Richard Dawkins Laments The Decline Of Christianity In England, Calls Himself "Culturally Christian"

Setting aside the fact that you keep repeating the same platitude, it’s inapposite to a discussion about the distinctions between the three Abrahamic faiths.

 

I don't want to burst your bubble, but we literally aren't.

 

John Lennon getting shot and Gary Glitter being outed as a pedo was a bigger blow to English culture than people not going to church lol.

 

With every due respect, you're talking out of your rear end.

I have lived in a town with one of the highest Muslim populations in the UK for the past 20 years.
The only issues arise when bigots cast aspersions that aren't at all backed up by reality.

Closet racism is the worst.

 

Dang, are you running to be an MP under the BNP banner now?

 

I happen to think the issues in the US are far more complex than simply diminishing faith. We are experiencing an unprecedented scientific and technological revolution that changes every we know about all things virtually every day. We are finding answers to questions previously unasked through technology, which itself has replaced a precept of religiosity. And while we are watching the exponential, unprecedented, unfathomable change, we are experiencing a mass of communication and connectivity that makes the world a much smaller place, and we are struggling with the insta-news and information. That struggle has given birth to unprecedented weaponization of misinformation, where we have a form of “Future Shock,” - where we have som much to consume that some of us cannot filter the trash.

That is the biggest challenge to our culture. And yes, where faith once provided the comfort of answers to questions yet unasked, we now have instant answers, replacing a certain need for faith. The absence of the faith has left a void in societal norms, which we learn as young children both at home and through our religious schooling.

There is a confluence of events that we, as an advanced human race, are struggling to handle.

At least in my opinion.

 

Doesn't even need to be the BNP any more, WGB. Reform UK is going to take all the frothy racists and decimate the Tories at the next election, mark my words...

EDIT: Latest polling:

 

True. Fear of Islam seems very 80s Britain to me. I guess its evergreen for racists.

 

It's continuous. And it's tiring trying to defend it - lazy journalism which appeals to those who want to read that sort of thing. The narrative is embarrassing - it's just racism but people try to dress it up as diminishing culture or whatever else it serves them to say. I've never once in my home town had my beliefs challenged, a threat for churches or cathedrals to be knocked down, or anything imposed on me. "No Go" zones are the funniest - the worst places where I live are notoriously deprived but "white" in ethnicity but that probably doesn't help with the other agenda, eh.

My granddad was an abhorrent racist but an incredibly bright man. He was offered a scholarship to Oxford and designed revolutionary new comms systems for Royal Navy submarines.

I realised that if he - one the smartest humans being I ever met - couldn't see past the stoking of fear based on a person's skin colour or religious belief, that it would affect many many more beside him.

 

I typically answer atheist when asked, which is almost never. In my experience door knockers think if you answer atheist there is no point in continuing but if you answer agnostic they think they have a chance at converting you. If they owned and used a dictionary it would be harder. lol

 

The best answer is probably "I'm whatever you are" anything else is like a challenge for them

 

I'm glad I dont have to see the English press weigh in on the EPL allowing players to briefly break their Ramadan fast during matches.

 

The contention from the Jews has always been that the Christian story relayed in the New Testament was contrived to conform to the existing Jewish scripture. Hell, the Jews specifically requested additional guards be posted at the tomb in direct anticipation of claims about the Resurrection (see Mt. 62-66).

This is largely why the Jews--after the sack of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple (including the destruction of the original manuscripts) in 70 A.D. by the Romans--rejected books that were in Septuagint (authentic Greek copies of the Hebrew scriptures preceding and surviving the sack of 70)--which were found to buttress the "Jesus Christ = the Messiah" contention--the same books which the Protestants reject as scripture because they weren't in the *original Hebrew (Masoretic) manuscripts* (which were, out of necessity, reconstituted from the Septuagint due to destruction of Temple in 70 AD), while always being a part of the Catholic Bible which always used the Septuagint as basis for its OT--which would also have been and was, the Scripture with which Christ would have been/was familiar with, having grown up in Galilee--NB: Septuagint's Greek is quoted some 350 times by JC/Apostles in the NT).

The point however, is that you're telling a Jew that his scripture needs to reconcile with our NT, when his religion has already dismissed any such claims, on the grounds of having been, in essence, reverse engineered to fit the OT prophesies. I appreciate your angle, but it's been addressed in terms of logical in-congruence, centuries ago.

You're right about the Muslim take though--their contention is quite simply patently inconsistent, to wit: the NT is true, but...it was somehow/somewhen "corrupted"--in direct contradiction to the historical record (which only exists because we always had a reliable custodian of the records in the Catholic Church). You just kinda' gotta' take Mohammad's word on it, apparently...

At least the Jews figured an angle that wouldn't face plant in into itself as a matter of logical in-congruence.

jmho/fwiw.

 

Or myopic on your part.

They're warm n fuzzy neighbors when they're a vulnerable minority.

They're among the most intolerant and inhospitable bully hosts in the history of hosts when they comprise a controlling majority of a population.

 

Most Brits like most Euros, know their history.

Unfortunately, the neo-prog virus that seeks to erase history for their own political benefit, has long gone Trans Atlantic.

...just another chapter of history in the making...

 

Look, I disagree with Bluke on a lot and think he often paints with a broad brush, but nowhere in his comment did I interpret him as saying that agnostics/atheists cannot have a value set, only that many of the values associated with Christianity are objectively beneficial to individuals and society, i.e. your own point but in different words.

 

I hope so, their history of international cruelty, violence and empire far exceeds ours (but perhaps if we stick around as long as the British Empire we can overtake them). But I guess you are saying they shouldnt be reflective about it and perhaps embrace it, like our "patriots" do here.