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

Hey Adelaide! This is Willem in South Africa. Over on abbi's thread we had a bit of an exchange about religion! You said you're a Christian. Well, on this site I've noticed a lot of 'Christian bashing' and I was a bit worried that you might have considered some of the exchanges on that thread as being part of the same pattern. Anyways, I just want to say from *my* part ... I *do* have the criticisms that I expressed there about *many* forms of Christianity, but I still don't think it's 'on' to go around insulting Christians or disrespecting their religion! My comments were relative to my experience of Christianity in my own country. I do not know as much about different forms of Christianity in Europe, Britain, America and elsewhere. I *do* think I (or anybody else) should have the right to criticise certain practices and attitudes. I do not think that it should be necessary to 'approve' of every single little thing that a person, or a group of people, say or do whether that be in a religious context or not! But just because I'm critical doesn't mean I disrespect people or don't like them or whatever! My criticism is really meant to be kind. I do not like to see people 'bashed' for their beliefs! 'Bashing' someone - that's really like 'bashing them over the head' with one's own hard, rigid views! It doesn't paint a favourable picture of one's own views if one is capable of 'bashing' other people with them!

Hello, Willem... It's so great to hear from you. No, I wasn't bothered about Christian bashing on abbi's thread, but I have been bothered by a general tone of it elsewhere on h2g2...
In a way, it's que sera, as since I've been here (since mid-2001) I've had to accept that that's simply the way it is here.
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You've expressed it very well indeed, Willem, and I respect your point of view in this respect. I have my own criticisms about forms of Christianity - especially those which don't like adherents exploring alternate points of view.
Thanks for your remarks!

Some very interesting ponts you raise there Mr Pillow case.

Bashing people over the head with rigid views is perhaps a bad thing but where it's people bashing say the catholic church for clasifying an animal that *suckles* the *live young* it gives birht to and has *fir* as a fish.

Now I have never seen anyone being bashed for being a christian per se.

What I do see is idiots doing things like calling beavers a getting bashed for what they say.

If I went around saying women are inferior to men then Id expect to be bashed for being wrong. If had got the idea that women were second class people because Im a rugby player and it was part of the doctrine of rugby then Id expect to get basheed for adhereing to that part of rugby if that were the case.

Which is preety much how it goes, has anyone been bashed for saying "love thy neighbour". I seriously doubt it.

People have been bshed to use your term for saying *homosexuality is wrong* and if these people want to explain their reasoning by saying "God says it is" they will get bashed for being dogmatic fools. Some parts of it are silly, that may sound disrespectful to those who think you cant deny the truth of the Bible or Torah or whatever. Well how can people say and prove such things without upsetting such people?

This is not christian bashing.

If I said the moon were made of cheese and backed up what I say with my religious book would you be being disrespectful if you pointed out the truth to me?

Id "bash" anyone who says such things muslim, Villa fan, Australian, fat, choose any subgroup you like its the message that gets torn to shreds because of the information inside. I dont do it and neither do others atack information because we have sonething against the envelope that message comes in. We leave prejudice like that to other people who tells us about their prejudices and exhibit them here.

Hi Della.

one love

Hey Adelaide and blickybadger!

I have personally seen quite a lot of what *I* consider to be 'Christian bashing' here on h2g2. I would love to go into this issue in depth! Blickybadger, I have a few responses to some of the things you mentioned. But not tonight! I have very little time to spend here and some serious responses to give on other topics elsewhere.

But anyways, just for what it's worth, this is *my own* point of departure.

I am *not* a Christian, but have been in very conservative Christian churches here in South Africa for most of my life. I left the church a few years ago as a result, mainly, of questioning my church's dogma on evolution. I have ended up questioning many other bits of church dogma as well.

I lived through the transition period of Apartheid to the 'New' South Africa and have the perspective of how an entire society's beliefs can undergo quite radical changes.

I'm a bit of a philosopher as well.

What I fervently believe is that peace in the world is impossible if people cannot calmly discuss their ideological, religious or whatever other differences with each other, with respect for each other's views.

