Posts by Emma Hart
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We're going to get into more semantics probably, but what word would you use in that context?
I have no problem with semantics where everyone's aware that we're dealing in semantics.
I'd use the word 'community', because that's what it is. Churches are also communities, but that does not make Public Address a church.
I know the word 'church' had a wider meaning than the strictly religious, as when people say things like 'feminism is a very broad church'. But 'church' also has connotations which 'community' does not, and which members of the PA community might find offensive or simply discomforting. So why use it?
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It irritates me when religious people (or non-religious people, for that matter) insist I have some sort of belief system, when all I have is an absence of belief.
A friend of mine put it like this: atheism is not a religious belief any more than not collecting stamps is a hobby.
However, some people would say that we have built our own church right here on Public Address - like-minded (for the most part) individuals discussing issues that affect us.
'Church' is so not a word I would use in that context.
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As Islander has highlighted some writers have fought quite strongly to maintain control of their material in the dangerous digital world. As soon as it hits the web in an un-hindered un-control form they know they're fucked. They know it cos they've watched other media be consumed by it before.
Or, the Baen Free Library, which has an extensive statement of position from Eric Flint on its landing page about why they're giving away e-books for free.
A small sample, please check context if you wanna argue:
In the course of this debate, I mentioned it to my publisher Jim Baen. He more or less virtually snorted and expressed the opinion that if one of his authors — how about you, Eric? — were willing to put up a book for free online that the resulting publicity would more than offset any losses the author might suffer.
The minute he made the proposal, I realized he was right. After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And — hey, whaddaya know? — over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!
And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case. And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.
Sure enough, within a day, I received at least half a dozen messages (some posted in public forums, others by private email) from people who told me that, based on hearing about the episode and checking out Mother of Demons, they either had or intended to buy the book. In one or two cases, this was a "gesture of solidarity. "But in most instances, it was because people preferred to read something they liked in a print version and weren't worried about the small cost — once they saw, through sampling it online, that it was a novel they enjoyed.
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Oh, and if you need another reason to go 'gnnngh', try this:
However Father Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, Archbishop for the Recife region where the abortion was performed, has excommunicated those involved in the procedure, including the girl's mother and the hospital staff who performed it.
"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso said.
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I don't know where J's position came from, but I felt proud of him and furious with the nasty people who had run the "party".
A hearty 'amen' would be kind of inappropriate, right?
I think Jesus is a lot like the Twilight franchise. Their biggest fans are their worst advertising.
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You have a cat named "Colin".....?
And I've got a cat named Phil. Want to make something of it?
Yes! Some kind of drummer and lead singer for a soft MOR band.
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Emma are you a weak or a strong atheist? What lead you to that view, rather than agnosticism?
Heh, semantics? I mean, if you tell people you're an agnostic, they tend to assume that you haven't made your mind up and you're open to persuasion. I'm not open to persuasion. Proof denies faith, after all, so if you proved to me that a god existed, that wouldn't really be a religion, right?
I went to church every Sunday until I was about eight. Even at that age, I was aware that the other people there were getting something out of it that I wasn't. I went to church, but I never believed. At ten I had an argument with our RE instructor in (state) primary school and realised that I knew more about evolution than he did. And that was it, I was done with Christianity.
Also at about eight or so I had an extremely traumatic experience, which I believed had been sent to me by God to punish me for being naughty. It's not far from there to 'well, fuck him then'.
As far as the Abrahamic Gods go, you could prove they existed to me, and I still wouldn't want to worship them.
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Thanks for dropping in, Darel, good to hear it went well.
To sort of reply to Andrew and andin's comments, this is usually an argument I find myself somewhere in the middle of. I'm not a militant atheist. I used to be very much a 'who gives a fuck-theist', and then I had children. I have one hard and fast rule for proselytisers of any religious stripe, and they don't appear to be able to understand it: stay the hell away from my kids.
My mother is my benchmark for a 'good' Christian. She's one of those people who works her arse off to help other people, and she did this when she was worse off than most other people. She's still doing Citizen's Advice and driving for Meals on Wheels at 80. I don't like seeing her belittled for her beliefs, because she doesn't push them on anyone else. She doesn't preach, she's accepted the atheism of all four of her children without a flicker, she doesn't weep for the souls of her unbaptised grandchildren, and she has more gay friends than I do. She's just a good person, and she's not hurting anyone.
But the moment you do start hurting people, that's when you become fair game. I do understand that people who proselytise genuinely believe that they're helping people, that they're rescuing souls that are otherwise doomed. But when you, as was the case at Seaview School, make a conscious decision to target the children of atheists without their parents permission, when you tell children that people of particular sexual orientations or beliefs are doomed to burn in hell for all eternity? You can piss the fuck off, your motivations become irrelevant.
See, it is possible to save people without inflicting your world view. In the course of helping out friends I've used the City Mission in Christchurch a few times, and there was no judgement and no preaching, just help. Do I have a problem with religious people doing work like that with their religion as their motivation? Hell no. But if the help is dependent on conversion, or even listening to a sermon, then hell yeah. The more vulnerable people are - sick, hungry, young and pregnant - the more repulsive I find it.
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Oh, and we didn't make it to Drinking Liberally (which I keep typing as 'liverally') last night because my daughter's audiology appointment ran an hour over time, so I can't report on Phil Goff's new political orientation. My last close-up knowledge of him dates from the late eighties/early nineties, when he was slightly to the right of Labour Centre, but I have heard tell that before that, back in the Muldoon years, he'd been a raving Commie pinko.
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Japanese Jehovah's Witnesses.
In our old house (down the road from the International Centre of a Christian school and round the corner from an evangelical church) we used to get this a lot, cute young Asian women who would ask if they could come in and 'practice their English'.
And I've come up with the definitive answer for that hardy perennial: "How can you possibly be gay and a Catholic". "Well, dear heart, I don't suck cock in church."
I was in the Square once with my Best Friend, heckling this religious loony - a process through which I met this other Wiccan. He asked my friend if she Followed the Path too. She told him she was Catholic, at which he arched his eyebrows and said acidly, "You must be a very tolerant Catholic."
Yeah, dude. Pot, kettle.
There's probably secret "missionary sign" (sort of like hobo signs) scratched on the lamppost outside your house warning others who come
Ha, now this makes a lot of sense.