NJS

The quote function is still erratic for me so excuse the medieval layout: "But not scientifically? I never said it was for better but you must admit that Christianity was one of the causes? It goes against all historical logic to deny it." I don't deny the churches set up universities and were involved in education (with an ulterior motive as ever but that's by the by) but the men you mentioned weren't in science at the behest of the church - they were just keen minds in their own right. I know people like Newton are held up as "good Christians" but that just has to be seen in the context of a time when just about everyone was so I don't hold much stall by it - as well as the fact he dabbled in the "heretic" alchemy. I think the diversity berwtten religion and science is a more modern thing as apart from astronomy there wasn't much "conflict" until Darwin. I think now that we know so much (but I realise just scratching the surface) about the universe its harder to find any kind of common ground. As I've said on here before in the context of a 6000 year old Earth, christianity "makes sense" with less actual questions to be answered than when you start accepting the truth and our specie's place in it. On philospohy I admit to a being a practical bloke - I don't mind intelligent thought if its from a "reality" based viewpoint but as soon as it it strays into theology then I tend to call bullshit.

When it was raised to 50% it was made crystal clear it was a temporary measure by Darling and it wasn't in the country's interest to have a 50% tax bracket. Labour have said today they wouldn't reverse it at the next election. The HMRC and the OBC have both said the amount it raised was a pittance and under the other "tycoons" taxes launched today this group will end up paying 5 times more. Everyone should see the benefit of a low corporate tax when we are trying to gain inward investment. As for the rich not spending...... How do you account for all the posh houses, posh cars, rolex's, etc etc. Some even buy football clubs! This would be the OBR which said growth would be 2.5% when its 0.8%? They've been spinning the amount raised to the point of lying. TBH even if the amount raised was trivial its about messages - "we're all in this together" shouldn't be a shit soundbite. I'd also say that the argumnent that "talent" is discouraged from moving here then they can fuck off somewhere else. As I said if you really think vague "loophole closing" will worjk then you know even less about big business then I thought which is incredible. The changes to the corporate tax laws are not about innward investment - they are about multi-nationals taking money out of the uk. Even now ULK compaies are sitting on an estimated cash pile of £750bn which they aren't "investing" - they are just watching it stagnate. What I mean is that wealth can only be spent up to a point - once you have the nice house (or two) and all the toys there comes a point where the only way you could spend it is to chuck it away - hence the football clubs.

CT can you tell me how often miilionaire buys a £2m house compared with how often they get paid? The idea that closing a few loopholes (which they'll get around anyway) will in any way raise money shows how gullible the cunt thinks we all are. Also on "trickle down" - the reason the rich are rich is because they don't spend money - if you give anyone on this board 40k they'd go on a fuck off holiday or buy a daft car (not counting mortgage pay-off as that doesn't apply to the rich) - if you give 40k to someone who's rich they stick it in the bank and wank over their statements - it doesn't go back into the economy at all (as the banks won't use it now either).

The rise of Christianity happened in parallel with technological and societal progress - I don't accept that Chrristianity was the cause - other civilisations over the same period also developed morally. Ever heard of the Greek philosophers - the Islamic scholars who invented algebra or all of the the inventions from China and the far east - Christianity was only ever happy with science when it didn't conflict - when it did it was declared as heresy. Lovely mention of Galileo of course. You can't engage with religion on a sane level - its fudamentally insane by nature. You can line all up all the pseduo intellectual bollocks you like but until I see some actual evidence for any kind of God or show me any argument that goes against the nano-second reasoning that it takes to realise that's its all man made I'm happy where I am.

Where did I mention inherent evil - I thing that was Sloop John. I don't believe in "evil" as an entity but people who could be described as such are usually the result of nature and nuture - psychopaths who exhibit no empathy are usually found to have miswired brain chemistry. "the degradation of society due to the media and excessive liberalism" - you do realise that taking the UK or even Europe as an example, society is easily the safest and most tolerant its ever been - violent crime and murder rates are tiny compared with even a hundred years ago. I would agree however that the last 30 years has turned society a bit more nasty attitude wise - but that's down to conservative values (as practiced by Thatcher and Blair) rather than "liberalism" whatever that means. You also won't find me defending Sharia - I abhor all religions equally.

Fine for me on Android

I'll reply fully later but your suggestion that by nature we are all bastards any only religion saves us does not reflect the reality of our history or that of our primate cousins. Cooperation works far better than conflict and that all started before we could even speak.

If you're taking about something you signed in a contract, it's been laughed out of court a few times now. I've been thinking about going back to contracting lately. I'm quite happy where I am but I've been thinking about why I moved south in the first place. Being comfortable but only having 25 days holiday to enjoy it wasn't really it. It's in my contract, and also in terms of my industry without that, I'm pretty sure it's legal too. What is it you do again? Anything I can help you with? Ah sorry I forgot you hate consultants haha. Test cases suggest it isn't legal. I did meet a couple decent recruiters last year but they were the minority - probably more about the location than the breed as a whole.

If you're taking about something you signed in a contract, it's been laughed out of court a few times now. I've been thinking about going back to contracting lately. I'm quite happy where I am but I've been thinking about why I moved south in the first place. Being comfortable but only having 25 days holiday to enjoy it wasn't really it.

As evidenced by the recovery.

The real centerpiece is changes to corporation tax worth 20bn over the next 3 years.

O'Neill appeared before a parlimentary committee to defend spending 130m at Villa - most of his defence was it was "only" 70m net.