Hello, Pillowcase...
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I had pretty much the same experience! I went from the Open Brethren, to the Anglican church, almost entirely because of the Brethren position on evolution, but then had other questions - though I am still a Christian!
Growing up in South Africa must have been really hard... My son's favourite school teacher and her husband are South Africans, good people, I met them once, when they gave some really valuable and much needed support to Jim. She left the school on maternity leave so he misses her a lot...
Nice to hear from you again!

Hello Adelaide! Sorry for taking so long to respond.

I just want to say, I don't think it is ever 'on' to ridicule anybody, for whatever reason! I may think somebody is an asshole or a fool, but I wouldn't call him or her so! In fact, whenever I have a spur-of-the moment thought 'this person is a fool' I immediately ask myself, 'but am I such a wise person?' The bottom line is, I cannot wholeheartedly call *anyone* foolish without somehow implying that I myself and my views are 'wise' ... which I cannot easily do since this is 'arrogance' and I believe that 'arrogance' is generally a bad thing! The only person who can defend this sort of arrogance is someone who is 100% convinced that his/her views are *totally correct and true*. Even if I am 99.99% convinced of the truth of my own views, I will not go so far as to insist that they are 100% true. I will tell people ... "I am 99.99% convinced that I am right ... but even in my own mind there's still that 0.01% chance that I might be wrong! Not to mention that I might have seriously overestimated my own chances of being right!"

Anyways ... what are the Open Brethren like?

Actually growing up in South Africa wasn't so hard ... being a grownup right now in South Africa is the challenge!!

Hi, Willem... Don't worry about taking a while to respond, s'okay!

I am with you on being 99.9% sure I am right, in RL, I dither a lot with 'on the one hand, on the other' thinking... I sound certain sometimes when I am not always..

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Ah, they vary a lot... They have no official clergy (except for dealing with Govt and the City council) so they end up with a kind of consensus view of the men in the chapel - they are quite male dominated (no, I'd have to say very male dominated...) The Chapel I was in was regarded as one of the more "liberal," in Auckland (our city) which astonished me when I learned that - it was way conservative to me! They take the Bible with absolute literalness, so are Creationist, and to outsiders must seem very harsh and totally certain of their own rightness - one of the preachers berated them for not being out-going and not welcoming outsiders, which was pretty true - oftentimes they seemed to be 'preaching to the choir', I noted that the "unchurched" would come along and never stay. Someone asked me once why they couldn't hold on to solo mothers, the poor etc, and I pointed out that they *were* in fact quite unwelcoming, and she was shocked - she hadn't realised - but basically it's because they were too 'middle class'! All that being said, they were tremendously well-meaning, and very lovely, just not welcoming to outsiders. So eventually I went to another church - for a while I attended both, week about - quite disorienting!

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It must be! How are things in general there? Very different from when you were growing up, I assume. From your name, I assume you're an Afrikaner, which would very much complicate matters...
(I had an Afrikaner fiance, for many years...)

Hello again Adelaide!

The Open Brethren sound very much like my old church. I was in the Reformed Church of South Africa, also a very fundamentalistic and male-dominated church. I wouldn't say the church was *that* bad since it was one of the earliest 'white' churches in South Africa to open its doors to non-whites. But still they're very conservative and literal in their interpretation of the Bible.

Like I said, my initial doubts as to the 'rightness' of the church was due to evolution. I totally believe in evolution and its a rather big issue for me because I am the most 'Green' person you're likely to ever meet. To me the whole history of life on Earth is incredibly fascinating and I believe the fact that we all evolved from the same initial living cells binds all living things together on this world. It's a vital part of my own 'religion' in fact!

Well I've had clashes with church dogma on this and other issues and in the end I had to ask myself - if the church is wrong about this, can't they be wrong about other things too? I *really* (well, say 99.9 percent ...) believe that evolution is real, and any church that says that it isn't, is badly mistaken. Interestingly, though, I don't believe that Darwin was *totally* right about evolution. I don't think 'fitness' is as important in evolution as he thought it was, I think evolution is more a sort of cosmic force, *and* I think it is more goal-directed than random. I also believe there are forces and intelligences at work in the Universe about which we know nothing, scientifically speaking that is.

