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

<<"Religious right fights science for the heart of America">>

First, that's America and the question referred specifically to HS' contention about the Uk.
Second - they are not going to win, anyone who isn't more interested in scare-mongering can see that.

Third, with all due respect to Moke and TRiG, and those who think the way they do, not all Christians are Creationists, as Andrew S has verified, Catholics aren't - in fact, most aren't. So any attempt to legislate Creationism, anywhere in the world, would be attempting to nail jelly to a post!

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Exactly! I feel the same way about the colonisation of New Zealand English - or 'New Zild' as it was called in a jocular book pubbed in the 1960s...

<<- 'next of kin' does not recognise partnerships outside marriage>>

I thought it was the same there as here... and the law here recognises *anyone* as next of kin - when my unmarried and unpartnered brother died last year, I was his next of kin for legal purposes. (not that we were "partners", but you get my meaning.)

<<- social laws about sexuality are based on Christian mores>>

Why is that an issue? Are you talking legal, or societal mores?

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Ditto. Where's the harm? Or do you consider pornography to be a good thing? Erotica may be, but pornography is harmful and exploitative.

<< what I can buy or do on a Sunday and when is determined by Christian sensibilities>>
Once upon a time, people working in retail got to have at least one day a week off as of right. I never hear anyone but the middle classes compain that they can't go shopping when they feel like it. At least in your imagined golden (repressive) age when Christinity ruled (yeah, right) working people got some leisure - not now.
I know what I am talking about. My sister works in a supermarket. She works a 60 hour week for what would have been before monetarism took over this country, 40 hours' money.
She gets one day off mid-week, when her husband and son are working. Christmas was the first chance she had had to spend any time with her family for 6 months. Meanwhile, I and others are unemployed, because employers can get away with making people like her work long enough for one and a half people!
I am sorry if you expect me to feel sorry for you, but I don't. The things you have mentioned are either non-issues to anyone but a complete hedonist who wants societal approval for amorality, or just plain selfish like the last.

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I didn't have to try to be attracted to a particular woman once - but when it got down to the er.. ah... putting of it into practice, we decided not to. Believe it or not!
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Early on in, many people were saying that calling it innate and *not* a matter of choice, was homophobia! Hence my confusion. It all seemed a bit like trying to have it both ways, against the people they were calling "homophobes" .

Personally, I have always believed it to be a matter of choice. In the 1980s, many feminist women I knew became "lesbians for political reasons" and I quote. Twenty years on, many of them are embarassed about that phase of their lives, which at the time, they insisted they genuinely meant.

<<- social laws about sexuality are based on Christian mores>>



The problem here (at least to my mind) is that these Christian mores are what we call traditionalist - they're oppressive and try to prevent things like abortion and sodomy and gay marriage. We've had huge problems with them here in the States, as the religious right takes over. Well, I suppose the problem is not so much that they simply exist, but that they exist in a way connected with the government. Religion should *never, never* have any association with politics, and when we start making our laws based on Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition, we've got serious problems. I think what I just said makes sense.

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Again. There's nothing wrong with the laws themselves per se, but the fact that they are Christian-based and the further fact that they can get carried to extremes by traditional Christians is damaging to society. I shall say it again: religion has *no place at all* in the workings of political and governmental society!

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I believe the issue early on in that thread was over the original article which claimed 'scientific' links to women taking slimming pills during pregnancy producing more homosexual offspring than those who don't. It was this sort of research that was called homophobic - I mean, why else look for a 'cause' for homosexuality? 'Blaming' homosexuality on drugs taken during pregnancy or a 'gay gene' is not the same as saying that homosexuality is innate.

So people were not trying to have it both ways, as you perceived it.



az

Dr J and Echo.

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>I don't really understand what you mean here, TRiG. Are you talking about the plural of 'god' ('gods') or are you talking about the feminine form ('goddess' or 'Goddess'). If the feminine form is what you're referring to, there's no reason to me why 'Goddess' can't be spelt with an uppercase 'G'. Some people certainly do believe in a supreme mother Goddess, one of my former teachers for one.< <<

God with a capital generally means the monotheist God. Triple-O and therefore incapable of being pluralised. I am not sure how a Christian and a Moslem deal with that if they do not believe that their Gods (sic) are not the same God.

(For me it isn't a problem, as I believe both of them to be a god (sic) and not omnipotent, and possibly the same being, but who cares?)

For a duotheist, their God and Goddess can both be capitalised, as their religions state that there is but one of each and that all other gods and goddesses are aspects/archetypes/bits of some sort of the divine pair.

For a polytheist like me, there are many gods and goddesses, none of whom are capitalised, and if I do use a capital for the monotheist or duotheist gods, it is out of politelness - same as using US idiom on a US list is politeness, or using (or at least not deliberately dissing) UK idiom on a UK list is politeness.

I don't, however, use the term God as a signal that I accept the idea that there is such a thing as a Triple-O God. As far as I can see, there is a deep problem with the Triple-O idea, as it really really falls down when you get on to the actual definitions...

