In history, what were all those chantries about if not fear of what might happen to an errant soul? I know of many who have asked for a priest and last rites - most unexpected in one case and my mother having to find a priest for someone who we didn't even know had ever been a Catholic. In my experience, a pretty broad catchment area of people from all walks that many wee  not immune fro fear of a suffering afterlife.

As for there religion of evil, there are cults that are too awful to write about here - and surely you now that. In one place where I lived a child and visited over the years there was always a moment of silence whereev we were when the bells of a certain church rang. Tales of the evil cult tha had once used that place 200 years before were whispered again and again, even the most unlikely people crossed themselves. All superstitious nonsense as maybe, but people have lingering fears. I wonder what the humanist approach to dedicated evil is? Not that it belongs in this thread but I am curious. 
That at least one examination board now offers 'Witchcraft' as a subject for GCSE's -  doesn't surprise since many aspects of religion are studied - what does make me wonder is what one writes of it  on a job seeking CV? ,,,,,,,just wondering

So we have all this support for religions hi jacking  'fairness as a natural basic human  trait, dealing with defaulters of the code was somewhat harsh even in godless communities, I suppose - but society moving away from religious mores doesn't seem to have licked the problem. Fear of the law is somewhat less fearsome as some form of retribution that will linger longer. I still think that the basic commandments were a very good deterrent for a very long time  - and  still are whilst mankind sorts out its  rightful evolutionary progress. And that, Paul makes them very close indeed to being a benefit of religion. Excommunication for breaking them in some sects is still  a strong force with eaped damnation thrown in........I know 2 young men who this has happened to recently over neighbour's wife issues!

Religion utilises many natural fears in order to convince followers of its validity. Fear of death, when complicated by convincing the subject of a fear of eternal damnation, is a powerful control tool. So in that sense I agree with you. However when you look at human behaviour it is quite obvious that it is not an over-riding concern for people in general and never really has been when it comes to evaluating and prosecuting behavioural choices - other more immediate factors will almost certainly trump these concerns if pressing enough, as will sometimes character traits and values learnt in childhood that facilitate egoistic attitudes towards what might be termed "the rest of society". So it is not as cut and dried a threat as it may first appear, strong and all as it was pumped up to be in the past by various religions.

I also would think that one should tread carefully if one is religious when dismissing what appear to be aberrational congregations who share an equally aberrant theology as "cults". People assemble to do bad things (bad things being those which offend general prevailing morality) and they use all sorts of pretexts to justify their congregation, religious ones included. However the assessment of behaviour as evil is not a preserve of any one religious sect, however large. My contention is that it is a more universally uniform concept which transcends religious affiliation and belief, basically being a product of being social beings. In that sense "evil" can be identified certainly in cults such as the example you cite, but also in larger religions (as I have certainly reiterated many times here regarding those faith systems which currently have the largest numerical memberships). What separates a cult from a full-blown faith is often simply the numbers who have signed up to it. However what distinguishes evil behaviour from good behaviour in the context of a religious faith and what it encourages is quite independent of membership statistics. Saudi Arabia's decision to behead and crucify a 17 year old, as reported yesterday in the paper, using Sunni religious code as justification for this barbarity, is a topical case in point. No one would call Sunni members a cult. But their collective faith is facilitating this gruesomely cruel punishment for the crime of having a telephone and taking part in a protest march.

You say that society moving away from religious mores doesn't seem to have helped things. I would strongly disagree, and in the case of Saudi Arabia would actively aid the process using whatever means I could, if only to arrest the continuation of such evil cloaked in a perversion of basic human morality, a perversion which religion has historically demonstrated it is best positioned to construct. When that perversion finds its way into civil law codes it is never a good outcome.

Too much generalisation on my part and too much specification on yours has overlaid some thought here. In my rambling through this thorny briar  I have been ducking the heavy strands of 'born into' religious groups which are also political entities  and have been thinking more of religions which are of choice - and that has been a hard won freedom. The Sectarianism   that Temp asked about  to get a handle on  the current situation in the Middle east had no replies. Far too complex an issue for us to take on here,  I suppose.

Moving away from religious mores I intended for consideration in our societies. Where parents, school, Sunday school and society in general made a conscious effort to impart values to children from a religious grounding this is happens less. Our own households still have links to those even if by choice we have very different notions from  our forefathers. So I wonder what is replacing that?
And how is it being done? 
Such benefits as were once absorbed from religious mores now are societies' responsibility is what you have always maintained - but how is it being done? I hope I am very wrong but evil seems to have better PR!  Must think more on this - and give some thought to who is grabbing the baby from the emptying bath.

Priscilla wrote:

Such benefits as were once absorbed from religious mores now are societies' responsibility is what you have always maintained

No I haven't. I have maintained that it has always been a societal rather than a religious feature of how humans organise and behave, and that this basic human morality which the resulting rules are designed to encompass is exactly that - a basic humanity - whether it is chosen within some societies to dress it up as a received code from a divine source or not.

When this is not true, in other words when a specific religion imposes its own narrow or specific interpretation of morality on this process then it is almost always to impose restrictions, rules and consequences not normally condoned within general morality as universally understood by all humans.

It is significant, I think, that when this role of addressing amorality or immorality is assumed by people motivated by religious faith in an effort to do actual good - for example when a set of values is promoted by a particular faith (or faiths) to address an issue where general morality has been insufficient to prevent bad things happening (Quaker opposition to the slave trade, individual Christian priests' opposition to the Nazis etc) - an appeal is normally made not to everyone to conform to that religion's particular moral ethos but to their own humanitarianism. And this is rightly so, as this is the ultimate test of conscience which can be applied in these cases and always the most effective. Where religion becomes an unreliable source for this type of change however is in its proven track record in failing to distinguish between that which is good in accord with universal humanitarianism and that which is merely deemed good within its own particular ethos. For this reason alone it is almost always better therefore to ascribe actual change for the good emanating apparently from such an ethos to a proof of basic human morality being the actual underlying prime motivation in each case.

