Deleted.

Poor guy, it's bad enough being ginger without whatever disease that mouthful must be on top of everything else (pemphigus vulgaris maybe?). I hope it all clears up for him soon - he deserves it.

nordmann wrote:

the little ungrateful bastard

As is indeed sadly quite often the case. Good parenting is sometimes a thankless task or even worse. One is minded of one the bleaker stories from the catholic canon of saints - that of St William of Rochester. According to the 14th century writer John de Tynemouth, William was a 12th century Scottish baker who adopted a foundling in his home town of Perth and taught him his trade. Later when the boy was older, father and son were on pilgrimage to Canterbury, when the adolescent waylaid William at Rochester, murdered him and robbed him. With no small amount of irony, for his pains the church later dubbed William 'the patron saint of adopted children'.

That's an interesting point, Vizzer. Western religion in general sends out a very negative message about loyalty between mortals - it is a virtue that this religion has historically taught carries no worthwhile reward in the mortal realm but for which (like many others) reward will be dispensed by a supernatural being after death.

Fortunately this trope is generally ignored by the bulk of humanity which (even the religiously devout element) turns a blind eye to blatant examples of disloyalty in scripture often perpetrated by subjects who otherwise are presented as paragons of virtue and, for reasons of essential social cohesion and intercourse, actively promote, engage in and reward acts of loyalty as a matter of course.

Some eastern religions, those which adopt the notion of karma that can play out within one's lifetime, tend to hold a view of loyalty more commensurate with the human experience. However even these attempt in part to remove total responsibility for the dispensation of reward from "mere" humans and assign it a divine provenance or a supernatural angle. This matches in a way the pre-Christian European religions which generally also saw the divine element almost as the introduction of randomness into the equation, not enough to dissuade one from pursuing a virtue but enough to warn one that even the best behaviour and intentions can get royally screwed up through no one's fault in particular (blame the gods). However within that mind-set loyalty in fact was one virtue over which humans could demonstrably retain pretty effective control nevertheless, and some of our most ancient legends and myth cycles contain that message at their core, the concept of loyalty tackled from various angles within them and always portrayed as a noble ideal worth pursuing, even if it leads to problems for the protagonists in the story. In fact of all the virtues as represented in ancient myth it was probably the one least interfered with by meddling deities, a very practical and realistic recognition of its efficacy and necessity.

If one wishes to find evidence of how the Abrahamic faiths devalue humanity and humans' responsibility for their own actions in their belief that it's all going to end soon and badly anyway, before everything then gets referred to a supernatural being to sort out, then their inept and confused messages regarding loyalty are probably worth close examination.

Thank you for the generous reply, Spiny Nordmann (to my PM, not above): it did make me laugh, although I'm not sure it was meant to.

Alas, despite your joy about my having fallen off the wagon, I have taken a Holy Vow never to drink again and never to mention religion ever, ever, ever again - here or elsewhere.

So I'm off to the Age Concern thread. Might post something about traitors here later.

Temp wrote:

I have taken a Holy Vow never to drink again

Thank Christ it's not a real vow then ....