h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>Personally, I'd reckon the simplest route would be for people to just keep using the word 'marriage' in the expectation it will get more widely adopted as a shorter alternative to the legal phrase.

And that's down to us. Instead of saying "Adam and Steve are having a civil partnership ceremony", we should say "Adam and Steve are getting married." My observation is that this *is* what people say - assuming they're the kind of people Adam and Steve would want to invite to their wedding.

I know a gay chap who recently told me that he is "getting married" in the autumn. As far as I can see that is the accepted term.

>>"I think that you misunderstand me. The outcome of the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry that I was referring to was the creation of the concept of 'Institutional Racism' due to the initial mishandling of the case by the Metropolitan Police. This then led to this further concept of the victim deciding if they had been racially abused or not."

Institutional racism was really a term regarding an organisation ending up discriminating without anyone necessarily being racist.
Listening to a victim claiming they had been racially abused (rather than ignoring them) might make sense in terms of initial police investigations, but if it comes to a prosecution there'd have to be some evidence to support the claims.

>>"....Is this the promotion of religious hatred?"

You're still mixing up general suggestions of listening to people claiming aggravating circumstances related to another crime (such as a racial element in an assult, etc) with the religious/racial hatred law.
It's *not* up to someone upset by a comment from someone else to say "I'm upset, therefore they must be guilty. Arrest them."
It's up to the police in the first case and then the CPS to consider if they can realistically show an intention to promote hatred, or get someone for a breach of the peace, etc.

>>"The lay Christians pray for our souls while a number of Ministers quote scripture in which they threaten us with fire everlasting and call for god's vengeance upon us."

That threat is only really a threat if you believe they are Right, or you credibly believe that they, or others incited by them might try and take god's vengeance into their own hands.

I doubt the law covers people inciting deities to do things.

>>"And that's down to us. Instead of saying "Adam and Steve are having a civil partnership ceremony", we should say "Adam and Steve are getting married." My observation is that this *is* what people say - assuming they're the kind of people Adam and Steve would want to invite to their wedding."

Precisely.

>>I doubt the law covers people inciting deities to do things.

>>"Unlike the States we actually have Anglican Bishops in our upper chamber (The Lords) and a lot of active Christians in Parliament and Government. This makes the issue of gay marriages somewhat sensitive, and thus we have the compromise of civil partnerships."

Read as:
>>"Unlike the States we actually have ... a lot of active Christians in Parliament and Government."
That would seem rather amusing.

I'd reckon here that a Bishop who stood up in the House of Lords and said "You know, I was talking to God last night, and he said..." might even get a less forgiving reception than a Senator or Congressperson who said the same thing in Washington.

>>"I once tried to mention the original title of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and found I couldn't. They must have changed the filter again. Like you, EMR, I'm quite surprised."

You could try the 'hood spelling "..ggaz", but I suppose that might not look very Agatha Christie.

Morning all,

Just to expand this a little: in my lifetime I have met some young children who were born (for want of a better word) Angelic' and who sailed through all sorts of difficulties with an unquenchable beatific attitude, no matter how harshly they were treated.

Equally I have met at least 2 who were born (again for want of a better word) wicked, and where no amount of nurture changed this basic nature, which continued into adulthood, albeit beneath a veneer of 'normality'

From this I conclude that whilst most are born 'unprogrammed' so that nurture can supplement nature, there seems to be the 'odd' ones who are born good, or bad, and which nothing will change.

Does this indicate the existence of two opposing deities, or is it some inherited throw back to generations of crueller times?

Novo

no, because you cannot say that under different situations they would not have turned out differently. It isn't possible to say that a particular child would turn out 'wicked' no matter how much love was put in (or whatever) because each child is an individual, each person trying to help them is an individual, and each means of bringing them up has its effect modified both by the responsible adult and the child in question. Plus it happens over a very long time so it is difficult to get parity of upbringing, and it will be modified by what has happened before.

novosobirsk...