Well anyways! South Africa is wonderful in some respects, terrible in other respects. There is an incredible amount of natural beauty here, and some amazing people, and there's also a terrible amount of destruction going on, of nature and of people.

Yes I'm an Afrikaner! So how and where did you meet your Afrikaner fiancé?

Hi, Pillowcase... long time no sea, as the fishmonger said about her old stock...

<< I think evolution is more a sort of cosmic force, *and* I think it is more goal-directed than random. I also believe there are forces and intelligences at work in the Universe about which we know nothing, scientifically speaking that is.>>
Come to think of it, I agree with you here.

<< there's also a terrible amount of destruction going on, of nature and of people.>>
Here, in the nature of things, we tend to hear more about the destruction than anything else.
<< So how and where did you meet your Afrikaner fiancé?>>
In the late 1970s, his parents decided to emigrate to NZ, for the sake of their childrens' education. I met him where he worked, in an hotel for mostly foreign tourists and I had ended up there by chance. (Long story)
He's off overseas now, last I heard he was going between the USA and the Netherlands where he has cousins. Interesting, but very guy...

Hey again Adelaide!

Yeh I heard that one of the fishies! Poor fishies.

You know I have family in New Zealand - my dad's brother went there a few years ago, with his wife and her mother, their boy and his friend, and his daughter joined them a while later. His wife's mother died just a short while after the trip. Anyways, they went there because of being sick and tired of the situation here in South Africa ... the crime, and the lack of working opportunities.

There are quite a number of South Africans coming to New Zealand in recent years. My son's maths teacher for four years, is South African and her husband also - she just left to have a baby this year.

Also, when I did the disabilities course at a teachers' college, one of my fellow students was straight from the RSA..

Hey Adelaide! I think this might be a good time and place to wish you a Very Blessed Christmas in the true spirit of the Holy Day! Peace and Love on Earth, Peace and Love between humans and humans, Peace and Love between humans and God as well. The Hope that this may not be just an impossible dream! For you I wish that you can spend this time among friends and loved ones and that it will be a day of joy heralding more joy to come!

Hi, Willem, and thanks for your kind good wishes... We have my older son and his wife to stay, (they've just gone out to her father's place for a while), so we had a truly magical Christmas Day (yesterday for us...)
I echo your wishes for all kinds of to break out everywhere... I hope you and yours have/have had a great and wonderful Christmas as well!

Hey Adelaide, time flies doesn't it... I hadn't even realised it's been so long since we last spoke!

Happy to hear you had a nice Christmas!

Why do you keep changing your username?

Well anyways ... I'd like to know ... how do you feel about abortion? This is a general issue where often it seems the 'Christians' and everyone else come into huge conflict ... I *promise* that whatever you say I will respect it and not insult you!

Hi, Pillowcase! I am changing my name every day, as a sort of a game, and then I am going to choose the best from a shortlist, and stick with it. (I actually am taking votes! So far, only 3 votes, and 2 of them are for one I don't particularly like,but that's life...)
By starting the game, I seem to have turned what was a nasty situation into an okay one, which is all to the good, but to be honest, I am getting a tad tired of it. The conditions for ending it haven't yet been met, but I may give up anyway.

Ah, abortion. I'm agin it. (Always have been, before I ever was a Christian.) Of course things are rarely this pure, and never simple. My opposition does not mean that I have ever resricted (or even tried to) the rights of others in this respect. At least one family member (that I know of) has had two abortions and suffered the physical and emotional consequences, in terms of difficult later pregnancies, many miscarriages, and the consequent problems.
All 3 of my sons were born in less than ideal circumstances, and I am very lucky that I live in a society with a good system of welfare, because I did end up needing it. I never considered abortion for even so much as a heartbeat, though the doctor who diagnosed my first pregnancy when I was 18, thought that I would.
That being said, I have never tried to stop anyone else having an abortion, and never would. I just wish they'd reconsider, and think it over very very carefully indeed - the decision to abort (not always wholly voluntary, especially in the case of very young women) may well turn around and bite them on the bum!
There is no medical condition existing nowadays that justifies abortion to save the life of the mother. In an article from the mid-90s that I was reading the other day, the doctor writing pointed out that in anti-abortion circles, the removal of a cancerous uterus, the only circumstance he could think of, *is not classed as an abortion*!
So, that's my view. In a society with anything resembling a welfare system, it is never necessary to have an induced abortion. So, I feel safe in saying - "I'm agin it", as a general principle.
Meanwhile, how are things going for you these days? SA is in the same latitude as we are, innit? Are you stiflingly hot? We are here, for once, yay!!!!

