on. Its quite clear that the average joe in this country doesnt hold a christian view on any of them, however.

That's what I was trying to say, but you made it much more clear - I'm not good with whiskey and argument together, unlike Hitch :-)