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Always loved this track – the studio version is originally on ‘Wired’ but sounds just as good live, here at Ronnie Scotts. Nicely recorded and filmed, too.
Spot the Wolves fan in the audience….2 users thanked author for this post.
Really JI, all these little put-downs about superiority and suchlike! And there you are telling people to repent! Seems to me that you feel a bit uncertain about it all, and need to reassure yourself with post after encyclopaedic post in defence of your god.
Thing is this, JI. If I were 10-15 years younger I might have launched into a piss-take around miracles, virgin birth, life after death, dinosaurs, dna, even language…. For example, what language does He speak? Aramaic with a Scunny accent? And then there’s the pearly gates, what are they like? Footballer’s gates with gold points and tips? Gothic ‘Game of Thrones’ ones? Nice, genteel English middle-class ones with curly and round bits? And where were they made? Sheffield / Bilbao?
And then there’s the tricky question of evolution, which dismisses the lot!
Your ‘get out’ is to say that God guided us to find these things. But on that basis, the bible can never be falsified! Anything goes, and you can believe whatever you want. It’s a pick n mix, pound shop approach to Christianity! Take whatever you want, it’s all the same price. We could have an alien invasion and life on Mars, and it would be god guiding us! Has he guided us to discover other religions too?
And to finish I might have echoed NI’s earlier comment about Adam’s rib and the impossibility of a man and a woman from those chromosomes.
But now I’m a bit older, I tend towards Sid and others’ view that when it comes to religion it really doesn’t matter what someone believes, as long as it isn’t violent or pushed on other folk. People can and do believe all sorts of weird things based on parental influence, education, and their own troubles and mental state.
However, of more import is that there are some aspects which come from a much darker place, which are full of fake news and disinformation. These websites for example, ones which we’ve been regaled with before on here…..
http://briangemmell.blogspot.com/2016/06
(probably went too far with this – he’s now pushing up daisies)(Some of the jonnies’ propaganda on here!)
or, before it was closed down, the extraordinarily racist Truth Wars website.
It’s also evident from an earlier post you find black lesbians rather comical. Actually, I used to know black girl, from Port of Spain, Trinidad. Well, she was bisexual, and you know what? She was one of the nicest, kindest people you could hope to meet. And there you are, taking the piss out of a certain type of person you’ve never met, thinking you’re a good Christian.
And then there’s the delicate issue of abortion, which apparently is a matter of whether you’re “a fan” or not.
And that’s what I don’t like about ‘hard’ religion or the so called religious; the self-righteousness, the hypocrisy, the wish to force it on others in the hope of brownie points in the imagined afterlife, when in fact all they are is part of a PR machine for a product which doesn’t even exist!
I rest my case.
Bless there you go again, must be a God given intelligence you possess. Blessed are the meek or was it the humble
I think it was the cheesemakers.
Really, all this wriggling and twisting to explain why we shouldn’t be concerned with what the bible doesn’t say about dinosaurs or fossils! It really is comical.
Much of it is like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In fact, if we took the word God out of many of these comments you could be forgiven for thinking the author was a raving loony, with post after post of intensely written guff.
Each to their own, but religion always was a human construct to explain the universe to people who didn’t know any better.
So, what to do? Here’s a suggestion. Most people don’t question the reality they inhabit, or why they see things the way they do, but they should. Why? Because it’s enlightening.
For example, JI, do you ever open your mind and ask yourself questions about why you think the way you do? For example, how reliable are the sources and people who tell you about what’s going on in the world? (Or for that matter, who or what led you to think that someone like Biden is your candidate for Idiot of the Year?)
Do you ever wonder why so many people just think that all religions were just made up; that they are exotic fabrications to explain life, death, disease, suffering, using the best information the society had at the time? That religion was just a way to answer the huge, troubling mysteries, which badly needed a comforting explanation?
Well, with the rise of science and knowledge of evolution, many now don’t see any need to believe in a god. They see ‘holy’ books of all religions for what they are – just made up stories which were created to comfort the masses.
