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

It would seem not, NPY, and I apologise for my part in it..

I'm hardly het up. I simply find it amusing. This isn't the first time you've horribly misjudged me. The last time, I believe my name was supposed to be Bill, and I was supposed to be a widely-published atheism activist in America, which would have been flattering except for the fact that it also implied I had such a hopeless inability to read people that I would have taken up romantically with the likes of you.

At any rate, if you were truly sorry for your role in these frequent skirmishes, you wouldn't keep looking for them. I know you've got me on your "friends" list (I'm sure I don't know what I could have done or said to make you mistake me for one of those), and you monitor my articles and my homepage for religious conversations so that you can ruin them just by being you. I hate intolerance, I hate bigotry, and I hate charlatans masquerading, however transparently, as intellectuals. That combination pretty much precludes the possibility of you and I ever engaging in a civil conversation.

Besides... last time I heard, I was supposed to be on an ignore list. Yet here you are.

Lets try and move away from the name calling and get back to discussion.

Della wrote:

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I'd have thought that was obvious! Both are barbaric, anti-life and I can't understand people who pick one and support it, while opposing the other.

It is as much for the sake of consistency as anything else, that I oppose war, the death penalty, and free unrestricted induced abortion.


Well I dont know anyone who supports unrestricted terminations.

FREE means that it comes free like blood tests for diseases or xrays for injuries or infact vitamin suppliments for preggo women and mid-wfe care.

LEGAL means supervised by rules set down in law.

SAFE means perfomed by trained staff in estabilishments that are monitored to come up to the stadards demanded within hospitals and clinics etc...

It is faintly ridiculous how you say people support termination when you cant use English properly. Im in favour of the availability of terminations, of a womans right to choose and a doctors right to give a medical opinion of yes or no.


You seem only to want to state negative facets of termination stories without a wilingness to readily acknowledge that some women have found termination to be useful in certain circumstances. Why do you deny this truth?

While at the same time only speaking of positive facets of religion and inparticular christianity. It is fair enough to say The Rev Dr. Martin Luther King was a great leader and a man who brought people together in a peacefula and positive way. He spoke passionately of his Christian inspiration for this but he also had inspiration from a Hindu, Mohandas K Ghandi. Both important religious men one was a well known adulterer. Why is it impossible to seperate good and religion but when peoiple are bad we always well that's NOT because of religion?

one love

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By useful, do you mean convenient? I understand that there are situations where an abortion may come recommended by doctors as the mother's life may be at risk due to a medical condition she may have. In such cases, abortion may be deemed necessary to avoid the death of the mother.

But if abortion is mearly a convenience to someone who wants to focus on her career or whatever, is this right?

It's also a big thing with teen pregnacies. I went to an all-girls school and more than one pupil was pregnant at 16. Here in Northern Ireland abortion is illegal and the age of consent is 17. These girls did not have a legal option of abortion, and all, as far as I am aware, went through with their pregnancies and looked after their own children. Only one girl I later heard that sociasl services took the baby from her after a few months. I don't know what happened after this.

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You mean that being good and having a belief go together and doing wrong goes with being athiest?

"Religious" people do wrong things. Athiests do good things. I understand that Adolf Hitler was a devout Roman Catholic.

NPY: I wouldn't call abortion a convenience. Convenience is being able to get cash out of an ATM machine. Surgical procedures are rarely convenient.

My personal position is that there is enough pain, misery, and poverty in the world without making a deliberate effort to increase those. Teen mothers typically don't finish school. They're financially unable to support themselves, nevermind the child, and the fathers are rarely present. In addition, they're unlikely to receive proper prenatal care and nutrition, leading to birth defects. They're unlikely to possess the maturity required to raise a child (being children themselves), which means the children of teenaged mothers are more likely to be abused or neglected.

It always seemed to me that sentencing a child and her unborn child to a potential life of poverty, despair, drug abuse, and incarceration is an overly harsh punishment for the simple crime of responding to a biological imperative without proper planning. As a society we do less to armed thieves.

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Which one was the adulterer? AFAIK, Ghandi did do some rather unconventional things, sexually. I have heard there are allegations against King, but I give him the benefit of a very large doubt, given that those allegations came from the famously cross-dressing Mr Hoover.

Your question is a bit disingenuous. Religion couldn't possibly *cause* adultery, it condemns it!

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Oh, NPY, just a quick note, that's a myth! Hitler was not a Roman Catholic, he wasn't *any* kind of Christian.

Certain people will right now, be yelling, but be warned, I *can* back that up...

