What If..............................?

[dan]

Give me a list of the good things you perceive as being 'brought in' by the labour government? This will be interesting

Hmm, my apologies. It seems that a lot of the things I had in mind were actually formed by the Liberal Party earlier in the 20th century. Although the NHS was the early Labour Party. I should probably spend more time checking my facts when I post, but for minor points like the one above I often don't bother.

The 'good things' I had in mind can generally be covered under the umbrella of the welfare state (welfare payments, NHS, etc), although I'm also of the opinion that a lot of the post-war nationalisation was a good thing - particularly so today when I dislike seeing public services in the hands of private, profit driven, corporations.

[slapshot 3]

Wasn't going to get into the whole religion thing but why the hell not.

I've had enough personal heartache in life to question whether the great God exists to bring happiness and joy to us all.

Nothing wrong with a healthy discussion. The people with religious beliefs tend to want to discuss it less than the non-religious once there is any question of proof. There are far more arguments against it than for it (not that that in itself proves anything)

Not sure how heartache or happiness has any bearing on whether a God exists though?

Being brought up told that god is everything GOOD in life, the joy and the happiness of life etc, think it could be called brainwashing.... When you have a minister pontificating aout how good God is and how he will heal your pain when you are about to bury your own child makes you think. Mrs Slapshot and I have gone through this twice and the religous element is always the same, God's greater purpose and all that. Carolyn can deal with that my limited faith can't.

we should never decry anyone for the power of their beliefs.

Don't think there was any decrying going on. One group have one view, another group have another view, we were discussing the reasons for those beliefs. The non-religious tend to have their beliefs questioned a lot more in our society than the religious even though we have the weight of science and historic evidence on our side.

Get this all the time, Carolyn and I argued about this to the extent we don't talk about faith and religon any more. I can believe something I can prove or understand scientifically. I can't put my fundamental faith in something like the bible, the koran, the talmud or any other religous writing beause the proof is not there. If people want to question this then so be it, I'll state my opinions but won't try to change theirs.

I'm probably becoming less open minded as I get older, but only because of the lack of any evidence. I like to discuss the possibilities - but it does amaze me that my young impressionable kids come home from school having been told religious facts by similar people with "faith", and I have to explain totally illogical concepts to them without calling their teacher a liar. I have to tell them to take the religious ramblings with a pinch of salt because it seems that due to belief, there seems to be an inability to teach kids that they are 'beliefs' and not 'facts'.

If our whole society were more open minded then maybe our kids could understand other beliefs a little easier.

Yup, Schools have to teach a broad scale of religion these days but I think it's gone too far. Example Small daughter brought a project home on Sikhism, spent a huge amount of time on it but took it back to school and was slated by the Teacher for it because it wasn't detailed enough,next one was Judaism and she has the Islam one to come, is it necessary, is it relevant, personally I don't think so. Teach these things as a general topic not individually. Touch on our own faiths for a time as well. We've gone nuts on this correctness nonsense. I think it's a waste of time. We want society to be open, integrated and fair but, we continually make exceptions to groups who don't want to integrate who don't want to be open and whose own fundamental views lead them to blow things up to get their way.

Edited October 25, 2006 by Slapshot 3