(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

The probate interview finally came through. Next Thursday I shall have to present myself to the authorities and try to convince them that I am a proper person, and honest and reliable enough to be executor of my Father's will.
For a change, I will not begin the interview by listing all my sins and all my faults - sometimes there may be advantages in departing from ingrained behaviour. It is not necessary that my interviewers laugh, nor do I have to put them at their ease. Oh well, at least I can take refuge in forms and paper.

I'm now of the opinion that England (not the UK as a whole) is a nation of two cultures.
One is educated, polite, and open-minded.
One is drunken, rude, lacking education, and narrow minded.
Of course the two sets intersect, but I find myself in a grouping that doesn't.
Damn the ignorant. Damn their stupidity. Damn their crassness. Damn their racism.
Damn them, damn them, damn them.

A day pilloried in the stocks wouldn't do some of these folk any harm (as long as nothing hard or sharp was thrown at them).
Humiliation is a great aid to learning, which as a young man I found to my cost (and shame).

Comments

[vlion.livejournal.com]

I am coming to believe that the US as a whole is starting to splinter into a few different crosssections broken along several lines: Value of education, physical location(rual vs city), and some splitting around a religious/non-religious worldview which I havn't deduced the fault of yet.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Not certain from here, but taking occam's razor to the question: it does look as if the non-rational aspect of the religious folk's belief is, with their zealotry, pushing the rational into a corner.
I don't know about you, but for me Darwinism (of a particular kind) seems more rational than intelligent design. Much as I can understand the need to be comforted by believing that there was a paternal all-father figure who cared especially for me, it won't do for my intelligence. And if I were a teacher of science, it might piss me off right royally. Also, as I'm never going to get pregnant, I don't feel I've got a right to an opinion as to what women do with their bodies, even if I might not like the idea of abortion. (I would, however, hope to be consulted if I were a putative father, and would hope that I could offer support of whatever kind required.
I imagine that there are very few zealous anti-religious folk in comparison with the religious folk, and the impetus behind the polarisation is led by the religious right - but I accept my analysis may be coloured by my own opinions, and may be plain wrong, because I don't know all the details about the numbers involved in the debate, and their respective stances.

[vlion.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to say right now there is a lot of poles around which people are congregating: abortion, darwinishm, and so forth.

Part of the issue is the questions touch deeply into the heart of religious beliefs, and that's not a very rational thing to touch, and the responses are equally irrational unless there's a well-disciplined mind about.

If you take a man like Richard Dawkins, who(from what I understand, I haven't studied him myself), he wants to see all religion abolished, and the supernatural removed from life. That is a central fear of the amorphous political-religious movement in the US- one of the genuinely uniting factors in its disparate parts. This fear arose back in the early days of the 20th century with the rampant atheism of the Bolsheviks and what they did to their subjects. Dawkins scares the crap out of religious people, and they want his ideas essentially surpressed or permantly shelved. Even the more raational religious people would rather see tolerance than the gross intolerance he displays.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

To a certain extent I think you're right, but Dawkins is pretty much a lone voice on the 'Scientific Fundamentalist' position, whereas I can't begin to name the legions of folk who adopt the 'Religious Fundamentalist' positions.
Also Dawkins is more concerned about education than abolishing religion: he wants it out of all science classes, especially biology.
The thing is, even the Catholic Church accepts Darwinism, rather than intelligent design. Pope Benny, god bless his soul, after dithering for a bit, took advice from his Jesuit theologians on this and came out in favour of Charlie Darwin with the normal academic modifications.
There's the Gay thing as well.
The Christian right do have problems with Gay folk.
As an aside, my Godfather, who is kind and upright and served his country in the forces with honour, is as gay as a San Fransisco carnival, and is also the nicest chap imaginable.
If anyone told him how to live his life not only would he be outraged, I'd be really bloody angry too (I'd rather see him happy and content).
All sides seem too intolerant, except...I don't think Dawkins cares too much about other people's personal morality and self-reflectory or co-operative actions. I'm sure he cares about folk misbehaving in other ways (Murder, Robbery, etc) but we don't hear about any of it. There isn't a single area of life that the religious chaps don't have an opinion on, or will tell you how to behave.
I don't know how it will all work out, but if push came to shove, I think I'd be on the side of the rational: but I rather hope everyone can be a bit more tolerant, and it doesn't come to it. I'm for religious tolerance, but not in the Science Lab, which should be about logic and the Scientific Method. I don't think belief has any place in science - observation, analysis, and all the other tools of science seem more appropriate.
I don't think Science has much place in most Churches, either: prayer and worship seem more the thing. (Good music helps as well.)
Live and let live doesn't sound too bad a way of going about things.