I still have a problem with this basic human morality that you and others proclaim. So really  you all maintain that the work of missionaries in societies that were come upon somewhat behind in other development received no benefit at all from mission work and that left alone they had their  moral compasses well established. Not quite what I understand from those who have worked with emerging  peoples. Stopping them from eating the neighbours - and I jest not - seems to me to be an all round benefit but you would have it otherwise, perhaps- that they had a sense of inborn fairness of some sort - but that was not clearly apparent - or so I have been told. I think we are in a loop here. Exploring this subject has been most interesting and helped me personally - and towards directions that might dismay you. Media chucks at us daily more and more examples of humanity - educated humanity behaving in intolerable ways. The vaneer  of civilisation is as thin as it ever was. What is happening to the basic goodness and sense of fairness that we are all supposed to be born with as religious mores fade? Basic human morality as a prime motivator seems to need a good  and hard butt-kick.

Why would I say that missionaries did no good work? That would be stupid. I would say however that their religious ethos was no sure-fire guide to replacing existing values with better ones.

Cannibalism and Caribbean have the same linguistic root, thanks to Spanish assessment of the locals' name, practices and heathenism. Missionaries ultimately succeeded in stopping the Caribs from dispensing with slain enemies in so ecologically sound a manner, and instead inculcated a value system whereby the once fierce warriors would tolerate being at the wrong end of a slaving society run by the missionaries' patrons and masters. In terms of basic humanity one is right to point a finger at aberrational behaviour when judged as evil against a global norm (as has always been the case in societies isolated from that global norm) but the finger should not stop pointing at the first aberration it encounters - in fact one could argue that it deserves to point all the more accusingly at so-called "developed" societies who accommodate just as reprehensible values themselves.

So, there have been missionaries and missionaries (and still are), some good on the whole for the people whose society they have intruded into for religious purposes, some so-so, and some who did way more harm than good. Like all things religious missionary mentality contains elements of everything and has diffuse effects.

There is an assumption you have made several times (and seem to think I also have inferred the same) - that basic humanity is expressed by people doing good things. It is not. It is expressed only in terms of recognition of certain things being bad, and certain things good, whether they are tolerated or not at specific times within specific societies or whether the bad deeds outweigh the good in terms of incidence. No one would say that basic humanity passed the country of Germany by, yet many within that society in a certain period of time in the 20th century behaved reprehensibly. I doubt if sending missionaries would have helped much there, but the point is that aberrational behaviour exists, it has many reasons behind its occurrence when it happens, and it can be so vile as to defy normal language to describe how bad it is. But it does not mean that basic humanitarian values have ceased to exist, even within that society. They have simply been ignored.

Religion proved to be not much help either in acting as a bulwark against such a descent into immorality, and ending the behaviour meant that several other societies had to descend to almost equally immoral levels in order to prosecute a change through violence (often with religion being cited as inspiration). But then such is as it always has been.

So I keep on misunderstanding you! Not hard! I appeal to the masses for support on that - too many fruit in the baskets, old matey each time!

Too much generalisation - on both side. The people who all for a people-protein diet were in Sawark(sp) so  dreadful Spanish interference doesn't count here. 

I was expecting Germany to crop up - missionaries would have done no good - and their basic inherent human nature for fairnessn cracked. The infliction of an an evil cult, however, all very well reasoned - and applied with religious zeal told hold for a while.......another kind of theocracy - if that is the word. If not supply the right one please you have a fuller basket of them than I do.

Lots of people have eaten people, and it's not always been immoral (though very taboo right enough, especially in front of one's auntie). Killing people without eating them afterwards could arguably be called even more immoral (though apparently not always taboo, funnily enough).

I think it's a bad example of human decency/indecency maybe to highlight anyway as it skirts around the whole issue of global morality and what constitutes a universally understood code of ethics. The ones I would plump for are stealing, injuring and killing, especially when they're done to you. If one then takes the old Sumerian edict repeated by many afterwards of doing unto others as you would have others do unto you then that's about the whole morality thing more or less covered, for everyone, for the whole world. Anything religion might add to this is basically just window dressing.

I had a different take on Hammurabi's code - had better ask Gil! or look it up.

Lex talionis?

Isn't that a bit different from:


Matthew 22:35-40King James Version (KJV)
³⁵ Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
³⁶ Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
³⁷ Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
³⁸ This is the first and great commandment.
³⁹ And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Jesus of Nazareth attributed - Matthew 5:38-48 wrote:

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

nordmann wrote:

There is an assumption you have made several times (and seem to think I also have inferred the same) - that basic humanity is expressed by people doing good things. It is not. It is expressed only in terms of recognition of certain things being bad, and certain things good, whether they are tolerated or not at specific times within specific societies or whether the bad deeds outweigh the good in terms of incidence. No one would say that basic humanity passed the country of Germany by, yet many within that society in a certain period of time in the 20th century behaved reprehensibly. I doubt if sending missionaries would have helped much there, but the point is that aberrational behaviour exists, it has many reasons behind its occurrence when it happens, and it can be so vile as to defy normal language to describe how bad it is. But it does not mean that basic humanitarian values have ceased to exist, even within that society. They have simply been ignored.

Religion proved to be not much help either in acting as a bulwark against such a descent into immorality, and ending the behaviour meant that several other societies had to descend to almost equally immoral levels in order to prosecute a change through violence (often with religion being cited as inspiration). But then such is as it always has been.

Nothing is easy about this discussion. I have kept quiet all day because I do not know any more what to say. The mention of the Nazis made me think - please don't laugh - of the old film starring Andrey Hepburn: The Nun's Story. Hepburn's character finally leaves the convent: listening to the atheist doctor (whose skill has actually saved her life) has seriously undermined her faith, but it is the German bombings and the death of her brother that make it impossible for her to continue living by the rule -  or continue trying to follow the teaching we read of (above) in Saint Matthew's Gospel. She tells the disapproving Mother Superior that she cannot forgive; that she must fight back and that she intends to join the Resistance. The last shot of Hepburn (looking as lovely as ever) is her exit from the convent. No one says good-bye to her and she steps out alone into a deserted street.

The German theologian, Bonhoeffer, who was hung by the Nazis, has also been on my mind.

Tim was around earlier. I wonder what his take is on all this?

All quiet on the northern front

Either he is re writing Hamurabi's code for Wiki

Or writing a huge essay to be delivered tomorrow

or he has gone out for a drink...... which would be good thinking, giving us all a break.

Priscilla wrote:

All quiet on the northern front

Either he is re writing Hamurabi's code for Wiki

Or writing a huge essay to be delivered tomorrow

I sincerely hope nordmann is writing something about the old "lex talionis" for us: it is not really something I know much about. It was the basis of Roman law, I think - and something that the fearsomely vengeful God of the Old Testament also approved? Surely the teaching in Matthew 38, which I have quoted above, was revolutionary then, and must have appeared, whether one was Jewish, Roman or Greek, far from being a benefit, but actually quite a mad way to go about things?

