Verbal

There isn't. They'll be liquidated within a month.

One quite appalling fact to consider, Sergei. That notorious Concordat with Hitler has never been withdrawn. Furthermore, the Vatican was not 'fighting for existence'. Not even Hitler could topple the Catholic Church. THe Vatican collaborated for advantage and because of its barely latent anti-semitisim. I also thought that by drawing attention to a particularly well known Lutheran pastor that I was not 'shunning' those Christians who offered sanctuary - that's an odd conclusion to draw.

V. funny. And true.

You didn't read it, did you.

Where did you get the idea that Hitler was a 'pious man'?! Hitler was clearly Hitler - a horror story beyond description. I was talking about the acquiescence and ultimately collaboration of the Catholic Church (via the Concordat and later pronouncements) and how that hardly made such a great basis for claiming that there's any kind of intimate connection between church and morality. I'd go further and say that the Church's behaviour indicates a deep-seated moral bankruptcy. A few Catholic priests in Germany protested, as well as a few more from other Christian sects, such as (famously) Martin Niemoller, who actually began as something of an anti-semite. But he was ultimately responsible for one of the most telling quotations about the Holocaust: First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

I was thinking something similar - it's like the Beatles never happened.

Claiming that our 'moral values' come from organised religion is like saying poetry came from Ghengis Khan. Moral values clearly predate organised religion, and can still be seen to do so from tribal communities that have long existed outside the reach of missionary zealots. And just as well too, otherwise how would we have recovered from the genocides of the Cathar Crusades or the Conquistadors on the New World? What essentially Christian moral values can be discerned in horrors of the Inquisition? In what way did the deeply religious General Franco further these 'moral values' when, with his endorsement from the Catholic Church, he conducted his massacre in Guernica? Or what of the Catholic Church's acquiescence to the Nazis' mass murder of enslaved Jews, 'Slavs' and the disabled? (This began when Hitler declared in 1933 that Christian belief is the 'unshakeable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people'. The Catholic Church's response was for the Papal higher ups to conclude a 'Concordat', which effectively gave Hitler carte blanche, with the church's blessing, or at least, non-intervention.) As for the 'crude assumption', the prediction is neither crude nor an assumption, but a carefully argued, peer-reviewed, statistically based hypothesis based on clearly visible trends.

On the contrary, Sergei. The trends identified in the Census indicate a clear and sharp decline in religious belief. And Census data in nine other countries suggest that religion there is actually heading for extinction. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197

So to sum up, Turkish, this thread is yet another of your accidental announcements that your poor social skills and low self-esteem have led you to a bizarre conclusion about the world you only marginally appear to live in. Have the courage to step outside your bedroom, and when (or if) you do happen to meet people, listen to them (rather than chuck your usual garbage at them), because they may tell you that it is no longer 1953. Among the things you will learn is that religion is basically quite unimportant - and that people can live quite happily without the constrictions imposed by the more authoritarian and censorious incarnations of 'the Church'. All kinds of benefits will follow from opening up whatever it is that stands in for your mind. You won't for example, feel the need to try, quite so pathetically, to bully younger posters on threads here, or sneer at women (I can see you have some 'difficulties' there), or fail entirely to grasp some frankly fairly simple counter-arguments to your inadequately expressed 'thoughts'. And when you come back indoors, consider your failure a wake-up call. In short - and I say this with the best of intentions - pull yourself together.

What kind of gormless fool trolls his own thread? If you really try, you can engage in sensible debate - not with me, if you want, but at least with all those who've put up reasonable objections to your hopeless thesis (for want of a better word).

Give one example of a 'Christian law' - aside from the blasphemy law, which is a travesty. Those laws that are the result of enacted legislation (as opposed to common law) are not rooted in 'Christian values', or at least not the sense you must mean, because those values are basically shared across most cultures. How is the Police and Criminal evidence Act, for example, 'Christian'? Or the Prevention of Terrorism Acts? Or the Sale of Goods Act?, etc etc. People don't need to 'rise up' because there's really precious little to rise up about. (Dump the useless monarchy certainly, and 'disestablish' the CofE, but these are ultimately marginal).

It's a fair enough point of view. However, I just don't feel it's necessary to crap on other people's sensitivities if they happen to be religious in one way or another - largely because religion as practised around us is largely de-fanged and diverse. I personally rather enjoy going to Diwali or Eid events, or to Hanukkah at 'Christmas' time. More broadly, you'd have to be beyond gormless to believe that this all adds up to Britain being a 'Christian' country. So the idea of an 'established' religion is dead in all but name. Which seems to me a fair result.

You clearly don't get out of your presumably scuzzy bedroom much if you don't get in invited to other people's festivals, religious celebrations, etc. Shall I invite you to one? It might do you some good to meet people. You'll have to shape up first though. Let me know when you're presentable.

Step away from the google.

Who celebrates Christian festivals rather than pagan ones? Who is obliged to swear on 'Christian books' in court? Who 'has to' marry in Church? And who anointed those duffers in Buck House to be anything 'Christian except the Church itself? I'm sorry, others on here, and I, have tried to raise you above the swamp, but you seem determined to let your low self-esteem get the better of you. You CAN read the counter-arguments if you really, really concentrate. Then we can have a proper debate.

Only in the minimal sense that the Church spent the best part of a thousand years crushing all its rivals. Now that the established Church has been de-fanged, it's influence is and has been on the wane. Now that Britain is free from institutionalised religious violence, other practices and beliefs flourish. And thank **** or that.

You win a question. Where the **** have you been? You're just about the only died-in-the-wool Tory on here with a brain (I suppose the exception proves the rule...).

Yet another of your collisions with simple facts. No one 'has to' swear on the Bible in a British court of law. It's completely optional.

As others have said, your stubborn refusal to understand other corrective arguments on this thread, or your more likely failure to understand them, is just making this all a bit repetitive. Why don't you spend a little time - you seem to have so much of it - and bother to think about some decent counter-arguments, rather than this incoherent mess. As for measuring the level of Christian-ness of a country by counting the number of public holidays - as banal an argument as I could imagine for quantifying religiosity - it runs up against the obvious counter-example of the US. No Easter holidays, and no Christmas holidays either. And yet you could not imagine a country, in places, with more religious fervour.

Hendrix did it better - with lighter fuel.

What a good Catholic bear you are.

Although he'd have no clue about this, Turkish has stumbled on an important and largely ignored issue. Religion in everyday life is not about belief but about ritual. Christmas trees and easter eggs, co-opted pagan symbols the pair of them, are ritual markers of faith. And it's in the comfort of rituals that people mostly profess their faith, not some existential argument about higher beings. This is where Dawkins gets it horribly wrong: his arguments are all, in the end, about the ways in which scientific method has rendered religious belief in a Deity redundant. No wonder he can't puzzle out why it nonetheless continues to exist.

Charles Dickens had more to do with Christmas trees and celebrations than 'Christianity'.

...but way too much religion.

Do you really have to sound like such an hysteric every time you post with someone you disagree with? Pap has done you the undeserved honour of replying civilly (although he used far too many syllables for you in doing so) - why don't you try out something similar in monosyllables? And I always come back to the BBC=lefty brigade with a simple question: which programme or news report are you suggesting is socialist in some way?