“Shitty” is an adjective used by people who feel the need to look down on others, and to describe lowly circumstances with horror. More rightly it is an epithet which applies to the one who voices it, unless we are talking say of the dirty protests which went on in the ’80’s in Northern Ireland. In this case surely it was a cry for help, saying “I have lost hope” my situation is so bad that walls covered with excreta are an improvement.

In short, John B is a potty mouth, who needs a bit of toilet training.

>Jefferson also had slaves. Are you going to claim he wasn’t an important figure in the evolution of modern concepts of freedom and liberal government?

No. Just asking for clarification.

>The Romans pioneered the concept of individual rights – it’s just that they didn’t identify women, foreigners or slaves as individuals, a trait they shared with almost everyone up until recently.

And noting that you are happy to pick particular bits out of history, while making broad brush assertions about “organised religion” – whatever you mean by that phrase.

>A universal concept of humanity was something which only happened from the 18th century onwards.

A universal concept of humanity is in the New Testament, and is there in the Old Testament as well if you take the trouble to look.

>The freedom, liberty and independence (notwithstanding the EU) that we enjoy today in Britain stems from a Christian heritage”. If you had to trace the antecedents of freedom, liberty and independence, then the Romans and the Greeks would be top of the list, with atheist thinkers like David Hume close behind.

We can presumably agree that David Hume lived from 1711 to 1766. Have you not read “The Mystery of Iniquity” by Thomas Helwys, on freedom of conscience for all, published in 1612. Here’s a quote:

“For men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure.”

He was the founder of the first Baptist Church in this country, and his argument is from the New Testament. In due course that movement brought us the Act of Toleration of 1689. Whether you like it or not, you owe a good deal of your freedom of conscience in this country directly to the Protestant Reformation. Sorry if you find it uncomfortable, but that’s history for you.

Note: I’m not claming that the tradition is exclusively Christian or anything else; I’m pointing out the bits of history that you seem to want to exclude from your narrative.

Wikipedia on Thomas Helwys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Helwys

You can find a scan of the book here, which a PDF linked from the page:
http://baptistlibraryonline.com/blo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2&Itemid=25

If you don’t like reading Olde Englishe books, there is a brief Guardian article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/may/20/comment.religion

>No it fucking isn’t.
>No it fucking doesn’t.

Are you a member of the National Secular Society, by any chance ;-? That tone of argument is familiar.

Christianity was vital to the abolition of slavery by its belief in a soul and especially the individual salvation of the Protestant Churches. It is probably also fair to say that there is a consequent loathing for the body and this has lead to a certain problems ( cough cough)
The profoundly Christian rebel political revolutionary and artisan Londoner William Blake shows how Christian zeal drove men to look though appearance even whilst assumptions still current well into the 20th century ……… even whilst still in their grip.

‘MY mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O, my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:

‘Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday. ‘

Makes you yearn for the “articulacy” (ugh ) of “Cunt rag” doesn’t it .

Interesting discussion this and some magisterial work from CS, I tend to agree that Parliament has a secular flavour but its original form, was as a court in which a law was not made but “discovered “.The assumption being that the right law was ready to be brought into being and only required the proper description. Its so easy to enter earlier times unawares and miss the very things they would take for granted . This was an essentially religious exercise then not a prescriptive one

I recommend Discarded Image CS Lewis for an insight into early modern thought and its vastly different world view

True, point well made.

History is not a simple narrative and I don’t claim it to be.

*sighs*

You’re just making the same statement without evidence.

Our parliamentary system was born out of fiscal economics and the conflict between Saxon regionalism and absolute Norman centralism. Parliament was a compromise between the Crown and the landed gentry.

You can try and crowbar your thesis into history, but you’ll find religion is the garnish not the main course.

Have a go at reading what I wrote. The Christian tradition of this land fostered the growth of Parliamentary democracy. Nothing to do with the liberal tradition (the Bill of Rights, of course, pre-dates the Enlightenment).

I know that you’d prefer to erase history and build your little leftist utopia, but sadly for you history is concrete. Institutions such as marriage, church, law and monarchy are expressly Christian in Britain, and they form some of the pillars of civilisation.

Wank off, you cuntrag.

You amuse me.

As for Hannukah, this year it’s toward the end of December, so late November lights seem a bit premature.

Wikipedia entry
The Cromwell Association

It’s also worth pointing out – again – that nobody’s banning Christmas.

Sorry. That’s just gibber jabber.

Just because Britain enjoyed flourishes of liberalism, doesn’t mean Protestantism or Catholicism fosters democracy. Our freedoms have got bugger all to do with organised religion. Indeed liberalism has always found an enemy in the dogma of religion (if not the teachings of Christ).

Your assertion is completely and fundamentally flawed, I’m surprised you made it.

