Of ridiculous things to say
Yes, Richard, it must be cultural. Either that or senility. Church bells are an absolute invasion of people’s right to reasonable peace and quiet. I make an effort not to be bothered by them – and one can get used to them, but there is no doubt they’re an abuse.
At 10am the bells on the church on our street ring 10 times, at 10:02 they ring another ten times. At 10:30 they ring once, at 10:32 they ring once yet again. This goes on every hour, and half hour of the day, morning to night.
Lovely? No.
My Mazamet 
I didn’t have Richard Dawkins pegged as ‘intolerant’, but I guess he is
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think he uses this sort of thing as a means to create controversy and draw attention to himself. It’s a shame because it undermines the great things he does.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bells must be broken. The original use of the bells (not supported by scripture, along with the vast majority of other Christian practices) was a call to a church service (also no supported by scripture). These assholes are calling people to church three times an hour all through the daylight hours? What no night services?
LikeLiked by 1 person
They go from 8am to 10pm – and when there’s mass Friday, Saturday and Sunday they ring for a solid 5 minutes before mass begins. Not to mention we’re talking about a small town with four churches, two of which are about 400 metres away from each other, so there’s simultaneous ringing.
LikeLike
I’ve always been relieved when Good Friday arrives and the bells are silenced in readiness for their flight to Rome 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
When in France you could hear the bells of five churches from our garden. Luckily all were far away enough to make it a pleasure rather than a pain.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m used to it now, but I just don’t see the point. Especially not in the case of competing noise. And on top of it the church on our street is closed, so it really makes no sense whatsoever.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The churches around us were served by a single priest and as we could not see him bicycling frantically between them had to assume that there was either a time switch or that the faithful provided the bell pulling power.
I think it was the evening Angelus, used as a knocking off signal for those working in the fields in the past.
The dull clangs of French church bells did strike me as glum after English church bells….
LikeLiked by 1 person
You can just imagine him volunteering for the tombola stand at the Church Fete and later eating cucumber sandwiches with the vicar wistfully looking skyward in case the Spitfires fly over!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ah yes, the spirit of jingoism
LikeLiked by 1 person
The analogy is bad, bells should be compared to the adhan, which is beautiful in its own way.
LikeLike
None of it is beautiful if it’s on your street.
LikeLike
I loved to hear the call to prayer going out across Lake Dal in the morning.
I also liked the sound of the bells on Sunday morning in Chicago.
Then again, I get up real early. And I can sleep through anything anyway.
And I don’t currently live down the street from a steeple or a minaret.
The closest disruptor is Zipps sports bar. Better or worse?
LikeLiked by 2 people
why 10:02/10:32?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Because just once isn’t enough! I imagine it’s pure and simple psychological manipulation. The church inserting itself into your life. Reminding you of its existence all day long.
LikeLiked by 1 person
But on the hour, and on the half-hour, Okay, I can understand that, but for the love of all spices, why two-minutes after the hour??? What manner of fresh hell is this??? I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight if this goes unanswered.
LikeLiked by 1 person
https://books.google.fr/books?id=qlUXqQFi_XkC&pg=PT38&lpg=PT38&dq=french+bells+chime+twice&source=bl&ots=PVzzEgir9R&sig=YUR8Gvlgz4MM_iRoAIoSU7QOwds&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy97nS2KncAhXBjKQKHeywAX4Q6AEIqAEwGA#v=onepage&q=french%20bells%20chime%20twice&f=false
LikeLiked by 1 person
But why???
LikeLike
I would think your confusion and insomnia clearly demonstrates why the bells ring two minutes after they are initially struck. It seems that it’s just one more way TOOAIN inflicts misery upon its creation.
LikeLiked by 2 people
LOL! You might have something there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What we need is to develop an instant-freeze weapon. It could be fired at a distance, perhaps 25 meters or so, and super-freeze church bells just before they are scheduled to ring. The very first strike of the clapper would shatter the bronze metal by exceeding the resonance limit of the now-frozen bell.
How? Don’t bother me with technical details – lol! Maybe liquid nitrogen?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Buy a couple of thick padding wads and sneak up and wrap the clapper.
Bells? How about helicopters? Sheesh! There’s a greenway route that ends in our backyard. Choppers follow it as an easy navigation path. And, I suppose to reduce their noise impact on the rich people around us. But hells-bells those ugly things are noisy! Wahk-a-wahk-a-wahk-a, four or seven times a day. Rattles the bloody windows.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I love the sound of French bells… but perhaps familiarity breeds contempt.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The adhan only sounds five times a day. 🙂 When I was growing up, there was a church a few blocks from my house that played bells. Fake bells. Sometimes they’d forget to let the record player get up to speed first, so the music would start with a weird slide in speed and pitch. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring ding dong . . .