Well what should I call you?

Anyways, in my own case ... I have a scale of right and wrong that goes from pure wrong at the one end, to pure right at the other end. Abortion is somewhere in the middle, but *depending* on the circumstance it can be closer to the wrong end, or closer to the right end. As a general principle I consider life to be extremely valuable ... in my own case I really try to be consistent with that principle. For instance I don't eat the meat of animals and I don't buy leather or other products for which animals need to be killed. Certainly if the lives of animals are to be valued, then the life of an unborn human being should also be valued. I wouldn't even kill a tadpole without very good reason ... I believe 'civilisation' means, in part, to be responsible towards every living thing and to strive towards an ideal of 'minimum harm'. At present such an ideal is unreachable ... it may be ultimately unreachable, but it *is* approachable and I think the priority should be just to try and approach it as closely as possible.

Well that for now! As for myself, here in South Africa things are OK! We are almost at the same latitude as you are ... in my own case here in Pietersburg we're close to the tropics, but on a plateau so it's somewhat cooler than it would have been if we'd been lower down. Over here it never gets stiflingly hot! Not for me, at least. I happen to like the heat and dislike cold - for me, anything under 15 degrees Celsius!

Hello, Willem, nice to see you again... It's 25 C here and breath-takingly hot, also humid, and 19C at night, which means we're not sleeping well, but I seriously agree with you that cold is much, much worse. Oh, well, what can you do?

I have to say that I am not a vegetarian, though I have friends who are, but as my father was from the UK, we eat much less meat than the average New Zealand family does. When I was a child, we lived what would nowadays be called a "green lifestyle', reduce/re-use/recycle, our own organic vegetables, etc, because we could! It's good, looking back.

I believe that a pro-life stance includes opposition to war, and to capital punishment. In fact, I am an extreme pacifist - I have often said (and meant) that I would die rather than defend myself with a gun or similar. But that is a decision I can make only for myself. Luckily my children are grown up, and I have never had to face the situation of having to defend their lives! In practice, I don't know what I'd do.

Well, that's that for now, I have to go do some 'e's! (Email, and other things.)

Tell me, where in New Zealand do you live? North Island, or South Island?

To give you an idea of the climate here ... I have a greenhouse out back, not with glass but with shade netting ... I work there a lot with my plants (I cultivate indigenous South African plants) and I have a thermometer there, mounted on the shady side of a pillar. This past week it registered a high temperature of 42 degrees C!

For me, vegetarianism is not an 'absolute'. It is an ideal to strive toward. Some people may manage it, some people not ... but people can strive for it in various ways such as eating less meat, more vegetables and fruit ... maybe at some point cutting out red meat ... maybe at some point cutting out fowl and fish as well. Right now I still eat animal products in the form of eggs and milk, because for those products no animals need to be killed. But anyways, I don't think people can be told to quit all meat cold-turkey because it's morally wrong. I think a better way is to merely encourage people to think about living in more vegetarian ways and to advance several arguments in favour thereof. For instance there's also an ecological argument ... it is more 'economical' for people to eat plants directly rather than eating animals that eat plants ... for instance every cow consumes about ten times as much bulk of vegetation to give a human the same amount of food (nutrition) as the amount of plant food a human would need to directly consume to ingest the same amount of nutrition.

It's no use beating people over the heads with arguments and reproaches. I think it's better to give people ideas and examples. I am very serious about projects such as finding more environmentally friendly and sustainable ways for humans to keep themselves alive, healthy and happy!