Jefferson had some interesting thing to say about debt John as well as this “”Religion, as well as reason, confirms the soundness of those principles on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted.” –

Yes people are paradoxical are they not which is not at all rational of them and it is perhaps this disconnect with people that accounts for the many cruelties inflicted in the name of rationalism ( Had a poor 20th century those rational philosophies ). Cicero S is quite right .The attempt to extract the Christian heritage of this country from the weave and ascribe to it what appear to be bad effects is risibly juvenile . The ideas of the soul , the prospect of a better world ( a stoic feature emphasised from the days of being the slave religion of the Romans ) , the primacy of love and the contemplation of the best a man could conceive a man to be ( as a humanist would interpret god ) . These are deep in the swell and surge of revolution and the rebellion against Christianity itself .

Read Blake
Read George Elliot

Not everything that is true is easy to say and I applaud Cicero`s attempt .
Why so angry anyway ? This is all a conspicuously secular country and the Classical heritage assiduously preserved and copied by medieval Monks and Christians is also very important .

Well-targeted swear words aimed at idiotic assertions are indicators of comprehension and articulacy; patronising dismissals of your interlocutor’s points on the grounds that they’ve used swear words are indicators of pretension and a fear of debate.

“Also, thanks largely to the Reformation, religious absolutism was never able to triumph in Britain, laying the ground for the Bill of Rights.”

i.e. the not-especially devout upper classes successfully prevented religious lunatics from gaining power here. That would appear to support my narrative, not yours.

“Bishops sit in the Lords and Her Majesty the Queen is Defender of the Faith.”

The queen is also on Canadian and Australian banknotes. That doesn’t mean she’s in any way relevant to Canadian or Australian life. And yes, bishops sit in the Lords. They shouldn’t.

“The law of the land is based on a broadly Christian worldview.”

Do as you would be done by? Turn the other cheek? Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s? Eye for an eye? Stone adulterers? Let those without sin cast the first stone?

Either you’re saying “because England has been nominally Christian for 1200+ years, the broadly-liberal tradition we have here is definitionally Christian, whereas Papal supremacy and Calvinist fundamentalism aren’t Christian at all”, or you’re making completely unsupportable assertions about how a “Christian worldview” encompassing all denominations across history is different from a classical-pagan worldview, an other-Semitic-religions worldview, or an atheist worldview.

“However, I don’t expect you to grasp any of this so feel free to come back with obscenities.”

Wank off, you cuntrag.

Your teenage use of obscenties to back up specious assertions signals that you probably don’t really understand history.

You may wish to consider that Britain (indeed England) is the birthplace of Parliamentary democracy. The curia regis, from which Parliament was born, had among its members senior ecclesiastics. Also, thanks largely to the Reformation, religious absolutism was never able to triumph in Britain, laying the ground for the Bill of Rights.

This is a Christian country. Bishops sit in the Lords and Her Majesty the Queen is Defender of the Faith. The law of the land is based on a broadly Christian worldview.

However, I don’t expect you to grasp any of this so feel free to come back with obscenities.

The Romans pioneered the concept of individual rights – it’s just that they didn’t identify women, foreigners or slaves as individuals, a trait they shared with almost everyone up until recently. A universal concept of humanity was something which only happened from the 18th century onwards.

>If you had to trace the antecedents of “freedom, liberty and independence”, then the Romans and the Greeks

Romans?

Care to explain how the slaves benefited from that?

Just asking.

HAHAHAHAHA!

Your tongue must have been firmly in your cheek when you wrote that.

That. Is. Hilarious.

Jesus wept. I’m literally ROFLing.

The attitude of the organised churches has, over many centuries, been utterly shocking. I wont rehash all the things they got up to but what underpins it is the fact that for many centuries they insisted that the bible was never translated into English so that people could read it for themselves. By retaining it in Latin it meant that only those rich and powerful enough (who had a vested interest in keeping everyone else under control) to have an education could read it. Hence the most important messages of the new testament (ie love thy neighbour) were easily brushed over in favour of selective passages justifying violence and repression.

I think it no coincidence at all that as English verisons (and versions in other languages in other countries of course) became widley available the worst excesses of religious violence and intollerance quickly disapeared as well.

With the excpetion of the still astonishing and appauling homophobic attitudes (which is a big reason why I do not subscribe to any particular denomination) we are lucky now to have a farely liberal minded church in this country, however this is a very recent development.

Democracy and freedom in thsi country has next to nothing to do with Christianity. It is more accurate to say that it was the early middle classes who wanted more of a say rather than letting the King get on with what ever he wanted to do!

No it fucking isn’t.

“The freedom, liberty and independence (notwithstanding the EU) that we enjoy today in Britain stems from a Christian heritage”

No it fucking doesn’t. If you had to trace the antecedents of “freedom, liberty and independence”, then the Romans and the Greeks would be top of the list, with atheist thinkers like David Hume close behind.

Organised Christianity has fought against freedom, liberty and independence more or less non-stop for the 1800 years it’s been in existence.