Angela Shanahan objects to "Godless Politics"

'Cue the Horst Wessel Song?'
Vacuous little bastard.

'In no instance have...the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.'
James Madison

If it is good enough for James Madison to say, it is good enough to stand by.

Professor Bradley is quite right. It is Christianity that has created the environment for democracy.
It didn't happen in China or Japan or Africa or Asia.
There is a good reason why democracy happened in Britain and some other European countries first and they spread it to some other parts of the world. It was Christianity.
I wont accept this ridiculous dogma of the atheists that Christianity is to blame for all the problems of the present world.
If you had the kind of country you want you wouldnt be able to say the things you do.
The Horst Wessel is a nazi atheist song. Your substitute for a hymn.

I do have the country that I want, Mary, and it is little thanks to Christianity that it is so fine, it blows my mind.

About your last statement, Mary, it is insulting.

The Enlightenment seems like an eruption, then it doesn't. I am vague about it. Were the witch burnings the last straw?

Democracy started in Greece, several centuries pre-Christ. To attribute it to Christianity is the height of arrogance.

Once again well said Mary.

Don't take any notice of the pinheads who have little understanding of anything outside of blinkered ideology and can only parrot the obnoxious phrases of the loony left.

You are quite right, whatever the failings of Christianity, it has shaped the free world and in doing so shaped the innovative free thinking of the west that spread its inventiveness and freedom across the world, which is the envy of and copied by the rest of the world.

Whereas Islam has only managed to spread its oppression, ignorance, backwardness and poverty.

*Insert klaxon noise here*. Wrong again, Julio. Historically the church has oppressed free-thinkers and branded them heretics. The idea that we are not actually the centre of the universe was branded heresy and Copernicus was buried in an unmarked grave for his troubles. Galileo was tortured into admitting he was "wrong" about the Earth being round. Giordano Bruno was tortured and burned at the stake for defending Copernicus. Tomasso Campanella was tortured seven times by the Inquisition for defending Galileo. Isaac Newton withheld his private religious beliefs for fear of persecution by the church and Charles Darwin waited 20 years to publish his theory of natural selection while he agonised over what the church's reaction would be.

Christianity is hardly a beacon of open-minded free thought.

Conversely, mathematics, which is the basis of all science, was invented by the Babylonians and Egyptians, developed by the Greeks and then the Chinese and refined by the Arabs.

You should get your facts straight before you mouth off.

The free world was shaped, Julio, by a rejection of the Church.

Mary, it is hard to understand how your mind can be so closed. Yours too Julio.
Don't you people ever make use of the internet to check a few facts.
Why do you keep repeating the same old slogans.

Gerard Bradley's article reveals him to be both arrogant and stupid.

His crack about the Horst Wessel song is a gratuitous insult that can only backfire when we consider the close links between the Vatican and the Nazis during and after WW2.

The only good thing about your appearance on this website is that there is a faint chance you may one day be impelled to do some reading about the philosophy of Diderot, Rousseau and others.
Why don't you try?

Mary, I believe you to be a good person, a little uneducated perhaps but a good person. If it works for you, do it, do not listen to any of us.

Yes we all know about the ignorance (and cruelty) of the Catholic church, but that still leaves unanswered the question of why the Christian west - at least in the modern era - became so technically and scientifically highly developed leaving the rest of the world in its wake. Development that even to this day is having its technological, and scientific, advances copied and emulated by the developing economies of Asia.

In your pettiness, you are now saying it was the overthrowing of religion thought, which like all reactions probably did play some part, such as that of Darwin, but you are too churlish to acknowledge the other inspirations that were undoubtedly brought about by religious thought, such as Newton, da Vinci and so many others.

This should not be a degraded debate about religion as opposed to Atheism, a childish "mine's better then yours" it should be a recognition of what brings into play cause and effects and in that it is just plain silly, as you are trying to demonstrate, that religion played no part.

"Mary, I believe you to be a good person, a little uneducated perhaps but a good person"

Dear carusmm, I have the feeling that there would be many on this Humanist web site who would just love to attack you with the same condescension that you insult other people with (such as the above insult to Mary) but we refrain because your ramblings give the impression that you might be a danger to yourself if your ego is deflated too violently and we wouldn't want to be responsible for that.

