I think we are all being serious ... we may sometimes be flippant, jokey, and yes even patronising ... but I don't think any of us would be posting on this discussion thread if we weren't taking the issue very seriously, do you? I have spent a lot of my time fighting, and that's not too strong a word, both for and against some of the issues that have come up in the discussion here. So I am certainly being serious.

PS : "Fighting" maybe is too strong a word ... but frankly I've suffered a lifetime of "religious benefits", so please don't tell me to be serious.

Priscilla wrote:

And what is this Big Bang stuff? How did that get going?

It didn't get going. Time itself can be traced in origin to the singularity that prefaced what is mistakenly called the "big bang" and without time nothing "gets going". It is only fair to add however that a model for the origin of the universe based on Einstein's static-space/time paradigm (as opposed to the more popular Friedmann-Lemaitre expanding-space/time paradigm) allows for the inversion of time and therefore an infinity of "starts" to the process.

As opposed to - so the theories change, mm?

No, the big bang theory is incredibly consistent. However the models that can be made to conform to it can of course be changed. This is how knowledge progresses.

Priscilla wrote:

As opposed to - so the theories change, mm?

Out of my field I'm afraid, P ... "A Brief History of Thyme" is more my daily reading these days.


PS : Oops, you just intended a quizzical: mmm? ... rather than MM. Sorry, very presumptious of me, but I just couldn't resist the pun.

Mmmmmm. Still Thyme is better than getting the chillies.

Ah well, to call an opinion a cheap shot  served with a  hot roast dove may prove to be expensive. Temps may not be back here for a while .... if ever.  And I need to know if the theory re the hot dust in infiinite circles is an improvement on theory before? Belief in anything is hard for me.How wise of the Greeks to make a God dedicated to Time - and how wise of the Hindus for seeing it all as a never ending cycle. And how wise of our generation to catch up. Not hard. I had worked out that there was a link between time and infinity in cycles before I was 6.

What are the origins of the micro bits that make a hot gas .... that make a big bang... that makes universes... that make planets ... that make places f0r lifeforms.... that make homes ... and some homes like the one that Jack built........in Time?

I didn't say her opinion was a cheap shot. I said the juxtaposition of two elements in her statement inviting false comparison from which a particular insinuation could then be levelled by her was. Her opinion is always well communicated and its validity and honesty never in question.

Unlike temp's opinion the roast dove wasn't valid by the way. It was really a chicken which I just called a dove for purposes of humour that has them rolling in the Isles somewhere around the Banyak Archipelago and obviously idling in the Rolls in deepest Kent (I had better be sure to keep everything above board and hopefully thereby avoid further potential accusations of gross bird impersonation or something).

Hot gases don't make a big bang. Well, not a Big Bang (even with time).

Why can't someone just ban the expression Big Bang and all those daft graphics of explosions, fire balls and cosmic whooshes? Interesting though how some of the latest theories imply that poor old Fred Hoyle might not have been entirely wrong?

I've kept out of the last days' discussions, I'm a sensitive soul and didn't want to come clattering in with tackety  boots, but suffice to say while I completely see how his religion would have been of benefit to Waite, I think any meditative process never mind poetry, quadratic equations, nursery rhymes or anything safe and familiar would be beneficial to soothe the mind of anyone in that appalling situation.

Priscilla I thought it was very brave of you to add a post on the benefits of religion and risk the wrath of Nordmann’s rhetoric.  I would point as one example of the benefit of religion the unique ethical teaching of Jesus.  Albert Einstein, who was not a Christian, wrote ‘As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.’  ‘No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Theseus.  Theseus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.’  ‘No man can deny the fact that Jesus existed, nor that his sayings are beautiful. Even if some them have been said before, no one has expressed them so divinely as he.’  Nordmann, of course, puts this all down to a write up of a mix of Jewish religiosity with Greek philosophy.  Not that he has ever provided any evidence for it nor can he make up which particular Greek philosophy it is having suggested at various times and on various site Aristotelian/Plato/Middle Platonism/Neo-Platonism and possibly, as I have read only a smidgeon of his posts also Thales/Diogenes/Zeno/Plotinus and George Michael, but definitely not Andrew Ridgeley who is neither Greek nor a philosopher.

