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> His smile widened and the smoke plumed behind his head.

Maybe he had an appropriate disguise. You should invest in a purple clerical shirt for these occasions!

i am sorry that you did not make it to the big ten!

What on earth do they need security for? Hysterical fans? Stalkers?

GV

Security must have been tight if your team haven't even managed a few pics of the Hallowed Blue Tent as a backdrop to your good self. (Or, perhaps these will be forthcoming at a later date??)

Alan: I can't say I wasn't tempted to buy a discounted purple clerical shirt from the Market Place. But even then, everyone has a colour-coded photographic ID and even the bishops wearing clericals have to wear their IDs in order to enter the tent.

Scybalous: I would provide a picture; but I left the cable at home. My colleague John Benson, our sound supervisor, has gone to get his. We'll try to get you a pic.

gveale: A very good question.

dennis: thanks for your sympathy; much appreciated!

As long as the bishops weren't wandering around like bears in the big blue house ...

So you felt badly because you couldn't get a ticket to get in to see the circus. A lot of kids with no money in their pockets once felt that way. I am surprised at your lack of enterprise and determination. Now if it had been me, I'd have gone to a costume shop and acquired the proper garb as some have suggested here. Certainly credentials could be faked. Failing that, I'd have disguised myself as a Catholic bishop who was sent as an emissary also with faked credentials. This should not have been too difficult. And you might even have gotten some help from Catholic clerics themselves so long as you promised you'd provide them with all of the details of what was going on inside. After all, how do you think the Catholic Church smuggled Nazis out of Europe and into South America after the second world war? Of course, the whole thing might have been far more trouble than it was worth. What went on inside anyway? Probably just a bunch of boring religious stuff.

Mark:
As your esteemed former President LBJ put it, it is better to be inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in, especially if you are posting all this boring Lambeth religious stuff on a blog or presenting it on the radio. Thank goodness, it's over. Perhaps we can get around to debating some real topics again.

William: The moral is: smoke a pipe next time and look authoritative.

Wow, no love lost between Brian and Will by the sound of it ...

For what it's worth, Will ... I enjoyed the lambeth stuff. It's when humanists go on (and on and on and on) about Darwin, secularism and why we should all think like them ... that's when I get seriously bored.

PTL..... you have a point.....

JovialPTL:

I was hardly blaming William for the Lambeth Conference or for the Sunday Sequence coverage. But it would be interesting to know if any other Ö÷²¥´óÐã regional radio station gave it as much coverage as Radio Ulster.

BTW:
Watching Dawkins tonight, it was shocking in this day and age the extent to which children at school learn so little about evolution and have been so brainwashed about creationism by religious people going on and on and on.

Brian, that's a ridiculous comment. Radio 4 broadcast their entire programme from the conference on Sunday. This is a ten yearly event, so why shouldn't Sunday Sequence cover it? Anglicanism is the largest protestant church in Ireland. I know you are a humanist, but you really can't get angry when a religious affairs programme covers religion.

JovialPTL:

I referred to a REGIONAL Ö÷²¥´óÐã station. Radio 4 is national and can be heard in NI as anywhere else.

For information, Presbyterianism is the largest Protestant sect in Northern Ireland. The C of I is the third largest Christian denomination.

I shall tell you what I think is ridiculous and what makes me angry. Sunday Sequence advertises itself as a 'religion and ethics' programme and is the only Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI radio programme dealing with ethics. This gives religion a public monopoly on ethical matters which it doesn't deserve and which is a contradiction of the pluralist society in which we live.

Brian-

"I shall tell you what I think is ridiculous and what makes me angry. Sunday Sequence advertises itself as a 'religion and ethics' programme and is the only Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI radio programme dealing with ethics. This gives religion a public monopoly on ethical matters which it doesn't deserve and which is a contradiction of the pluralist society in which we live."

NOW you have a point worth making. Of course religious ethics are a part of ethics, but I agree with you on this.

I'd like to see Crawley host a nightly ethics program on Radio Ulster with guests and a phone-in segment: programmers at Ö÷²¥´óÐãNI take heed! It'd be a hell of a lot more successful than the current nightly lineup, which should be in the realm of commercial broadcasters, and it would take ethics to a new audience in the manner befitting of a "public service" broadcaster. All in favour say AYE

AYE

Aye, aye, sir.

See, Ö÷²¥´óÐã? The people have spoken.

Well - three of the people have spoken. Four if you count me.

Could we ban politicians from the show?

G Veale

Brian I said that the church of ireland is the largest protestant denomination in IRELAND. It is.

and religion and ethics is as far as i can see a Ö÷²¥´óÐã combination, with radio 4 also having a religion and ethics department, and wbsite.

Jovial PTL:

Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI is Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI, not Ö÷²¥´óÐã Ireland.
In this context, the C of I is smaller is number than Presbyterians. This is a fact. On the same basis the Presbyterian General Assembly should be given at least comparable coverage.

Frankly, I think the Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI coverage of the Lambeth Conference, whether or not it was from the Big Top, was definitely Over the Top.

The Ö÷²¥´óÐã in Great Britain broadcasts ethics programmes divorced from religion. The Moral Maze is the obvious example. Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI doesn't.

Brian you seem to think Ö÷²¥´óÐã NI shouldn't cover the bishops conference because the church of ireland is the second largest NI denomination. By that logic, no humanists should ever be allowed on any radio programmes, because there's about 20 of you.

In fact Brian I think you're onto something. Let's ban humanists from all programmes until you get more than 1,000 members (about the size of a small catholic parish church). Deal?

Jovial PTL:

I didn't state that they shouldn't have covered it. You are misrepresenting what I said. I thought their coverage was excessive. There's a big difference.

Also, the Humanist Association of Northern Ireland has 200 members and another 100 subscribers to its magazine. Since you are arguing on an island basis, I should also point out that it is also an all-Ireland journal, which covers another 400-500 people.

Many people who are freethinkers are not joiners. The number who are neither Protestant nor Catholic in NI is about 200,000.

Brian
You are very optimistic about the
200 000. I'd be overjoyed if they were all humanists or fre-thinkers. At least they'd believe truth and argument are important.
The majority of Church members in Northern Ireland are nominal. What I tend to encounter is a sort of post modern "pick and mix" when I ask what people believe. I've known people who believe in reincarnation, an impersonal deity, miracles, and providence. That set of beliefs doesn't cohere at all. But to round the absurdity off, they'll insist on having their children baptised.
At least the 300 aim at a consistent and true worldview. I think that should take precedence over a head count of Church members.

Graham Veale

Jovial
I'm sorry to take issue with a fellow traveller, but I do take exception to the way the "Big Four" denominations throw their weight around in Northern Ireland. I've seen this as an RE teacher, and I don't like it.
We have an RE syllabus in Northern Ireland, in which a student can reach the age of 18 without ever having asked the question - what is Religion? Atheism need not be studied - despite the success of Pullman's "Dark Materials", and the rise of New Atheism. I've mentioned this before, but it irks me that RE is treated as a compulsory Sunday School, and not an academic subject in it's own right.

Graham Veale

It's also worth remembering that it is thanks to Thomas Huxley that non-conformists can attend Oxbridge. That means that I owe Free-thinkers some sort of gratitude.

GV

I wrote a reply but this damned comments system won't accept it.

See .