However as you continue in showing no concerns for the feelings of others you need to be told to show the same restraint in your erratic comments as is constantly being shown to your feelings.

Do unto others as you would be done unto. Else you may end up with more than you bargained for

How exactly does the Holy Spirit come into science, Julio?

The Mongol invasion was a big part of the problem as to why Islam did not advance past the Middle Ages. Also, Islam did not have an institution that it could suddenly just drop. There are logical reasons as to why the Christian West went forward and the Islamic belt did not. No-one would seriously suggest nowadays that it had anything to do with race. Let us not suggest that it had anything to do with superiority of any sort, it had to do with luck and that is all.

This talk of origins only satisfies meatheads. Let's get off it.

Yes indeed the luck of having a religion that allowed for practical interpretations instead of forcing its adherents to follow one massively concocted lie, by a self serving vile opportunist, that their god spoke directly to them.

O, very good, Jeff. Having the crazy think that he is actually God is better?

To Julio, Jeff and anyone else who credits Christianity, Islam or any other faith based ideology with human progress.
Please try to understand that belief in supernatural things is not the source of all the legal and industrial progress.
Patient practical work by scientists, engineers and even laborers has been the only source of discovery, new machinery and so on.
Saying prayers, making the sign of the cross and other such deeds don't put bread on anyone's table. They don't discover radium, they don't manufacture steam engines, they don't build a canal.
The calculation and manpower for that never comes from any religion.
Don't bother comparing Christianity with Islam. They are both useless. They have both been obstructive. The best you can claim is that maybe Christianity was less obstructive.

Well said, siliboi9.

Threats now, Peter?

Some crazy shit has been going down on this website lately. But at least we are not talking to ourselves.

Editor, you have got it wrong. The article in question was not the work of Gerard Bradley. The author of that article is Angela Shanahan. Gerard Bradley is given prominence because she was using the article to advertise his up coming talk to the faithful.
It is she who is guilty of that claptrap. She is an ardent Catholic and a columnist with the Australian and other publications and is the mother of nine (yes nine, 9) children.
She has the usual horrifying views on family matters.

What I find equally distressing is that in her biography it says she gained an honours degree in history.
How then could she have produced such claptrap as the notion that Christianity was responsible for western progress?
What University was it? Did she study church history?
She has ignored the advances made outside Europe and the complex of forces that advance and retard industrial and social progress in every society.
We Westerners have had a good run. Is anyone so naive that they expect us to stay in front of Non Christians in future.
Go to any university in Australia and see who the the leading students are.
Anyway Editor, you are doing good work but please fix that error.

Jack1, you are brilliant. I was confused by his use of the first person particular.

I have been kicked off of one humanist website, for reacting badly to the same sort of threat that Peter has issued to me recently. I think that I have handle it this time as I should have handle it the first time, the threat is clearly one of censorship, yet the first time I was dealing with real enemies.

Nazis, Peter. I don't like 'em.

Nazism is a perversion of humanist values, and Communism was a corruption of them.

Peter is obviously not clever enough to think of the next line of attack so I have sought to get in first.

The Church, the Catholic Church in particular, was obstructive towards the progress to mass literacy until the benefits to them of mass literacy overcame. Hallelujah.

If I was going to be a teacher, I would be an English teacher. It would be something that I could really believe in without being too sneaky about the aim of it.

Thank you Jack1 for pointing that out.
You will be gratified to see that I have corrected the article.

I am very careful what I say about Jews, usually.

On Job, "the book is a powerful argument against man's attempts to purchase happiness through his worship of God." Thus, Jewish humour is a gateway of doom for Jews.

And what of Humorist humour, when Humanists have created a world where there is nothing about themselves to laugh at. And what of Islamic Humour when Muslims are strictly forbidden from joking about anything, especially about themselves.
That is the thing I have noticed about people who like to call themselves Humanists, which is that they only see the world in black and white where we have shallow people asking such question as "How does the holy spirit make a microwave oven work". The sort of questions a child of three would have more sense than to ask.
However that is the humanist psych, a mentality that is incapable of grasping the subtleties of how inspiration can come from things far removed from what they call reality and far removed from the end result of such inspiration.
Ok let's have the cannabis cackle.