What was the Greek take on the lex talionis?

Temp, I ask this respectfully and out of genuine puzzlement: as in the Mathew 38 quote, in order to live by those tenets why is there any need to believe in a deity?

Loving thy neighbour as thy self is all very well (and only fair) as long as you do truly love yourself and that's something that religion isn't very good at encouraging.

The 'yearning after spirituality' that you mention, is that not the response to the cry when faced with death and the often cruel business of living, There must be more to it than just this? And P, when I said 'spirituality, whatever that means', it was a statement rather than a question given the way that term is used to cover everything from putting a crystal on the window ledge to the most profound contemplation.

Punishment as a means of modifying behaviour may work in the short term but haven't we known for an awfully long time that not only does it tend to militate against being caught rather than actually changing any value judgements but that positive reinforcement of the desired behaviour works much better. Even in pigeons.

ferv, you once asked me - far above in ths thread but I could find it what I meant by the mysteries pf spirituality. Temp is away for a tad so I will fill in for myself. Spirituality is not  - or nowhere near a cry in times of pain or distress, far from it. It's those quiet still momwnts of utter peace contentment and love of the beauty I find in simple things as you suggest  

In my book, atrocity should be met with punishment harsh but its too late for exercises in desired behaviour. I think temp has touched on the many ways in which a deitymay be perceived or understood. I can only quote Sufic stuff  - I have found it fascinating  - the word itself means wool  and suggests the comfort of being swathed......... and far more awesome than our limited minds can grasp. There was much batting above about origins and no one has yet said how all those bits of bits and which force and the originator of time itself all cane about. Purity - maths, physics, life forms ever way whichever are interconnected  and many religions try to bring this together in an understanding of a deity and codes of behaviour that may fit the pattern. We can not agree, I guess. Humans have a way far to go before they meet the ideals that you think are innate. people like me think we are only just out of the mud and just maybe we need to cling to a rope of hope..... and I don't think myself religious just on a mental search - and doing what nordmann calls, cherry picking.

Hi - I was off doing some humanitarian works. It's what we humans have to do sometimes ...

Temp, by the time the Romans used the "Lex Talionis" as a basis for some of their laws - in other words by the time it was even called "Lex Talionis" - it was already more or less the same principle enshrined still in our modern laws concerning compensation, namely that a financial value could be put on reparations made to right a grievance inflicted by one person on another. If anything the Romans went even further than we do in applying this principle - just about any wrong could be righted in a court of law through pecuniary payment. We tend towards custodial sentencing much more than they ever cared to do. Anyway, if a Jewish rabbi was referring to "an eye for an eye etc" at the time of the story cited above then he, and we must assume his audience, would have been in no doubt that he was referring to ancient Jewish law and not modern Roman, at least if he knew as much about how Romans did things as he let on. He probably didn't care that much either way since the point was to contradict the principle and suggest a more doormat-centered attitude towards grievance with the expectation of compensation in the afterlife. Not a sound legal principle on which to build statutes, and possibly a perversion of Platonic principles as filtered down through Judaism to a pretty backward people educationally, but not "Lex Talionis" in any case.

I'll stay out of the "what spirituality means" conversation. Often it seems to mean being hoodwinked as far as I can see from experience, my own and others who I know of. In my own private little legal system with its High Court situated somewhere around the frontal lobe of the cerbral cortex the jury is still out on that one.

The Greek take on the Lex Talionis was basically that they had originated the same thing under Solon's Tort Laws, so no big deal there. However they adopted codified Roman Law in many cases even before they had been fully subsumed into the Roman political hegemony so it seems they were quite open to having the traditional laws of Tort amended to match the more detailed Roman versions. Both Greeks and Romans would have been horrified at the notion that one should go around gouging out eyes and knocking out teeth after something along the lines of an industrial accident. Both of them had much cleverer ways of seeing that justice was done, and did not have to go into either Charles Bronson or doormat-mode to achieve it.

The notion of being completely submissive in the face of aggression directed against one, by the way, has really nothing at all to do with the "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" maxim. The former creates victims and martyrs (great for a religion maybe) but the latter creates a fairly run society.

nordmann wrote:

 If one then takes the old Sumerian edict repeated by many afterwards of doing unto others as you would have others do unto you then that's about the whole morality thing more or less covered, for everyone, for the whole world. Anything religion might add to this is basically just window dressing.

What of this reference. normann? The code was all for an eye for an eye etc

I am  confused. ,,, but glad that spirituality is not up for diacussion for a bitt..... as my cleaning lady  says on more ordinary issues  - 'It's doing me  'ead in.'

I assume we are then talking about two very different things. The Egyptian Ma'at was both a goddess and a concept of reciprocity by the time of the Middle Kingdom. The "Eloquent Peasant" story, assumed to be an import from even more ancient Sumerian and designed to explain Ma'at, one of our oldest documents from any culture related to reciprocity, states "now this is the command: do to the doer, to make him do" which is later more accurately being translated from Late Kingdom versions as "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another." This was then what the later Greeks - who through the Ptolemeic connection had become acquainted with the principle, the story and the embedded command - came to know as the "Golden Rule". From there it was to feature in many philosophical debates, especially concerning justice. Plato liked it a lot.

Nowhere in the transmission of this marvellously simple but correct piece of sound advice was it taken to imply that you should do back to another what he has done to you, as the rather barbaric and utterly vengeful Jewish edict concerning how they handled reciprocity seems to have encouraged.

How they became conflated in Christian (and Muslim) eyes - a phenomenon I've noticed before by the way - is anyone's guess, but I bet the reason isn't a very joyful one to contemplate.

I am lost - Middle Kingdom? What of Sumarians edict? Oft quoted Egyptians?

Still confused. Who is muddling Sumerians and Egyptians, me? I may not know me cuniform from  me hieroglyphs enough t read either but  they are surely a tad different histories - and Hammurabi is cited quite a lot for his 200 odd laws - enough for me know of it and a bit more.

Priscilla wrote:

Who is muddling Sumerians and Egyptians, me?

