@fresco,
Quote:Religion has its uses for many as a psychological comforter and a social regulator but has absolutely nothing significant to say about scientific exploration.
I know how much you love to stress the comforting aspect of religion, fresco, hinting, of course, that you're srtong and need no comfort and that religious people are big softies or touched in the head, and much to your credit it is I must say but it is getting to look like a reflex action on your part not unlike that of a baby sucking its thumb.
It is not too much of a stretch to say that militant atheism is a psychological comforter too in the sense that it makes you feel less regulated socially and the need to feel that sense of freedom is likely to be strongest in those who are most sensitive to being fucked about, up hill and down dale, from morning to night, by all the regulations and minions of our wide sweeping and not to be brooked bureaucracies which would soon become like those of North Korea if there were no Archbishops to stare down their power hungry proposals for want of any opposition from the "stitch-up brigade" which we call a two party system complete with commode big enough for them all to piss in.
Are you sort of weaseling around faintly promising any converts you make that they will be able to hold up their heads proudly and escape being regulated in their social activities? A win/winner eh? With only having to chant the mantra that "Religion has its uses for many as a psychological comforter and a social regulator but has absolutely nothing significant to say about scientific exploration" to be both comforted and freed from regulation despite the scientific fact that without religion there would not be any scientific exploration nor words with more than two phonemes.
The very presence of your post and its expression is 100% proof that you're talking out of your arse.
What you need to do is what Thatcher did to the mines. She didn't say that coal mining was a bad thing. She said it had done its job and it was time to sweep it away. That's a fair enough stance to take. Something to debate. Religious belief cannot be attacked on an Internet network using polysyllabic words without looking like a bit of a mutt. Unless you postulate that this kit we are using could have arrived in your study without the Church's guidance. Even I wouldn't attempt such a task.
What regulations of the Church do you find burdensome? And if you don't, as I feel sure is the case, what is your reason for belittling the comfort of those who find consolation in the Church. It can't be that it is holding up scientific progress when it was the Church that put the flaming torch to the blue touchpaper of science in the first place and has had to wrestle with such an awkward offspring ever since which obviously wants to sprint before it can walk. Science can go to the head you know. Especially with nerds who feel a power inchoate in science which they never felt in anything else and are thus highly motivated to study and become experts so that they can use a highly specialised expertise to boss everybody around there being no other route available. Such as getting elected.
If that's the offer you're pitching it will go the way of the promise to close Gitmo within 100 days of being sworn in.
That we can walk tall as people who need no comforting and have the yoke of the Church's regulations lifted from our shoulders at the same time
Regulation then explodes I fear. As it does naturally with no hindrances. As it has done.
Did you know that a one-time Archbishop of Birmingham did his Master's Thesis on Baudelaire?
I think you ought to develop your ideas on social regulation so that we can examine them for their potential for usefulness.
