Tell me about Nick Faldo............

First topic message reminder :

Apologies if this has been done

He was a bit before my time but I remember his name being synonymous with golf throughout my childhood. If I was to think of golfers from that era (I would watch golf on TV but never really played until a couple of years ago) I would think of Faldo, Woosie, Langher and Seve. As for the last three I admire them very much and I am still fond of Woosie and Langher on the Seniors tours.
It is funny to think that you like the personalities that your father likes. I much preferred Jimmy White to Stephen Hendry as although Hendry was from my home town my father said he was a d**k and this was also he reasoning with Faldo. Was it the arrogance? Was it rooting for the underdog? I’m not really sure but there is something about Faldo's personality I really can't stand even although he holds my utmost respect and he could fairly be described as a British Sporting Legend.

Does anybody have any opinions of Sir Nick either good or bad?
Would it be fair to say that the most similar British golfing personality around today would be Luke?
Why is it that the likes of Westie are much more popular in the golfing fraternity. On this point I would say that I am a Lee Westwood fan as he seems an all round good lad.

Does Nicky Faldo get a raw deal or was my father right?

I don't really care what his views are, the point is that simply because he is Lord Winston, it doesn't give his views any more weight, because his job, title and accolades are in the field of Medicine and Surgery and not anything which might be able to prove or disprove religion.

You might as well ask a Chemical Engineer to give his opinion on Medicine, simply because he is well educated, doesn't mean his views have any weight to them.

I don't really have too much time for the idea of religion because I simply see it as an straw clutching idea and a crutch for the feeble minded. Do they really lack that much self confidence?

But why would anyone care what you think ? Yet you are happy to tell everyone your opinion ?

Very true Diggers, but religious zealots are far worse than me, they like to talk about their religion, but heaven help you if you dare to criticize it.

Religion is absolutely fine, and people have every right to hold their beliefs with the proviso that they keep them to themselves. Once people bring it up in sporting events, then they are fair game as far as I'm concerned.

If religion was a private thing, the world would be a far better place.

To be honest I've met a lot of religious people, devout Christians , Muslims who got to Mecca on pilgrimage. Not one was a zealot or damning of none believers the way you are of people with faith.
I think it's a bit of a fallacy that most believers ate outspoken , in my experience they don't tend to talk about it unless prompted.

Then I've no problem with people like that Diggers, it's the whole organised nature of religion that gets me and the deluded belief that each individual religion is right and all the others wrong.

If the earth is in the region of 5bn years old, and religion perhaps 2-3000 years old, then the whole premise of religion as a basis of fact seems very unlikely to hold any truth at all. As someone else said, a convenient tool to control other (gullible) people.

What intrigues me is the number of highjly intelligent, analytically minded people who do have faith. Thats why I find it interesting, not because I have any faith myself.

I find that more confusing/concerning than interesting.

I would imagine that most may have been raised that way, subconsciously indoctrinated if you will. I wouldn't think too many would gravitate towards religion due to its "clarity of thinking".

Diggers wrote:What intrigues me is the number of highjly intelligent, analytically minded people who do have faith.

Perhaps those "highly intelligent, analytically minded people" are unable to accept the finality of death?

It appears to me that Diggers is playing the part of the Devil's advocate here. He says he himself doesn't really have faith in an omniscient power but respects and understands those who do. He quotes that some well educated and intelligent figures also hold this belief.

The real danger of religion is the billions of people who are not so intelligent, well educated, are gullible and easily led by its teachings. Its so called interpretation of the various rules books such as the Bible, Quran, Harry Potter (oops, I included a fictitious book written by humans about magic) and others.

The question is can a fundamental belief in a faith, religion or what ever you want to call it cause harm to the human race? History tells us that answer.

Diggers, do you respect Muslims who believe that Sharia law is the way to worship their version of Allah?

