You should be flattered. The Germans are asking you — yes, you, that person sitting at your computer — what you think of the Catholic Church. When Germany asks, you must answer.
What do you think of the Catholic Church?
35% Sie ist eine gute und wichtige Institution (it is a good and important institution)
20% Sie hat gute und schlechte Seiten (It has good and bad times)
34% Sie ist überflüssig (It is superfluous)
11% Sie ist mir egal (It doesn’t matter to me)
That first answer needs to be knocked down a peg or two, I think.
Comment #2 translates as “It has good and bad sides” (not “good and bad times” which would be Zeiten).
Aside from the poll, how charming is it that the German word for superfluous is überflüssig (or is it überflüßig)? Gotta love the Germans, eh?
It’s well on its way to being Pharyngulated. However, the vote number is fluctuating all over (went from 417 to 405 upon reload). I never trust those things.
They don’t have the answer I am looking for: “it is a focus of evil in the modern world.”
Uberfloosig = 45% – Jah! Zer Goot!
It is interesting that they left off a fully negative opinion such as “It is a destructive institution” or at least “It is bad”.
Wow – even before pharyngulization, “superfluous” is just about tied with “good and important”.
Yeah too bad they don’t have an option for “It’s evil”.
German churchgoers tend to lean left as opposed to right.
And Germany has the tradition of Kulturprotestantismus, unlike the tradition of Anglophone kneejerk, hyper-rationalist dismissal of religion (like you see on this site, for instance).
No option for “it is evil” so “superfluous” (47%) it is.
Hmph.
ZK
@ #9
Kneejerk, hyper-rationalist dismissal of religion? Yes, because noone here knows anything about religion, we just lash out at it as a kneejerk reaction. As for hyper-rationalist, I reject the concept entirely. Rationality is the only way to approach the issue. You can’t “overuse” it.
On a more general note, yeah, I am saddened that there wasn’t the correct option wasn’t allowed; “It is one of the most vile and disgusting organizations in existence.”
Personally, I’d choose all of the last three options, with the caveat that the second choice leans heavily towards the schlechte (dunkle?) Seite. Having to choose just one, I went with superfluous.
Hey J-Dog, was that supposed to be Sehr Gut! or are you speaking Dutch?
German scholarship also has the tradition of separating out the human (less tangible) from the natural, inhuman sciences. Daniel Dennett apparently doesn’t want to be bothered with that stuff.
It’s things like this that makes Terry Eagleton bash Americans for being intellectually provincial…
The lack of an “It’s bad!” option comes as no surprise. The Welt newspaper is part of the conservative Axel Springer publishing house, and “superfluous” is probably the worst they could bring themselves to offer.
It might be illuminating to translate the first few lines (and forgive my, without doubt, imperfect attempt), for the article is actually rather critical of specific internet-manifestations of christianity.
Coincidentally, kreuz.net’s (Kreuz = cross) webserver is located in Atlanta, as the article states as reason why the staff of this “Giftküche” (Gift = poison, Küche = kitchen) cannot be prosecuted;
the owner (the “Sodalitium for Catholic Communication”) is seated in El Segundo, California.
The article focusses on the antisemitic issues and holocaust-denialism of those websites’ (kreuz.net, gloria.tv – a sort of christian youtube, yuk) customers.
The strange thing is that the poll doesn’t even reflect the theme of the article it’s tied to. The article is about Catholic extremists and their propaganda warfare on the web, where you find everything from antisemitism through historical revisionism to general reactionary opinions. The focus in on kreuz.net and kath.net, two popular news and blog portals. Their comment discussion threads are very entertaining and in no way overshadowed by American fundieisms.
as a German, let me just say: bullshit.
for one, even though German churchgoers are left-er than American ones, this is simply because Germany as a whole is FAAAAR more to the left. Internally though, non-churchgoers are more left-ish than churchgoers, usually.
Two, I resent the term “Kulturprotestantismus. The correct term should be “Kulturreligion”, since Germany is not and has never been uniformly protestant, nor is it even uniformly Christian anymore.
