Hats off to Roger, shows why he is the noble champion

Lets get this straight, Roger is the player i am most conflicted about on the ATP tour. Beautiful game, a talent that really is cheapened by words. He is our Pele, our Muhammad ali. Yet, as a Novak fan, I can see at the same time what it is about federer's perfectness and him that could get under someone's skin. But here again, while I often do take exception with Fed sometimes, it is stories like this that reinforce the man's greatness. I mean after all they say mozart was a drunk and had an annoying laugh. As a Novak fan, I will never, ever say I am Roger fan. But again, respect to the man he deserves everything he has, tennis will never, ever be the same without him:




"Roger Federer has come up with a $3.3 million budget and hopes to put 54,000 children in school in Malawi in the next 10 years. Federer said, "As the father of two little girls, I observe every day how incredibly fast children learn if their environment is a stimulating one. It is a great privilege for me and my foundation to help give children in Malawi the chance to reach their full potential."

The foundation’s prime objective is to build 80 community-based child care centers for three- to five-year-olds in the poverty ridden country, which will comprise of classrooms, play areas, supplies and food. Almost 50% of all children under the age of five in Malawi are said to be chronically malnourished, and nearly three million children under the age of eight have no school education. Half of the 13 million people living in Malawi, a village in southeast Africa, is said to be living below the poverty line."

http://www.tennisearth.com/news/tennisNews/Roger-Federer-launches-10-year-project-in-Malawi-110782.htm

I love the way there's grumpy picture of him by the story.

I think it's when he's just told the Umpire "don't tell me the f*cking rules" at the USO after JMDP kept taking 20 seconds to make a Hawkeye appeal.

Also, I it's clear that Roger would be able to do so much more if he won every Slam for the next two years.

I think players should examine their conscience when they enter court with him and consider the moral dimension, that by trying to beat him they are destroying the lives of children.

We must leave it to them to decide, but really........

I hope then that Novak destroys the lives of a lot of African children in the next two years, wait that doesn't really sound right.

socal1976 wrote:I hope then that Novak destroys the lives of a lot of African children in the next two years, wait that doesn't really sound right.

This is the dilemma you face. My own conscience is clear.

As a Christian, I dislike when people parade and advertise their charity, however noble the cause may be.
Why can't they just give without letting the world know how good they are?

Many players have helped charities - Agassi for example has set up foundations. I'm sure you all realise that this wont have been Federer's idea though, he will have been approached to support something like this and then agreed, then his PR team will communicate it to all the media channels.

I agree with NITB on this. These are sportspeople, and clearly when you have earnt 100's of millions of dollars you can start to give something back as you enter the autumn of your career.

noleisthebest wrote:Why can't they just give without letting the world know how good they are?

Because by letting the world know that they give, the world then also give in turn.

I am pretty sure those athletes don't tell us they give for improving their image but use their image to support a cause/charity.

Nothing bad about it in principle though I am often suspicious of those people working and getting salaries from charities. The athletes don;t get a penny as far as I understand but they give their time away...which is probably paid back through some indirect form of sponsoring...maybe.

noleisthebest wrote:As a Christian, I dislike when people parade and advertise their charity, however noble the cause may be.
Why can't they just give without letting the world know how good they are?

Bit sour. It's not exactly something he shoves into your face is it?

Anyway, as a Christian the good news is that you could ask the Pope to sell off all his finery, the greatest art collection in the World, etc. etc and he'd be able to relieve most of the trouble in the World. What do you reckon?

As my Dad once said to a Priest moaning to him, "You lot have it hard don't you? Every Sunday you put the plate around and afterwards you throw it all up in the air; what stays up is His, what comes down is yours. I earn all my money by my own hard work, you do the same then you can tell me what to do with it."

Religion: the greatest catastrophe to afflict mankind.

I don't mind players highlighting their efforts in charitable causes. The thing I like when Roger does it as he is able to gain the respect of others to follow in suit. The Australian floods spring to mind when he came out publicly and was able to get support for exhibition matches.

Every little helps.

A new joineee to the group so I dont want to say much but as a practising Christian, it often hurts to see people labelling religion to be the reason for things bad in this world.

Bogbrush, why would you make that statement. Jesus told me to live life a good way, work hard, be faithful in marriage and love one another. Now what is the catastrophe that you see in that if I try to practice that and if I ask you to give Bible a try!

