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Dear George,

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"You are apparently referring to my sentence "seeing Catholic education worse than sexual abuse of minors (is) so absurd that not even Stalinist propagandists would have dared to make explicitly"."

No, you originally introduced the amalgam on page 13 of this thread when you wrote:

" ... do you really believe that the present Pope (or George Pell) is a "tyrant", comparable to those who sent millions to the Gulag?"

But never mind, George, I have made my point and I am happy to leave it at that. There are no hard feelings.

I find very interesting your indication that "Catholic education - as discriminated against in many ways as it was - was not formally a crime."

I do not know which communist country you are referring to but do you know if that was true in all communist countries prior to the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union?

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George,

I like our discussions. So I really try hard to leave well enough alone when you say something like, “so let us just leave it at that”. Believe me, I do.

But there are a couple of points that I’m sure you’ll understand why they are necessary to make once you read them...

<<I admit that when referring to a quote from Dawkins, the "couple of sentences" should have been more explicitly "two sentences", since the first two make up the sweeping statement I was objecting to, not the following example...>>

Yes, and this is why cherry picking is so problematic. Because Dawkins explains, in the very next sentence, that his remark was, not only an off-the-cuff remark, but that the positive reaction he got came as a surprise to him (indicating that at the time, he - at the very least - had doubts about whether he meant what he’d just said).

<<Remember, it was you who asked for quotes from Dawkins, and I gave you, actually three of them.>>

Well, yes I asked, because I honestly couldn’t remember where or when Dawkins had said that and Google searches weren’t returning much.

But you actually only gave me two instances of him saying that since he never made the claim in his speech at the protest; I’ve clarified what he said in his book, and in the link you gave me to The Dubliner, he says exactly what he said in The God Delusion - only worded slightly differently.

What he said in the Dubliner interview was ever-so-slightly brasher, but considering it was a spoken interview and not a carefully considered piece of writing, I think that’s understandable.

But I appreciate your efforts all the same.

<<Perhaps I should not have, since it provoked four lengthy posts from you, like a couple of times in the past.>>

I’m not sure why you would see such a long response as a bad thing.

Continued...

...Continued

You should feel pleased that what you have to say can get someone’s mental juices flowing to such an extent and be seen to be so worthy of such effort in responding.

<<I really do not see any point in answering again your assertions sentence-by-sentence ...We should have learned from our previous encounter that this ping-pong of assertions and counter-assertions does not lead anywhere if we want to keep to the rational (as opposed to emotional) level.>>

I’m not sure what you mean by my “assertions”. Any points I made in my last response that were made as if no supporting evidence were necessary, was only made in such way because I’d already covered the reasoning (rather sold reasoning too if you’ll recall) behind them at some point in a past response and didn’t want to bore you or waste my word count by repeating it.

Even if there is a bit of emotion in what I say, all my arguments (and the reasoning behind them - covered at some point in the past) were/are still sound on a rational (as opposed to emotional) level.

Dear Banjo,

>> No, you originally introduced the amalgam on page 13<<
In all fairness, what you are referring to is a REPLY to your "amalgam":

You wrote:
>>You … resisted the tyranny of the State in the communist country in which you lived. I encourage my compatriots to resist the tyranny of church and State in order that their children may have a chance of attaining adulthood with their faculty to choose fully intact.<<

To which I replied:
"… do you really believe that the present Pope (or George Pell) is a "tyrant", comparable to those who sent millions to the Gulag? You obviously do not agree with them. How did they tyrannize you? Is making proclamations, and the publicity that is associated with them, tyranny?"

You see, I did, not object to you calling "tyranny" the State in the Communist country but to you comparing (or amalgamating, if you like) it with whatever you dislike on contemporary Church and the Pope. How else was I supposed to understand your reasons for using "tyranny" in both cases in one paragraph? And you still did not answer the question how did they tyrannize you (or children you know) that could be compared with what Stalinists did to their victims.

No hard feelings, I agree, although I am not sure on whose side.

The country I experienced Stalinism in was Czechoslovakia. The attitude towardds religious education was about the same in all East European countries, although different countries were differently rooted in their religious traditions, hence exerted different resistance.

As to what was and what was not listed as crime in the law-books of this or that country, I am only sure that e.g. a father who sexually abused his daughter, would be officially put on trial and sentenced, whereas a father who attended Sunday masses with his children, sent them to First communion, could only be sent to menial, manual jobs, etc. The harshness varied not only from country to country but also from time to time, the strictly Stalinist times wer only at the beginning.

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Dear george,

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It seems I closed the book too soon. However, I understand your concern and am happy to open it again. The sequence of events was as follows:

Page 11 (George):

As I said, I grew up in a Stalinist country, so I experienced not atheistic, but explicitly anti-theistic education, but even there the Authorities would not have dared to “outlaw“ education by e.g. Christian parents, only discriminate against it.

Page 13 (George):

During a short period in my childhood I took private English lessons outside home, and RE solely from my father. So the one was instruction received from an outside body (like RE received from a church), the other at home. Neither were, strictly speaking, illegal, but I was well advised not to mention this at school

Page 13 (Banjo):

I can understand your father wanting to keep the flame of religious faith burning by passing it on to you, given the tyrannical political context that apparently reigned in the communist country in which you grew up. I have great respect for those rare individuals such as your father who have the courage to resist tyranny.

Page 13 (Banjo):

You and your father resisted the tyranny of the State in the communist country in which you lived. I encourage my compatriots to resist the tyranny of church and State in order that their children may have a chance of attaining adulthood with their faculty to choose fully intact.

Page 13 (George):

Or do you really believe that the present Pope (or George Pell) is a "tyrant", comparable to those who sent millions to the Gulag?

My analysis: 

I termed "tyranny" the discrimination you suffered as a child from the State regarding your English and religious lessons.

I then compared the "tyranny" you suffered to a similar "tyranny" suffered by "my compatriots" at the hands of Church and State, not for witholding religious education, as in your case, but for dispensing it.

It seems to me quite a large jump from there to the Gulag.

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Dear Banjo,

>> I termed "tyranny" the discrimination you suffered as a child from the State regarding your English and religious lessons.<<

No, you spoke of me and my father resisting "the tyranny of the State in the communist country in which you lived", not of discrimination. "Tyranny" in my dictionary means "cruel and oppressive government or rule" or "cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power". Since I did not give you any details of my father's ordeal (he was not jailed; only my uncle, at the age of 25, was sentenced to 9 years, mostly spent in uranium mines, for having been caught translating a French prayer book) I made the - unjustified as I see now - conclusion that your use of the phrase "tyranny of the State in the communist country", referred to the REGIME subservient to the Soviets (who indeed sent people to the Gulag), and NOT to discrimination against religious education in Czechoslovakia, which I would not call "tyranny" on its own.

I could not describe in a few words the sufferings I could observe at first hand, (although my personal experience I would not call suffering) the same as you could probably not describe the sufferings on the hand of Catholic "tyrants" that you could observe at first hand.

So the only criterion of whether such parallel use of the word tyranny is justified could be in comparing the numbers or refugees in both direction:

Of people risking their lives in the 1950s (and later) fleeing from a Communist country to the West in order to escape the Communist tyranny. And of people risking their lives fleeing from some Western country to a Communist country in order to escape the "tyranny" of the Catholic, or other, Church.

So please, let us indeed close the book on this very painful for me topic; it is not a pleasant feeling for me to have to fight my emotions wanting to interfere with my argument.