Three, since German religiosity is less virulent (albeit at least as pervasive) than American religiosity, the reaction to it is less strong, as well. But it’s still there, as the recent brouhaha over the atheist childrens books shows.
huh? the words mean exactly the same, even to the stem level:
from Middle English, from Latin superfluus, literally, running over, from superfluere to overflow, from super- + fluere to flow
Dammit, my blockquotes just won’t fit, and I was having some trouble with a simple italic-tag somewhere else. Compared to how other posts are parsed in the resulting HTML, mine had < br >s added (others had not). Is this a Firefox-issue?
How about, “It is fundamentally evil?” I lack an acceptable response option.
“It is interesting that they left off a fully negative opinion”
Nope, if you know the paper the poll belongs to it’s not.
In related news, an attempt from the religious group “Pro Reli” to make religion a compulsory school subject in the state of Berlin (yes it’s a city and a state) failed. They got enough supporters to hold a public election and got pounded. In the rest of the country, however, it is sort of a compulsory subject. You either have Catholic Religion or Lutheranian Religion. If you subscribe to neither of one, you just get an hour off…
Jadehawk:
Forgive me; I was commenting only on the sound of the word, which I find “charming” in a total nonironic sense.
On reflection, I can see where my comment may have seemed snarky… but I promise I didn’t mean it that way.
as a German, let me just say: bullshit.
I read it in a poll. A greater percentage of German churchgoers lean left politically than right.
I’ll try to find it.
@23:
“…totally nonironic…”
I hate when I notice stuff like that during the lag between hitting Post and seeing the text disappear from the input box. 8^(
and the fact that Germany is to this day bogged down in superstitious woo is a good thing…? I mean seriously… there’s ads on TV for Homeopathic Cold medicines, and people take them seriously (hey they’re sold at the pharmacies, they most be real medicine, right?); people go to woo-practitioners as often as to real doctors; and they believe in magic and other superstitious nonsense. and all this is part of the tradition of accepting woo as an acceptable answer to stuff.
lastly, the mere separation of the social sciences and the natural sciences is not a German-only convention. however, the true differences have shit-all to do with some magical quality of the human spitit, but simply with the extreme complexity of human systems, so that studies of those systems need different methods than the hard sciences. and even there, the differences are slowly melting away (as per neurosciences, evolutionary psychology etc.)
Actually, only sort of. Even in Bavaria, my wife could choose between Religion and Ethik, while Bavaria is considered one of the most religious states in Germany (haven’t really seen any recent statistics, though); and that was even ten years ago. Somewhat optimistic this is improving – it somewhat surprised me they did not even get the necessary number of votes to consider that Pro Reli-nonsense.
and because I haven’t said this today yet: I fucking hate the new commenting format!!!
at the very least, all paragraphs should be indented the same, ffs!
…everything is soooo much better in german.
@#24
Yes, which is exactly what he said. The point he made was that the churchgoers are more to the right than the non-churchgoing Germans. Which you seem to just ignore…
nope. that’s what “werte und normen” (ethics) classes were for. all the muslims in my school took that one, as well as a few actually non-religious students
which is why the conservative/right wing party is the Christdemocratic Union. of course your use of “more to the left than to the right” is the height of ambiguousness, since we don’t know what they’re more left than right about, and in comparison to whom
No, I’m not ignoring. The article I saw (as I remember it) took that into account. And the point was that the left was more represented in the population going to church than the right, even given the percentage of left and right in the overall population.
But no doubt Germans are just like the rest of Europe. Most don’t go to church and are atheist or agnostic… It was just interesting what views were represented relative to the population at large. It was different than the US.
I didn’t take it as snarky, you just confused me, because in my mind the words are exactly identical, so I couldn’t figure out what specifically you’d find so interesting about the German version. now I get it :-)
I’ll translate the article later (as mentioned, it’s interesting but has nothing to do with the poll).
So has English, with even stupider names to boot: “the humanities” and “the sciences”.
A greater percentage of Germans leans left than right. The Social Democrats keep winning or almost winning the parliamentary elections, and it’s not a two-party system.
Reginald Selkirk (#4)
That gets my vote.