 Nordmann at over 4,000 posts you really do need to find something else to fill your time.  I have not and will not attempt to try and read all the post but see that logos has come up in the discussion and so thought I would add something on Jesus as Logos and Dabar – the Word of God or one could say the contingent aspect of God in the creation of this contingent but mathematically impossible universe. 
‘The spoken word to the Hebrew was fearfully alive’ and compared to Greek or English for that matter, Hebrew had very few words.  The word in the Hebrew bible reflects the power of words.  In the creation story in Genesis 1 over and over again it repeats ‘And God said’, the word of God is the creative power.  This is in many other places, for example ‘By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made’.  In Isaiah ‘So shall my word go forth from my mouth; it shall not return empty, but it will accomplish that which I propose’.  In the Targums the Jews often substituted ‘the Word of God’ for God.  The Jews also saw Wisdom of God in creation from Proverbs ‘Yahweh by wisdom founded the earth’.  Wisdom is God’s agent in enlightenment and in creation.  Proverbs ‘Yahweh created me [wisdom] at the beginning of His work’.  Ecclesiasticus ‘Wisdom has been created before all things’.
In The Wisdom of Solomon written in about 100BC, the Wisdom and Word of God are equated.  ‘O God of my fathers and Lord of mercy, who made all things with your word and ordained man through your wisdom’.  To the writer God’s wisdom and word were His instruments and agents in creation and bring God’s mind and will to humankind.
Prior to the reign of Antiochus IV the Greeks viewed the Jews generally positively as ‘a nation of philosophers who shunned the crudities and beliefs of and expression that marred so many other peoples.’  In Greek thought there was the Logos the word and reason of God.  Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher of the 5th and 6th C BC believed the world to be in constant change and flux but that the Logos of God provided the sense and order that allowed the world to continue.  It also gave humankind reason and knowledge of truth. ‘all things happen according to the Logos’ and ‘the Logos is the judge of truth.  To the Stoics ‘The Logos pervades all things’.  To them ‘all things are controlled by the Logos of God’. 
Philo was a Jew who lived in Alexandria at around the same time as Jesus and Paul.  Philo has left a considerable body of writing in which he tries to combine the Jewish law – the Torah with Greek philosophy.  He saw Logos as the word, the reason of God.  It was the instrument by which God made the world, the human mind was stamped with it and Logos was the intermediator between God and humankind.
John in his magnificent prologue to his gospel sets out that in Jesus that Logos, that Dabar has become flesh, the contingent aspect of God has become a human being. 


However, while I am on the subject of Philo I might add that he considers the Law of Moses to be the complete revelation of God to which nothing can be added.  Philo had a very different attitude to humankind to that of either Jesus or Paul.  Humans are graded depending on their ability to use their mind to control their body.  Men are essentially superior to women and to slaves.  Philo is particularly hard on women, blaming wars on them, for example.  “For the majority of wars, and those the greatest, have risen through amours and adulteries and the deceits of women,” According to Philo highest and closest to God are free men, who live completely for the mind, and pay the body minimal heed.  Women are lesser beings, they are essentially passionate and their minds are weak.  “The women are best suited to the indoor life which never strays from the house.” (Spec. 3.169) He condones the stoning to death of women ‘let her be stoned to death – she who has corrupted the graces bestowed by nature’ (spec. 3.51).  In his two tiered religious system there are those who can love God and those who can only fear him.  Women belong in the latter group.  ‘The male embryo takes only 40 days for its ‘moulding’ because it is perfect but the female “who is so to speak, a half section of a man” (QG 1.25) takes twice as long, 80 days’.  Unlike Jesus, there were categories of human being for whom Philo seemed to have no fellow feeling.  Philo understood the Torah to be the solution to the world’s ills.  Philo views every philosophic teaching through his understanding of the Bible; everything must pass Mosaic sanction. To Philo Moses reveals every truth that the great philosophers, even Plato himself, later expounded.  Philo interpreted these laws as timeless rules for both his people and others who aspire to see God.  This is very different from Jesus who in the Sermon on the Mount repeatedly says, “you have heard it said but I say …”.  For example while Philo declared that “for the worthless man is a creature naturally malicious, a hater of good and lover of evil.” (Abr. 20f)  Jesus stated that it was wrong to express contempt for your fellow humans.  Philo would have been absolutely fuming that a ‘Galilean tekton’ could preach the Sermon on the Mount.  Paul campaigned vigorously against requiring gentile converts to be either circumcised or keep the food laws.  Philo fully expected in the fullness of time for all nations to acknowledge the Jews as the model nation and keep their laws. 
Tim

Me, quoting Jane Austen's prayer, which is lovely, so yah boo sucks to you all, wrote:

...and save us from deceiving ourselves by Pride or Vanity.

I am sorry I over-reacted the other day: I suspect that my pride - rather than my feelings - was hurt. I was very emotional after the Terry Waite talk, and found myself in Heavenly Uplifted Mode which  is always a rather dangerous state for me. I was brought crashing back down here and I did not like it.

To be fair to me, though, I did say that his religion was beneficial to him at the time. Waite said that the collect from Evensong was just so appropriate during his darkest hours, but I do accept MM's point that if you don't believe any of it, it would not be of much use. Fair enough.

ferval wrote:

... nursery rhymes or anything safe and familiar would be beneficial to soothe the mind of anyone in that appalling situation.

Well, I suppose that, if one found oneself a prisoner in some hell-hole in Syria, awaiting brutal execution at the hands of some total nutter, there could be a certain satisfaction in annoying the ISIS guards by constant repetition of Hickory Dickory Dock, perhaps alternated with Ding Dong Bell . That would confuse the b*stards. Not quite the same gravitas as the majestic prose of the BCP maybe, but nicely absurd. Waite did say a sense of humour also sustained him: I admit humour is not always an apparent benefit of religion.

