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brianmcclinton

Listed below are comments made by brianmcclinton between Sunday, 22nd November 2009 and Thursday, 26th November 2009 (34 Minutes Ago) .

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Don't label me ... 11:15am on 26 Nov 2009 Peter:

Your obsession with subtexts and hidden agendas detracts from the message. The obvious point about any statement of value is that it is open to interpretation. Does it have a subtext? Well, of course Humanists tend to think that belief in gods and goddesses is superstitious nonsense, but can we not take something out of the message whether we are religious or not?

After all, someone is quoted somewhere as saying: "Love your enemies". Yet this character believed in hell, so his message didn't extend to those who rejected him. But I'm not going to dismiss his message for that reason. Indeed, in my arrogance I might say that, unlike him, I'll live up to it. The message stands (or falls) irrespective of who delivered it. The message in the Humanist billboard is a jolly good one. Why not accept it for it says instead of trying to discredit it?
Don't label me ... 00:01am on 26 Nov 2009 Indeed, Helio. But Peter doesn't see the point in encouraging freedom of thought. He doesn't see the point of appealing not to put young people in boxes in a society which is forever pigeon-holing them.

The religious in their delusion think they have all the good ideas, so they are keen to see nasty hidden agendas in anything that secularists try to do. Inevitably, the personal attacks will develop - on Ariane Sherine, Dawkins, Humanists, atheists in general. It's all really quite pathetic.
Don't label me ... 11:28am on 25 Nov 2009 Parrhasios:

Totally wrong. Children are not little adults. But clearly it is all the more essential to ensure that their heads are not filled with adult prejudice, bigotry and intolerance.

And why brainwash them with fantastical nonsense about floods and original sins, heavens and hells, slaughters and sacrifices, virgin births and immaculate conceptions, resurrections, deaths and apocalypses?

By Jabbers, it is a miracle that most of them grow up to be reasonably sane adults given the garbage we pump into their minds.

Labels help to create attitudes. It was the labels attached to Catholics by my environment that created my bigoted attitude to them.
Don't label me ... 5:17pm on 23 Nov 2009 McCamleyc:

It doesn't advance any argument about the particular divide here to hold up your hand and say: "it's what all humans do". No, it's not; some humans are more prone to labelling than others. And Northern Ireland is one of the worst places for doing it. Bigotry, racism, homophobia are rampant here. They are not everywhere.
Don't label me ... 10:57am on 23 Nov 2009 Let me say one more thing. I have found it curious that some Christians on this blog object to an ad pleading for an end to incessant labelling of children. If any place is drowning in a sea of labels, it is here. Take religioius afilliation. Look at the last census. There is an almost endless list of religious labels that people attach to themselves. Why? I am tempted to say: God only knows.

As for politics, there’s Unionist, Nationalist, Loyalist, Republican, Prod, Taig, UVF, UDA, Provisional IRA, Real IRA, Continuity IRA, TUV, DUP, PUP, SDLP, Sinn Fein, Alliance, Green Party, Social Environmental Alliance, Conservative Party, Labour Party (?), etc, etc.

It’s all a bit overwhelimng for an adult living in a region of 1.7 million people, let alone a child!
Don't label me ... 10:11am on 23 Nov 2009 Peter:

I don't think the ad is directed specifically at 'faith'. It's about attitudes and values in general, whether religious or political.

As far as the NI divide is concerned, my view is that the major participants in our quarrel are fighting shadows, not real enemies. And these shadows are formed by the facile labels that they attach to one another. We are, as Brian Friel put it, "a retarded people divided by similarities".

McCamcleyc:

You are half-right. A plague on both your houses. Let's seek a Humanist way beyond Orange and Green, beyond God and Ulster. For they are shallow, empty, divisive concepts that should be consigned to the dustbin of history and thought.
Don't label me ... 11:41pm on 22 Nov 2009 Peter:

Thanks for your considered replies. I do believe that the divide in NI is largely phoney. It is based on misconceptions facilitated by simplistic labels which have no real meaning or sense.

I shall briefly tell you why. I was brought up in the ‘loyalist’ Shankill Road as a ‘Prod’. Both of these labels - loyalist and Prod - I largely accepted as a kid, though I hadn’t a notion what they really meant. When I became an adult, I discovered that they didn’t actually mean anything sensible coherent or relevant at all.

