Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to nzlemming,
I wouldn't necessarily call myself an athiest
I'm the same. I hate the word - it defines what I don't need defined.
That said, and despite the fact that what he says often annoys the fuck out of me, I love listening to Hitchens speak.
Or at least I did. This is so very sad, and a huge loss:
Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down.
On a much-too-regular basis, the disease serves me up with a teasing special of the day, or a flavor of the month. It might be random sores and ulcers, on the tongue or in the mouth. Or why not a touch of peripheral neuropathy, involving numb and chilly feet? Daily existence becomes a babyish thing, measured out not in Prufrock’s coffee spoons but in tiny doses of nourishment, accompanied by heartening noises from onlookers, or solemn discussions of the operations of the digestive system, conducted with motherly strangers. On the less good days, I feel like that wooden-legged piglet belonging to a sadistically sentimental family that could bear to eat him only a chunk at a time. Except that cancer isn’t so ... considerate.
More at link.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Since for many people their religion is a major source of their happiness then that's fine by me.
Sure, me too. I'm not saying I have any right or desire to limit or pre-judge - as long it doesn't negatively impact me or others - where people derive their happiness or morality from.
Unfortunately it often does.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Russell Brown,
And nary a word is heard in Indonesia from the MUI (the dominant Islamic guiding body) about the bombing of Churches, imams marrying 12 year old girls, attacks on sects which vary the word, and the FPI (the radical arm) assaults on anything they consider breaks the word as written.
They did however, a short while back, issue a fatwa on women riding alone in cabs - apparently the male drivers might be tempted to stray. It was, however, up to the woman to curb the desires by obeying the ruling.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Russell Brown,
Since I really should be following Leviticus to the letter or be a hypocrite, right?
In a way, Craig, yes.
But the family that runs the dairy around the corner from are see themselves as good, observant Muslims too.
And that's not unusual, but it does exclude the fact that they only do so in 2011 by discarding parts of the texts which are no longer deemed relevant. When religious leaders are pushed on the word the response is inevitably that we adapt it as time progresses.
Uncomfortably, these adaptations have accelerated - quite dramatically - in recent times when less and less of what was accepted as the literal word is deemed acceptable. In other words, earlier believers were quite simply wrong on many things. It's a very short time back to when almost all educated Western Europeans believed that most of the bible was the direct word of god and the natural and moral worlds were subservient to him/her.
Now, as it becomes uncomfortable, literal has mutated into allegory or discarded as ugly for our times. As we move through time, a large red pen is continually produced and large slabs are - continually - crossed out.
In large parts of the Islamic (and indeed Christian) worlds believers have yet to make that jump - they treat the words in the books as the direct word of god. They may, as sects do, interpret, but they are still the word and that word has not changed at all since 632.
Except for the gay bits. Those, they really take a lot of notice of, for some reason.
Quite.
Are they all evil? Maybe some of them are thoughtless. Or stupid.
Or selective. The morality that some feel they derive from their religion is only achieved by sidestepping the bits that are no longer acceptable.
Some unattractive family customs of, say, Pakistani immigrants in Britain are often attributed to Islam, when they're at least as much about the tribal culture they've brought with them.
Islam is just that though, a reflection of tribal cultures and traditions, originally those of the desert Arabs. It has, across the world, as has Christianity, absorbed local culture - in Indonesia it is a large part Hindu and animist too - and it's hard to argue that 1100 years of Islam in Pakistan has not in some way morphed any line between pre-Islamic tribal culture and a faith which is taught as life itself.
The dichotomy you're offering could only take place if religious texts were an all or nothing proposition.
For many that is exactly the case, surely. And we only move beyond it by discarding that proposition. Some totally, and some selectively as the times suit. Some not at all - Osama was one.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to R A Hurley,
On the contrary, it seems he was a good deal "truer" than most religious believers in the modern world, by the measure that he rejected less of his chosen text than most.
I agree completely. I do find the claim, oft heard, that 'our understanding of these guiding texts has evolved and we no longer take parts of it literally', or words to that effect, disingenuous and utterly dishonest.
Either you buy into these brutal bronze age and/or desert tribe morals and teachings or you dismiss them. There is no half way point surely. You can't pick and chose the 'word' as the times require.
Despise him or not, Osama saw himself as true to his texts, as odious as they may be. And he's not alone.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Islander,
Being way more vowel-rich than English
I found when I was learning Bahasa (Melayu / Indonesia depending on which side of the 1820 UK drawn boundary I found myself on) it was easier if I treated the vowels as if they were Māori (or Maori if you so wish). There was a clear linguistic link between the two - the vowels are voiced identically, and they share things like the ng sound which so confuse most non-NZ English speakers. Those years studying Te Reo in school and university made speaking the SEA tongue fairly straight forward.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to webweaver,
It should mean that the SEALs can't just rock up and blow someone away if they feel like it
And of course, doing so runs counter to a proud US military history of never using extra-legal means to an end.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to R A Hurley,
In much the same way I feel comfortable calling creationists and abortion clinic bombers idiots.
I'd prefer delusional with varying degrees of dangerous added as the depth of delusion increases.
But I take your point :)
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Drifting off - slightly - on a tangent, I think Lawrence Wright today in The New Yorker is a must read:
It’s the end of the Second World War, and the United States is deciding what to do about two immense, poor, densely populated countries in Asia. America chooses one of the countries, becoming its benefactor. Over the decades, it pours billions of dollars into that country’s economy, training and equipping its military and its intelligence services. The stated goal is to create a reliable ally with strong institutions and a modern, vigorous democracy. The other country, meanwhile, is spurned because it forges alliances with America’s enemies.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to Russell Brown,
Anyone who sees Bin Laden in those terms simply doesn't understand what he believed.
Sat in Indonesia in a barber's shop a few years back. After the haircut the barber traditionally pulls out a cut-throat razor, shaves you and then tidies up all the edges - rather wonderfully, and it's quite a treat to have a haircut in a small local joint. This time, however, as he was sharpening the blade on the leather strop I looked up and saw a large picture of Osama pinned on the ceiling, grinning down at me.
I excused myself from the last part of the grooming, quickly paid and went to the car.