So here we are, back to how a Triple-O God can be good...

Jez

Hi .

That is very interesting to a working (?) philosopher. Is it a matter of definition that 'harmful and exploitative' erotica is pornography; or have you discovered by observation that pornography (however defined) is 'harmful and exploitative'?

toxx

I have attempted to answer this somewhere in the backlog. My answer is that God doesn't have an 'F'. In other words, He isn't perfectly free to do wrong or the illogical. That puts your 'O's in a rather different light. I just ask you to think about it and consider whether you disagree.

toxx

"

I take it you're referring to Echo..."


There was another Jew here briefly, on your invatation, I believe, toxx. He just popped in to clear up some issue we were talking about.

I really don't like the americanism 'visit with'. But the two different pronounciations of 'anti' (I forget what they are) can actually be less ambiguous than british pronounciation.

Yes, that was Stevan who is observantly Jewish and knows his stuff. I regret that I'm one of the uncircumcised - but there ya go.

I take it that you refer to 'anti' = against; and 'ante' = before. Do Americans really pronounce them differently?

cool, toxx

"What I have always been taught, and what I have always been told by my homosexual and bisexual friends, is that sexal orientation is never, or at least rarely, a choice. It'd probably be considered homophobic to assume anything at all about homosexuality, but your information is a revelation to me as well."

There's two things about "queer by choice" - or maybe three or four, depending on how loquacious I feel!

I - and many other people, either because of their gender education (not the same as their sexuality!) *or* their sexuality - would say that there are many, many sexualities out there in the world available to most of us, and that many of them are no more than a matter of releasing ourselves from our social mores. For some, it may be having sex with people of the same gender instead of the opposite gender, but that is not the only choice. I have know people who prefer to have sex with any gender, to enter into multiple marriages with various genders (and all live together); to have sex without feeling, as an activity in itself divorced from those one loves; to have sex in groups; to have sex with animals and never with humans; to have sex with anything that moves; to have no sex; to prefer the moving image or one's own imagination; to prefer sex with a distortion fo the body, death or violence; to prefere powerlessness in sex, or power etc etc. The variety of human emotion and sexuality is vast.

Back in the 1970s, many women decided to become lesbian as a political act. I don't know how permanent that decision was. Men or women entering prison will often engage in same sex activity if they can, though they will not engage in same sex by choice when out of prison. Many apparently entirely heterosexual men (most, from things I have been told over the years) will engage in homosexual activity at some point in their lives, from various motives. Some will feel guilty and not repeat the activity; some will feel guilty and do it again; some will do it again without guilt, but without leaving their wives or giving up heterosexual sex. Same with women.

The point is, I suspect that being either wholly hetereosexual or wholly homosexual is a personal preference which is set by a combination of society and the individual (the latter at a deep and unchangable level), in the same way as fetishes and other deep seated sexual preferences. Some of these things do not seem amenable to change e.g. whether or not one is turned on by sadism, or only amenable to minor change, whilst other expressions - whether one has sex with a particular gender or species seems more amenable in some circumstances for some individuals. Some people become multi-sexual, some give up sex, some change from hetereosexual to homosexual. Note, for the great majority, this involves leaving the default setting of society in favour of something else. I know that BDSM people are often instructed to have sex with an animal by a dominatrix or master, so I don't see what the problem is in deciding to have sex with someone from the same gender. It may be that people give up one sexuality for another, but I doubt whether the underlying reasons for the decision are clear cut.

"The decision on whether to write /God/ or /god/ on a specific occasion should have nothing to do with your beliefs. It is a question of grammer, nothing else."

Sorry, TRiG, but it is the reverse. Why should anyone write God instead of god in the middle of a sentence except to demonstrate resepect? There is no grammatical reason.

" An upper-case initial is used for a deity who exists in isolation: the God of a monotheistic faith -- Jehovah (Yahweh), Allah, and the like -- whether or not you believe in his existance."

Exactly: a matter of belief and respect by an adherent of that faith. It is not grammatical if I were to write" the god of an monotheistic faith."

"My favourite grammer book, The Right Word at the Right Time, published by Reader's Digest, contains the sample sentence, /All people worship God in one way or another/, showing that /God/ should also be used for an underlying equivalent of a monotheistic God."

Thus sprach Reader's Digest. However, Reader's Digest is not an acknowledged authority on grammar. In this case, it is simply expressing the preferred usage of some faiths.

I should try Fowler for the nearest thing to an authority on English usage. Gower is also good. Then there is the house style reference of organisations such as the BBC.

"This means that /colorist/ is the correct spelling in both American & British English."

What is a "colorist"? It isn't a word which appears in the shorter OED.

However, I did find "colourist" in Chambers, 7th edition.

"Yet another exact simulpost for me, HS. Is this evidence of intervention by some supernatural agency?"

But of course, toxx - synchronicity is everywhere.

