A God of Life

[TheVoorwaarden]

Well would you believe it. Not only does he remove my comments because of issues he knows he has no answer for, he posts this video in response to my earlier statement that he is so depressing that I'd rather slit my own throat (well I didn't say it so many words but felt that way). I said he should be more positive because looking at his videos he's a very troubled man; all his videos made up of ramblings of a bitter old man.

I of course talk about Pat Condell.

My responses are not so much because I am a Christian but because he tries to distort, or rather fail to mention facts that do not correlate with his views.

A god of life

For instance I had earlier challenged his assumption that Islam and religion in general destroys all knowledge, yet everyone knows that religion like Christianity and Islam were the bastions and the nurturers of learning. Lindisfarne and the talented and erudite monks preserved knowledge in spite of years of Nordic pillaging and the destruction of ancient truths.
He took particular offence of the fact that if it were not for Islam, civilisation would have been thrown back a good couple of hundred years, as it was during this time that they furthered and preserved knowledge during times of strife throughout the rest of Europe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_medieval_Islam

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Europe was fragmented into barbarian enclaves. The devastation wrought by the barbarian invasions left the western regions of Europe something of a cultural wasteland. But islands of scholarship survived, especially in the far west, and the barbarian tribes adopted many of the institutions and structures of the defunct Empire. And the Roman Church helped with the perpetuation of these as its influence in Europe was extended during the Dark Ages.

"The Western Empire, now weakened by isolation and (in Edward Gibbon’s view) by the spread of monasticism, fell to barbarians forced into mass migration by Hunnish incursions from the Asian steppes. Christianity, sometimes in heretical form and already established in some barbarian tribes, endured; and, with more than a little irony, the surviving monasteries served as a conduit that preserved traditions of scholarship and memories of a civilised past. But scholarship was perverted into a sterile scholasticism that lacked curiosity, intellectual rigour and dynamism. In the 7th Century, as the great population movements subsided, an increasingly powerful papacy reached out across the barbarian divide to the far west, where Christianity had survived in remote communities. A united Church imposed its orthodoxy on pagan or heterodox enclaves and provided the institutional framework for a re-invented Empire, soon to be dubbed Holy Roman. Henceforward the Church was to assume a monopoly of learning, based for the most part on scholasticism and with the aim of creating a literate and educated clergy capable of promoting and justifying dogma. Morality and ethics were subsumed within an artificial structure of belief." (1)

Vestiges of classical culture and knowledge (and paganism) survived, however, in the Eastern or Byzantine Empire, although the influence of Christianity was to subvert and disrupt the classical heritage of progress from superstition to metaphysics to rational philosophy — and to investigation of the natural world based on observation and deduction. Nonetheless Byzantium preserved the works of many classical writers, even after the Emperor Justinian disbanded the School of Philosophy in Athens in 529 CE. A century later the spread of Islam brought the Arab rulers into contact with Byzantine scholarship and what remained of the classical legacy.

"Flashes of light occasionally penetrated the prescriptive piety. The universities of Alcuin and Charlemagne evidenced a cultural resurgence in the west; but there was nothing to match the great cultural flowering under the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. Here Greek, Jewish and Arab scholars co-operated to preserve the great works of antiquity and to advance the disciplines of medicine, chemistry and astronomy. Medieval Islam (and to some degree the vestiges of Byzantine classicism) created a repository that periodically illuminated European thought, most notably when Crusaders came into contact with the sophistication of the east; or later, when the Italian Renaissance produced a revival of interest in the Classical past and an outburst of scientific curiosity that had to look back to the 2nd Century medicine of Galen and the cosmology of Ptolemy." (1)

[Gareth]

I like a lot of what Pat Condell says, but don't always agree with the tone of his videos.

However, I think Pat is railing against the Islam (and occasionally, Christianity) of modern day, rather than the medieval Islam, which introduced the world to the idea of testing theories experimentally to see if they were true.

I was thinking about this earlier while reading Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw's book about E=mc^2.  I think the problem isn't so much that religion is incapable of supporting scientific facts - of course it did support and was often the foundation of many scientific principles in the early days, but there came a point when science started throwing up evidence that challenged the religious beliefs.  Darwinian Evolution being the obvious example.

Yes, most mainstream Christians (and probably Muslims too, but I don't know about that) accept evolution now.  However, I am with Christopher Hitchens on his point that you cannot rationally be a Christian and accept evolution - there has to be a pretty severe amount of compartmentalisation in order to accept both propositions as true.

EDIT:  Oh, and if he's deleting comments that he doesn't agree with then he's very, VERY wrong!  I'm sure such YouTube atheists as Thunderf00t, AndromedasWake and Aron Ra would be quite upset with him!

[TheVoorwaarden]

I like a lot of what Pat Condell says, but don't always agree with the tone of his videos.

However, I think Pat is railing against the Islam (and occasionally, Christianity) of modern day, rather than the medieval Islam, which introduced the world to the idea of testing theories experimentally to see if they were true.

I was thinking about this earlier while reading Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw's book about E=mc^2.  I think the problem isn't so much that religion is incapable of supporting scientific facts - of course it did support and was often the foundation of many scientific principles in the early days, but there came a point when science started throwing up evidence that challenged the religious beliefs.  Darwinian Evolution being the obvious example.