>>Equally I have met at least 2 who were born (again for want of a better word) wicked

Tosh. Complete and utter wrongheaded tosh, I'm afraid.

To make such a judgement, we would have to be able to distinguish between the child's innate character and the character they acquire because of their environmental/ societal circumstances. If you can convince me that there is a way to assess children *independently* of environmental effects, I might revise my opinion. Until then, you are not entitled to make a judgement. In other words, you are talking tosh. (btw...'tosh was not my initial choice of words).

Meantime...since we don't know...but since we *do* know things such as that children brought to the attention of police and social work as a result of their bad behaviour are *overwhelmingly* already known to them because of offences of abuse and neglect carried out against them, it is probably reasonable to start with the baseline assumption that their 'evil' is made, not born. We certainlly would not be entitled to call ourselves civilised unless we worked on the assumption that children (remember that word: *children*) can be moulded into responsible adults, provided they are are given love and care.

Please tell me you're not involved in any profession concerned with the care of children.

Helllo Edward

No, of course I am not. I presume your first inclination was to say "Bollocks"?

I was merely asking was it possible?

My main inclination is to believe that all children are born equal and unprogrammed, so that love and nurture can indeed mould them. But that is of course untrue, they are pre-programmed to survive by what ever means possible.

Novo

And yet you have decided, on no evidence of which I can conceive, that two children of your acquantance were born wicked. And presumably you would extrapolate that there are others? Some irrational views are merely ridiculous. This sort of - er - tosh is potentially harmful to others.

(It, was 'shite', not 'bollocks')

Hi Novo ,

"My main inclination is to believe that all children are born equal and unprogrammed, so that love and nurture can indeed mould them."

And here, as Eddie would suspect, I disagree. But possibly not for the reasons he would assume.

No child is born equal. Each has a set of physical and neurological factors that makes them unique, even supposedly identical twins. This starting set may influence how they respond to the environmental factors that are applied to each of them.

Shall we have an example? Let's use me then as I am the only person I can truly relate the experiences of:

I was born short-sighted, myopic. Not particularly bad at first but I wasn't diagnosed until I was seven by which time I needed fairly strong lenses. My mother noticed quite early on that I would not join in with other small children when they were playing ball games and would sit in the corner and read instead.

I did this because I could not react quickly enough to a ball coming towards me. The other children called me 'butter-fingers' and my teachers called me 'clumsy'. Whereas I could always hold a book close enough to me to see the pictures and words. As a result I didn't develop the hand-to-eye coordination skills of other children until much later.

I also suffered at school where I couldn't see the board clearly. My teachers decided I was 'backwards' (a popular educational term in the early 1960's). Once I got glasses I soon caught up, but my early reports are painful reading.

Imagine being seven and being the class's backwards, clumsy child. I was bullied but fought back ferociously, which given my large size I did quite effectively. I then became the 'aggressive, backwards, clumsy child'.

I can remember being interviewed by a Grammar School Headmaster about it before being given the place my 11+ results deserved. My father had to fight to get me that place, and if it wasn't for the intercession of my family Priest I would have been condemned to a Secondary Modern.

All because of my myopia.

Simple differences, possibly life-changing consequences.

No child is equal.

Blessings,
Matholwch .

That was so obvious, Math, that none of it needed stating. Why on earth would anyone think children are born unprogammed? What do we imagine DNA is?

But what we were discussing was whether children are born 'wicked'.







(We really will have to remember to label the ends of our sticks for you)

It is NOVOSIBIRSK actually Edward.

I am extrapolating to nothing, merely remarking on events in my lifetime and asking opinions.

Shite would have been expected, and accepted. After all, when you disagree you usually attack on a personal level first.

Glad you are keeping your mind open.

Novo

This is slightly tangental to the current discussion(s): I'm not going to comment on civil-unions, golden hats, or the ongoing river-goddess debate (at least not directly).