Lorus , not playing devils advocate just giving my view on the subject.
I'm no expert on Sharia law but it's easy to highlight an extremist view to make your argument look better. A bit like me mentioning fascism in relation to the Tory party.

gaelgowfer wrote:

Diggers wrote:What intrigues me is the number of highjly intelligent, analytically minded people who do have faith.

Perhaps those "highly intelligent, analytically minded people" are unable to accept the finality of death?

My parents are big on religion. They are both sound of mind and not crazy, they hold respectable jobs and are intelligent. (so they are not nut jobs haha)
The main reason for their faith in God, is due to the fact they believe the bible. Prophesies were fortold in the bible hundreds of years before they actually happened and have been subsequently backed up by archaeology.

I guess it comes down to the universal question. "What is the purpose of life?"
Do we just live for 70 or 80 years and then die, or is there something more to it? My mam and dad believe there is more to it.

Each to their own I guess.

Diggers, that's not a good comparison at all. Fascism has elements of both the extreme left and the extreme right.

Y I Man wrote:

gaelgowfer wrote:

Diggers wrote:What intrigues me is the number of highjly intelligent, analytically minded people who do have faith.

Perhaps those "highly intelligent, analytically minded people" are unable to accept the finality of death?

My parents are big on religion. They are both sound of mind and not crazy, they hold respectable jobs and are intelligent. (so they are not nut jobs haha)
The main reason for their faith in God, is due to the fact they believe the bible. Prophesies were fortold in the bible hundreds of years before they actually happened and have been subsequently backed up by archaeology.


I guess it comes down to the universal question. "What is the purpose of life?"
Do we just live for 70 or 80 years and then die, or is there something more to it? My mam and dad believe there is more to it.

Each to their own I guess.

Like what exactly?

The vast majority of people relate fascism to the far right Super so as an illustration it serves it purpose. They have more in common for instance that Muslims and Quakers.

My only regret in the way this thread is going, is that we don't have a really a person of strong faith making a contribution. Surely, one of the many people reading this has an unerring belief in a higher power. The question is then, why isn't he/she putting forward that point of view?

Is it possible that golf (I assume all on this section of 606v2 are golfers) and its consequences on the human spirit, has made us all doubt any faith we may or may not have had?

lorus59 wrote:My only regret in the way this thread is going, is that we don't have a really a person of strong faith making a contribution. Surely, one of the many people reading this has an unerring belief in a higher power. The question is then, why isn't he/she putting forward that point of view?

Is it possible that golf (I assume all on this section of 606v2 are golfers) and its consequences on the human spirit, has made us all doubt any faith we may or may not have had?

Thankfully Lorus, I think most people are grown up enough to know that religion is easily debunked and it would be foolhardy for them to get into their pulpits.

I am enjoying this discussion but as it is almost 1am here, I need to get my ugly sleep. I will check again in the morning.

To lads (and lasses) of a certain age, Nick Faldo was God!

super_realist wrote:

Y I Man wrote:

gaelgowfer wrote:

Diggers wrote:What intrigues me is the number of highjly intelligent, analytically minded people who do have faith.

Perhaps those "highly intelligent, analytically minded people" are unable to accept the finality of death?

My parents are big on religion. They are both sound of mind and not crazy, they hold respectable jobs and are intelligent. (so they are not nut jobs haha)
The main reason for their faith in God, is due to the fact they believe the bible. Prophesies were fortold in the bible hundreds of years before they actually happened and have been subsequently backed up by archaeology.


I guess it comes down to the universal question. "What is the purpose of life?"
Do we just live for 70 or 80 years and then die, or is there something more to it? My mam and dad believe there is more to it.

Each to their own I guess.

Like what exactly?

I haven't had anything to do with the religion for about 15 yrs so my memory is a bit sketchy. Some of the prophesies were about the fall of various world powers and the such. After a little google search I found the following, but there are loads more if you wanted to research it thoroughly.