Nitb, coming to tennis and celebrity issues, while Tenez has explained it, I would look at it from other angle. Do you want the conditions in Africa to improve - if yes, then the way about is not to care only about your rewards but to get everyone to start working for the good of those less fortunate. In this case, by this Federer announcement, there would be a welcome attention to the problems at Malawi and possible that more funds may flow. Even if Fed fails the reward for his generosity (I dont think he will) but still he has worked to make the life at Malawi good (necessarily a good think for which God will bless him in this life or in the life to come).

All life descended from a single cell.

The money Federer raked in by posing with a shaving razor, I wonder if it was more than $3.3 million.

Its good that any player helps charities, of course. Why wouldnt it be.
But lets not annoint Federer is any special way above the other players for doing this - for much of his career I'm sure charity began at home as it does for most people eeking out a living in their own profession. Many others do great work for charities.
I'm not getting into the religious discussion, it never goes anywhere other than down. Charity and religion dont have to be a synonymous discussion.

I'm sure you all realise that this wont have been Federer's idea though, he will have been approached to support something like this and then agreed, then his PR team will communicate it to all the media channels.

much like Nadull with the schools in India then, or was it to promote his brand?

Fedex_the_best wrote:A new joineee to the group so I dont want to say much but as a practising Christian, it often hurts to see people labelling religion to be the reason for things bad in this world.

Bogbrush, why would you make that statement. Jesus told me to live life a good way, work hard, be faithful in marriage and love one another. Now what is the catastrophe that you see in that if I try to practice that and if I ask you to give Bible a try!

If you need imaginary beings to tell you not to harm people then that's a problem.

The Bible also tells you

* to stone adulters to death
* that eating shellfish is a sin
* to kill anyone who worships another God

And celebrates a man (Abraham) who tied his son up and was about to run a blade through him because he'd heard a voice in his head telling him to do it, but stopped because the voice told him not to. There are lots more people in the World who report similar experiences. Should we celebrate them or lock them up? I don't know, if it's left to me I feel the safer call is to lock them up.

Some people like to pick and choose the Bible, to decide that this bit or that is optional, which is obviously mad as the Bible also tells you that it's a mortal sin to interpret or change anything in it.

So, yeah, I reckon I can do better without it.

Guys i've found the perfect forum for you two:

http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8

This is very inspirational, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Falun Gong, Buddhist, ....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-560743/Why-I-nun-tennis-star-Andrea-Jaeger.html

LF...you're outdoing yourself today with links and references!

JM, I understand your post but let me just reply this once - not to debate but to just address some misconceptions that Bogbrush seems to be having.

Bogbrush, Christ changed a lot of things and if you are talking about Christianity then the overlying theme on which we work is the one where God tells Peter to 'not call anything unclean which God has made clean' - for a Christian, no food is off-limit and anything eaten for good health by giving thanks to Him could ever roam in an area remotely close to sin.

Christ changed the theme of eliminating sinners - we hate sin but we love sinners. No Christ-like Christian could ever hate an adulterer but we will constantly pray for him to understand God and live a life full of grace with God in it.

Abraham was given a promise and his son would never had died. It was an image of things to come in the New Testament.

Dont want to sound preachy or superior in any way but Bible can never be understood if you just read it without God's spirit. For you it may just be stories in Old Testament where you can find hundreds of faults but for millions of peoples like me, it is the source of life. Having read Bible 12 times already and rarely ever missing churches and trying to walk in His way, I have started to understand Bible a bit more. I dont have to pick and choose, every word when understood, essentially only mean to reflect his love and the love-filled life that we are expected to live.

Laverfan, nice story - really touching.

Apologies again for writing this on a tennis forum and will refrain from doing it more.

lydian wrote:LF...you're outdoing yourself today with links and references!

Hope I am not being a PITA with all this stuff, though. I try to make information as useful as possible.

A long time ago I decided that being polite about religion made no more sense than being polite about politics, or even tennis. I feel very sorry that Andrea Jaeger got so lost that she decided to become a Nun but I guess she got told stuff while a child then she couldn't shake off.

The Bible is absurd, which is why modern people desperately try to reinterpret it.

Fedex, whilst the Bible and it's language is obviously an efficient reference point for you in terms of talking about morality, do you think it's possible to convey the same ideas whilst avoiding those references? I'm not sure it's possible to not sound 'preachy' when words like 'sin' are being employed. Maybe it's a better term than I'd tend to assume.

Bible may not have carried any meaning for you till now but for me, it is life. So it is not absurd. Anyways, we can always share facts and debate on opinions but may be on PM.