Tim, with the greatest respect, what are you on about?

Isn't the greatest benefit of Christ's teaching/ethics its emphasis on the need for a child-like (not childish) trust and simplicity? Isn't there a danger we can lose the essential message in all the intellectual stuff?

PS nordmann, your stupid picture infuriated me. No more poultry jokes please, else it'll be a Duke of Norfolk turkey stuffing for you, my lad.

Tim wrote:

Nordmann at over 4,000 posts you really do need to find something else to fill your time.

Good advice must be appreciated regardless of its giver, I feel, so thank you. Though in my defence a goodly 3,500 of these have had to do with technical adjustments to the site, making bad jokes and generally ensuring that Priscilla's knitting needles don't go rusty. Maybe not time well spent but definitely better than using it in other pursuits I could name (if not too churlish to do so).

I like the picture of the turkey, Temp. What sort of bird is that he's holding? And if one cannot over-react on one's birthday then what are the bloody things for????

I actually disagree with both of you regarding the child-like versus heavy intellectual content of the collected sayings attributed to Jesus. They are too diverse in tone and style to conform to either interpolation fully, I think. And nor can they be described as uniformly ethical, I would say, so to describe them as a benefit on that basis would take a bit of arguing before I would readily agree to it.

The Hellenic aspect to Paul's thinking and writing reflect his ethnicity which, while indisputably Jewish is also indisputably Greek. It depends on where you want to look - his core assumptions regarding deity (no doubt learnt by him as a child - just like yourself, Tim) to where he went with them (no doubt based on what he learned growing up in an Hellenic environment). People with a foot in two (or sometimes more) cultures tend to make others nervous, right enough. The prospect of compromising one's core beliefs dismays many, even today, though history can often be read as a litany of just such compromises by millions of people over millennia. Paul's tussles with his fellow Jewish Christians seems to bear out that he was no stranger to this predicament himself.

But we're digressing from the notion of benefit, and to what extent it originates within a religious source. I am still adamant that it serves one better to adopt a much broader view - of what constitutes both benefit and source - before one should quite so readily plump for any particular benefit having derived solely from any particular religion as a source. Closer examination of both tends in most cases to affirm the notion of benefit only as it diminishes the relevance of religion as its source. Religion maintains its function however as a transmitter and facilitator of much that is demonstrably good. Just as it has that which is demonstrably useless and of no benefit, if not even downright evil.

ferval wrote:

Why can't someone just ban the expression Big Bang and all those daft graphics of explosions, fire balls and cosmic whooshes? Interesting though how some of the latest theories imply that poor old Fred Hoyle might not have been entirely wrong?

I've kept out of the last days' discussions, I'm a sensitive soul and didn't want to come clattering in with tackety  boots, but suffice to say while I completely see how his religion would have been of benefit to Waite,

Ferval, now that the emotion a bit is "settled" (with esteem to Temperance) I also wanted to give an example of what you mean with:

"I think any meditative process never mind poetry, quadratic equations, nursery rhymes or anything safe and familiar would be beneficial to soothe the mind of anyone in that appalling situation"
I also remember that Nordmann on 30 September in a reply to Temperance said:
"The correct non-religious parallel would be Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" or Confucius's "Analects", to name just two works which might conceivably have been memorised by people in the past due to their value as a source of wisdom and mental strength and also on that basis have a comforting familiarity about them, not "mathematical formulae"!"

But now back to my example:


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/arts/11kempowski-backf-obt-12-04.html?_r=0
"Convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, Mr. Kempowski served eight years in the notorious Bautzen prison, in the former East Germany. His first book, “Im Block” (“In the Block”) (1969), was a harrowing account of his ordeal and set the melancholic tone that suffused his later work."

I read a lot of the works of this brilliant German writer, among others about his time in the Bautzen prison...
If I recall it well to prevent of going insane as he wrote to his brother, he tried to make fiction or something like that like repititive mantras or am I mingling it with the diaries of a notirious Jewish scientist in German captivity during WWII...? Will try to check it all...

Kind regards, Paul.

nordmann wrote:

I like the picture of the turkey, Temp. What sort of bird is that he's holding?

Don't you be rude about Bernard Matthews, nordmann. Our much-loved turkey tycoon ended up richer than the Duke of Norfolk and owning a fair chunk of that bootiful county. That's the power of capitalism and turkey burgers for you.

nordmann wrote:

I actually disagree with both of you regarding the child-like versus heavy intellectual content of the collected sayings attributed to Jesus. They are too diverse in tone and style to conform to either interpolation fully, I think.  And nor can they be described as uniformly ethical, I would say, so to describe them as a benefit on that basis would take a bit of arguing before I would readily agree to it.

