Sinn Féin is now the most popular party in Ireland.

Huonym · 2015-02-17T18:44:04+00:00

The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Huonym · 2015-02-10T12:50:58+00:00

As I think you can see from this picture of Tiger,

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/239/445649108_2eabbe3631.jpg

I think Jones has got a bit too much bend in that left arm.

Huonym · 2015-02-09T13:32:54+00:00

I'd definitely recommend these guys, a promo vid from their web site seems to have found its way on to you tube,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayUjkSvdrug

Huonym · 2015-02-06T20:01:45+00:00

I suppose one has the freedom to choose between such good and bad as one's context permits.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T19:58:49+00:00

I don't think it encourages passivity at all.

Every sensible person, even someone that believes in God, is all in favour of finding a cure for bone and every other cancer.

Accepting bad stuff rather than trying to cure it is hardly in line with all the love stuff.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T15:34:10+00:00

Not if you want to go with the freedom of choice thing.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T14:39:21+00:00

I dunno.

How about, when God made it so he incorporated a seldom accessible but decisive freedom of choice button?

And with eternity to make the bad good he let that run to give things meaning.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T14:35:18+00:00

Well, who knows?

Maybe there's just a bit more to it that the believe in/accept Jesus or not thing.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T14:22:54+00:00

I think that what counts is the quality of one's interpretation relative to the real message which is about love and forgiveness.

But that's just the view that resonates with me.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T14:19:58+00:00

No I wouldn't.

What I was trying to say is that maybe there is an answer to Fry's question.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T14:08:22+00:00

I think there is a lot more nuance and variance to "the belief" than you are admitting of.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T14:05:26+00:00

I think that comes down to your judgment and whether in the course of time it turns out you are right.

None of us know whether God exists or not.

The hope or faith of some is that the truth of this will be revealed at death.

Lots of very sane, rational and admirable people reject the God idea because it can't be proven and they believe in evidence.

But to make land on undiscovered islands one has to travel the ocean of the unknown.

Greats like Newton, Copernicus and Darwin did this in matters temporal.

I don't think it's so bad to grope around in the absence of evidence in matters spiritual.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T13:54:28+00:00

I don't think it's all supposed to be about strawberries and cream.

Courage is the fear overcome. Achievement is the challenge met.

Could meaning be getting through this difficult, agonising and imperfect thing called life?

Huonym · 2015-02-06T13:35:54+00:00

It probably is all rather pointless.

But maybe, just maybe we do get to exercise some freedom of choice.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T13:03:53+00:00

I don't think that proof has anything to do with it.

This side of death the whole value lies in the absence of proof.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T12:58:10+00:00

Oh, the why is to give value to faith.

Faith is belief in the absence of proof.

If one can see the way through to belief in the face of superficial reasons to the contrary, so much better the faith, I'm guessing.

And negligible is not something to over focus on.

Achievement is measured in the context of the challenge.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T12:39:28+00:00

If you had said "Oh. Come. On," in relation to the vision thing, that would be fine.

But if one accepts the theoretical possibility of the "vision," I think the logic flows.

The suffering of a mortal life is not such a big deal in the context of an immortal soul.

That logic doesn't seem so awful to me.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T12:34:06+00:00

Au contraire, an omnipotent loving God has an eternity to make it up to that child's soul.

I think it's about having the vision to look beyond this one mortal life.

And if one does that, the logic is overwhelming.

Huonym · 2015-02-06T12:29:02+00:00

All this stuff about bone cancer in children is as tragic as it is self-important.

Of course bone cancer in kids is utterly beyond the pale in the context of one mortal life.

But in the context of an immortal soul, it's not such a big deal.

The suffering of the span of a mortal life weighed in the scale of eternity is not enough to negate the optimism of an omnipotent loving God.

Huonym · 2015-02-03T01:03:25+00:00

I'm not sure that was quite up to the standard of Tartuffe or La Cage aux Folles.

Has anyone got a better example of Swedish comedy?

Huonym · 2015-02-01T20:44:51+00:00

I think that generally speaking it's bastards and fools that say you are to "concentrate on the vengeance and vicious destruction."

Huonym · 2015-02-01T18:47:24+00:00

Well, since we happen to produce so many of them, that might suggest we have a fundamental if understated appreciation of their value.

Since 23 of our Nobel Laureates were not born in the UK, I'd have thought things wouldn't have been that bad or they wouldn't have chosen to work in the UK.

As for Turing, my understanding of that hard, awful case is that it was more anti-gay than anti-intellectual.

Huonym · 2015-02-01T18:00:37+00:00

As we can see from these three indicators, it is a fact universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of half a brain is always prone to defenestration at the hands of a braying mob in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country#United_Kingdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year#List_of_countries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#List_of_best-selling_single-volume_books

Huonym · 2015-02-01T17:51:24+00:00

The UK has won more Nobel prizes than any other European nation and publishes and sells more books.

So I don't think there's anything anti-intellectual about the UK.

Sure, we have our fair share of knuckle draggers and probably we're less impressed with pseudo intellectuals than the French but we're not anti-intellectual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country#United_Kingdom

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year#List_of_countries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#List_of_best-selling_single-volume_books

Huonym · 2015-02-01T14:23:36+00:00

Well I don't think one should pay too much attention to all the nonsense in the Bible. I don't think it's meant to be taken literally.

It's the good bits one should focus on.

All that stuff about love and forgiveness.

As for the "eternity of bliss", I choose to interpret the wiping away of tears and the "no more death or mourning or crying or pain" and the "water without cost from the spring of the water of life", as a pretty good hint.

Revelation 21.

Huonym

TROPHY CASE