Well, not me (if you read again what I said above). You might be confusing your Amorites with your Sumerians, but that's another story. You are correct in noticing that his stele (written in Akkadian, thereby showing how much later it was than Sumerian) ignores the notion of monetary compensation and is more like the Jewish notion of vengeful retribution (probably no coincidence there either, given the history). However if, as is assumed, Ma'at's eloquent peasant parable has Sumerian roots then it simply shows a discord between how reciprocity was viewed legally between very ancient times and the later Amorites. Such backward moves in terms of prevailing laws in particular geographical areas is by no means an historical anomaly, as Islamic State is currently dead set on demonstrating wherever they pretend to government.

The point however, regardless of whether you accept Ma'at's antiquity or not, is that the concepts are fundamentally different. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is not the same as "do unto others as they do to you". In terms of reciprocity they might appear similar but the first command is designed to encourage the creation of a society which is fair by its nature and therefore constitutes advice, whereas the second addresses revenge in a society where unfairness exists and constitutes a draconian precept which, being draconian therefore lends itself to becoming an edict. That is why one became the "Golden Rule" in Greek eyes and the other simply a rather ham-fisted and even vindictive basis of a legal system that instils behavioural conformity through the threat of rather cruel retribution for transgressors. I personally find the latter inhumane when it is employed, and as we know it still is in certain quarters.

I'll post this here, as I can't think where else to put it;

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/books/earliest-known-draft-of-king-james-bible-is-found-scholar-says.html?_r=3

I make no assumptions about Ma'at whatsoever.  I still think you confused your codes here and have had quite  a wriggle struggle to get out - admirable move tho - and how theorist it is. And you wonder why I cannot put my belief in theory. Being a very old gran who knits and does crochet builds rockeries - and is about to take on our Town Council as it happens with another side of my brain, I think I'll watch a western now. If I could recall if the good guys wore white hats, it would help. Hope Temps gets in here soon. And I don't think IS deserves mention in this thread - we all know about the downside of religions. I do hope you get your Middle Kingdoms sorted - painful.

Trike, you have to say here if you think it beneficial! Thread rules - even if our diversions wander into  odd places on ancient maps, its what we are on about - sort of..... I think.....sometimes, anyway.

Cheeky! No wriggling here, ducky.

The Middle Kingdom in Egypt (the 11th, 12th and some of the 13th dynasty) dates roughly between 2060BCE to 1650BCE and the "Eloquent Peasant" (which contains the "Golden Rule") dates from this period. As I said (now three times). However it belongs to a set of what are called "poems" and which are believed to have had Sumerian origin. As I said (now twice).

Islamic State deserve a mention as they represent simply a very recent manifestation of a long standing phenomenon in which what you call the veneer of civilisation is not only stripped away but wilfully and spitefully obliterated in the process, or at least so the perpetrators hope it is perceived. Religion is not always a factor in this - though of course it often is.

No wriggling? Whereas I ought be a follower of the deity Ma'at despite my appearance I am not a follower of Da'aft, either (nth time of saying) I think the 'Eloquent Peasant' is a Post Impressionist painting - with poem on the back.(first time of saying.) I used to write answers like yours for A level and only got a B - except in Economics when it was higher because they were acceptable.

Where religion is not a factor in of providing benefits it doesn't belong in this thread - nor worthy of a mention in any context under consideration - or in your case, pounding.

And the film was awful. Not a western and no one wore hats - who can tell who is good and who is bad these days? Just thought I ought mention it. My absence was not humanitarian but possibly of benefit to this site.

Priscilla wrote:

I used to write answers like yours for A level and only got a B - except in Economics when it was higher because they were acceptable.

You used to write answers????

No, what passed as answers  You know, surely.

I know, at least I think that much I've learnt so far. 

I had a long interview in my later finals in never you mind what - when suddenly the interviewer llit  up- of all things - a Woodbine. After a few moments, she then offered me one. I got  a distinction, she probably got cancer and I can't quite recall what we chatted  and smoked for about for over an hour thereafter. Can't imagine it happening today. Had there been gin  as well it would have been longer and I'd have got a fellowship..... perhaps..... or perhaps not.

ferval wrote:

Temp, I ask this respectfully and out of genuine puzzlement: as in the Mathew 38 quote, in order to live by those tenets why is there any need to believe in a deity?

Loving thy neighbour as thy self is all very well (and only fair) as long as you do truly love yourself and that's something that religion isn't very good at encouraging.

The 'yearning after spirituality' that you mention, is that not the response to the cry when faced with death and the often cruel business of living, There must be more to it than just this? And P, when I said 'spirituality, whatever that means', it was a statement rather than a question given the way that term is used to cover everything from putting a crystal on the window ledge to the most profound contemplation.

Punishment as a means of modifying behaviour may work in the short term but haven't we known for an awfully long time that not only does it tend to militate against being caught rather than actually changing any value judgements but that positive reinforcement of the desired behaviour works much better. Even in pigeons.

Hi ferval,

Sorry I didn't respond yesterday - was happily shopping in Exeter.

I must give you an answer answerless to your question. I don't think anyone here - certainly not me - is insisting that you believe in "a Deity"  at all. In the words of the great Tom Petty:

We got somethin', we both know it, we don't talk too much about it
Ain't no real big secret, all the same, somehow we get around it
Listen, it don't really matter to me,
You believe what you want to believe, you see

You don't have to live like a refugee...

I agree with Priscilla that it is not at all about the soul crying out in terror of death or in existential anguish - I'm in existential anguish when I lose touch (which I do all the time) with what I choose - for want of a better word - to call "God". Poor crazy Joan of Arc summed it up when, in her second public examination on 22nd February 1431, she was asked whether she was in a state of grace or no answered:  "If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God. But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me? I would that every one could hear the Voice as I hear it."

The God you and nordmann - understandably - do not believe in, ferval, may not be the God I believe in. Priscilla's idea of the Deity may again be something quite different. I don't think it matters actually. I trust I make myself obscure?

I am reading - and should like to recommend - "God in Us: A Case For Christian Humanism" by Anthony Freeman, especially his Chapter Two: "Where is Now Their God?".

But, alas, this is wriggling - and woolly wriggling at that - of the worst kind, but, having enjoyed a very boozy birthday lunch (a friend's, not a late celebration of mine), it's all I'm capable of at the moment.

Nordmann - thank you for bothering to post an interesting and detailed reply about lex talionis. You are a good teacher - really. Perhaps you have missed your vocation.

PS Anthony Freeman, whose book I recommend above, studied chemistry and then theology at Oxford. What an interesting combination. He was ordained in 1972, but when he started to talk too freely and too honestly, he was dismissed from his parish "for contravening church teaching". Ah, obviously a good, old-fashioned heretic of my kidney. What fools the Church authorities are.