LikeLiked by 2 people
Too answer your question Mr Dawkins, it’s your cultural upbringing.
I have an idea on the church bells for you Pink. Why not send as very nice respectful letter to the archdioceses? Especially since the church is closed, I think you might get a fair shot at getting the bells quieted.
If that is unsuccessful I would take a petition around to all the neighbors and ask for restrictions on the church bells. Submit it to your city councilman/woman who represents your district.
What you describe is excessive. I bet even if you don’t get the bells completely silenced you at least get them reduced in frequency.
Now being the strong willed woman that I am, if I did not get results with the first 2 methods, I would record the bells, rig up a loud speaker on my car, measure the decibels of the bells at my house and adjust the volume of the broadcast of the recording to be the same decibels, and drive it over to various city leaders and play it on the hour.
There is even an app for that,
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/decibel-x-db-dba-noise-meter/id448155923?mt=8
I think I would probably buy that app and measure the decibels so that the decibel level can be used in communication with the archdioceses and City leaders. Also there must be a law in France on sound pollution, I would check into that also. The key is knowing the decibel level.
I don’t think I would mind the bells ringing 12 rings at noon, then maybe 6pm and 9pm and Sunday morning, but what you are experiencing IS excessive IMHO.
A story about church bells. During WWII the military would send a list of the dead to the churches so that a minister could deliver the news to the family. During WWII when the church bells would ring incessantly the members of the church would hurry over and wait in the pews for the minister to read from the list and announce which boys and men from their church died in the war. I know this is true because my mother had two older brothers and many cousins in the war and she told me this story about the fear and anxiety of waiting to see who it was that they knew who had been killed.
Ringing of church bells that serves a purpose like the above or calling ppl on Sunday morning to come to worship I don’t mind, but hourly ringing of church bells for no reason other than to force you to think about this church hourly is not acceptable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
They blend into the background now. We’ve been here for over three years. We could do without them, but it doesn’t bother me enough to do something about it.
LikeLike
Dawkins seems to need attention, just like Christians with bells and Muslims with chants.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely! It’s the only explanation.
LikeLike
I thought one needed culture in order to have a cultural upbringing. Dawkins is a decent biologist, but he seems to suck at being a decent person. This tweet reminds me of the ill-advised rape tweet he sent out a few years back. It’s bad because it will give people an excuse to ignore the stuff he’s good at – talking about biology – in favor of believing in Omnipotent Wish Granting.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t think anyone could have put it any better than that!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like them. But don’t have to live with noise of any kind. So can feel for you. Yikes. 🤯
LikeLiked by 2 people
Pink’s a miserable git!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Only 5 days per week 😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting what you write about the bells – I found that I really missed then when I lived in London, where there were plenty of churches, but the bells couldn’t be heard above the incessant noise all around. I find it quite comforting to listen to the clock striking the hour if I wake in the middle of the night. My parent’s live close to the local parish church (in Germany), and when the bells are at full peal at lunchtime or evening you literally cannot hear yourself think, but I did get used to even that! 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, it’s strange how these things work. After moving here I stopped wearing a wristwatch. I always know more or less what time it is without ever stopping to think about it. So I can see how removing that could be very odd to the mind 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
You may have seen this 🙂 https://youtu.be/8Yinae243MU
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hadn’t seen it! LOL. Love it 😀
LikeLike
It’s very ironic that Dawkins enjoys the church bells. I’m sure he simply has some fond memories associated with them. I always found his thinking and arguments impulsive and emotional. There is nothing wrong with it unless you claim that you are rational and your opponents are not. There is as much blind fanatism in him as in Jehovah’s witnesses. As Hermann Hesse said, we hate things that are a part of us. Things that are not a part of ourselves does not bother us. (Not an exact quote).
LikeLiked by 2 people
Absolutely. Here’s the exact quote: “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Awww…bells ringing bother you? That’s sad, because I think church bells are beautiful. Do you also not like sirens in the middle of the night? Or parents yelling at their children? Because those noises truly are sad.
LikeLike
It’s such an imbecilic question – what sort of answer were you hoping for?
LikeLike
😂Thanks for the compliment! I’m sorry. My question wasn’t very clear. I guess my thoughts were, “Someone is letting the sound of bells annoy them so much that he wrote a blog post about it. There are many sounds that are so much worse and more harmful! But I apologize. I should have kept my shock to myself. I need to think before I type😊
LikeLike
I didn’t write a post about bells. It’s about cultural bias as expressed through the acceptance of noise based on the identity of the noise maker.
LikeLiked by 2 people