To be fair, I would love to continue our obvious mean-to-each-other-because-we-fancy-each-other-romance, but with the recent revelations on the Sunderland board I have no will to. Hope you and the Mackems are alright and I wish you my best, and would encourage anyone who has not done so already to do the same.
Shouldn't bite but: Traditionally, both jews and antisemites have defined jews on grounds of ehtnicity. The jewish view is matrilinel and the antisemites view any connection as contagion. Neither regards a lack of religious belief as making the person in question a non-jew. There is probably no scientific basis to the idea that they are genetically distinct but that is not important to either rgroup.
In case anyone is actually interested: I think most Jews view themselves as a 'people' - that is a matrilineal group with a shared heritage and culture. It's a non-proslytising religion (i.e. doesn't encourage conversion in order for people to be 'saved'). You can have Jews of different races and ethnicities - there are Black/Ethiopian Jews, Sephardic/North African Jews and European/Ashkenazi Jews, as an example. I believe there are some examples of genetic markers that are common to all those groups, interestingly. Anti-Semites tend to define Jews in 'racial' terms. An old joke among many secular/non-religious Jews is that they're not Jewish enough for the Jews but plenty Jewish for the anti-Semites.
If you exclusively **** a small section of the population, then you are likely to inherit similar genetic traits at some point, as with all cultish bands, but there is no science to suggest that people who follow the Jewish faith, and those who have descended from jewish lines, are a distinct race, which you have nicely summarised. As both Freddd and you have mentioned words like "tend" and "traditionally", I take that as contrition I can proceed to use the "anti-semitic" terminology to refer to anti-religious, not racial sentiment, and thus my foul-mouthed rant stands
I mean, what is a racial group other than a group of people who have f*cked eachother exclusively over a number of generations and therefore share genetic traits? I’m beginning to wonder if your redefining of words to try and prove your point is anti-semantic..?
please log in to view this image Great read for anyone. All religions dismantled, not a shred of favouritism. They're all ****e. I intend to litter these pages with my atheist ramblings (not really mods), like those religious nuts who arrive at your door asking you to repent or at least join them at their place of worship. Any noticed that this happens far less now? You used to get Jehovah witnesses at the door every other week. Now there is no one. You get the odd group of people on Northumberland St or the like with their placards or megaphones. It is diluting so much now they can't even be arsed to put the effort in.
I’ve just come back from a session with my Psychologist, he says that I’m suffering from Xenophobia. I’ll bet I caught it from some dirty smelly foreign bastard.
I had a Jehovah's witnesses knock on my door about 2 years ago. I invited him in, made him a coffee and said " what would you like to talk about ?" He said " facked if I know, never got this far before "
Think you are pissing in the wind here. The numbers of people affiliated with, and practicing religion, in one of its many guises, are growing, mainly due to population growth in the more religious countries, so its not going away any time soon. By 2080 Islam will have overtaken Christianity as the Worlds major religion while by 2050 the religiously unaffiliated will have dropped to only 13% of the worlds population. Obviously I have history for jumping on the bandwagon (e.g. Man Utd season tickets) but think my conversion from Christianity to Islam will hopefully go down as remarkable foresight and not the actions of a Religious Plastic.
No but its on the list and working my way around the four horsemen's works. I have a holiday coming up in November so it will make for some nice poolside reading if I choose that kind of holiday. I read Sam Harris End of Faith. I am going to read The Holy Quran too, not for any other reason to be fully informed. Have to say though God is Not Great is just fantastic. Bit of a moment for me reading it and thinking "**** this guy has articulated everything I think about religion and just how nuts it all is".
I undoubtedly am. Its only growing as crazy as that is. The more intelligent we become though, I still believe (hope) at some stage we consign it all to the past. There is some data which gives hope too (to atheists like myself), and that comes in the form of looking at where its growing. Particularly in more developed countries (take the US, Europe, China), atheism/agnostics is growing and the traditional religions of those places is declining. Migration across the planet is obviously skewing against this somewhat, so some of the fall in the traditional religion is being met by Islam unfortunately (no offence intended to yourself or other people of the faith for the word unfortunately). Its also skewed as followers of Islam tend have bigger families which means more people indoctrinated into that faith. I have nothing against any religion on a personal level but obviously when you reach the stage where you feel comfortable in what you believe, then it influences the way you think about everything. Being blunt I find it all very backward and a bit bat **** crazy. With what we know now through science and knowledge as fact, and how at odds that knowledge is with every single religion, I can't really comprehend why any religion would be growing. I do think its telling that religion spreads quicker in less developed places. Essentially we need to find a way to stop Muslim people multiplying at such a crazy rate and get more knowledge to the less developed places