PPS Vivas, especially at Oxford or Cambridge, can be interesting affairs, I believe, the proffering of Woodbines notwithstanding.

Temp wrote:

Priscilla's idea of the Deity may again be something quite different. I don't think it matters actually.

It matters. In fact it's crucially important.

Temp, I cannot speak for ferval but it is only fair to point out that your god is precisely that which I do not recognise as a reality since I do not recognise the requirement at any level for such a fiction, yours or anyone else's, to be acknowledged as real. Whereas the religious person might use the terms "believe in" or "not believe in" when addressing this fiction I choose not to employ such language, "belief" for me having a rather more precise meaning that does not allow it be used in any meaningful sense when associated with items of fantasy. And it is also fair to point out that your own logic extends to fellow religionists of every hue, in fact to every individual religionist on the globe. One can not, at least with any certainty, aver your god to be the same as the next person's, so subjective is the application of personal fantasy on their own perception of the world by each separate individual, and to your credit you also state something similar while retaining belief in a deity. It is however, to me, one of the surest indications in fact that the real nature of deity as an adopted concept is based on no actual communally justifiable grounds, and with almost nothing to do with communal experience or common knowledge, but almost everything to do with each individual's coping mechanisms in a complex environment. Your god is malleable, as you have pointed out, and that is a good thing to recognise, I feel, as it corresponds to my view that nothing malleable assumes form without someone more important in the process, namely the individual, doing the malleating.

I would actually be on surer ground myself were I to acknowledge not your averred faith in god but your averred spirituality. That most basic of all nebulous catch-all expressions is in fact so indistinct as to be impossible to refute just as it is impossible to identify. However, unlike "god", it rather allows the inclusion of transcendental personal experience, and that at least is something within all humans' ability to relate to as an actual experience, or at least so many can acknowledge the possibility based on previous experience without having to resort to pure imagination that it allows itself inclusion in common currency, however clumsily.

I am a crap teacher. I'm still not sure Priscilla has her Amorites completely separate from her Sumerians yet, and this on a history site no less! Last time I pointed out the discrepancy I was accused of wriggling. I bet no one ever told Mr Chips any such thing.

Whereas all the Mr - and even Mrs Chips in my life can be malleated I am not so sure about what I call God could be - or rather I would not expect it -  with me being only a speck with a sort of mind who is in touch with an awareness; compassion does not have to give to be of comfort. I think that's what I feel - well today anyway. Some of you are so sure of what you do and don't 'believe' in. How easy that must be, all cut and dried. 

As for the Amorites and Sumerians  I have a most clear understanding - and of wrigglers too. But since non are currently making great knee boots, they are not foremost in my searches. And none of this has anything at all to do with benefits as was my intent. More on that as a winding down when I have  a firm hold on some more long boots!

Good, we're back to these benefits again (which have been sparse in the thread up to now, at least as ones which could safely be ascribed to religion as their well-spring).

Here are some for you.

Religion (all of it) has benefited humans while it served as a conduit between people and their consideration of the metaphysical. Science - lately quantum physics - is doing a much better job of it now, but this is a very recent development and for the millennia in which this knowledge simply did not exist then religious faith and all the demands it placed on humans to justify their existence kept that part of the collective brain ticking over quite nicely. In fact one might even say that our recent advances in understanding the universe and postulating its nature and origin owe a huge debt to the generations who honed the skills required as best they could while seriously lacking the tools to make anything other than wild guesses. So adept were they at this, and so inbuilt now is the assumption that all such guesses must be wild, that physicists' greatest challenge nowadays is often trying to convince others of just how much less wild theirs are. That is the down-side of course to the same evolutionary process of thought and reason; religion has led to a situation where too many people fail to distinguish between educated and uneducated hypothesis. That is a price we have paid, and are still paying, for arriving at an exciting juncture in our species' progress where at last we are equipped to at least phrase the right questions. But without religion we would not even have that metaphysical currency in our pocket to pay any such debt.

Religion's (all of it's) pervasiveness has equipped us also to accommodate disillusionment along the way without ultimately giving up hope of finding an answer to universal laws and truths. The challenge of deducing any such thing should in reality be so daunting as to make us desist from expending effort in its pursuit. Religious faith, being as much a triumph of ignorant optimism over equally ignorant despair in this regard as anything else, has conditioned us collectively to persevere without any obvious or immediate reward in sight, and even to harbour self-delusion along the way, in fact to cherish it. This has been of enormous benefit to those whose huge strides in knowledge related to how, who and why we are as we now are began first with giant but necessarily ignorant leaps of the imagination. You cannot get greater leaps of the imagination than those which religion obliges its subscribers to perform, so this proved also essential training for better things later.

Religion (all of it) has also passed on one tremendous facility from which we all benefit today whether religious or not. The deceptiveness of data in its initial stages of analysis is one of the biggest obstacles to the development of scientific theory. Religion has conditioned us to accept that deception is not to be regarded as automatic criteria for invalidation of the first analysis results. Each variant of religion, each metamorphosis it performs over time so that one code attempts to discredit the others around it or preceding it, is testament to the very deceptiveness of the perception of deception itself, and therefore also a hugely valuable lesson even for the non-religious facing such metaphysical challenges in more reasonable and rational fields of inquiry today.

I could name a few more but you get my drift. Religion inferred benefit, and while its role in that regard is dissipating it is by no means in the past tense just yet. However it will get there, as surely as our ancestors consigned their sun-god to the realms of superstitious ignorance when they utilised what they had learnt in its worship and belief to construct a better model, and then another, and then another and so on. Religion has served as an affirmation of our intense universal curiosity, and who is to say that without such affirmation we may not have progressed at all?

It is currently a faulty tool, and growing faultier. But it was not always so, and when it had pride of place in the toolbox it served its manufacturer very well indeed.

Amen.

nordmann wrote:

Religion inferred benefit, and while its role in that regard is dissipating it is by no means in the past tense just yet. However it will get there, as surely as our ancestors consigned their sun-god to the realms of superstitious ignorance when they utilised what they had learnt in its worship and belief to construct a better model, and then another, and then another and so on. Religion has served as an affirmation of our intense universal curiosity, and who is to say that without such affirmation we may not have progressed at all?