When I consider the beautiful world around me, the infinite depths of the starry night sky, the wondrous intricacy of the web of living things, the tender loveliness of a wild sunflower blooming beside a country road, a rainbow, a sunset, a waterfall, a cottonwood tree standing alone in a field of wheat -- When I consider all this subtlety and magnificence I can't imagine how anyone could possibly accept the simplistic, insipid, small-minded and absolutely inadequate explanations offered for it all by the creation stories and cosmologies of the religions people have made.

I can't help but feel sadness and sympathy for such people: what horrible, tragic hurts must have been done to them earlier in life to make them turn away from reality with such hatred? How terrible that these people have suffered such injury that they must blind themselves to so much of the unfathomable beauty of the world in order to embrace the hopeless protection of the tremulous fog that religion offers.






Lest any religious people take offense at the above, I should mention that a few weeks ago on a local radio programme a version of the above comments were made *without rebuttal* about people who don't believe in the Christian god. I find it tiring to hear pastors, priests and lay-swallowers-of-what-they've-been-told-to-believe getting up on soap-boxes (in this particular case, publicly-funded soap-boxes) telling me and other people with whom they've never had *any* contact about what a horrible, hurtful childhood we've had. I find it tiring to hear these people, who appear to have little or no aesthetic sense, little or no connection to the natural world, and little or no understanding of the *actual* functioning of the biological and physical world -- I find it tiring to here such people claim that a rainbow implies that an old man in the sky created the world a few millenia ago and if I don't see that then I must be somehow intellectually and emotionally deficient.

Before anyone criticises my characterisation of the believers' syllogism, my description exactly captures the depth and subtlety of the reasoning *generally* expressed with great frequency in the everyday world of religious discussion in face-to-face and daytime radio conversation with believers (in contrast to the general level of discussion here).

I get really tired of it and now I've finally vented.

Thanks

Novobeserk,

Sorry if you feel personally attacked. I'm sure you're a reasonable fellow, even if your ideas are half-baked shite.

I bow to your lifetime experience. I see from your PS that you have children and grandchildren, and I assume you must have been about a bit. Nevertheless, at the risk of patronising you...I respectfully suggest that your experience may not quite match up to the collective wisdom of, say, The Kilbrandon Committee (qv). And you probably haven't thought it through as much as them either. If *your* mind were a little more open, then some wider expert thinking on child behaviour might have managed to get into it, rather than being limited to personal anecdote and your limited horizons.

I am fortunate to live in a civilised country which decided, many years ago now, that which wrote into law the assumption that children are not simply born wicked and that any offenses the may commit.

So...if my mind is closed on the issue of whether children are born wicked, then at least I am in line with the law of (my) land and with civilised practice.

As for your question...since you say that you were only asking a question, although I'm *sure* I spotted a misinformed opinion on children in there (you might like to go back and check)...what was it again?

>>Does this indicate the existence of two opposing deities, or is it some inherited throw back to generations of crueller times?

The answer is 'No.' To both. Since the assumption it was based on was ridiculous.

>>I am fortunate to live in a civilised country which decided, many years ago now, that which wrote into law the assumption that children are not simply born wicked and that any offenses the may commit.

Garbled.

Read:
I am fortunate to live in a civilised country which decided, many years ago now, to write into law the assumption that children are not simply born wicked and that any offenses the may commit should be treated as welfare issues.

Should that have been Novoberserk Edward?

In my original post I cast around for suitable words. Clearly I got them wrong. It would have been better and perhaps simpler to substitute inherently Good and inherently Bad - certainly better not to have used 'wicked'

I accept any criticism based on that.

I don,t believe however that ALL bad children are the result of bad parenting. Nor do I accept that ALL good children are necessarily the product of good parents.

I was attempting to question why in pretty rare cases the opposite occasionally seems to occur. And it is pretty rare if I have encountered only 2 in 67 years.

Novo

So...you admitting that you only made a judgement that you're not entitled to make on 2 children, then? Progress, I suppose. (Still a bizarre basis for a theological discussion, mind.)

I'll concede the moral high ground to you, then. After all, I use sweary words and can't type.