Two hundred years ago, scholars doubted whether Babylon ever existed. The only record could be found in the Bible. Critics used the story of Babylon, and what they called its "non-historic kings," to discount Scripture. However, Babylon was discovered and excavated in 1898.

We know today that Babylon was one of the first cities in the world, and founded by Nimrod, great-grandson of Noah (Genesis 10:9-10). Archaeologists have found his name on many inscriptions and tablets, while a massive head of Nimrod has been excavated near Calah on the Tigris River.
http://amazingdiscoveries.org/S-deception_archaeology_Bible_Babylon

The scriptures predicted the rise and fall of great empires like Greece and Rome (Daniel 2:39, 40). It also foretold the destruction of cities like Tyre and Sidon in Isaiah 23. Tyre's demise is recorded by ancient historians, who tell how Alexander the Great lay siege to the city for seven months. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon failed in a 13-year attempt to capture the seacoast city and completely destroy its inhabitants. During the siege of 573 BC, much of the population of Tyre moved to its new island home approximately ½ mile from the land city. Here it remained surrounded by walls as high as 150 feet until judgment fell in 332 BC with the arrival of Alexander the Great. The siege lasted seven months, and during that time he fulfilled the remainder of Zechariah's and Ezekiel's prophecy concerning the city at sea by completely destroying Tyre, killing 8,000 of its inhabitants and selling 30,000 of its population into slavery. With Alexander's wrath almost complete, he now dragged 4,000 desperate souls to the beach and viciously crucified them. How could he reach the island that was a ½ mile at sea with an army of infantry and calvary? He fulfilled the details of the prophecy (Zechariah 9:4 and Ezekiel 26:12) and scraped up the dust and rubble of the old land city of Tyre, just like the Bible predicted, and cast them into the sea, building a 200-foot-wide causeway out to the island. Alexander's death and the murder of his twin sons was also foretold in the scripture

http://www.drfalesbaa.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=31

Mary... Still is....

YI, I don't believe anything was "fortold" at all in the Bible.
No one really knows when exactly it was written or by whom. For all we know everything could have been written after the events.

Also, all the Bible code nonsense has been debunked.

Fall of world powers, floods and natural disasters are hardly prophetic, rather inevitable events. You hardly need to be a soothsayer to predict that they will happen at some time in the future. The bible really isn't that specific and you tend to find people will read "truth" in anything that they want to read or believe in.

super_realist wrote:YI, I don't believe anything was "fortold" at all in the Bible.
No one really knows when exactly it was written or by whom. For all we know everything could have been written after the events.

Also, all the Bible code nonsense has been debunked.

Fall of world powers, floods and natural disasters are hardly prophetic, rather inevitable events. You hardly need to be a soothsayer to predict that they will happen at some time in the future. The bible really isn't that specific and you tend to find people will read "truth" in anything that they want to read or believe in.

The Dead Sea Scrolls seem to prove otherwise.
But again, its down to interpretation and whether you choose to believe it or not.

Still think the Bible is Love sacks YI, and you'd have to be a fool to believe in it.

Thats the issue I am faced with though. My parents are not fools.
For me though, religion is not for me. I didn't want the way of life, the commitment, the preaching.
However, I do believe it, but choose to ignore it.

Faldo is/was a professional golfer and a very good and successful one.
Now that he is past his playing prime, his opinions on the game are of interest and he is asked to take an active part in other ways. It is not his fault he is not also a natural stand up comic, after dinner speaker or philosopher. Perhaps he does feel awkward in that role. So what? Is the fault really with Faldo or with the interpretation?

Similarly, just because Zach Johnson, Webb Simpson or anyone else see fit to give thanks to something other than themselves, however real or imagined, does not necessarily make them "completely ridiculous", "unacceptable",
"vomit inducing", "simpering", "sanctimonious" or in any other way, less than, decent people.
Although it is not endearing to many it is no more an accurate reflection of them as human beings than someone who, for example, makes vitriolic, unfounded, biased and totally inaccurate statements designed simply to wind up others, and all while hiding behind a position of anonymity.
At least they are real. They are there to be verbally "shot at" and are seldom allowed the luxury of retaliation.