"I was saying that it is impossible really to say when the point is at which the foetus becomes human, and remarking that, if we do not wish to be murderers, we will not risk killing anything that might be considered human. In other words, if you hold to the majority view that there is a grey area, you will aim not to induce an abortion after that grey area has commenced."

The first problem with your contention, TRiG, is that not all killings of human beings are murder. Some are manslaughter (or whatever phrase a particular coutnry uses), and some manslaughters are regarded by society as justifiable. So, even if an abortion is killing a human being, that is not the same as murder.

Hi all. I'm writing this as a reply to post 1, cos I can't get into the current conversation page. It's been banned by my college browser system: "Weighted phrase limmit exceeded". Whatever you're talking about it doesn't like it.

"I thought it was the same there as here... and the law here recognises *anyone* as next of kin - when my unmarried and unpartnered brother died last year, I was his next of kin for legal purposes. (not that we were "partners", but you get my meaning.)"

The same thing happens here - your next of kin is defined for the purposes of inheritance, if you die intestate. So the next of kin is your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings - in that order IIRC. Of course, the laws of inheritance don't necessarily benefit them if you do die intestate, but that's another matter. The point is, X may have lived with Y (regardless of the respective genders of X or Y) for 30 years or more, but if X is taken into hospital, or dies, Y has no standing with either the hospital (and can be refused entrance to the bedside by the next of kin) or with the funeral arrangements, or Y's own inheritance of property, if X was foolish enough not to leave a will. Everything goes to the next of kin, or someone who might be recognised as next of kin. The same thing might be true in NZ, I don't know - the fact that he was you brother means you could be counted as next of kin under the law.

Now, of course, if X and Y are of the same gender, they are prevented by the law of marriage, which is based in the UK on Christian morality (and not upon the morality of any other faith) from marrying and thereby accruing rights to be next of kin, and of the various propoerty rights and tax advantages which come with marriage.

"<<- social laws about sexuality are based on Christian mores>>

Why is that an issue? Are you talking legal, or societal mores?"

I was talking about the former, but the latter also exist. It is an issue because they are not my mores, but they do limit my freedom, often in ways I disagree with. To take an example from another faith you would be familiar with, you might find it uncomfortable if the penalty for using a printed quote from the Quran (perhaps your local paper makes a practice of printing a daily quote) to clean the toilet was a death sentence or a public whipping.

"Ditto. Where's the harm? Or do you consider pornography to be a good thing? Erotica may be, but pornography is harmful and exploitative."

Della, I see no harm at all on pornography and consider the distinction between erotica and pornography to lie more in the minds of those who wish to justify the pornography they prefer than anything else. As for exploitation - in this country we have laws governing health and safety of workers, If the government can't extend that to people wortking in the sex industry because it doesn't approve of them, then it has no right to use censorship as its tool. I like porn. I do not like censorship. I believe adults who are not suffering from a recognised mental health problem have the right to make their own judgements, including the sort of work they choose to do. If that produces health and safety issues which risk them and society, then there are fairly simple measures which can be taken to protect people. But I don't expect common sense and reasonableness to be so skewed by Christian prurience that a government cannot face proposing solutions which are used elsewhere and which work.

"<< what I can buy or do on a Sunday and when is determined by Christian sensibilities>>
Once upon a time, people working in retail got to have at least one day a week off as of right. I never hear anyone but the middle classes compain that they can't go shopping when they feel like it. At least in your imagined golden (repressive) age when Christinity ruled (yeah, right) working people got some leisure - not now."

Della - I have no problem with everyone having the right to one or more days off a week. But why does it have to be a Sunday? Why cannot people take off the days in the week to suit themselves? My issue is not to prevent people having leisure, but being told everyone has to have their leisure time on the same day.

In any case, we have a law to protect temployees in this country. No one can be forced to work on a Sunday. However, once they have worked on a Sunday they cannot invoke the protection of that law. This is to protect genuine Christians and to prevent those who want to hide behind a measure designed to protect Christians to gain themselves overtime at their convenience but never at their employer's.

"I know what I am talking about I and others are unemployed, "
I agree with you, but that's a different issue.

"I am sorry if you expect me to feel sorry for you, but I don't."

I didn't expect you to.

" The things you have mentioned are either non-issues to anyone but a complete hedonist who wants societal approval for amorality, or just plain selfish like the last. "

Neither did I expect you to be willing to try to see anything from someone else's POV. However, I did expect you not to be so rude. I think that, unfortunately, it is time for me to take the path the Original Jez took some time ago, and to ignore you until such time as you apologise.

"I take it that you refer to 'anti' = against; and 'ante' = before. Do Americans really pronounce them differently? "

Yes, that would be it. I think they pronounce 'anti' in the way we steriotipically think of their accent, such as on dead ringers, to rhyme with 'cacti'. But they pronounce 'ante' the same as we do. Of course, I expect there are differences in pronounciation accross the continent (but not as much as across ours!)

God gets a capital 'G' when describing monotheistic gods because in that case its a name.