I am also quite pacifistic. But not an 'absolute' pacifist. This is my own stance and philosophy:

*START*

I will defend my own life with violence if that is necessary, and I will defend the lives of others similarly if I'm in a situation where their lives are threatened and I can defend them. But I believe violence needs to be very heavily curtailed. There are some things that I just would not do, ever, even if they are the only things that might save my life or that of another. I feel that whenever you do are in a situation where you may need to use violence to defend yourself or another, use absolutely the minimum of violence and consider the person you're directing your violence against, still as a friend of yours ... imagine you're in a situation where your best friend is threatening you or someone else ... you will want to stop your friend but *not* kill or seriously harm him or her. But even killing may in some cases be inevitable. I think in such a situation you must grieve for the person even if you killed that person yourself. There's no use in thinking of violent offenders as 'scumbags' or 'sickos' or 'monsters'. Even the most extreme of criminals are still human. Even Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels and Mengele were human. I see the potential for evil as existing in every one of us ... and similary the potential for good. If we want to fight evil the best place to start is to seek out evil in our own souls and change it to good.

*FINISH*

The above is just my own philosophy. I may be mistaken, and it's well if other people have other philosophies, but I do think the above makes sense. I do think there's way too much violence in the world. I do not own a gun and I don't think I ever will because a gun is an implement with no other use than to kill people (or other beings) with. I also think that I might be willing to suffer death rather than defend my life with a gun.

There is certainly room in the world for a philosophy of extreme pacifism. As in not defending your own life violently, and even urging other people to not defend their own life ... even allowing people around you to be killed without defending them, as a matter of principle. But such a decision is a matter of extreme responsibility. If you urge this degree of pacifism again you need to bolster it with some extremely important provisos and powerful underlying principles. 'It is better to die than to kill' may be such a principle ... an entire group of people need to be convinced and committed to this principle if it is to be carried out to its full conclusion, and then there may still be doubts about the 'rightness' of it. There may be serious doubts if an entire community or society gets wiped out by aggressive attackers, without offering them any resistance. I believe not even Gandhi went this far with his philosophy of non-resistance.

I think my own philosophy can be termed 'minimal violence' and one thing that can be done is to make it pretty clear that violence is extremely abhorrent and that war is hell. We must become truly sick and tired, fed up, horrified of war, murder, rape, all kinds of violence ... enough to motivate us to *do something* to stop all the violence, and to maximally restrain us from being violent ourselves.

As for capital punishment, again I'm against it as a principle. I recognise, though, that the issue of capital punishment depends on the moral maturity of the society in which it is carried out or not. To effectively eliminate capital punishment it is not just necessary to abolish executions, it is also necessary that the society itself be one where there is general respect for life - to in effect also remove the *reason* for having or wanting capital punishment.

Well those are my thoughts for what they're worth!

Hello, Willem,
It is hot and sunny here, and I hear a chorus of birds outside the window (and somewhere, the "melody" of lawnmowers. (I think they've stopped for now.)
I thought 27 degrees was bad enough! 42, wow!
I see your point about vegetarianism, especially the economic one. We eat very little meat compared with our neighbours and the people around us, but I could never give it up entirely.
I have to take an absolutist stance about capital punishment, though I see what you mean about having a society that supports such views. As far as violence and defence are concerned, I have to say that I pretty much agree, in that my idea of death before killing is personal, I would not expect anyone else to act in accord with my principle. Some will, others not, and those around me may feel that they have the right to defend themselves. If it came down to a family member being threatened, and assuming I was physically able to do something about it - I really cannot say unless I was put to the test. My siblings are either already dead or can take care of themselves, my children are grown - so I can't really imagine such a situation. The thing is, I don't own a gun, and haven't touched one since I was a child, and my father insisted on teaching me to use a gun. I am assuming that shooting to wound, or kill, would be something I wasn't able to do - I couldn't hit the side of a barn, to use a cliche!
That being said, I can choose for myself, but not for anyone else.
How is your greenhouse getting on? Sadly, I have a brown thumb. I kill plants, while having the opposite intention.
My father was a great gardener, plants flourished under his care, I wish I had that ability..

Oops, I forgot - we're in Auckland, in the North Island. Where it doesn't snow, except for the middle of the Island, in what are for the most part National Park areas.