The Pope's Visit

[donkey]

Create a vacuum at your own peril.

Nature, as some great man said, abhores a vacuum.

Unless you want to be ruled by religious maniacs face the truth now, and stop all this sillyness.

Learn from the past.

The USSR was keeping a cap on it in the East, Catholicism is keeping a cap on it in the West.

On your own heads be it.

 

Catholicism and Islam are two sides of the same coin. There's nothing that the Islamic fundamentalists are trying to do that Catholic zealots haven't done already. More and more people in the west are seeing through the hypocrisy of those who set themselves up as 'God's representatives' or 'moral guardians' and that is not going to change. Clinging to the past won't stop the world from turning.

[taxman]

Seems to have been a good turnout.

 

Great, they can pay for it all then.

[artisan]

Catholicism and Islam are two sides of the same coin. There's nothing that the Islamic fundamentalists are trying to do that Catholic zealots haven't done already. More and more people in the west are seeing through the hypocrisy of those who set themselves up as 'God's representatives' or 'moral guardians' and that is not going to change. Clinging to the past won't stop the world from turning.

 

That is not what I mean.

I mean if you destabalise Christianity in the Third World, the only alternative to those uneducated, superstitious, poverty striken people is Islam.

Enlightened debate is not open to those people.

The only hope they have is in some kind of god.

A bit like people in the west have the lottery, does that make it easier for you to realise?

Undermine your own base if you want, but you will bring the whole edifice crashing down.

[taxman]

That is not what I mean.

I mean if you destabalise Christianity in the Third World, the only alternative to those uneducated, superstitious, poverty striken people is Islam.

Enlightened debate is not open to those people.

The only hope they have is in some kind of god.

A bit like people in the west have the lottery, does that make it easier for you to realise?

Undermine your own base if you want, but you will bring the whole edifice crashing down.

 

Isn't that a sad indictment of both society and religion? The only way to prevent poor, oppressed and destitute people from turning to a wacky, way out and ludicrous religion is to get in there first with a different way out, wacky and ludicrous religion. Poor sods haven't got a chance.

[donkey]

That is not what I mean.

I mean if you destabalise Christianity in the Third World, the only alternative to those uneducated, superstitious, poverty striken people is Islam.

Enlightened debate is not open to those people.

The only hope they have is in some kind of god.

A bit like people in the west have the lottery, does that make it easier for you to realise?

Undermine your own base if you want, but you will bring the whole edifice crashing down.

 

If religion is strong in the third world because, as you say, many people there are 'uneducated, superstitious, poverty striken' that is not going to change just because people in the west are becoming better educated, less superstitious and relatively free from poverty. It's not really much of an argument.

[artisan]

Isn't that a sad indictment of both society and religion? The only way to prevent poor, oppressed and destitute people from turning to a wacky, way out and ludicrous religion is to get in there first with a different way out, wacky and ludicrous religion. Poor sods haven't got a chance.

 

The Victorians had the right way, but that is looked down on now, and rightly so in countries like India.

That is colonisation.

Take them on and use them.

The Victorian proto capitalist left many great success stories behind them.

Australia, New Zealand, India, just to name three.

 

Regarding India, Pakistan had just the same birthright as India, but is poverty stricken and rife with internal grief.

 

Yet India is on course to be the next World Power.

 

Pakistan is Muslim, but India is a free thinking democracy.

It just shows what a regressive, stultifying regime Islam is doesn't it?

[taxman]

The Victorians had the right way, but that is looked down on now, and rightly so in countries like India.

That is colonisation.

Take them on and use them.

The Victorian proto capitalist left many great success stories behind them.

Australia, New Zealand, India, just to name three.

 

Regarding India, Pakistan had just the same birthright as India, but is poverty stricken and rife with internal grief.

 

Yet India is on course to be the next World Power.

 

Pakistan is Muslim, but India is a free thinking democracy.

It just shows what a regressive, stultifying regime Islam is doesn't it?

 

You've obviously never been to India and seen the abject poverty ( and I mean poverty, not the "poverty" British people have) where children wallow in mud pools with pigs to collect mud and dung to make plates. Where severely disabled children are tugging at your trousers...etc etc...India is a travesty...a rich nuclear country with abject poor and a rich upper class...but we like them better than Pakistan because India's religion is a bit more fluffy and has animals and isn't so scary as Islam

[artisan]

You've obviously never been to India and seen the abject poverty ( and I mean poverty, not the "poverty" British people have) where children wallow in mud pools with pigs to collect mud and dung to make plates. Where severely disabled children are tugging at your trousers...etc etc...India is a travesty...a rich nuclear country with abject poor and a rich upper class...but we like them better than Pakistan because India's religion is a bit more fluffy and has animals and isn't so scary as Islam

 

That is true, I have never been to India, but I have worked with Indian and Pakistani, and Bangladeshi men all my life, but I regret to say have never been there.

That will be one of the regrets of my life.

 

What made me say that about India being the next great thing was I was just watching a prog on BBCi by John Sargeant about Indias railways.

 

Capitalism is in the ascendent there, and the rich are so powerful.

But as you say it is contrasted by the grinding poverty.

It showed at one point a vast open air laundry, all done by hand.

Any machinery was unguarded, drive belts thrashing open.

Very labour intensive.

The rich men exporting all the latest modern equipment to a waiting world, dressed in the most modern fashion.

 

It was like looking at Victorian Britain, in the 21st century.

[Halibut]

That is true, I have never been to India, but I have worked with Indian and Pakistani, and Bangladeshi men all my life, but I regret to say have never been there.

That will be one of the regrets of my life.

 

 

It's never too late. I'd gladly donate a tenner to send you to India.

[mj.scuba]

Catholicism and Islam are two sides of the same coin. There's nothing that the Islamic fundamentalists are trying to do that Catholic zealots haven't done already. More and more people in the west are seeing through the hypocrisy of those who set themselves up as 'God's representatives' or 'moral guardians' and that is not going to change. Clinging to the past won't stop the world from turning.

 

Do you mean apart from flying aeroplanes loaded with passangers into buildings?