"Religion is a hypothesis about the world: the hypothesis that things are the way they are, at least in part, because of supernatural entities or forces acting on the natural world. And there's no good reason to treat it any differently from any other hypothesis. Which includes pointing out its flaws and inconsistencies, asking its adherents to back it up with solid evidence, making jokes about it when it's just being silly, offering arguments and evidence for our own competing hypotheses...and trying to persuade people out of it if we think it's mistaken. It's persuasion. It's the marketplace of ideas. Why should religion get a free ride"

Greta Christina

Thursday 18 March 2010

Tai Chi isn't xian enough apparently

This is priceless. A vicar in Sheffield has banned a Tai Chi class from his church hall because
He understands it comes from an eastern spiritual tradition
Of course he's right, it does. But so what? The elderly ladies taking this class are doing Tai Chi in the secular way most of us in the west who have tried martial arts do them. I'm an atheist but it didn't stop me learning Tai Chi, who cares whether it has religious origins.
The Reverend David Rhodes is displaying, did he but know, it an old pagan/shamanistic superstition which is essentially sympathetic magic.In his religion deluded mind, Tai Chi is contaminated by association, regardless of the intent of the participants. But of course what else can you expect of someone whose career has been spent peddling superstitious twaddle; his problem with Tai Chi is that he thinks it's someone elses twaddle.
I wouldn't care about this except that as is the case in a lot of small communities, the church hall is the only community space available to these good ladies and they are now reduced to excercising in a front room; not ideal. You could say that it is very un-christian of Rev. Rhodes to proscribe the use of church facilities in this way. Except of course it is in fact that peculiarly typical christian way of doing the wrong things for the "right" reasons.

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