The Hellenic aspect to Paul's thinking and writing reflect his ethnicity which, while indisputably Jewish is also indisputably Greek. It depends on where you want to look - his core assumptions regarding deity (no doubt learnt by him as a child - just like yourself, Tim) to where he went with them (no doubt based on what he learned growing up in an Hellenic environment). People with a foot in two (or sometimes more) cultures tend to make others nervous, right enough. The prospect of compromising one's core beliefs dismays many, even today, though history can often be read as a litany of just such compromises by millions of people over millennia. Paul's tussles with his fellow Jewish Christians seems to bear out that he was no stranger to this predicament himself.

But we're digressing from the notion of benefit, and to what extent it originates within a religious source...

It's all very interesting though. I'm tempted to question you (and Tim) further about the above - not here on P.'s Benefits thread, but over on the Jesus Myth thread, or the Paul's Fault thread. I'm fascinated by the extent to which Paul "invented" Christianity and have just been given Eric Zuesse's book, Christ's Ventriloquists - The Event That Created Christianity. I know nothing about Zuesse, who claims to be an "investigative historian" who uses legal/forensic methodology; but, after reading the first thirty pages, I'm not hopeful that the book is as scholarly as others claim. I'll continue reading it though.

However, people are perhaps fed-up of all the religious discussion around here. That said, the views for this thread - now heading towards 6000 - would suggest there is a real interest in such debate. I hope so - it's important, even though at times it gets very uncomfortable (for me at least). But that's not always a bad thing.

I now suggest that the structure of rites may be a benefit derived from religions. Before you leap in with data about the rites of passage now enjoyed without the benefit of clergy on any kind, however they are observed there are rites of some kind. Most people seem to need rites to underline the solemnity of  life's 'milestones.'  My suggestion is that religions from ancient times were the core with rituals which became perpetuated; comfort seems to be derived by many from the exact following of ritual. I was witness to much of that in the East, to screaming point, to be honest. 'This must be moved thus.. and with this hand and then that is..... whatever... as if the sun would fall from the sky in the exact performance was not followed  and with much chat from elders ensuring the young understood how things must be done to ensure the blessings of one God or another.

So what benefit is derived?  Perhaps  order calms, order  recognises pecking order  and  invites respect and so on. So I suggest that the origins and for long ages thereafter, ordered procedure has emerged from many religious devotions, and by that I infer the processions, the drama, the dressing up, symbolic tokens, the taking of oaths and the convening  and functioning of assemblies. 
It's that Res Hist 'Aunt Sally Pot Shot Time again, folks!'

Oh goodness, P, I may take pot shots but you use a scattergun and that makes responding really difficult. That post contains so many different topics that it would need a lot of unpicking to reply properly.
You jump from celebrating life=course events to propitiatory rituals to ceremonial processions and propose that all of these are a) beneficial and b) solely arising from religion, how about picking one and we can talk about that?

Regarding propitiatory rituals, ia the footballer who always puts on his left sock first  for luck observing some ancient. religious obligation?

I need to go and perform the ritual gathering of offerings from the great god M&S now but I shall return assuming I perform the correct observances according to the Road Traffic Act.

Publicly performed rites and their associated ceremonies are also a great implement of social control, it must not be forgotten. It would be remiss of organised religion not to have hijacked these at the earliest opportunity and then zealously defended its self-assumed right to administer them. Some definitely appear to fulfill a human need regarding solemnisation and publicising of certain key events in life and the accompanying rituals can definitely take some of the sting out of what otherwise would be simply too harrowing or arduous an ordeal in the case of burying dead people (as well as deflecting attention from potential pitfalls associated with other key events such as hitching up with a plonker). So their "benefit", albeit a dubious one at times, is well attested.

Though of course the issue of their actual origin raises the usual chicken (not roasted this time) versus the egg conundrum. It's like religion in general. Just because it replaces simple ignorant superstition doesn't necessarily make it a better option, only a more complex one, no matter what else it gathers into its maw at times and pretends to have originated to obfuscate its actual nature.

I made no mention of the pretention of origins, it is merely my observation that what happens in religious observance has - if you prefer your take on it, been hijacked by society to add solemnity to occasion....... opening of parliament, law courts, hand over of power and office -- and er hum  tiddy ho hum - surrender?

Priscilla wrote:

...and er hum  tiddy ho hum - surrender?

Or indeed no surrender, even in defeat? The idea that, when faced with tyranny - religious or secular - facing death with courage and dignity is preferable to denial of what matters? The dignity bit - doing it properly - is important: decent scaffold behaviour after all was always expected of the aristocracy - part of the complicated rituals they were trained for. All that knighthood  stuff - Order of the Bath and such? All religious based, I think.

Then out spoke brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth, death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods..."

We ignorant, simple-minded, superstitious - er, religious - folk do still seem to need our rites. I wonder if, as humankind evolves, such nonsense will be abandoned completely: corpses simply consigned efficiently and unemotionally to the fire (why on earth should death be harrowing, after all - it's a fact of life), and mating conducted pragmatically without any solemn, ritualistic nonsense - vows and such like?

Ah, brave new world indeed that will have such people in it.

