`And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
And, of course, we all know Humpty's answer.
If only there were a word that described people with no religion. It would make Ms. Burleson's job so much easier!
Photo found here.
5 comments:
What beautiful children too bad that they are all caught up in the Christian evangelism.
I didn't know that Scotland remains Pagan. I have been longing to go to Scotland not knowing how welcome I would feel there.
The equation of "no religion" or "irreligion" with Paganism is an old and standard Christian mind game. O.P. Kristeller, one of the most important Renaissance scholars of the 20th century, actually quite seriously that Marsilio Ficino could not have been a Pagan because he was a deeply religious man. Never mind that Ficino's religiosity had more to do with Plato, Proclus, Proclus, and Hermes Trismegistus than with Peter, Paul, or Jesus Christ.
But Christians even go so far as to assert that atheism itself is synonymous with any rejection of Christianity. For this reason the great Pagan poet and dear friend of Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, is often matter-of-factly referred to as an "atheist".
It's the spiritual two party system: Christianity or nothing.
I suspect a great many Scots of all religions, and of none at all, will sigh with relief at not having to deal with these morons on a daily basis.
This kind of thing reminds me of gooper apologists who like to say, "You're not really mad at Rush cuz of what he says, you're mad cuz he makes more'n you."
People can't debate or escape exceptional dissonance until there is some basic agreement of terms. That fact becomes strategy: Some refuse common terms to avoid debate or better yet, enjoy the convenience of imposing their set of constructs onto someone else's reality. At one point social research coined a term for this dynamic, the "received view." The article at the link is a great example.
In which case, what A. Johnson said.
UUgal
Interestingly, according to the Wikipedia article cited, the early Christians were called "atheists" by the Pagans because they didn't worship the Pagan Gods.
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