It is currently a faulty tool, and growing faultier. But it was not always so, and when it had pride of place in the toolbox it served its manufacturer very well indeed.

Amen.

And, as you climb down from your pulpit, I am sure that you feel you have delivered a fair and convincing argument. Which you have. But somehow, for all your eloquence and icy intelligence, something is missing. It's the middle of the night here; I can't sleep; and I'm struggling to make sense of all of this. My head tells me you (and others) are right, but my heart affirms that there is more to it than you would have us believe.

I've been reading my biography of Francis Bacon and, very near the end and just by chance, I've come across this:

"For an avowed atheist, who viewed life as a tragic absurdity between two voids, the death of a lover* opened as deep and complex a well of feeling as the death of Christ in a believer; the whole nature of existence is brought into question. As if impelled by the force of his emotions, Bacon the atheist had ransacked the central rituals of both the Greek and the Christian faith: only there, he was convinced, could he find a structure to convey the extent and the implications of his own drama...In the earlier part of his career, the Crucifixion was a dominant theme; in the latter part, it was the Greek myths, and above all the Oresteia..."

nordmann wrote:

...as surely as our ancestors consigned their sun-god to the realms of superstitious ignorance when they utilised what they had learnt in its worship and belief to construct a better model...

I think not. You see, with all your talk of quantum physics and science generally, you are dealing with knowledge, not with understanding. Human understanding is still so very limited. We fly to the moon, but we still struggle when we attempt to deal with with basic human suffering and despair, to find, like Bacon, a structure to convey the extent and the implications of our own drama. Calling all religious belief "superstitious ignorance" is perhaps its own kind of ignorance: you may as well as well suggest we consign Aeschylus to the bin of history, along with Homer and Shakespeare while we are at it, plus the work of a fair few other artists. Our interpretation of the great Jewish poets (of both Testaments) may well change - should indeed change - but simply to dismiss their writings as "superstitious ignorance" - sorry, can't go along with that, your brilliant eloquence notwithstanding.  

Can I delete all reference to Tom Petty above? I had had several glasses of wine - unwise at lunch - and was talking nonsense to ferval. No doubt at nearly 3.00am I continue to talk thus - another hammering for the malleable will no doubt be on the cards.

PS * A reference to the suicide of George Dyer.

I do not agree that I was talking about "Knowledge, not understanding" (what a bogus dichotomy in the context of the supposed theme of this thread!). I was talking about where religion has actually conferred benefit, and that happens to have historically been, albeit somewhat ironically, in the area of acquiring knowledge and our faculty for understanding what we acquire in that process.

What is to "understand" about "human suffering and despair" and how is it relevant? Unless religion has advanced this understanding the question does not really belong here. Granted that certain Islamic states and statelets around the world are intent through barbaric law on providing students of both with a huge supply of raw material to examine where otherwise it might not have existed, and Christianity in recent years has done its bit in ensuring that children in the care of its institutions contribute their own percentage to the sum of human suffering and despair, and Judaism's contribution in the form of welcoming global annihilation ... oh what's the point. This list could be endless.

But you get it anyway. For all religion's sterling efforts to help us get to grips with suffering and despair by ensuring we are never short of it, our understanding of it (sic) is no further advanced. So that wasn't a benefit then. And why I didn't refer to it.

And I also stand by my reference to the complexity of gods as increasing in line with previous models. This was a simplistic way of saying that the theology in which the god construct is situated, through necessity must be ascribed a complexity designed to keep the god mysterious. The more people actually know the more convoluted this has to become. Even the most stupid person in our modern age who may believe in a very simple deity, whether they know it or not has adopted belief in a deity now surrounded by layer upon layer of theological interpretation. The individual can choose to ignore all that (most do) but certainly in the case of gods run by organisations those layers will keep on coming.

And why, when I notice that older versions of gods are now consigned to history, should I "might as well consign Aeschylus, Homer and Shakespeare to the bin of history"? If any wisdom derived from any of these sources, including even out-moded gods (as much marvels of human invention as anything produced by the lads you mention), then it has contributed along the way and lives on, even as a benefit, as I said above.

nordmann wrote:

What is to "understand" about "human suffering and despair" and how is it relevant?

If you don't understand that, how on earth can I even begin to explain?

nordmann wrote:

Unless religion has advanced this understanding the question does not really belong here. Granted that certain Islamic states and statelets around the world are intent through barbaric law on providing students of both with a huge supply of raw material to examine where otherwise it might not have existed, and Christianity in recent years has done its bit in ensuring that children in the care of its institutions contribute their own percentage to the sum of human suffering and despair, and Judaism's contribution in the form of welcoming global annihilation ... oh what's the point. This list could be endless.

You know as well as I do that it is not Christianity or Islam or Judaism that have caused such suffering or which continue to cause suffering, but the actions of wilful, proud - or sick - men, men puffed up with their own self-importance - men who have used these great religions as a means to pursue their own evil agendas, notably their hunger/desire/need for power and control over other humans. Hubris is the opposite of the humility taught by Christ. (And humility is not being a door-mat - how little you understand). I have just come back from church. The sermon, delivered by a visiting vicar, a man of great humility and wisdom, was, oddly enough, on this very subject - hubris, as opposed to humility. I did not know that there is no word which can translate the Greek word "hubris" properly - "pride" is the best our usually rich English language can come up with, but is not really adequate. The readings too were oddly apposite for me this morning, especially the one from the Old Testament - Job 38 1-7 . The Gospel reading, Mark 10: 35-45 you would no doubt dismiss with contempt as the usual door-mat stuff.



38 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

2 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?

3 Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.

4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;

7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?



But, enough of all this. As you so rightly say: "Oh, what's the point?" I can only add, nordmann, "Go in peace - and work out thy salvation with diligence." Which I am sure you will. I hope so anyway. And I'll continue to struggle along with mine.

PS Sorry about the grammar mistakes - it was the middle of the night.

I keep starting replies in this thread and then binning then because they are either inadequate or stormin' nordmann comes in and expresses it better than I ever could but: I have been told that if I don't know what 'spirituality' means then there's no point trying to explain and now nordmann's being told the same about the relationship between knowledge and understanding. How can there be knowledge without understand or understanding without knowledge? And Temp presumes to know what god it is I don't believe in. Nordmann's spot on about the use of 'believe' here by the way.