We ignorant, simple-minded, superstitious - er, religious - folk do still seem to need our rites. I wonder if, as humankind evolves, such nonsense will be abandoned completely: corpses simply consigned efficiently and unemotionally to the fire (why on earth should death be harrowing, after all - it's a fact of life), and mating conducted pragmatically without any solemn, ritualistic nonsense - vows and such like?


Dear Temp, you do have your tongue firmly in cheek, don't you?  I can't for one moment think that you actually believe that, were all religion to vanish, all humans would suddenly become emotionless automatons and stop celebrating life events or cease to mourn the dead and mark their passing. Have you never been to any humanist ceremonies? They are just as inspiring as religious ones - often more so because the celebrant has made a real effort to reflect the wishes of the commissioner and conducted a ceremony that really reflects the people and the occasion. I've been to too many weddings and particularly funerals where the religious officiant has been wheeled in make it 'proper' and the results have sometimes ranged from the deadly soulless to the risible.

Our species seems to have an inherent love of ceremony, of ritual, parading around and dressing up (I'd buy a new hat for whatever kind of wedding I was invited to) and doesn't need religion tacked on to legitimise it.

ferv! What does a humanist mean by bemoaning a church funeral for being soulless? 
All-at-sea-P.

ferval wrote:

We ignorant, simple-minded, superstitious - er, religious - folk ... 

.... and all the rest, especially your counter points...

Very well put ferval!

But we (as a species) do seem to love the ceremonial, the remembrances of things past, anniversaries, marking the changes in the seasons etc .... but I think that's primarily because we are human, rather from any religious incentive.

We all mark these days, who doesn't know and mark their own birthday? But that's just human nature, no?

Hey, I wrote that!

Humanist funerals can be dire, too. I once went to one that was a complete shambles. You quite forgot amidst all the hubbub why there was a box with flowers on it at the back of the room.

Mind you, one of my friends (who was a death-bed convert) plumped for the full monty Catholic Requiem Mass. I nearly choked on all the incense - I shall tell her so too, if we ever meet merrily in Heaven - which I hope we shall.

Sorry Temp, you did indeed say that ... mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ... sorry.
And it was good stuff too.

But still at heart I feel that it is just a part of being human ... whether one is religious or not.

Why does religion always get in the way, take over, appropriate the situation to preach it's particular message? People have been dying for well before we were humans (duh) ... it's inevitable, and people have always dealt with it, in whatever religion, or none, that thay happen to live in. Death shouldn't be a uniquely "religious" event.

This thread. MelM, is about the shaping of our human experience from  the exercise of religions - assorted. 
I suggest that much has been  extracted to give shape to many secular formalities.

Sorry, I understood this thread, as posted, to be all about listing and discussing the "benefits" that religions have given us .... and logically that has to be: "what benefits religions have uniquely of themselves given us? ",  if it isn't to be a nonsensical thread ... or have I misunderstood.

But then it's your thread, P, so make of it whatever you want.

This part of this thread is about shaping.... etc. Every so often I shove it along to another angle. What has surprised me is just how many angles there are to explore.

Priscilla wrote:

ferv! What does a humanist mean by bemoaning a church funeral for being soulless? 
All-at-sea-P.

Ah yes, perhaps an infelicitous choice of words but I'm sure you know what I mean. The deceased has had little or no connection with any church nor has the family but the undertaker has rolled out their tame retired cleric to officiate because that's the accepted thing to do. The service then is a recitation of the standard format with the usual platitudes and perhaps an attempt at personalisation drawn from a five minute chat with the family which inevitably does not work. My father in law's funeral was a farce. He was a staunch atheist but my mother in law was not so a religious service it had to be. Fair enough, funerals are for the living not the dead, but in her preliminary chat with the minister she told him about his interest in science. We were then treated to some nonsense about his spirit sailing up like a space ship - this was in 1970, moon landing time. It was all I could do not to laugh and my poor husband was incandescent.
I know you will say that this not how it should be, that those without a live church connection cannot really expect anything much more profound, but it speaks to me not of any vestige of faith being expressed at the end but of a human need to follow the cultural expectations in their memorialisation.
Obviously it's not always like that, my great grandfather was a church officer and so his five children were brought up in the kirk house. Their funerals were held in that church and all were intensely moving because the minister could refer to their childhoods, to how they had played in the church and hunted for dropped coins and other such stories. That was what made those services so relevant and memorable, for me anyway, .

Oops, several more posts but I'll go for it anyway.

Meles meles wrote:

Sorry Temp, you did indeed say that ... mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ... sorry.
And it was good stuff too.

But still at heart I feel that it is just a part of being human ... whether one is religious or not.

Why does religion always get in the way, take over, appropriate the situation to preach it's particular message? People have been dying for well before we were humans (duh) ... it's inevitable, and people have always dealt with it, in whatever religion, or none, that thay happen to live in. Death shouldn't be a uniquely "religious" event.

Meles meles,

"But still at heart I feel that it is just a part of being human ... whether one is religious or not."

