Christian/Atheist or other.....

Should have said 'why are these guidelines aimed specifically at atheists'.

Why is confidence based on "a constant awareness of how short life is"? I am aware that life is short and am sometimes deeply grateful that it is, but it's not a constant thought at the front of my mind. Life's too short for such nonsense.

Not too much #2 here then! I'll keep #9

Discussion point: sacrifice. I'm not sure I agree that sacrifice for its own sake is any use to anyone.

I was going to say "any use to man or beast", but I suppose if you eat a sacrificed beast, you benefit. Not sure the beast does.

Seriously though, if you can achieve the same things without sacrifice as you would with it (and I think this is often, if not usually the case), why bother with the sacrifice?

If, by sacrifice, is only meant not being selfish, e.g. sometimes putting the needs of others before one's own, then that's fine, I'm all for it when it's possible without causing problems.

Ritual sacrifice? No. Daft idea.

I found a tremendous amount of empathy on Gransnet when I spoke of my own tragedy. It has helped me through the past year.

Here we go!

Actually, the more I think about the comments on confidence the dafter they seem. There is no definition of "everything" so, presumably, he means literally everything – including our children, partners, home, health, eyesight. Or does he mean everything material? In that case he should say so; he is meant to be a professional writer.

"Pessimism isn't necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow. Is this from a fortune cookie.

To me, his definition of confidence is more like a defintion of "lack of fear", which is an entirely different thing or, at best, only a small part of confidence.

Perhaps he's being deliberately provocative in order to generate discussion. Perhaps he thinks atheists need help to think about these things. If so, he's a prat.

Bags Probably both. He's certainly someone with a very high opinion of his own intellect.

Lot of it about

Shallow pit.

Movedalot

Must 'fess up; when I posted I hadn't actually read the commentaries on each of his guidelines. I glanced through his list and thought, yep, all good stuff. I would have added 'kindness' to the list - probably somewhere near the top!!

ga yes, agree - maybe it flows from empathy though.

secondary small excavation.

Absent are you posting from the dentist's chair?

Still here(definitely not a troll).
I never really thought of myself as unintelligent, but I just don't understand the comments" here we go" "shallow pit" and "secondary small excavation" Absent.
Granny Act posted an interesting idea for discussion....does" anything to add". mean please......oh dear I'd better not go there.

agapanthus Don't worry; those comments relate to other postings and other people. Ignore them.

Yes, I think we will all do that. No point joining in any more of these, there is enough trouble in the world already. Such things will get just what they deserve.

The only difference between an atheist person and anybody else is that the atheist person sees no reason to believe any of the myths that others like to believe. We all have much the same morality. And people have a right to believe what they want to believe...

Hmm.......what about self-control? That could be added to the list.

Does humour spring from disappointment? I should have thought that quite a lot of humour springs from the absurdity of the human condition, quite a lot from a singular event (e.g. classic man on a banana skin) and just as much from odd juxtapositions. What about word play?