I read Spong's foreword to Freeman's book last night and I was struck by how his 'first response' was so typical of the most annoying, indeed condescending, attitude of many priests. (and teachers!) "You are a very nice man and you have raised good questions but your conclusions are all wrong. Well done though" and a metaphorical pat on the head. He then goes on in his second response to show just how wrong he is. On this thread I detect elements of that approach - from both sides, to be fair.

Unfortunately there is little of Freeman's argument on line but in the cover blurb it does say "God is not an invisible person 'out there' somewhere, but lives in the human heart and mind as 'the sum of all our values and ideals' guiding and inspiring our lives." I trust that that is a quote from "The Little Book of Quasi-Refigious Waffle" and not a summation of the book's content being how glib and vacuous it sounds.

I'm not rereading this otherwise it would undoubtedly end up in trash with the rest.

ferval wrote:

I keep starting replies in this thread and then binning then because they are either inadequate or stormin' nordmann comes in and expresses it better than I ever could but: I have been told that if I don't know what 'spirituality' means then there's no point trying to explain and now nordmann's being told the same about the relationship between knowledge and understanding. How can there be knowledge without understand or understanding without knowledge? And Temp presumes to know what god it is I don't believe in. Nordmann's spot on about the use of 'believe' here by the way.

I read Spong's foreword to Freeman's book last night and I was struck by how his 'first response' was so typical of the most annoying, indeed condescending, attitude of many priests. (and teachers!) "You are a very nice man and you have raised good questions but your conclusions are all wrong. Well done though" and a metaphorical pat on the head. He then goes on in his second response to show just how wrong he is. On this thread I detect elements of that approach - from both sides, to be fair.

Unfortunately there is little of Freeman's argument on line but in the cover blurb it does say "God is not an invisible person 'out there' somewhere, but lives in the human heart and mind as 'the sum of all our values and ideals' guiding and inspiring our lives." I trust that that is a quote from "The Little Book of Quasi-Refigious Waffle" and not a summation of the book's content being how glib and vacuous it sounds.

I'm not rereading this otherwise it would undoubtedly end up in trash with the rest.

A great post ferval ... in that it sums up my point of view entirely. Thankyou for expressing it so well ... and in getting in there before the discourse had shifted yet again.

And by quoting you I'm afraid I've now set your words in  "stone" so that you cannot now edit nor delete them ... and for that I do sincerely apologise .... but your voice did mirror my own thoughts so very well,  as does Nordmann's questioning of the word "believe" .

ferval wrote:

I keep starting replies in this thread and then binning then because they are either inadequate or stormin' nordmann comes in and expresses it better than I ever could but: I have been told that if I don't know what 'spirituality' means then there's no point trying to explain and now nordmann's being told the same about the relationship between knowledge and understanding. How can there be knowledge without understand or understanding without knowledge? And Temp presumes to know what god it is I don't believe in. Nordmann's spot on about the use of 'believe' here by the way.

I read Spong's foreword to Freeman's book last night and I was struck by how his 'first response' was so typical of the most annoying, indeed condescending, attitude of many priests. (and teachers!) "You are a very nice man and you have raised good questions but your conclusions are all wrong. Well done though" and a metaphorical pat on the head. He then goes on in his second response to show just how wrong he is. On this thread I detect elements of that approach - from both sides, to be fair.

Unfortunately there is little of Freeman's argument on line but in the cover blurb it does say "God is not an invisible person 'out there' somewhere, but lives in the human heart and mind as 'the sum of all our values and ideals' guiding and inspiring our lives." I trust that that is a quote from "The Little Book of Quasi-Refigious Waffle" and not a summation of the book's content being how glib and vacuous it sounds.

I'm not rereading this otherwise it would undoubtedly end up in trash with the rest.

I presume nothing, ferval - please read what I, in my drunken state yesterday, actually wrote, and notice I use the modal verb "may" about the God you tell us you do not believe in.

If I have come across as annoying and condescending on this site, I can only apologise and I am trying very hard to mean that. I am very tired and I am angry and I am hurt, but once we start hearing ourselves whingeing as I am doing, it is time indeed to shut up about our beliefs and the stupid books we read.

We are, perhaps, all at fault here in our attitudes to one another and come out with things which are misinterpreted as hurtful and/or condescending. You do at least try to be fair when you say:  "On this thread I detect elements of that approach - from both sides, to be fair. "

EDIT:  Et tu, MM? Fair enough. I am so sorry it has all ended this way - I have so much enjoyed knowing you all here, but it's time for me and my annoying teacher-like condescension to bugger off. I blow my nose very hard and say good-bye.

I hope it's more "au revoir" than "à Dieu".

But you, way back, asked why I didn't want to get involved in this thread ... and more recently you wondered why no-one was posting on res his anymore ...?

So now you know.

And I have just into it all from  gardening - prepare dto paise Temp for the eloquent post she put up in the night.

Full denial attack is trying to push back her strong riposte and backing each other. Temp and  don't do  it very often - to be honest i sounds too much like Shylock's praise for the lawyer - until he gets his comeuppance! So, I do this with reservation but all hail, Temps, you have made a worthy attempt to state a case against adamant and total claim to absolute knowledge that many with a shred of science assumes with the cap and gown. 

Just tell us what came before all the particles, electro stuff, and time itself  in easy- peasy words - if you can't, don't expect others to be able to tell you in easy-peasy words about their take on their faith.  So much here is about words and their meaning. Even the richest language in the world  often falls short and where composers and the creative people try to take over. 

Where tolerant understanding fails then veiled taunt creeps inso i understand Temp's withdrawal before that too escalates. Not me, chums, thick skinned, or as I think you assume, plain thick. I had better send her an e-mail.

Crossed posts. 

People can post in other threads. We  tried to contain the religious stuff to this one. Open some interesting threads to encourage  posts. I do my best but perhaps that you suggest that I take a hike also.

OK. But not until I have quite done with this one.

I also apologise if anything I said has been deemed valueless due to a condescension which, I promise, was most definitely never intended. And nor have I detected the same from others - the nearest being when arguments are countered with rather personally directed jibes (a failing thankfully restricted to one contributor here so far).

At the risk of that contributor yet again asserting that I am simply "in denial" I will iterate that the real separation in outlook here is (and has been since the beginning) the differing extent to which we acknowledge that religion is man-made. Not just the organisations, which of course must be man-made, but everything down to the most esoteric and minute metaphysical claim - all of it has originated in the human brain at some point in the past and for reasons that have everything to do purely with a human desire to use human abilities to understand what "is" from what is perceptible using solely human perception.