"just a part of being human"

About the great occasions of life even higher mammals...something to do with social organisation?...attention, I don't now want to belittle human feelings because animals...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270977/Elephants-really-grieve-like-They-shed-tears-try-bury-dead--leading-wildlife-film-maker-reveals-animals-like-us.html

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

nordmann wrote:

Publicly performed rites and their associated ceremonies are also a great implement of social control, it must not be forgotten. It would be remiss of organised religion not to have hijacked these at the earliest opportunity and then zealously defended its self-assumed right to administer them. Some definitely appear to fulfill a human need regarding solemnisation and publicising of certain key events in life and the accompanying rituals can definitely take some of the sting out of what otherwise would be simply too harrowing or arduous an ordeal in the case of burying dead people (as well as deflecting attention from potential pitfalls associated with other key events such as hitching up with a plonker). So their "benefit", albeit a dubious one at times, is well attested.

Though of course the issue of their actual origin raises the usual chicken (not roasted this time) versus the egg conundrum. It's like religion in general. Just because it replaces simple ignorant superstition doesn't necessarily make it a better option, only a more complex one, no matter what else it gathers into its maw at times and pretends to have originated to obfuscate its actual nature.

Nordmann,

nothing to do with the thread and I hope people will forgive me...

" no matter what else it gathers into its maw "

All those years of English and now that word "maw"...first seen since I saw my first English words at 10 years old...
From the context I thought on mouth (Dutch muil), snout (Dutch snuit), beak (Dutch bek), but see it comes from the Dutch:
"maag"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/maw
And if I pronunciate "maag" in our West Flemish dialect (dialect from the province of West Flanders; and for MM who knows a lot about Belgium: People over here don't know that we in Belgium have "Regions", "Language Communities" and "Provinces") it sounds exactly like the English "maw"...

I will never forget it again till dead me takes away...if that is not ceremonial speech...

Kind regards, your "disciple" Paul...not "the" disciple and not "the" Paul...

PS: Thinking further about it...disciple as long as...

Good grief! 'A Saint is Born?'........ I can see it now ..... in lights.... on Broadway...... can I be in it?

Re Temps thoughts on a future without rites, I have a close relative whose will is written that she is taken straight to green site burial without anyone else there apart from the funeral people. They being ordered not to proceed if anyone shows - like me for instance - until they depart. We are on very good terms so no agro with me. Her wealth goes to animal charities. Seems a sort of sad departure but she says she has been to all manner of funerals and thought them all smacking of  postering falsehood of some kind.
Equally sad was a notice  - as it happens beside the toilets at a Registrar's office, that the large  function room beside it could be hired for baby Naming Days. few babies are christened in the old way, I think but I see no joy in the suggested use of that facility in a rather drab building. I guess there are formats for it too - on line, probably. (Writes of Passage?)

I heard a really sad story from a friend who had been visiting an old chap in hospital. He had a family, but was estranged from them. He insisted that he wanted no funeral: his body was indeed to be consigned to the flames without ritual or any pretence of mourning.

His request was honoured, but my friend couldn't bear it: she found out from the local Crematorium when he was to be so consigned and she went - not to any service, though. She simply sat in her car at the Crematorium car park at the appointed time and wept for him.

Awful story - a real postmodern variation of Eleanor Rigby. At least she had Father McKenzie there.

But it must be noted that even in the "age of faith", many were buried without dignity or ceremonial -  in paupers' graves, or worse. The burials of suicides and criminals had their own rituals: the "rites" considered appropriate for such unhappy souls could be macabre and uncharitable indeed:


The Rites of Desecration continued to be performed for exceptional criminal suicides into the 1820s. The last known documented instance of this practice took place in June 1823 when Abel Griffiths, a 22-year old law student who took his own life after murdering his father, received a profane burial at the crossroads where London’s Victoria Station now stands. Reflecting the shift in public opinion, the Annual Register criticized the macabre spectacle, noting that “the disgusting part of the ceremony of throwing lime over the body and driving a stake through it was dispensed” prior to interment. The old burial custom – described at this time by moralists and parliamentarians as “an odious and disgusting ceremony” and “an act of malignant and brutal folly,” – would be suppressed by the 1823 ‘Burial of Suicide Act’.

However, suicidal deaths still carried a heavy stigma and continued to be punished and suicides were outcasts in death - placed on the north side of churchyards, alongside unbaptized infants, excommunicates and executed criminals. The penalty of property forfeiture wouldn’t be repealed until 1870, and religious penalties continued on for another decade. “Self-murder” itself would remain a criminal act on the statute books right up until the passage of ‘The Suicide Act’ of 1961.

Although suicide has since been secularized, decriminalized and largely demystified in the public mind, there still remains a folkloric belief centred around England’s old crossroads – and the restless ghosts who are said to reside there. Emotionally tortured in life, defiled in death and disgraced in memory, the “self-murderers” of the past will continue to haunt the popular mind, reminding us of the archaic beliefs and macabre rituals of the not-so-distant past.

