I honestly don’t think so - the Irish Times Article rambles away about introducing new religiously motivated influences into company law and mentions the nonsense spouted by Archbishop Rowan Atkinson who like Ray wishes to increase his influence in society and was using other people’s religions to do so.
The view that this article (and the other one in the Independent) represents the thin end of a religious wedge: a “repent now ye sinners” and “see where all that materialism and secularism brought ye” seems worryingly true.
Well it was the Catholic* university of Ireland so as a catholic university what hope did it ever have ?
*claiming to possess exclusively the notes or characteristics of the one, only, true, and universal church having unity, visibility, indefectibility, apostolic succession, universality, and sanctity: used in this sense, with these qualifications, only by the Church of Rome, as applicable only to itself and its adherents and to their faith and organization; often qualified, especially by those not acknowledging these claims, by prefixing the word Roman. *
Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
My favourite Douglas Adams quote about existence revolves around evolution and a puddle…
Something along the lines of the navel gazing nature of humanity to think we’re such a special little race that God created us to serve some amazing purpose, somewhat akin to a puddle marvelling at the wonder of a hole in the ground being the exactly correct size for it to exist in its current form…
I find the two most persuasive arguments against the existence of a divine creator or even an alien creator are snot and excrement, I mean seriously, if it’s God, could he not have come up with a less nasty discharge method and if it’s Aliens, seriously dudes! Design issues!!! Hope Human 2.0 works out a bit better!
The sole reason for religion, good bad or indifferernt. We must behave according to the texts!!!
I will admit I have some religious hangovers and do not want to see religion wiped out as to me this would be like a simlutaneous call on Llyods for all policies!!!
Oh hang on isn’t tht what they they are doing right now xcept on the fed not Llyods!
Most religions have seen this happen twice a century for the last thousand years and they probably call it not the the crash but rather the recruitment fair!
Dawkins dumbs down everything for the masses thats why he has so many followers. He is populist and is not taken seriously in the scientific world.
What the puddle is really thinking is what a jammy lucky bugger I am, cos the puddle knows that if during the first minute fractions of a second into the big bang there was an increase of 3% in the strong nuclear interaction relative to the electromagnetic interaction it would give a cosmological model in which none of the known chemical elements could form and I wouldnt be here fitted nicely into this hole. Similarily when the sun rises and heats up an he the puddle evaporates into the air to reappear again as another puddle in another corner of the universe he thinks to himself nice one, all that travelling around the universe as a piece of matter (cos we all know he doesnt actually ‘dissapear’ ) and no grumpy Ryanair cabin crew to deal with.
The article in the OP was addressing the **moralistic teachings **of various religions in light of the econmic decline, it wasnt pushing the **belief systems **of these religions. So chillax lads, you can put your ill-informed insights into religion that you were just itching to release on everyone once you saw an article that mentions the word religion back into their holsters. this thread should discuss the moralistic teachings of religion, if you want to discuss the belief systems themselves we can start another one.
I’d’ve thunk he’d be interested in “how did you treat your family?”, “how did you treat your friends?”, “how did you treat strangers in need etc?”.
I did not know that lies and cheating in your personal life would of less interest to him as long as you didn’t welch on a business deal.
I think I like this kind of god. Must look into it a bit more.
Of course the religious nuts will be pouncing on current troubles to spread the message that if we all just believed in God this wouldn’t have happened.
I noticed the Socialist poster putter uppers were out in force recently, with posters proclaiming “Capitalism In Crisis”. It’s funny how in all the years that Socialism has become more and more margianalised and let’s face it laughable, I’ve never seen them put up a poster that says “Socialism in Crisis”.
The US is one of the most religious (if that’s the word) countries in the West, and it doesn’t seem to have helped them. Many people losing their homes to “Sub Prime” in the US still pay tithes to their church.
Perhaps its my Trinners prejudices puts down teddy bear in bottom of punt to swig more champers but UCD (aka “Stillorgan Catholic Polytechnic”) seems to be stuffed full of this sort of over-religious chap. I recall one lecturer given a golden handshake after telling students that they must attend an Opus Dei lecture:
In Trinity, you were more likely to get white wizards like the venerable old Maitland Wolf putting hexes on you if you skipped them in the canteen queue.
As the OP on this thread, what I found interesting was that this sort of article is being written now that things have gone belly up. Ray Kinsella should have been writing these articles over the past 6 -7 years if he truly believed immoral practices were ongoing in the financial sector and the moralistic teachings of religion were the answer. I can’t find any of these.
So I would consider these recent articles as an opportunistic attempt to introduce his religious beliefs to a readership deeply worried by recent events.
Furthermore if you pick your way through the various holy books mentioned by Kinsella you may find some teachings which have merit in these circumstances. So do we just ignore all the other stuff promoting ethnic cleansing, misogyny etc?
I don’t think there is such as thing as ala carte religious fundamentalism!