JJWfromME (@24):
Did you read Jadehawk’s comment beyond the word bullshit? Because this…
…doesn’t actually rebut her point: She never argued that German churchgoers don’t lean left (at least by American standards), but rather that German nonchurchgoers lean left to a greater degree than churchgoers.
lastly, the mere separation of the social sciences and the natural sciences is not a German-only convention.
In the link above from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennett specifically refers to it as something that marks the German tradition.
Again, this is something I can’t find, but didn’t Kant’s in good part start as a reaction to Hume? And then you have Hegel, who is closely associated with the concept of Geist. Charles Taylor cut his philosophical teeth on Hegel, and his recent work is a reaction to the New Atheists…
As a german, I also think the poll, which stated that german churchgoers are more left than non-churchgoers is BS.
Also the church and religion got a good boost, because the german pope, Herr Nazinger.
On the surface a lot of german people seem to be non-religious. But when you talk about atheism and religious topics, they tend to say stuff like: “there must be a god behind all this. Maybe the church is wrong, but Jesus is real”.
Also alternative medicine like homeopathy is quiet big here in german. I got into an argument with my own doctor, who considers herself a specialist on that area and wanted to prescribe me such “medicine”- no thanks!
Dawkins was on TV about a year ago, and the talkshowhost (J.B. Kerner) argued with 3 other persons against his atheistic viewpoint. Not really a balanced conversation.
Another big problem is and especially will be the muslim rise in germany. Some of my best friends are muslims (turkish background but mostly born in germany). Normally they are reasonable people and highly educated. But when it comes to religion, they tend to say the most silliest shit, talkin about a western conspiracy against muslims,… .
That`s why we must stop all government support for ALL religions in germany, so that Islam won`t gain political power like christianity at the moment has.
So has English, with even stupider names to boot: “the humanities” and “the sciences”.
Um, yeah. But this guy famously argued why it should be so. (Or at least famously among people who care to study about these kinds of things.)
Was Halten Sie von der Kath. Kirche?
Sie is recht Böse und fuchtbar Dumm.
(Downright evil and frightfully stupid)
you fail to understand that those are 18th century distinctions, argued among a deist spectrum of thinkers. The metaphysics of those discussion have faded into the background, while the actually useful methodolocical differences are now ubiquitous. That this distinction came about as part of the German Enlightenment tradition is meaningless in modern times because it’s ubiquitous in Western scholarship. This is like saying that the German scholarly tradition is better because it includes public libraries, as if those didn’t exist anywhere else just because they started in Germany.
Alright, I can’t find the story about the poll and I’m working from memory. I thought I remembered the point of the story being that it was counterintuitive for an American audience. But it was a while ago that I saw it, and I’m not going to swear on a Bible, Koran, Upanishads, etc. that there was more churchgoing relative to the percentage of left views in the whole population…
oh, and also, you gotta keep in mind that “far right” in germany is where the Neo-Nazi’s are, which is different from the American “far right” where the god-botherers are; as such, german church-goers aren’t at the rightmost end of the spectrum of the scale like they are in the states. that, indeed, would be very counter-intuitive to an american.
you fail to understand that those are 18th century distinctions, argued among a deist spectrum of thinkers. The metaphysics of those discussion have faded into the background, while the actually useful methodolocical differences are now ubiquitous.
Sure. But you assume the debate can’t be revisited with some good results. Maybe some useful distinctions have been forgotten. The sciences and the humanities tend to have some interesting differences that way. The sciences tend to digest matters and come to one useful point for progress (say, a new method). The humanities tend to revisit the same texts and find something interesting that might be newly relevant and can be revisited.
Great essay on this subject: http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/ac/divorce.pdf
Where’s the option for “The Catholic Church is evil and needs to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity”?
no i don’t actually. I merely don’t see the point of re-injecting discarded woo; especially in light of the fact that social sciences and physical sciences are moving closer together.
the arts are a separate subject altogether, and lumping them together with the social sciences into “the humanities” does a disservice to both.
RE: “Überflüssig” as worst option. I defer to the native speakers here, but my impression is that the German überflüssig can have a stronger negative connotation than the English “superfluous” usually does. That is, it can mean, as the English equivalent generally does, merely “unneeded”, but often carries a whiff of “… and unwanted” as well.