Notice how Pat mentions at the beginning (the person who he is responding to = me) that "I kind of agree with you about religion" which is exactly what I said to him. I do agree with parts of what he says in his video, but like you I disagree partly with the manner in which he goes about doing this.
His hate seems not only directed towards faith and religion, but at the same time 'multi-culturalism'. Now I have from the very first video I watched of his, come to the conclusion that he quite simply a racist - pure and simple.
The reason is because of the drawing on the earlier and documented contributions the Islamic world (not only the Islamic world but the Christian and Jewish world too, though he seems to target Islam for some reason), his response - or to be more precise the deletion of my comments, made me believe this even more so.

I agree strongly agree with the preservations of our own British cultural identity - for as you can probably tell I love British and European history and I am very much a traditionalist at heart even though I embrace technology and modern living.

Having said that and by his own admission he's a former stand-up comedian - one who was 'sick and tired' of his underperforming, and thus the type of person who revels in the limelight of controversy. What more can be said.

Yes, most mainstream Christians (and probably Muslims too, but I don't know about that) accept evolution now.  However, I am with Christopher Hitchens on his point that you cannot rationally be a Christian and accept evolution - there has to be a pretty severe amount of compartmentalisation in order to accept both propositions as true.

Yes I do agree with you and interestingly, even Pat mentions in the video that he doesn't know whether humans have a built-in desire or natural propensity to believe in some higher power.
I do totally agree with you Gareth because I am not sure myself in which denomination I lean, for at present it seems to be both though as you rightly point out this scenario is an impossibility. I partly attribute my Christian leanings to my upbringing (as earlier mentioned in another post) as the son of a minister, though I think I hope I'm capable of being able to differentiate between this.

EDIT:  Oh, and if he's deleting comments that he doesn't agree with then he's very, VERY wrong!  I'm sure such YouTube atheists as Thunderf00t, AndromedasWake and Aron Ra would be quite upset with him!

Which is a concern of mine also my friend. The particular messages that were deleted pertained to the medieval Islamic scholars and scientists which he took particular offence to. I refered to the fact that he was denying the heritage of his ancestors using the Venerable Bede as the example in which it was primarily because of his faith (and education) that the first chronicling of English histories took place. Apart from this the country was facing a dire situation whereupon the 'barbarians' from Scandinavia were attempting to destroy this last stronghold of erudition - Lindisfarne.
He had his lappies take aim at me and I later found he had deleted all of my messages (as I had responses from his lappies though I couldn't find my original message to which they were replying to).

[Lee D Munro]

it just gives the impression that a priest stole his bike as a toddler an he's still traumatised and upset by it.

An obviously intelligent and (probably) funny man, but a good example of why personally I dont have any time for very convinced athiests like Dawkins or, apparently this Pat Condell.  They all seem blind to the fact the more extreme the athiest rallying call the more they sound like the thing they are rallying against. 

I also think Mr Condell could do with reading a couple of books on the social and cultural aspects of religious belief before coming out with the dull "all religion is evil, god is hate not love" chestnut that sounds quite rebellious when your 13 but not when trying to convince others of the error of their ways with a cogent argument.

For the record, I have zero religious belief and (probably) zero belief in god.  In fact, if god exists may he strike me dow...............uughh   

[TheVoorwaarden]

For the record, I have zero religious belief and (probably) zero belief in god.  In fact, if god exists may he strike me dow...............uughh   

Now now :p Which brings us to another thing .... do you believe in fate and does it somehow coincide with paranormal phenomenon (spirits being able to predict furture accidents and events for example)?   

[Gareth]

I know the question wasn't aimed at me, but I personally don't believe in gods, ghosts, fate or the ability to predict the future.

[Lee D Munro]

to answer your question - no & no.

I believe that there are natural factors (socio-economic, genetic, cultural, etc. etc.) which may predict a path one's life may follow, but I certainly do not believe peoples lives are already mapped out and we simply toddle along autonomously like chess peices in some universal master plan.  Moreover, if this was the truth of, I would rage against it all the more!

[pandora]

Oh, he's awful, isn't he.  This is largely the reason why I dislike his type so much; they've turned into the type of people they preach against, creating a never ending circle of hatred and misrepresentation.  They're as bad as each other.  Honestly, it's like listening to children.

What dismays me is that there never seems to be any understanding of religion and and it's place in society as researched and documented by Anthropologists.  You know, the people who spend their lives studying the major, and not so major, aspects of humanity. 

As for the fate question, I've always had a problem with that.  There are so many variables in the life of a single person that when you multiply that by 6 billion (or have we reached 7 billion yet?), to me the possibility of us all having our lives mapped out for us becomes incomprehensible.  For the record I'm a pagan (polytheist) but I don't think that has much bearing on my answer.

[Sheila]

A very unpleasant individual. Where does all that anger come from? He's intolerant,dogmatic and self- righteous with huge moral contempt for his 'opponents'. Sounds like the religious fanatic that he despises so much. Why waste all that energy attacking others for their beliefs? He should just get on with his own life.