Charismatic bloke good with words travells around the country...MLK was an adulterer. This has been confirmed in anecdote by those who knew him and nodded and winked at by those who travelled with him. Most tellingly of all is this: http://www.drewhendricks.freeservers.com/drmartin.htm

Its from a site which outlines FBI failures and crookedness but does not question the veracity of the evidence that MLK wsa an adulterer.


Im not suggesting for an instant that Christianity encourages adultery it clearly does not. (It *creates* adultery, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.)

What Im saying is that one or the other FAITHERS NOR RATIONALIST have anymore likely hood to be good or bad people or know what right and wrong are. Im saying that I find it a flimsy see through lie when some faithers loudly hail the acheivement of other faithers as being inspired by the divine but disown the actions of or even the person who shares their faith but does something wrong.

Hitler was I have read brought up a catholic, apparently consiedered himself to be a catholic and had a cosy working relationship with the Vatican. Now Im not saying all catholics are Nazis but it appears to be very to say no Catholics including Hitelr were Nazis.

one love

<> (Della)

Uh huh. *Your* opinion again? Just as when you say Bush isn't a *true* Christian? According to who - you again?

Apparently God talks to the man, Della. Just as you have said God has talked to you. Why should your experience be *true* and other's not?


az

'Well, I don't know anyone who supports unrestricted terminations.' —Blicky

I do know of Peter Singer; he supports abortion, and (in special circumstances) infanticide and euthanasia:

'Consistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to physical integrity is grounded in a being's ability to suffer, and the right to life is grounded in the ability to plan and anticipate one's future. Since the unborn, infants and severely disabled people lack the latter (but not the former) ability, he states that abortion, painless infanticide and euthanasia can be justified in certain special circumstances, for instance in the case of severely disabled infants whose life would cause suffering both to themselves and to their parents.' —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer#Abortion.2C_euthanasia_and_infanticide

I am mildly appalled that I can sympathise; I have also been brought to unpleasant conclusions in pursuit of a philosophical agenda. (By saying I 'sympathise', I don't mean to imply that he has any regrets.) And, incidentally, his worldview isn't as bleak as one might imagine—he's also one of the founders of the 'Great Ape Project' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ape_Project) which supports conferring "human" rights upon the higher primates, a logical consequence of a worldview which values sentience over species.


'<> (Della)

'Uh huh. *Your* opinion again? Just as when you say Bush isn't a *true* Christian? According to whom—you again?' —Az

Hitler was baptised and confirmed a Catholic (As any GCSE/Standard Grade history student knows ); however, that is not to say that he lived as a Christian, or was even particularly devout.

He invoked the name of God and his own Christianity as justification for his crusade against the Jews. However, Hitler himself later explains that Christianity is a Jewish offshoot, a ploy designed to oppress the masses (compare Marx, who calls it the "opiate of the people"). So either Hitler changed his mind at some point, or he was playing the part of a demogogue par excellence, using Christian metaphor as a rallying call. Considering that Hitler supported the Catholic and Protestant churches (exclusively) as culturally important institutions, even while designing to replace them with a socialist dictatorship, it was probably the latter. Hitler's great talents were as a propagandist, a mesmerising orator and a charismatic leader; none of these skills are particularly augmented by integrity.

—Jordan

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Please explain? (I assume you're saying that without religion there wouldn't be any such concept - if so, I disagree. Someone cheated on would feel they were cheated on, even without any religious concept).

Re Hitler, no, he wasn't a Catholic, or any kind of Christian. See this New Zealand site.
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_hitler.html
Extract: "Conclusion
In conclusion, I think that Hitler was not an atheist, but he was not a Christian either. While he was materialist and rationalist in a lot of things, he also talked a lot about "Providence", or "Nature", as a sort of mystical force of fate, and he saw himself as somehow destined for victory even when the war was going badly for him, simply because of the purity of his purpose, his strength of will, and his feeling of destiny. I have even read that he believed in reincarnation. To me, some of his quotes and writings make it sound like he worshipped the German national identity; some make it seem like instead of God he worshipped or idealised or divinised Providence / Nature / Fate, with his glorious destiny assured no matter what; and in some ways it seems to me like he worshipped himself.

For a more detailed analysis of Hitler's thinking and his Christianity or otherwise, I strongly recommend Kevin Davids' excellent article on the subject.


Finally, two last points. The first is not very compelling, but I found it interesting. The first time I found Hitler's Mein Kampf on-line was at a White Supremacy hate site whose homepage had a litany of Hitler's anti-Christian quotes.

The second point is that even the Atheism Web highlights the difference between Hitler's public speeches before he came to power, and his attitude after 1935 when he saw Christianity as a threat to Nazi domination."