Mrs Tilton, you’re possibly right; it can mean unneeded in the sense of it serves no purpose whatsoever and is a waste of resources, thus being unwanted as well. German efficiency and all :-p
Interestingly enough, I thought “unneeded, therefore unwanted” was what superfluous meant, i.e. it’s superfluous, let’s get rid of it.
Who cares about Hegel?
Also, did you know that Geist means not just “spirit (including ghost)”, but also “mind”? There is no separate word for “mind” in German, and “mind” is the meaning one first thinks of when hearing “Geisteswissenschaften”.
Me too. As in “who needs that shit?”.
========================
Concerning the layout:
Current results:
What? Only 1360 votes? What kind of pharyngulation is that?!?
And to the right and a bit higher up, there’s another poll:
…which means “should Germany receive former Guantánamo detainees?” and needs a few more “yes” votes to counter the xenophobes and other paranoiacs.
Jadehawk:
Yeah, but it doesn’t necessarily carry the sense of <EddieIzzard>”…so let’s get it the fuck outa’ here!!</EddieIzzard>
See the subtle(??) distinction? ;^)
I will hear no more insinuations about the Catholic Church! Sie werden sich hinsetzen! Sie werden ruhig sein! Sie werden nicht beleidigen Katholische Kirche!
no i don’t actually. I merely don’t see the point of re-injecting discarded woo; especially in light of the fact that social sciences and physical sciences are moving closer together.
There are several things here that are a judgment call. There is tons of room for dispute–especially on the “social sciences and physical sciences moving closer together.” Much of the technocrat-ism and scientism of the twentieth century is looking not too good these days.
And the thing about “woo”–judgments about what is “woo” and what isn’t, is again, a judgment call, arguably based on what ideological camp you find yourself in. Certain people want to think there are no other valid camps but their own. In certain cases you can only do that by following the talk radio school of discourse–you shout down your opponents instead of granting where their disagreements with you have merit.
Me too. As in “who needs that shit?”.
Exactly.
Also, did you know that Geist means not just “spirit (including ghost)”, but also “mind”?
Yeah. Interesting, eh?
I recommend Firefox and others I know like Opera or Safari. I don’t know anyone who willingly uses IE. Usually people use IE because that’s what’s on their work computer and the IS twinkies get all bent out of shape if you download a good browser.
Tis Himself@56:
With “good browser” meaning one that those selfsame IE twinkies can’t easily muck up to a state totally beyond usefulness in their attempt to put the company logo in the upper right.
At least my company only threatens to yank FireFox out when it notices an upgrade I have not yet applied. That’s a minimal intrusion I can accept over all the times I am forced to use IE.
JC
überflüssig sage ich dir! überflüssig, und Böse und alles was Schlecht ist!!!!
Egal
Schnaps!
If such things interest you, click on the sitemeter box below the comment field and select OS or Browser Share to learn about what your fellow ilk are using to access Pharyngula.
Unfortunately I can’t vote in this poll, because the only answer I could be truthful in selecting would be the opinion that Catholicism is an evil force in the world which knowingly causes harm to millions of people. Oddly, that option does not appear. I wonder how many people would have picked it? Now I’m dying to know.
Dieser poll ist irsinnig und verukt. NARISCH! Mit keinen kopf und keinen arsch.
Wie die leute so denken, dann ist alles verloren.
As a german, I am very much ashamed of the other poll on that site, “Soll Deutschland ehemalige Guantánamo-Häftlinge aufnehmen?” (“Should Germany take in ex-Guantanamo-Inmates?”), and its result:
13% Ja
87% Nein…
I too would suggest Firefox. It is far better and the killfile script is great.
>German churchgoers tend to lean left as opposed to right.
Eigentlich nicht. I have been living in Catholic Baden for 25 years, and I know this is wrong!
Churchgoers, especially the older ones, believe all that stuff about Jews being god-killers, a woman’s place being under the doormat, paleskins having different genes from darkskins. Obviously you don’t get to hear this at once, it takes a few years and some schnapps before they open up. They had religion force fed as kids, only the strong ones dared to disagree.
