For a bloke who wears a dress......Follow

1) Anecdotal experience is not required to study a country's history, or to understand it. I know you're bitter about Ireland being colonised, but you sound ridiculous, especially in the latter half of that sentence.

2) "in depth", you illiterate monkey. By all means, continue to be staggered if you like.

3) So, to be clear, you're arguing about omission? That's all I wanted to know.

So, we just assume that you are always right?

No, but you can assume I have lived with and talked to many Irish about this kind of topic as well as visit both Dublin and Belfast for extended periods. But all that is anecdotal apparently. Best to learn from a book

If its a vehicle for social control and power, then I would agree. At the core the popular religions are a control mechanism. Control for what purpose (good or bad) is the question, and thats where the problem comes in

Well, don't downplay the danger of any instrument of social control and power, for that matter (including religion along with a wealth of others).

I think this goes back to the parallel Anna was drawing re: Stalinism, and other pernicious forms of communism wherein the leaders purported to be doing horrendous things for the greater good.

Well put, but the only difference with a religious power base is that there is not often an argument for "the greater good". There is instead a use of religious texts and ideologies to justify abuses of power.

warning, whimsical comment coming that in no way is serious

I'm all for destroying all religious texts and replacing them with Bill and Teds "be excellent to each other" mantra

I'm all for becoming supreme Papess with my legion of killer nuns.

Well, it's best to simply learn. That's why I thought it odd you took the approach you did, which was simply "you're wrong because I say so".

This one? Certainly (you left out part of it, though, but I fixed that for you). British discrimination and apathy towards the Irish was largely due to their faith, and when a group of people believe another group of people are wrong about one large thing, it's easier to add other things like them smelling funny, having outdated farming methods (and here providence comes in, if you want to talk about the famine), talking funny and so on. It also leads to British discrimination against the Irish and creates a feeling of religious seperation which makes it a place well suited to nationalist, seperatist feeling and violent rebellion - it only needs a spark to set it off for violence to erupt again.



I'm aware that most people think it's more nationalist than religious, yes, but it seems to me that the to become entwined and feed off each other, and that if the religious one was not in existence peace would be far easier.

Edited, Dec 29th 2008 2:17pm by Kavekk

I do find it refreshing to see such delightfully Pollyanna views from folks who think that, sans religion, there'd be any less violence, oppression, etc in the world rather than mankind just finding new excuses for it. Their naive faith in mankind rivals that of the sunniest female Lutheran officemate; the one who decorates her cubical with pictures of Jesus, that "Footprints in the Sand" poem, photos of kittens and the occassional Precious Moments figurine.

Brings a smile to my heart, it does

I maintain no kind of naive faith in mankind omg

The karma scores of a lot of folks here would be cause for revolt!