Here's another one.
http://answers.org/apologetics/hitquote.html
and an extract...
"The book Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944 published by Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc.first edition, 1953, contains definitive proof of Hitler's real views. The book was published in Britain under the title, _Hitler's Table Talk 1941-1944, which title was used for the Oxford University Press paperback edition in the United States.

All of these are quotes from Adolf Hitler:

Night of 11th-12th July, 1941:

National Socialism and religion cannot exist together.... The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.... Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (p 6 & 7)

10th October, 1941, midday:

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. (p 43)"

Sigh, typical az! Have a look at the links I provided below.
Is ad hominem all you've got?

Ooh, lookie. Della knows the name of a fallacy. Too bad she misapplied it here. Azahar's question may have been pointed, but it was a valid one. Who are you to say that you speak to god but another does not?

I find it interesting that you set so much store by a handful of quotes from a single source of dubious veracity: http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerSources.htm

I've got a much bigger list of pro-Christian utterings by Hitler, and they're far more reliable. They were either written by his hand in Mein Kampf, or were spoken by him publicly in speeches that have been captured for posterity in video and audio: http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm

But I have no doubt which side you'll chose to find "convincing."

"I do know of Peter Singer; he supports abortion, and (in special circumstances) infanticide and euthanasia:

Yeah and so do I Jordan but does he even advocate unrestricted terminations? You yourself point out the bit about "special circumstances".



Della if you can point out where az used an ad hominem attack on you in her post I will yikes the post myself. As you know I have a special place in the bosom of TPTB

I dont like ad hominem attacks. Like the ones you've launched on me and people here on this thread have seen them so dont bother pretending you havent.

What in your belief in reincarnation or your lies about me and your recent false witnessing about az qualifies as christian? You call yourself christian so I'll go along with that because essentially that is the only qualifier.

I can't call mself a surgeon because I havent passe the relevant exams. What objective tests are there for christianity or any other religion for that matter. Now Hitler was a Roamn Catholic why are you denying it. You as a fellow christian may be embarrassed by it but lying about it and pretending it isnt true does nothing to make you or christians in general look like the decent honourablke people you'd like others to believe you are.

Perhaps its a symptom of chritianity that you try to be as self contradictory as your little book

one love

'"I do know of Peter Singer; he supports abortion, and (in special circumstances) infanticide and euthanasia:

'Yeah and so do I Jordan but does he even advocate unrestricted terminations? You yourself point out the bit about "special circumstances".' —Blicky

Yes, he does; that was why I mentioned him, Blicky. You should notice that the "special circumstances" clause applies only to the latter two acts, and then not so far as you might believe. In his book "Should the Baby Live?" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192177451/104-4140867-7204736?v=glance&n=283155&v=glance), he argues in favour of a 28-day grace period in which mothers of disabled newborns can decide if they want to terminate. (And no, I didn't get that from the irate reader's commentary below. ) He later stated that 28 days is an arbitrary figure, and that a later time might be acceptable.

I remembered him from a textbook on ethics I bought a couple of years ago; in fact, the pertinent extract from this same text is available online. (http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1995----03.htm) In this precis he doesn't argue directly for unrestricted abortion, a position which he later clarifies and for which he is extensively criticised. "Many of [my detractors] protested particularly against the comparison of the intellectual abilities of a human being and a dog or a pig," he explains. "Yet the sentence that so disturbed them is not only true, but obviously true." —Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics

His ethical position is extremely logical and coherent, even if his conclusions are instinctively abhorrent.

—Jordan

Blathers, read both of the sources I cite, and the *whole thing* please! There is of course a lot more to it than you wish to know.

You cite one of the many atheist sources I found, but one of the two I cited specifically discusses and refutes the atheist argument.

Dear Blathers, you are nothing if not predictable, sigh..

Dear Della, you obviously haven't bothered to read your own links. Again. My first link makes the case against the veracity of the only existing source for the alleged anti-Christian quotes by Hitler. Neither of your articles answers those questions.

Your source is worthless, and so is your argument. Again.

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Hmmm, typical Della, avoiding answering a difficult question by shouting 'bully!'. Meanwhile, there was nothing ad hominem about my question. I would really like to know why *your* version of Christianity is right and other people's are wrong. Why when your God speaks to *you* this is real and when He speaks to others they are just making it up.


az

Ahhh... But Blathers you are forgetting the golden rule:-

Evidence that backs up Della's argument no matter how spurious or third hand is sacrosanct. But that any evidence to the contrary is clearly that of charlatans with an anti Christian/Della/women agenda.