Faith is whatever you want it to be and it is personal. Religion is something else entirely.

GT, It makes them precisely all of those things. To be so monumentally stupid as to thank someone other than yourself and your team for your performance in a tournament is shiversomely ill judged and immature. Even if there was a God, (and there is no evidence to suggest there is) why would he bother himself about some idiot hitting a little white ball in a bloody golf tournament.
It's crazy.

You see, that is my whole issue with the whole "God" thing. No one wants to hear about their beliefs and in golf interviews it certainly hasn't been asked for so they should keep their faith/religion to themselves and save themselves looking stupid and naive. They just try to showhorn it into every interview they have when they happen to be successful, but strangely there is no mention of the "holy one" when they come dead last.

They might well be decent people, and I'm sure they are both nice guys, but by bringing up faith and religion in a golfing context makes them look like they have a very lonely brain cell.

Faldono1fan wrote:Mary... Still is....

Amen to that!

One of my cousins based in the Far East has been a golf nut for far longer than myself. On one of our visits in the late 80s or early 90s, she asked myself and/or my brother to get Nick Faldo's autograph for her - seeing as we lived in England and therefore had a reasonable chance of bumping into him.

She had a college education in the US incidentally, which may or may not have informed her view as to the size of England...

SR....But don't you think you should use your superior intellect to look past all that and just enjoy the damn golf?

Skydriver...I have to say that as a Brit living in the States I do come across that a lot. I have been expected to know everyone in the UK. I confess, I do play on it.

It's just an irritant, and spoils a decent occasion to bring religion into something where it has no place.

Imagine if Simpson and Johnson thanked the pixies and the fairies. We'd think they were mad, which is pretty much what thanking god is.

Glad you have experienced some of the legendary American education. I once heard of one who came over here and said during a clear night "Wow, you've got a moon too". Unbelievable.

GT,
As a British person living in the States who for years had to deal with Corporate "tourists", I also encountered the converse, so much so that I had a wall map of the United States with England super-imposed on New York State, the two of them being approximately the same size.

Works both ways.

I'd hazard a guess more Americans know the capital city of England than Englanders know what the States capital city is.

Diggers wrote:...I guess re proof the argument is that faith can't exist without proof. Personally I can see why it's perfectly possible to see the universe could have a divine creator, there is a belief even within science that the universe is so complex it's foolish to think it wasn't planned...

The reason faith exists is exactly because it can't be proved. Religion/faith is the only thing I can think of where, when challenged, believers can't provide any testable evidence which stands up to the test. They want science to disprove God....which is impossible. Anything else in the World is supported by evidence for it.

As Dawkins suggested, you may as well believe in the Celestial Teapot - you'd have about as much chance of proving/disproving its existence.


If religion was a personal thing I'd have no problem with it; provided I could pillory people for it. Society doesn't seem to like that though which I find ridiculous. I also think the indoctrination of children is horrendous. Forget who it was but one religious group said something along the lines of "Give me the boy until he's seven and I'll show you the man". Very few people throw off the religious indoctrination of their upbringing.

Might I suggest someone opens a religious discussion on D4S' "Anything Goes" thread?

Wouldn't surprise me too much either Diggers, given the dumbing down of Britain, blame the X Factor generation eh?

super_realist wrote:Wouldn't surprise me too much either Diggers, given the dumbing down of Britain, blame the X Factor generation eh?

The dumbing down of Britain is entirely due to the dumbing down of education.

Navy, I don't think Hawkins has a clue about how intellect and feeling developed out of atoms. Logic really doesn't give all the answers and I really think our knowledge of the universe is minute.
For the record I and most of my friends all went to church as kids, I don't know one now who is a practising Christian. There is very little indoctrination in the Christian faith that I've ever seen.

