Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Last night as I was coming down the field I heard a commotion in the hedge, and after a while, out trundled a hedgehog, merry as you like, and obviously out for a good time. I thought he might make a jolly companion for an evening, so I brought him in. Adter a while I noticed he had disappeared and later heard a noise just like the sobbing of a little child, but very faint, and it continued for long enough. I traced it to a pile of boxes, and there was my comrade, with his nose pressed in a corner in a pool of tears, and his face all wet, and snivelling and snuffling his heart out. I could have kissed him for compassion. I don't know why I"m so sympathetic towards hedgehogs. Once when John and I threw one in the pond, it nearly broke my heart to see it swimming to the shore. It must be that they're something my affection can't touch, and as all through my life the things I've loved best have been prickles toward that love, hedgehogs have become a symbol of such unrequited desire, and move me so nostalgically. I carried Harry outside and let him go - he wouldn't even roll up he was so sad

metaquotes

shaysdays

Will you pray with both your hands?
Will you pray by moving sand?
Will you pray by twirling 'round?
Will you pray by bowing down?
Would you, could you, all alone?
Could you, would you, through a phone?

I do not pray, don't make me pissed,
I do not pray, I'm atheist!

But surely somebody, at some point, needs to cut through the forgiving fug of psychoanalysis and evaluate this quaint league tradition (apparently it's called "bunning", a new word for most of us) for what it is.

Strip away the fame and the adulation and all the trappings.

Strip away the girl, even, and ask the obvious question.

Which is: Why would a group of blokes come together, as if drawn by some invisible gravitational force, and gather in a room to masturbate with each other?

What do we ordinarily call that behaviour?

Much criticism has been made that the players who engage in "bunning" are exploiting these girls for bestial sexual purposes.

I don't know.

Those girls are being used all right, but I reckon they're being used as beards to disguise the otherwise perfectly obvious, screaming queerness of what's going on.

Come on. Are you kidding?

Let's say it out loud: it's the gayest thing ever.

And these are the same blokes who can't wait to climb into dresses for stunts on The Footy Show. Don't think we're not putting two and two together.

So come on, chaps.

If you want to get together and celebrate your oiled, toned bodies in the celebrated Greek tradition, then go ahead.

Just leave the ladies out of it, will you, and do us all a favour?

I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green)
John Schumann: Universal Music Publishing Pty Ltd

( lyrics ahoy )

'... You know how it is in the black moments it's always the apparent failure of what you live by that gets you down. Only apparent, of course, for the mere fact that you're wretched because you think your faith's gone means you've got hold of it pretty firmly. If you had no faith you wouldn't care one way or the other, would you?'
'I wouldn't know,' said Malony, with gloomy self-satisfaction. 'I've no faith myself.'
'You've all the marks of it... What made you first take to the drink in Clerkenwell?'
'General ugliness of things. I was a romantic youngster. Thought life ought to be a lot different from what it was. Then a pal of mine let me down.'
'There you are then,' said Hilary comfortably. 'You believed in beauty, in loyalty. Drunk, you still believed in them. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have been drunk. Have some more coffee.'

goblinpaladin

"The logical conclusion of atheism is amorality/ nihilism/ meaninglessness."

If you've been hanging around the atheism debates for long, you've almost certainly run into this argument....

It's an annoying argument. Largely because it flatly ignores the actual reality on the ground: the fact that most atheists are moral people, aren't nihilistic, and do find great meaning in their lives and the lives of others. It's an argument that prioritizes the believer's own beliefs and prejudices over the actual reality that's sitting three feet in front of them staring them in the face....

I want to talk about a parallel argument that I've seen some atheists make -- an argument that I think is every bit as flawed, every bit as troubling, every bit as willing to ignore evidence in favor of one's own prejudices.

It's the argument that theistic morality is inferior to atheist morality....
The argument goes roughly like this: Theistic morality -- and the idea that theism is necessary to morality, the idea that without a belief in God people will have no reason to be good -- is a childish morality. It's a morality that's based on fear of punishment and the desire for reward... and therefore it's an immature morality. The atheist morality is based on genuine feelings of compassion and empathy and fairness, a deep consciousness that other people have just as much right to live in this world as you yourself do... and therefore, it's a more mature, more truly moral morality than the childish theistic morality that "good" is what you get rewarded for and "bad" is what you get punished for.

And there are two reasons I think this is a bad argument.

here's my second argument against this idea:

It contradicts reality.

I know a fair number of theists and other religious/ spiritual believers. And they clearly have the same basis for their morality as I do for mine. The believers I know don't do good because they're afraid of Hell. Many of them don't even believe in Hell. They do good for the exact same reasons I do: because they feel compassion and empathy for others, because they believe in justice and fairness, because they understand that other people are people just like they are, because they want to see the world be a better place for everybody.

They may believe that these morals were planted in us by God, while I believe they were planted in us by the evolution of our genetic hard-wiring. But the basic morals, and the basic motivations for those morals, are essentially the same as mine.

And if I don't like it when bigoted theists deny the reality of my morality, then it's not right for me to turn around and be just as big a reality-denying bigot as they are.