So Temp, when you say that I know as well as you do that crimes against humanity done in the name of religion are done by men who have perverted the religious code of their choosing then yes, that is very correct. But they are perverting codes also devised by other men and women, who in turn have developed codes based on ones previously devised (and perverted at times) by other men and women, and so on. For me the inescapable conclusion when one looks for causality has to be an origin within the human mind. And since the title of the thread assumed a rather different causality this has been the underlying point to every riposte I have made.

I attempted to redress what might therefore have been seen as a mundanely negative response to the presumption in the OP title (as well as to show through reasonable response that the accusation of being "in denial" was unjustified and pointless in the context of an active discussion except to end that discussion by one of the participants through personal taunt of another) by listing what I consider can in fact be attributed causally to religious belief and is also a demonstrable benefit which that belief has bestowed on humanity. For this I was told I had set myself up on a pulpit. However I stand by what I said. And I notice a reciprocal gesture was made by no one regarding religion's own debt to humanity.

People it seems are at liberty to take offence where none was intended (it is after all a crucial element of religious observation also, I have noticed), and it appears that my contributions here only accelerate this process. This is a shame as I found the views of those who profess a desire to acknowledge that a spiritual dimension to the subject under discussion merits equal consideration to logic to be a stimulating and indeed crucial element, not only to this discussion but really to all such encounters between those who profess a spiritual faith and those who eschew the same as a distraction from reasonable inquiry.

However if, as Priscilla now says, this is to be interpreted as an invitation for the spiritual people to "take a hike" then so be it. I could rant eloquently in a vain appeal to reverse such an inordinate response to something that was never actually said anyway (and diametrically opposed to any intent displayed by anyone here), but instead I will rely on inspiration and solace from that great 17th century source of theological wisdom, Mother Goose;

"For every ailment under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there be none, never mind it."

PS: There is nothing "before time", Priscilla. Like there is nothing deeper than depth, or higher than tall, or whiter than white (excepting Aerial washing powder, which I now suspect might actually be divine on that basis).

Perhaps I should have re-read that one or known that, like posting while pissed, posting while feeling a bit bruised by life seeming to have decided to give one an all round kicking can be unwise.

I didn’t mean to cause pain and most certainly not to anyone in particular but I’m afraid I think that we all have the right to offend when it comes to seriously expressing our convictions and thus of course be offended - I think I was pretty even handed with that.
And after all, I am a teacher too!

I hope the thread continues but I will take MM ’s approach for a while at least, bite my typing finger and voice my opinions only to a very bemused cat.

ferval wrote:

Perhaps I should have re-read that one or known that, like posting while pissed, posting while feeling a bit bruised by life seeming to have decided to give one an all round kicking can be unwise.

I didn’t mean to cause pain and most certainly not to anyone in particular but I’m afraid I think that we all have the right to offend when it comes to seriously expressing our convictions and thus of course be offended - I think I was pretty even handed with that.
And after all, I am a teacher too!

I hope the thread continues but I will take MM ’s approach for a while at least, bite my typing finger and voice my opinions only to a very bemused cat.

 I refer to myself with this.


Well, drunken (or hungover) emotional outbursts have cost me dear over the years, ferval. It wasn't you or nordmann actually that made me lurch off stage left, falling through the trapdoor en route; it was those four little words: "So now you know." Ouch.

I hope you don't bite your typing finger and bemuse your cat. I think it is I who should do that.

I very much like the Mother Goose reference - so appropriate at all levels. As Nietzsche observed (and I think he was right): "There is no event, no phenomenon, no word and no thought that does not have a multiplicity of meanings."  How's that for a bit of pretentious claptrap from me - I'm good at it, ain't I?

I hope you are not still feeling bruised by life's batterings - really.

In peace - as my irritating old hippie friend (the militant atheist ex-Catholic who stills hopes to be officially excommunicated by the Vatican one day) always says.

I do hope the trapdoor leads to a tunnel that leads to a doorway that leads to a stairs that leads back to the site. It would be a shame to have finally ousted the malicious robots etc only to find that the humans have ousted themselves!

Temp wrote:

I hope you don't bite your typing finger and bemuse your cat. I think it is I who should do that.

I understand fully why you say it but please don't bite ferval's finger. And whatever about cats, I am sure ferval's is totally innocent.

PS: I thought MM's comment was harsher in reading than in intention. (More than probably in fact) I know I certainly neglected other threads while concentrating on eliminating gods and malicious robots the last few days.

Thankyou for your PS, Nordmann, that was gracious ... although I think it were others that bore the brunt of my comments. I was indeed just, yet again, vowing to myself that I should bite my tongue. I was actually more worried that I'd rather stiched up ferval, which indeed I had. But sometimes I struggle to get my thoughts in order with this thread ... only then to find it's all moved on, or as in the case of ferval's response, someone has expressed what I wanted to say so much better than I had. I'm afraid I deliberately 'quoted' ferval just so that she couldn't on retrospection delete her own response, which matched my own feelings so well. It was a bit of an underhand thing to do, I admit, and I apologise.

And I also apologise for being a bit "sharp" with everyone. This thread has touched on things close/painful to my heart ... but I wish my brain would get its responses in, before my heart nips in with its quick snippy-snappy-snipey responses. As I keep saying to myself ... and I have to keep saying it as I don't seem to listen ... if I can't say something nice, best to say nothing at all.

Meles meles wrote:

if I can't say something nice, best say nothing at all.

I had an aunt who was forever dispensing this as advice, the stupid old cow.

Total aside, but we use "claptrap" all wrong (me included) as an expression. It really means to say something, however stupid or outlandish, just to garner applause. There is certainly one thing this thread might be full of from all sides, but given the ominous silence from the gallery it's hardly claptrap (unless one applauds Temp on grounds of style as she athletically launches herself down a trapdoor, or me for that matter as I daintily split my hairy infinitives)

So "claptrap" is a bit like the current word "clickbait" ... ie something written or spoken just to get a deliberate response. Etymologically the words are very similar too.

But we digress ......

Yes, I just put the claptrap comment in as click-bait.

Travelling with a (very) junior travelling partner one time I announced that I thought the area of the city we were visiting was really only something of a tourist trap. Half an hour later I noticed the poor bugger was treading very gingerly and wildly checking all surrounding angles with terror-stricken eyes. I had to explain that tourist traps and bear traps weren't quite the same thing.