Coming to tennis, Fed has been doing a lot of these stuff always. Nadal announced a school in India but nothing seems to have progressed on that yet - it may still. Many celebrities do it but not with the consisntency of Fed (atleast not in the playing years). His charity work and the time and money that he seems to be setting aside for these projects is commendable.

Tennis doesnt come very difficult to this guy, doesnt it? He doesnt have to follow the same routine, rituals and practice hours and thats probably the reason, he always has more time than many other guys.

Funny how the less time Roger spent practicing and working-out
the more successful he got

By the way, I was merely posing the question, that wasn't a request. I was curious what your views were, not trying to rein you in.

droogle wrote:Fedex, whilst the Bible and it's language is obviously an efficient reference point for you in terms of talking about morality, do you think it's possible to convey the same ideas whilst avoiding those references? I'm not sure it's possible to not sound 'preachy' when words like 'sin' are being employed. Maybe it's a better term than I'd tend to assume.

A (Catholic) friend of the family was aghast recently to hear I am an atheist. She even said "but you're a good person, how can that be when you don't believe in God?"

I am convinced that humans will only progress through rationality. Magic and superstition belongs in the dark ages.

Yeah, but there's still organised social practises that are to do with moral orientation, moral improvement even. The good Samaritan story pops into my head every so often, usually in moments when I'm having a hard time myself and it becomes apparent that not only does no-one else give a damn, there's also truth in the idea that when you're really in trouble people tend to steer away from you. I can't knock a practice that's trying to keep a proper social perspective on those sorts of matters.

JM - sorry. But I have to please reply to Droogle also.

I use the Bible as a reference because I dont think there is any other way of discerning what is right and what is moral. Who has defined morality and sin and what could law be otherwise?

Bible shows us the path to do it. I am again not trying to sound preachy but think it is difficult for me to talk about morality without Bible - may be you can do it but then if I look at it from Bible's viewpoint, I may not then agree with you. I mean to say that Bible has one reference of sin and morality and if you come from some other viewpoint, it would differ. I prefer to follow the Bible.

I thought the new testament was in accord with what I take to be the central pillar of the moral world, i.e. do unto others as you would have them do to you. But whilst the Bible might articulate that position it doesn't show the truth of it, or rather the truth of it may become more vivid through various examples of it in practice, but that truth is something that doesn't originate from any external source such as the Bible. It's not that someone else commands us, it's that we understand that in order to be at peace with our conscience we need to behave that way. In which case the Bible might be helpful but not necessary.

I am convinced that humans will only progress through rationality. Magic and superstition belongs in the dark ages..
---------------------------------------

I am not saying that religion will get us anywhere but I know for sure that rationality alone won't!

A good rational and scientific mind knows that with logic he'll never able to understand and explain our world.

Tenez wrote:A good rational and scientific mind knows that with logic he'll never able to understand and explain our world.

But that is only but of the complexity. Such complexity does not imply the existence of a god, merely the limits of the human mind.

I prefer BogBrush's atheism to any religion that humans have conjured to offer.

Choices that other people have made, or their parents made for them, cause a lot of friction. Religions and their interpretations by the corresponding keepers of such faiths have killed millions, and that rankles me a lot.

To each their own.

There are things the human mind can explain through logic, scientific experimentation and application of relativity.

And there are things we cant. Either because we cant explain them due to lack of knowledge or proof, or its because we bound by the limits of the perceptual and cognitive ability of human brains (as Julius said). In this area, I have often wondered if the human condition simply tries to explain these gaps away by the application of beliefs in deities. All cultures have done this...greek gods, egyptian gods, roman gods, and more latterly other forms of religion. They all have a common link, the need to try to explain and rationalise human existence and the world around us in the absence of concrete proof of our basal origins. The problem is that modern science still cant provide absolute proof of our origins and probably never can, again because human endeavour can only go so far to explain the universe as we see it - therefore the belief on deities and their resulting religions persist to explain why we're here and where we came from.

We all just try too hard to explain things while the answers lies in letting it go.

One wants to have peace with self because we have been taught to have a basic understanding of what could be right. What is conscience?

Anyways, first day of my active posting and I am not writing about tennis!
But anyways, the central theme of the morality is to obey God and do all things with love. Faith, love and hope are the pillars of morality.

Lydian, Greek and Roman theories failed because it was ''originated' to explain things. Bible stays and will stay because it is the truth!