When I was growing up, I had absolutely no Catholic friends. Everything that I thought I knew about Catholics was filtered through the prism of ‘loyalist’ ‘Protestantism’, including all that ‘Freedom’s Foe - the Vatican’ poison. I only made friends with Catholics when I went to university in Dublin (a few Catholic defied McQuaid's ban). They challenged my ‘tradition’ and helped me to look at it critically. Of course, that doesn’t imply that I have converted to Catholicism (sorry, Bernard) and I will still be highly critical of papal policies etc. But it does mean that I can now see beyond the labels of ‘loyalist’ and ‘Prod’.

These are not identities that I want to have anything to do with, Peter. They do not represent for me progressive, tolerant and inclusive values. Instead, they are a dead end bunch of negative prejudices.

In order to see this, I had to ‘get out of’ my own background, to see up close and personal an alternative view, a view which showed me that Catholics didn’t all breed like rabbits (actually the evidence there was across the street where a Prod woman had 10 children but I didn’t consider it at the time), didn’t ignore the Bible, weren’t idolators etc etc (it’s all a matter of interprtetation), weren’t all militant republicans etc.

That’s what particularly worries me about parents bringing up children as ‘religious’ in NI. They will tend to bring them up with their prejudices, which are fatal for mutual understanding. I accept that not all religious people will be so narrow and that you don’t have to be particulaly religious either to instil bigotry. But I would object to a child being labelled unionist just as much as I would object to one being labelled ‘Presbyterian’.

Wouldn’t it be so much better if our children were brought up to love one another, working together in the same environment, and seeing beyond Catholic and Protestant to a better identity? In short, that they could ‘remember their common humanity, and forget the rest?
Don't label me ... 9:12pm on 22 Nov 2009 Peter/Bernard:

I hope that we don't let OT sidetrack us.

1. What are the deep roots of our divide?
2. Are you happy with children being called 'Catholic' or 'Protestant'?
3. What do these labels mean?
4. Are the differences important?
Don't label me ... 8:09pm on 22 Nov 2009 OT:

"It sort of seems like a distant cousin of the idea that the state should take all children into its control in order to raise them without the contamination of their parents". That's really silly. No one is suggesting that parents be denied the right to bring up their children or that the state should dictate what is told to them. Why do you have to 'contaminate' a perfectly reasonable suggestion with a poisonous slant on it?

All the billboard is doing is asking parents to be aware that children are not their possessions, that they have rights too, and that parents have a duty to help their child along the path to being an autonomous adult.
Similarly, as far as schools are concerned, they have a responsibility to 'educate' the child about all the various belief systems and world views, not just the one they were 'born into'.

The real totalitarianism in many societies lies with the people who hide behind ideas like 'the rights of the parents' in order to brainwash children into their own particular take on the world.

You say: "I mean, really, you seriously think it is unethical and/or immoral for peoples all over the world to pass on their religious, cultural beliefs and traditions to their children?" So it is okay to pass on sacrifice? Cannibalism? Witchcraft? Female genital mutilation? Fixed marriages? Natural remedies? No blood transfusions? Death to all infidels? Mass suicide pacts including the children? Child sex cults?
The Manson family? The Aum Cult? The Restoration of the 10 Commandments? The Order of the Solar Temple, which has made infant sacrifices?
Don't label me ... 5:46pm on 22 Nov 2009 You say that the BHA also promotes a list of 'Best Books for Young Skeptics', one of which is 'What About Gods?'

Peter, I am certainly not denying people's right to try to persuade young people. Don't be ridiculous. The point is that they need to be familiar with as many points of view as possible in order to make up their own mind. They can't do it in a vacuum with no points of view presented to them. If Camp Quest sticks labels on the kids, then that's bad, but if it helps them in their 'quest' for truth by explaining the secular view (which, let's be frank, doesn't get much airing anywhere else and not in many schools, let alone homes), then that's good.

Do you think that it is okay for parents to label their children with a belief system at a very young age?
And what are the causes of our divided society? Has facile labelling nothing to do with it? Arguably, in fact, considered objectively, our entire quarrel in NI is over facile labels of religion and nationality we attach to the 'other tribe'. Strip them away and the quarrel is over nothing much. But of course the majority do not look at it objectively.

Surely, you must have qualms over a child being called a 'Protestant' child or a 'Catholic' child. And if you don't, what do these labels actually mean? How does one recognise the difference?

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