BPG the same – if you only get your information from the popular press and the Church, it’s not surprising you think the way you do. So, if someone comes along and gives you a scientific explanation of the universe, it makes you feel silly. It puts your beliefs under serious threat, so you feel cross with them and either criticise them or ignore them. But you shouldn’t, because by interrogating your own beliefs, asking questions, reading, talking to a variety of intelligent people, you could learn something.
Of course, if you’ve been steeped in religion since birth, it must be so much more difficult to renounce your god, and on a par with leaving a cult. But, help is available. Here’s an example…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovering_from_Religion
OK must go and wash my hair, got a flat earth soc. meet tonight.
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Ah, you’re such a SMARTIE, SOS!
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And here’s another thing. BI, your duplicity knows no bounds. Post-prawn, on the other board you’re frantically virtue-signalling your concern for mental health, depression, addiction, etc.
To your credit, you have commented before about your own problems. But despite this, many of your brother Tories would say to you ‘Snap out of it Bucksiron, control yourself! And if you don’t, it’s your own fault for being so feckless. Just take responsibility, show some effin’ backbone and get a grip, man!’
It’s the position of classic neo-liberalism. It claims you are responsible for your own actions, that you can ‘just say no’ to all sorts of ailments and temptations, whether they are in a bottle, a brothel or a betting shop. Something has made you like this, and what you’ve learned, you can unlearn. So get on with it, and take back control.
Yet, your own direct experience tells you that it’s more complicated, especially the causes.
Let’s look at this more closely. For example, have you ever reflected on the insecurity and anxiety caused by the removal of social safety nets and employee rights? Or, how it feels to go to work while also needing a foodbank or after begging for Universal Credit? Have you ever paused to consider the stress it causes when people suddenly can’t pay their mortgage or energy bills, and have to beg their supplier not to cut them off, or the way it makes them feel they can’t support their families at Xmas, and are only one payday from destitution?
The material effects are bad enough, but the psychological effects are incalculable.
Just ask any doctor.As you know very well, being in control of your own brain and behaviour isn’t always an option, so people need help. But now just consider the difficulty in obtaining it. The waiting times, the lack of resources, the staff leaving the caring professions – the nurses who have left the UK after Brexit, the junior doctors who are leaving because the conditions are so god-awful bad that it’s making them ill, and the carers who can’t afford to care because the pay is so low it’s better to be stacking shelves, or flippin’ burgers. Then, there’s the humiliation of discussing your pathetic finances in order to qualify for UC.
But, mental health is not just about financial and medical resources. Communities themselves bring important social benefits. Alas, they too have largely disappeared from many areas. Just witness the decimation of South Yorks when the mines closed without a proper exit plan of ‘what next?’. When the work went, so did the informal network of care and support through the proximity of friends, relatives and workmates. A community who would talk, lend a hand and chip in, when times got tough. And in its absence the results are there for all to see, particularly in high levels of crime, and of physical and mental illness.
So, when it comes to the contradiction between sound mental health and your support for small state, unbridled free markets, small pensions/benefits, and of course Brexit, you haven’t a leg to stand on, because the economic and social effects brought about by all these are literally driving you and many others mad, BI.
But there’s a solution. For happier, healthier communities, you just need to take responsibility, get a grip and never, ever, vote for the blue lot again.
That’s true. When the government withdrew support back in the 80s there was little notice and no exit plan. It was like the withdrawal from Iraq, and the result was similar. Descent into disorder, in-fighting a breakdown of community, and ultimately a decimated, depressed area with no real future. Hopelessness and misery sit side by side, and local folk are easy prey for demagogues; in the case of South Yorks., ones like Farage.
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..Death penalty for who?
Come on BPG, that’s such a poor, cheesy answer. (Just camouflage for something much darker, I think.) It sounds like you’re happy to let politics trump religion.
HE will not be impressed, especially on his son’s birthday.But here’s a way to repent. You could move to the Middle East, open a deli. and call it ‘Cheeses of Nazareth’!
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Bill, it’s no use holding up your cross and ranting like some medieval priest against the devil!
Just answer the question about why many of the pro-life lobby declare that abortion is morally wrong, but the death penalty is not.1 user thanked author for this post.