But the younger generation is beginning to let go of it all, at last, they just laugh at their grannies at the Rosenkranz. When asked, I say I am an atheist, people ask how that works, and I tell them, and they find it interesting. Their grandparents would have stoned me.
I let my children choose their religion, since I am old enough to understand that it chooses you. Their primary school was Catholic, then in secondary they both chose Protestant religious instruction, now they both changed to Ethics. They don’t seem to learn much, though. I am glad to say neither shows any leaning to sky fairies, and they have never been baptised.
By the way, I voted against Guantanamo too; my village is one of the ones where refugees get parked, so it is not an ethical but a genuine issue for me.
@39:
There was another talkshow though. A UFO believer, a spiritualist, a TV evangelist, and a rather catholic host, plus one host of a science TV show. He left after half an hour, with the comment “This is not a discussion, this is a psychotherapy session on acid.”
As for religious pervasivity and Germany: You know the atheist bus campaign? We have that too, or rather we are trying to have it. Sadly, the campaign has been looking for busses to advertise on for two months, and they haven’t found a single taker, because the same companies that display “Come to Jesus or go to hell” ads find that the Atheist ad is “too offensive” and “too negative”.
Religion is more passive here, but it’s there, and strong.
Well, seeing that a lot of the inmates were innocent, I just don’t see what issue there is to take with it. They’re not different from any other refugees.
>Well, seeing that a lot of the inmates were innocent, I just don’t see what issue there is to take with it. They’re not different from any other refugees.
These guys were hanging around dressed as terrorists, in the company of terrorists, acting like terrorists, armed like terrorists and talking like terrorists. You can have them in your neighbourhood. I don’t want them in mine. Why can’t they just put them back where they found them?
The refugee housing behind the fire station is empty just now and it is our turn to get new ones. This is not a theoretical problem here.
What’s with all the people in this thread trying to produce some accident-free German?
You are not succeeding….
PZ wrote:
This actually translates to good and bad sides/aspects,rather than “times”.
Anf agree with Mrs Tilton @ 48,
superfluous=|= ueberfluessig,more like “got too much of that already”/unneeded.
Option 5 proposal : “is a great institution if youre into altar boys”
Ueberflussig, naturlich!
Dein Wunsch ist mein Befehl, herr Komissar!
@68
Not to be a hairsplitter, but ‘superfluous’ is about right. ‘Ueber’ translates to ‘over’and ‘fluessig’ to ‘flowing’ which is what the latinate ‘superfluous’ actually means.
@Frank Voeth: “Dawkins was on TV about a year ago, and the talkshowhost (J.B. Kerner) argued with 3 other persons against his atheistic viewpoint. Not really a balanced conversation.” There is a youtube video about the book “The God Delusion” from the TV show “Kulturzeit”, where you can really hear how little the announcer thinks of the book. It is disgustingly biased.
Wow, 69% for superfluous? That is surprising. Where are all the people thinking without the Catholic church the Kindergardens and the Hospitals wouldn´t work anymore? Or all the other social stuff the churches to with 10% of the church tax money they get.
# 35
@ David
there had been sixteen federal elections for the federal parliament(Bundestag)in postwar Western Germany and reunited Germany. The conservative CDU/CSU got the largest percentage of the popular vote 13 times, the SPD two times (in 1972 and in 1998), the last election was a draw, with both large parties getting 35% of the vote.
@ 9
Gazprom Gerd Schröder’s courtjester “a leftist philosopher and advocate of democratically enlightened common sense” ?
I would have laughed out loud, if it wasn’t so sad.
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia
@ 24
Definitely untrue for German Catholics, who are more conservative than the rest of the German population. It might be true for a small elite of Protestant intellectuals, if you consider Wehrmacht veterans that still bear a grudge on the Catholic “Rhineland separatist” Adenauer and his rejection of the Stalin note in 1952 or wanted to leave the NATO in 1982 leftist ;-)
Yes 4%
No 97%
I don’t know. 1%
102% of the people agree this poll is whack!