Be Excellent To Each Other

Damn right.

That's bollocks really, unless you believe that atheists are incapable of feeling self-satisfied.

There's a bit of a difference between the small reward of a moments self-satisfaction and an eternity spent in heaven.

I don't think religion has quite as profound an effect on every aspect of a person's thinking as you seem to imagine. I think that by and large when people are nice to each other whether or not they are religious it's simply because that's just how society has evolved. It is to everyone's benefit not to be horrible to each other all the time.

I agree with you.

OK then, an example. My Grandmother used to clean her local Church every weekend for decades. Why do you suppose she did that?

Maybe because she enjoyed the sense of community she got from the church and felt like doing her bit to keep it going. Obviously I never knew your grandmother but I'm pretty sure it probably wasn't purely to avoid going to hell anyway.

Why does Grim... run the server for us?

So he can read our PMs.

Grim...?

Oh aye.

You're just wrong and I hate you.

She was a window cleaner?

Sorry that was probably a bad example as I've just realised that I have no clue what his religious views are. But my point was that since you have cheerfully written off every apparently altruistic act carried out by a religious person as selfishness how do you explain altruism shown by atheists?

Show your working or 0/10

Grim... believes in himself. For a man who owns his own road, there's no real higher authority to look to.

Because whenever you do something good, you get a little shot of endorphins in your brain as a reward. Why? I don't know. Religious people get this too, of course, but please don't tell me that religious people aren't interested in getting to heaven, because if that was the case then what would be the point?
And now I really must get on with some work before I lose my job. Jesus.

But surely if religion really was such a huge motivating force to do good then you would have to predict that religious people would actually be far more good than non-religious ones. I haven't observed this to be the case and so conclude that believing in god mustn't be as much of an influence as you implied.

I think I forgot to carry the 2.

*looking over shoulder*
But it kind of depends on the good deed doesn't it? I shouldn't think there are many atheists out there cleaning churches.

They think standing on street corners yelling a good dead.

Don't see many non-nutjobs doing that.

Again I'd say that people go to church for all sorts of reasons, particularly elderly people it can be the highlight of their week and it's not communing with god that they're looking forward to.

I suppose I don't disagree with you entirely but I think that if you try hard enough and you are cynical enough then you can find a pay off for almost all apparently altruistic actions. The idea that it means more if an atheist does you a good deed isn't one I can really buy into.

I'm coming up with a number of pictures for this, none of which seem right.

I'm a Christian, which is why I normally keep out of religious discussions online

As for doing stuff for other people - I'm not convinced I really do.
I mean, I do, but as a by-product: I like programming, and having people to use the stuff I do is really a means to an end. I'm not really talking about this place, this is a drop in the ocean - I've sunk thousands of hours (and pounds) into Little Savages over the years.

How many people bother to donate to that? I know the wife and I gave about twenty quid or something when we used to play it.

But what about people who quite openly swear around children? Not their own I mean, in public. I'm far from a 'won't somebody think of the children?' type, but I do hate the sound of a children swearing and haven't done it in front of my own kids. I remember as a teenager if there were young children around I would watch what I said - we all did, these days it doesn't seem to cound for anything though.

I think toning down one's language in public is just basic politeness. It doesn't take much to judge whether it's an appropriate time and place for swearing.

See, I'm not sure where I stand on that. I don't swear around kids (unless I really dislike them, obv), but looking at it rationally, there's no real reason not to other than to keep people from moaning.

In a lot of other countries, swearing around children isn't considered taboo at all. One of my housemates had a bit of trouble getting into the habit of censoring himself when kids are around, simply because it's not a big deal there. I'd say swearing in front of kids isn't a big deal (they'll hear it somewhere anyway, and kids are going to be adults sooner or later. It's not like knowing what 'bollocks' means is going to harm them, and there are maybe seven children in the UK who don't know that 'fuck' is a Really Bad Word), but it's arguably a case of 'when in Rome'.

My 9-year-old goddaughter is allowed to smack me on the hand when I swear in front of her. She relishes every opportunity to do so.

I try not to swear around kids, but I let a few shits out playing Rock Band with her on Saturday.

(Make your own jokes.)

There is a bridge near where I live. It has no pavement, it's just wide enough for a car with perhaps enough space for a person to walk if the car is stationary.

We went over the bridge yesterday and there were about 4 people standing on the bridge, looking down at the river. As we come on to the bridge one of them stands back, and throws a fishing line over. "Bloody Idiots" I say. Eliot, My 7 year old son says. "Oi Daddy, don't swear" It took me about 30 seconds to realise that bloody was a swear word. As it's a word I would have said to and infront of my parents I don't really consider it to be a swear word. Pauline and I both told them it was a mild one, but Eliot was having none of it. I apologised for swearing in front of him.

Malc

Sounds like you and Rev Owen had similar weekends.

Because children get into trouble for it. If a child hears a swear word and goes on to use it at school or in front of their parents, who know they haven't taught it to them they get into trouble. See Flis example. Darryl got into trouble at scouts for calling one of the female leaders a slag, he had no idea what it meant, I hadn't used the word around him and when questioned to see where he had had it from it turned out that he had heard that same female leader use it to describe a teenage girl from one of the other groups - and he got a couple of weeks suspension! A similar thing happened at primary school, he had called one of the black (can I even say that anymore?) girls a 'snicker'. He'd misheard someone else who was calling her a 'nigger', he didn't even know what the word meant! You could argue that we need to teach them what the words mean and that they are bad, but when do you start doing this? Children as young as two can quite happily say 'fuck' and 'shit' if they hear it, I'd like to see anyone explain that to them.

Have you seen the car advert where a little girl goes around saying "bollocks" when she has an accident or makes a mistake?

Then the final thing is her dad putting petrol in the diesel car, and saying bollocks.

I think that captures that just right.

Malc

Bearded Clam.

Beef curtains.

Gaping axe wound

REPEAT!

VARIANT REPEAT!

Smells like fish, tastes like chicken; what the hell, just keep on lickin'.

VARIANT:

....that's the place that you put your dick in.

How erudite.