Dear AJ Phillips,

Well Fry does say in the clip he is an empiricist rather than a rationalist. However I should have been clearer in that it was his second observation on constitutional monarchies straight after that was a little more germane to this topic.

Fry speaks of how tightly bound religion and the state are within these monarchies yet they experience high rates of atheism while in the US where the constitution forces a large divide between the church and state the rates of 'true' believers are incredibly high.

As an aside I've tumbled back into Nietzsche's Genelogy of Morals at the moment and imagining what he would have made of Mr Trump and his voters. I think it is an easy task to identify Trump as a 'blond beast of prey'. What is a little more interesting is why the 'slave morality' which has so driven Christianity, a religion deeply infused within American culture, has been so readily captured by Trump even though he exemplifies excess and immorality.

What has happened when the person originally seen by so many Americans as speaking truth to power becomes the most powerful?

Perhaps it has in measure to do with Trump's use of social media, primarily Twitter. By broadcasting his thoughts via this medium he has brought unfiltered access, immediacy, and to a degree intimacy to this power for his followers? How seductive is that to the slave? How empowering? I'm not sure.

Anyway it is all good fun.

So it goes that three guys had an argument in a bar:

1) Jesus was just like me: Strong, blonde, muscular, blue-eyed, Arian - how could he be any less?

2) No, Jesus was a Middle-Eastern, he was slim, tanned, dark-haired and bearded just like me!

3) You don't know a thing - Jesus was black and beautiful just like me, athletic with coiled short hair.

As they argue, there enters a small Jew, somewhat hunchback, half balding, flabby muscles.

"Oh Jesus, ye say? he was a Jew of course, he looked just like me!"

- The three couldn't stop laughing...

"What, you don't believe me? Come along an I'll prove it to you!"

So the three, thinking they couldn't miss another good laugh, went along and followed the Jew, who led them through the streets into the red-lights district. Finally he reached a building, went up the stairs where the door on the 2nd-floor had a big sign: "Maria".

The Jew rang the bell, a lady opened the door, looked at him and exclaimed in astonishment:

- JESUS, HAVE YOU COME AGAIN?!

---

The author had many good and interesting things to say which I agree with, regarding religion and free choice - but then he exposed his prejudice and ignorance just like those guys at the bar, claiming that his particular religion is both the most free and the most truthful of all while putting down all others, grading them down the scale.

I am a Hindu, I have been commenting on this forum for many years and anyone who read my comments would know that I am a very strong advocate for liberty. Economically I find myself in the middle-of-the-road (between libertine and libertarian), yet I abhor statism and never compromise on individual freedoms.

I find the author's spurious and unsubstantiated claim as if liberty and Hinduism clash, insulting.

Free will is a core concept in Hinduism since thousands of years before Jesus and Christianity – free will to believe or not and to sin or not.

Atheism is a "belief" in the same way that baldness is a hair colour or that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

Of the 5,001 Gods worshipped throughout human history, Christians don't believe in 5,000 of them. Atheists simply don't believe in one more.

Religion has a persecution and martyrdom complex and sees any variation in thought as a threat to their own belief and will try to rationalise its existence in every and any way possible.

Meanwhile, let's put the Thor back into Thursday.

Did Aiden just take the red pill?
"Christianity is indeed highly compatible with liberty. But Christianity is quite incompatible with Austrian School economics which uses dubious reasoning and blatantly false assumptions to justify policies which serve the rich at the expense of the poor."

I think if people say they know 100% for sure that God does or doesn't exist; that they could be right but it might also indicate mental illness.
How can anyone know for sure?

Dear SteeleRedux,

Yes, of course. I should have figured that that was the observation you were referring to, given the topic of the thread.

I’m not sure what to make of Fry’s observation there either. It’s as though democracies experience some sort of a backfire effect, in both directions, where the separation of Church and State is concerned.

--

Armchair Critic,

Who’s saying they’re 100% certain?

<<I think if people say they know 100% for sure that God does or doesn't exist; that they could be right but it might also indicate mental illness.>>

Similarly, I don’t know with absolute certainty that universe creating pixies don’t exist, but I’m happy to say that I don’t believe they do. I don’t see why a god should warrant any more serious consideration than universe creating pixies. And if someone were to tell me that they don’t believe in universe creating pixies, I certainly wouldn’t feel compelled to say, “Ah, but you can’t know with 100% certain that they don’t exist!”

Absolute certainty is a useless red herring.

You are free to believe that tiny unicorns live in your shoes. Fair enough.
However, when you tell me (or even legislate) how I must wear my own shoes in order not to hurt the mythical unicorns, it's quite a different matter.

That's nothing to do with my freedom, but only that of the unicorn-worshippers. The real meaning of religious freedom is just the freedom to oppress those who disagree with your beliefs.

It's what encouraged witch-burning and perpetuated slavery for millennia until both were overturned - not because of - but in spite of religion, which condones both practices.

They may recently have found the bodies of South American children mass-sacrificed centuries ago in order to stop the rains but nuns were still deliberately dumping the bodies of hundreds of dead children into septic tanks in Ireland until relatively recently.

Stephen Hawking said religion was "Fairy Stories for people afraid of the dark". For its abused or murdered victims, Religion IS the dark.