Kwini - Good point. True story -- in the mid 80's I moved from Utica to Minneapolis. After living in the twin cities a couple of years a business trip brought me to Manhattan. I was traveling with my boss. On our way to breakfast, my boss and I step into the elevator at the Hyatt Regency (above Grand Central). I run into the former Mayor of Utica, introduce myself to him. Then, that evening, after a long meeting with our ad agency, we duck into a steakhouse for dinner. Our waiter is someone I went to high school with in Utica (starving actor at the time). When I get back to Minneapolis and relate this story to my co-workers, their response was "Well, you're from NY after all."

Sr,
I like that Hyatt - last time we stayed there (ages ago obviously) the ARod Mariners were staying there, Lou Pinella etc. Saw them all; even then they were both big boys.
A few years earlier we were at an Italian restaurant when Ed Koch walked in - my Utica-Italian friend introduced himself and told Koch that he was conveying LLP's best Mayoral greetings! Much laughter!!

Diggers, Are you getting your Dawkins and Hawkins mixed up?

For me, what I admire about religion is Christian values, but that's where it ends for me, once people start talking about Creationism and the earth being just 6000 years old, then they are teetering on the edge of madness as far as I'm concerned.

Totally agree that creationists are but jobs, but I don't believe most Christians are creationists, not in the UK anyway. The bible is merely a guide book to the majority.

What I find strange is people who dont believe in the bible/God/Jesus but celebrate Christmas.

What a brilliant thread ... From faldo to favourite new York hyatt hotels, via geography, declining standard of education and a hefty slice of religion .

"What I find strange is people who dont believe in the bible/God/Jesus but celebrate Christmas"

i dont believe in christmas if i get two weeks of work who am i to complain

Diggers wrote:Navy, I don't think Hawkins has a clue about how intellect and feeling developed out of atoms. Logic really doesn't give all the answers and I really think our knowledge of the universe is minute...

Dawkins. He doesn't understand it; no-one really does. Yet. The lack of a molecular understanding about how we have a memory, will, intellect etc doesn't mean that God exists. To reference Dawkins again, that's his "Blind Watchmaker" to a T.

There are a few dead 'witches' next to the golf courses at North Berwick who did not get the chance to thank God.

When Zach and his pals don't win a tournament does that then mean that their god is punishing them.

Kwini - Re: Works both ways, absolutely right and I didn't mean to exclude the alternative. Many times I have had to explain to both sides that Britain would fit into Texas approximately 6 times, but that the population of the entire US is only 6 times that of the UK (approximate figures I know). To then suggest that they herd everyone in the US into Texas to get an idea of the density of the UK population, blows them away...both sides.

Diggers, did you mean "but jobs" or were you just one key left of target?
Either one works for me.

Diggers wrote:I'd hazard a guess more Americans know the capital city of England than Englanders know what the States capital city is.

Possibly true Diggers, but I'd hazard a guess that those same people think the capital city of England is the same for Scotland and Wales.

Too true 4 putt, I know that the Queen of Scotland gets quite upset when they make that mistake.

GT350 wrote:Kwini - Re: Works both ways, absolutely right and I didn't mean to exclude the alternative. Many times I have had to explain to both sides that Britain would fit into Texas approximately 6 times, but that the population of the entire US is only 6 times that of the UK (approximate figures I know). To then suggest that they herd everyone in the US into Texas to get an idea of the density of the UK population, blows them away...both sides.

No wonder those figures 'blew them away'. They're completely wrong, or 'hugely approximate' if you like. The area of Texas is less than THREE times the size of the UK. It's almost exactly three times the size of Great Britain.

The population of Texas is about 25 million, so just under half the size of the UK's 61 million. The US population is about 5 times the UK population.

It's all very well saying that Americans are insular and don't know what's going on in the big wide world, but erroneous comparisons don't help either.

Oh, since I'm being precise, it's 'Queen of Scots', not Queen of Scotland.