Many thanks to Ten Bears for this. I had copied the video address and put it in my cue for watching in its turn this morning. Wow, and I am glad I did, I only wish I had pushed it to the front. I just got done watching it and I know as I was doing something I missed stuff. It is not really long but packed with information. Especially the Stephen Fry parts for me. The video is 11 minutes. I think you will get a lot out of it. Hugs. Scottie
Totally Depraved …
Scottie's Playtime 
And if you need a refreshment after everything you do, try out this one; Lewis Black Reads A Rant About Corn, https://youtu.be/SP2JLQ3Shxs?si=1CkjqICOo3U_e9-U . I watched it over supper, and it’s just great!
I’m not aware of Lewis Black’s work being problematic, so please forgive me if I’m unaware of something. I’ve watched his work for years, though, and haven’t seen an untoward thing. Well, except maybe against GW, et al., and so on over the years. Anyway, enjoy the rant about corn. There is no politics within.
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Of course I am going to disagree with a lot but definitely not all that is expressed in that video. But then I regard religion as a way of being, a way of understanding my experiences and how I respond to them. Religion does not require belief in a supernatural realm of heaven or hell or entities that dwell there, nor of deities or demons. Nor does it require a belief in an eternal soul or afterlife, in salvation, or divine retribution and punishment. Nor does it require holy scriptures, statements of belief, dogma or creeds.
My own experience teaches me that just as some people are gay or autistic or trans or dyslexic, so some people are religious. It’s a matter of genetics modified by social imprinting. I can not imagine nor experience the world a non-autistic person experiences (and visa versa), and I can’t experience same sex attraction as gay people do, nor for that matter, opposite sex attraction as heterosexual people do. Likewise I cannot imagine being non-religious, and I dare say non-religious people cannot truly imagine what I experience as a religious person.
And here I need to differentiate between those who hold particular religious beliefs as being true because of social imprinting/indoctrination, most of whom are not really religious at all (the believers), and those who are religious by the nature of their experiences, and for whom issues of belief or theology are very much secondary (the religious). In other words most believers (of most religions) are not religious. In many communities people chose a religious identity for the same reasons most autistic people mask their autism and why some people hide their same sex attraction or their true gender identity: because it’s more socially “correct” to be that way and the consequences are less unpleasant than revealing their true selves .
And unfortunately there are those who will take advantage of this. Trump is a great example. He hasn’t got a religious bone in his body but he exploits believers in a fundamentalist form of Christianity, so much so that some are convinced he’s the second coming of Christ. Hitler used and abused Christianity in much the same way, and I dare say there’s a great many within most forms of organised religion who are very willing to exploit believers for their own advantage.
I do not know if my father was an atheist or an agnostic, but I do know he did not view organised religion kindly and was vehemently opposed to proselytism in any form. On the other hand he had great admiration for those who were, in his words “truly religious according to the best of their tradition”. And perhaps that’s a good summary of my position too.
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Hi Barry. I so wished I had seen this comment when you first posted it. I agree with it. See for me a faith is a personal code of behavior. Christianity as I was taught it was to be a guide of how you lived your life, it was never a club to be used to force others to live by the same rules you did. I have a personal code of how I live my life and I am not religious and am an atheist. But while I love everyone to live by my code I don’t demand it. I feel religious people that try to use their religion as an excuse to force others to live by their church doctrines and live by their own beliefs actually mock, dirty, and don’t understand the message of their holy books. Best wishes. Scottie
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