The only reality that I want to escape, Mona, is the one with you in it. Get out of my life, woman, you shit me no end.

NO!! As you sow so shall you reap.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

Muslims must have a sense of humour, I wonder what it is like? I know that Afghans swear in combat, it may be ribald.

Apparently dick jokes are popular in Egypt.

I'm pretty sure I know who the humorless one is around here.

(Mona, I'm looking at you).

Oh god morning carusmm, hope you're all bonged up for another hilarious day of disjointed posts (cut from the internet), insults of telling people they are either stupid, dim, uneducated and unhealthy etc, whilst telling us that you are an highly educated intellectual who knows more than anyone else.

Well keep on puffing away to keep the laughter flowing.

Morning, Mona, still moaning I see.

You lose a lot of credibility when you can't maintain your position, Mona. First, we're ignorant and immoral, then lacking humour and finally you resort to calling us potheads.

For the most part we're just realists who tire quickly of the pontifications of fantasists such as yourself. And make no mistake, fantasy is where you live. The idea that there exists another, mystical and magical world that cannot be seen, heard or detected in any way, ruled over by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being who cannot be seen, heard or detected in any way is pure imagination.

Don't get me wrong, it's a delightful piece of make-believe and I can fully understand why children are prone to believing it. But I cannot for the life of me understand why apparently intelligent, rational adults would persist in perpetuating such nonsense.

Why deny what you can see and test and prove in order to subscribe to something for which there is, and always has been, no good evidence whatsoever? And please don't hit me with some tired old line about "faith" being its own reward and science being just another form of religion.

"Science adjusts its beliefs based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
Tim Minchin

Oh good morning carusmm aka trulyfree, hope you're all bonged up for another hilarious day of disjointed posts (cut from the internet), insults of telling people they are either stupid, dim, uneducated and unhealthy etc, whilst telling us that you are an highly educated intellectual who knows more than anyone else.

I note how you do not even have the sense to keep what I've said to carusmm from the responses of trullyfree.
Note how you're using the subjective pronoun "we".
Note how I never referred to trulyfree as a pothead only carusmm yet your aka says "calling us potheads" .
Note how I never accused trulyfree of lacking humour, only carusmm. Yet trulyfree says: 'we' are lacking is humour.
From all these clues we can now safely assume the carusmm is trulyfree.

Oh well you've been caught out, but just keep on puffing away to keep the laughter flowing.

Not so, Mona. You referred several times to Humanists as a group. Surely even you can tell the difference between my posts and carusmm's.

And you've posted the same nonsense three times today. Perhaps it's you who is puffing away.

Don't you just love being hounded and exposed for the phoney thatv you are?

Mona, we have been through this with Jeff. I suspect that it will prove as productive as it did the first time around. If you have nothing better to say than to make silly little allegations, I suggest that you read a book. Something thick like yourself.

It is you who is the phoney, Mona, otherwise you wouldn't be on this website.

Actually, I just think it's a pity that a healthy debate has degenerated into name-calling. It's not all that surprising though. It's the usual recourse of those who can't back their position which is what I always find with followers of the sky-fairy.

Be careful, trulyfree, he is more than a fairy, he is a king-size queer.

You're not doing my argument any good by joining in on the name-calling, you know. Much as I appreciate the support.

Sorry, trulyfree, can't help myself.

Bob Hoskins reckons that the most girlie character he ever played was Hitler.

God is Love. If you actually believe that, you are blind.

What a clever ruse , pretending to be arguing with yourself.

Oh and incidentally your scrambled, mixed up, mind is devoid of understanding of anything
Pleas note: carusmm has changed his original post of "How does the holy spirit make a microwave oven work" to "How exactly does the Holy Spirit come into science".

Even he can recognise his own insanity, when it is pointed out.

Do you mean addled, Mona?