Priscilla wrote:

What has surprised me is just how many angles there are to explore.

Evidence of just how extensively and voraciously religion as a theme eclectically subsumes all human activity and attempts to claim ownership of it in terms of origin of concept.

Yes, nordmann doesn't it? World religions certainly have - and are having an impact on the human condition..... and it would seem  so from the beginning on human interaction. Is this an accusation of a conspiracy to false claim? Surely humanists cannot deny that their idealist movement is a progression based on much that has been sieved from the best of religious notions? A thread is necessary to illuminate the humanist movement from year dot, I suggest since my OP seems to have irked those who align with it. And I ain't quite done with this one. Starting a fresh thread might allay ratty jumpimg up and down about this one and its eclectic subsumation - (Cor!  What big words for a morning post - I need coffee.)

I'm not sure I understand what you might mean by a "humanist movement". Being human has never required enrolling in anything, or at least this is what I have always been led to believe. And nor does being human require that anything be "sieved" from religious sources in order to achieve a state of humanism. Rather the reverse, I would have thought.

Religion certainly encourages skewed and overly complicated perceptions of really very simple concepts, doesn't it? Perhaps that is in fact one of its own proofs of success - convincing its believers that humanity is a "movement" requiring membership conditions just like religions themselves like to impose. What a great scam.

I have never heard mention of a humanist movement from religious sources only what I gleaned from some posts here - and had to look it up! And does the church set out to convince its believers of anything? To my mind its a bit like a buffet, stuff is laid out and one is free to take from it and also to question. Not all religions will accept questioning. I have had that out with an organisation in Holland re islam, the lady suggested that questioning was tolerated but got very huffy because I questioned that! Scam, now is it? After all the benefits that have been mentioned here - and accepted by some non believers, it's all a scam. Your  window of vision is anti church, the thread is about religions world wide. and they differ. I assume you are not big on tolerance - or is that just limited to me? it's a pity you have never lived in the east where you get a good mind-boggle at least twice a day to tolerate.

Tolerance is my middle name, Priscilla, as well you know  

The buffet approach to religious belief is, on the other hand, not tolerated by all religions, or at least not by those who reckon their role to be enforcers of particular beliefs from which they maintain one cannot depart if one wishes to retain membership.

I actually agree with you though that cherry-picking items of faith is in fact probably the most honest approach to being religious. It is after all exactly how any religion's canon is assembled itself, were the cherry-pickers only ever honest enough to admit it.

The scam I referred to is that of persuading people they require to subscribe to a faith in order to avail of those things that they actually enjoy simply from being human. Or at least if that isn't a scam then what on earth is? My window of vision is certainly wide enough to see that, so I don't think I need to call the glaziers in just yet. However I'll keep on the look-out for a good window firm and will send then round to you when they're done here if you like.

Too much boggling is bad for the mind. Best instead to understand things, I always think, or at least to try to.

Ah, yes. And I haven't done with an old issue yet. You will recall the little boy who asked his teacher the meaning of what he was on about - and getting stick - literally, for it? Well, now, before we got over excited about my misuse of the words 'big bang' and hmmm, the latest theory about stuff in time - albeit of nebulous nature electro-whatevers - I wanted to know what was the latest 'theory' about their origin was..... much as that little boy had a go at his teacher.... along the lines of if you can't explain what are you doing talking about it then?
The reply to my first asking was a semantic nit-pick. we don't know is the answer I suspect. I am 2 weeks older and asking again.  Back to my know one knows that sort of thing for certain - and that is a basic mystery that many with religious beliefs - or seeking them try to resolve in what ever way they can - apart from total denial; often ducking, of course,  but then the nonreligious do  the same sort of ducking. Hmmmmm. Time to exercise those lazy, tolerance qualities, mmmm?

nordmann wrote:

What a great scam.

"Great scam" - "voraciously...subsumes" - "hijacked": Lord, what emotive choice of diction.

Why such vehemence? And why, when religion- and its dubious benefits - is such a ridiculously outdated and irrelevant concept, do people  - even the atheists - return, time and time again, to this egregious scam? Why don't you all leave it - and us - alone - to fester in our ignorant, simple-minded superstition?

I ask this because I am reading - utterly fascinated - Michael Peppiatt's biography of Francis Bacon, the artist, not the 16th/17th philosopher/statesman. I am enthralled and horrified in equal measure by what I am learning about Peppiatt's subject - an artist whose work I have, to my shame, avoided and feared. Such anger! Such defiance! Such misery in the life of this Anglo-Irish genius! Yet he too returned, atheist as he was, time and time again, to religious subjects: especially the Crucifixion and to that father of all fathers; Il Papa - - the Pope. Here's Peppiatt:

The artist later claimed that he was drawn to the Crucifixion because, more than any other theme, it enabled him to open up all kinds of areas of emotion and so convey his most personal and profound feelings about life, But however seriously we take this claim, the central paradox remains: and we are no closer to understanding why Bacon, the defiant, outspoken, atheist, returned obsessively to the most hightly charged event and most potent symbol fo the Christian religion. Already there is a  central enigma  in the artist's work that resist analysis.