Christianity's contribution to Western Society morally is huge; one has to remember that when Christianity came along it initially won plaudits for it's sobriety, peacefulness, generosity, care for the poor and sick and above all it's central creed that it was a religious obiligation to act charitably towards others - something that disgusted the Emperor Julian who wrote that "it is a disgrace that these impious Galileans care not only for their own poor for ours as well" - but today would the extolling of such virtues fundamentally shock the leaders of our society? I don't think so. Whether these values are Christianities or not is a historical one, but it is clear that today we can see these virtues underlining our healthcare system for example... The influence of Christianity on the west is undeniable but also not exclusively beneficial. Every advance in human rights in the last 500 years has been opposed by religious authorities at some point - including the abolition of slavery. To suggest the idea of charity and especially medicine is exclusively Christian is also an insult to all of the Eastern philosophies - for example the service ethos of Buddhism pisses all over Christian charity from that pov. Someone mentioned geographical accident earlier which rings true in your case - if you'd been born in the Middle East you'd extoll the virtues of Islam as a cultural influence on humanity (with a degree of truth) or further east another influence - of course various perspectives all have some truth but that's my point - the underlying core values and ethics of all of them are broadly similar because they are all based on evolved human empathy - central to that is the lack of need for a particular tribal deity.

Part of that turning a blind eye to excess was and is backed by religion so to suggest that 20th century excesses were somehow a betrayal of better times is nonsense. Of course all civiliasations had brutal facets - I'm not saying humans are perfect but I don't get how you can say that in general the moral code isn't common. I can't think of any era where society wasn't underpinned by a broad notion of the common good - of course some failed to live up to that and got it wrong but even extremes like fascism and communism had a sense of "order" and desire to work at their core.Can you name a civilisation where murder and rape honestly weren't seen as geneally bad? On Hitler I have great "faith" that he could never have conquered the whole world in any meaningful way so the question is moot - there would always have been resistance. Even if they hadn't invaded Russia or had invented the A bomb they could never have conquered the Yanks militarily or China and India numerically. From a hypothetical pov I don't think in the 20th century onwards people would have accepted such a definition of the Jews - but funnily enough that very definition you mention was the official Catholic stance for centuries (minus the active extermination)

What do you think The church would have done in the middle ages with gas chambers or A bombs? The 20th century also saw massive advances against disease, hunger and poverty, of course they all still exist but to try and say it was dark age is ludicrous. Also note the widespread advance of human rights, and the increase of tolerance for homosexuality in a lot of the world as a huge step forward. Which God? As I alluded to there is a broad commonalitty of morality with all human communities. Of course there are aberattions but in general we do have an instinctive "feel" for right and wrong across a large span of ethics. Sociaties which never did know of an Abrahamic God all managed to come up with the same ideas - coincidence or evolved empathy based morality?

Humans are by nature a very social animal - to imply anything else is breathtaking ignorance. The western world has only reached this level of tolerance in the last 100 years - as religion's infuence wains - see the ongoing opposition to gay marriage as the perfect example of how wrong you are.

This would be the ten commandments that waste at least 3 talking about how to worship God, contain one that destroys the concept that the western world is based on (capitalism) and sees no need to proscribe rape, slavery or child abuse. Of course theft and murder were okay when Jehovah ordered it - how convenient.

Erm.... Murdered,raped,enslaved, exploited minorities etc etc Always find it interesting hove those who are "humanist" deride religion which was the very catalyst for said humanity. No - we formed communities - do you think some kind of switch was flicked by the Jews? Mankind would never have got anywahere near civilisation with empathatic morality. Yes a lot of these civilisations were religious but so what - what do you think came first. Also the Jews commited genocide in the name of their God, so again the idea morality was handed down to them is ridiculous. Many, many civilisations grew up in the last 5 thousand years or so - funnily enough all of them, no matter what belief system they follow have generally the same moral code - how does that work if it was exclusive to the Jews or Christians?

Just as stupid as the idea that Jehovah gave us morals. What did we do for the thousands of years before that?

It is perfectly acceptable to wish some well and genuinely hope they recover in the context of your own beliefs but I just think credit should go where it's due.

I thought we wre heading away from all this rubbish - albeit as much down to apathy as much as any kind of "enlightenment" but still. If prayer is so great would they have been brave enough to leave him lying where he fell and form a circle around him to pray? If he does recover you know it will be called a "miracle" when the only miracle on show is human intelligence and empathy backed by years of training from all concerned. In fact if I worked so hard on pushing the boundaries of life and then people effectively said "well fair enough but it was really God that saved him" I'd be pissed off. Theres also the question they won't answer - if he had (or indeed does) died would they have "blamed" the same God they want to thank? Will they explain to the family of the bloke in the next bed who did die that their prayers weren't good enough or God didn't think he was worth a saving nudge? I understand that it's all a hangover and its very human to think in these terms when faced with tragedies but thousands if not millions die every day - I just wish we could accept this, no matter how sad it is on an individual basis, and leave this legacy of our species childhood behind.

Just noticed Kilmarnock beat Celtic in the League cup final - a lad I work with was going up for this so he'll be fucking ecstatic (and I doubt he'll deal with any of my helpdesk requests tomorrow).

Bit of a struggle but the result is so important - also we should have had 3 really. I think we really need to freshen up the creativity in the summer.

The correct "who are you referring to" dig is Rotherham - they were the first. I also think "manure", "chelski" and "citeh" are far bigger crimes than the OP - sky era shite of the worst kind.

Yep in one thread - another Ashley is a twat leviathan - I remember Renton accusing him of having a sex wee when West Brom equalisied which is when he (Renton) stopped even trying to talk to him.