I should really put this on ferval's What Is Art? thread - but  I am sure Priscilla will forgive me. I think that Bacon and  Caravaggio had much in common.

A benefit of religion - it gives us pause for thought?



Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion c.1944  

Emotive choice of diction?    Have you read Priscilla's last post where she demands a one paragraph explanation of the origin of the universe? Have you read your own?

As an obviously vehement person I assume it is only fair to direct that talent against irrational claptrap, yes. But thank you for the compliment. I am now pausing for the umpteenth time for thought.

I've obviously pushed a button. Sorry.

PS Your comments on Bacon would be welcome - really.

You did.

I'll post you a snap from this summer of Bacon's studio as soon as I figure out how to get the stuff over from my phone. You'll appreciate it, I think. Especially if housekeeping isn't your forte.

That'll do. You could have saved me a long walk up O'Connell Street!

Irrational claptrap - my posts, I assume. That's what brings you out in a verbal rash, you suggest. Ah!

Now about that universe stuff. I was not limiting you to one paragraph..........has anyone ever tried to limit you to anything? All this came from my saying I had difficulty in believing anything - and this subject was tossed about for a while - or at least the latest theories.But theories are eventually upstaged by another eventually. So if it's too hard - or you don't know - or too difficult, let's move on and my difficulty in believing it as absolute knowledge stays much as it was - with or without the theory.

There, howzat for irrational claptrap? 

So what is so remarkable about Bacon's studio? I have seen, worked in and created much the same in my time. They always smell rather nice of the paint and stuff - not if you spend an age over a still life of herrings, though. There were complaints about that...... stupid lot, the change of colours was fascinating.

Priscilla wrote:

There, howzat for irrational claptrap?

I was impressed!

As I said before the Big Bang model is never likely now to be superseded in so far as it pretty much accounts for all observable and verifiable behaviour regarding matter, anti-matter, space and time, and everything else which collectively constitutes our expanding universe. Where something approaching competing theories as you describe exists is in the field of cosmogony which is the area of study attempting to define the singularity from which the expansion originated and what happened during Planck Time - the currently untestable portion of the Big Bang model. This is not to say that the various theories are competing with each other to be proved right - it is more that separate assumptions in quantum physics of equal hypothetical practicality, when applied to the problem simultaneously, enjoy various levels of success at explaining how things got to the state in which they are now observed. If ever an undisputed single theory emerges in cosmogony it will most likely not be one of the chief lines of inquiry currently being pursued but an amalgam of these. Of the separate theoretical models currently being explored the one examining Brane Inflation excites most interest at CERN, where exponential expansion is actually something that can be tested and measured to an extent, but that in no way invalidates string theory, M-theory and the other models currently adopted from these hypotheses.

The thing about the Big Bang is that it most definitely cannot have been big (quite the opposite in fact) and there was no bang. It's an awful name to have stuck really and deflects completely from the essential core of the model which probably supersedes even its treatment of matter creation - the nature of time itself.

Nailing the nebulous - must be enormous fun for those who have the mind set tools to do it - especially at CERN. Ferv once asked me what I meant by the spiritual mysteries that I admitted being drawn to and this is part of it; my awe and wonder is all inclusive and totally bound in grasping the nature of time. That has been with me since childhood when the mind has uncluttered understanding  and  before  words set parameters. ...... ie  irrational claptrap contd.

It was a great reply, for which I thank you. There we go - another great benefit of religions - science spurred on to disprove - or even prove what religions have at their core. 

I expect to hear a distant thud as you keel over on reading that.

May I add a little more of my particular brand of irrational claptrap?


 http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/14/francis-bacon-and-the-masters-review


Bacon's Crucifixion 1933 and The Crucifixion Alonso Cano 1601

I went in a Bacon fan, and left wondering how he conned so many people, not least the Sainsbury family. For this show not only reveals an aesthetic failure, but a moral one. Bacon seems painfully contrived and insincere. He looks like an overblown poseur, with no real heart.

That is because all the works of art here except his glow with human truth. Titian’s Christ Bearing the Cross (1566-70) is nakedly and simply compassionate. Christ looks out at you from beneath the burden of his cross, as blood runs down his face. It is not sentimental or fake: it’s a universal image of suffering. Beside this masterpiece from the Hermitage, a Bacon crucifixion just seems sensationalised, hysterical and weightless.





Mmmm, as Priscilla would say.

PS I withdraw my Caravaggio comparison. That was indeed irrational claptrap (although a similar fury and defiance is there).

PPS No more arty stuff on your thread, P., promise. Please forgive my rambling. I'm rambling off now.

PPPS This is the Titian referred to in the Guardian review:

Why the apology, Temps? It actually leads into a fresh notion that I have yet to introduce......... thudded body rolls over and whinces sounds coming my way. Let us be our own judges of claptrap and not leave it to another Bishop in this look-see format.