Written for over 4000 years and the first book being written over 6000 years ago, the Word hasnt lost the relevance because it did not 'originate' - it tells us what was, is and will be!

I thought this would be an uncontroversial feel good post. Yes of course others do a lot for charity. Nitb, I actually think that Tenez is right to a degree that when you give and you are a celebraty by announcing a problem and talking about it you may induce others to think about that cause and therefore give as well.

On the religious end of things, personally, it is just safer and saner for me to not say anything. But I'll just agree with BB. The words greatest catastrophe of all time certainly ring true, as one lives in a theocracy I will just keep the rest of my opinions to myself. Hint, hint.

I thought I'd stumbled onto a Theology Thread !

Fedex_the_best wrote: We all just try too hard to explain things while the answers lies in letting it go.
But anyways, the central theme of the morality is to obey God and do all things with love.

Letting it go doesnt advance technological development. In trying to understand the world around us in more detail, this has led to the possibility that there are strong alternatives to creationism.
Human morality does not have to be deity-driven. A code of ethics to live by can be driven by spirituality and a sense of what is right and wrong through an understanding of history, human conflict and creation of commonly agreed laws therein.

Fedex_the_best wrote:Bible stays and will stay because it is the truth!

Disclaimer: in your opinion.

Circular argument.

The findings of genetics, that Darwin was right and that all life evolved from a single cell. This is about the scariest idea I can imagine. Zillions of years of horror, of beast feasting on beast. Then suddenly we have tennis.

Not here we don't

Fedex_the_best wrote:Lydian, Greek and Roman theories failed because it was ''originated' to explain things. Bible stays and will stay because it is the truth!

Written for over 4000 years and the first book being written over 6000 years ago, the Word hasnt lost the relevance because it did not 'originate' - it tells us what was, is and will be!

This is not questioning your beliefs and faith, so please do not take it that way.

What do you think of books on similar topics written before the Bible or after it?

Human curiosity, a natural quality, which precedes all religions and faiths.

bogbrush wrote:Magic and superstition belongs in the dark ages.

And in tennis apparently, particularly when it comes to bottle placement and suchlike.

'The findings of genetics, that Darwin was right and that all life evolved from a single cell. This is about the scariest idea I can imagine. Zillions of years of horror, of beast feasting on beast. Then suddenly we have tennis.'

It's unlikely that everything evolved from just one cell! I don't see why this idea is so terrifying anyway; evolution scares me far less than the idea of a magic man in the sky plonking everything down on earth in six days, before seemingly disappearing off for the next few thousand years. Religion amuses me greatly, with the laughably outdated and occasionally horrifically violent Bible being a reminder of why this is.

'And God did say unto his children, "Lo! Let ye who follow the path of light follow it to this tennis court I have forged." And the men did as he commanded. They looked upon the court; upon its white lines and its rebound ace surface and they did see that it was good.' Federer 18:22

Fedex_the_best wrote:Lydian, Greek and Roman theories failed because it was ''originated' to explain things. Bible stays and will stay because it is the truth!

Written for over 4000 years and the first book being written over 6000 years ago, the Word hasnt lost the relevance because it did not 'originate' - it tells us what was, is and will be!

Oh OK, it's again the truth that we mustn't eat shellfish, we must kill people who curse their parents, you can die by entering a holy place without wearing bells, sometimes your donkey can talk to you and it's ok to tie your kid up and prepare to sacrifice him so long as a voice in your head tell you to?

How about you consider the possibility that it's a load of self-serving stuff written by some Arabic tribe to justify their killing other people whose land they wanted to take? That, and some guys in the 3rd or 4th century got together and cobbled the New Testament together as a means to control the population of the Roman Empire, throwing in plenty of Pagan stuff to co-opt some other superstitions. I mean, that version sounds more consistent.

Tenez wrote:I am convinced that humans will only progress through rationality. Magic and superstition belongs in the dark ages..
---------------------------------------

I am not saying that religion will get us anywhere but I know for sure that rationality alone won't!

A good rational and scientific mind knows that with logic he'll never able to understand and explain our world.

Right, so let's try irrationality then?

Actually Tenez, you're confusing logic with information. Lgic and rationality is the only reason we have any chance of explaining anything. Otherwise you're just trusting it to the fairies.

Apparently the shared genetic structures found in all living things means everything has one common ancestor. Which makes sense really. At some point a single cell had to emerge and I guess it decided to divide, it being a cell.

Even a single cell is a collection of organelles...and back and back it goes.

Every civilisation eventually debunked its own set of deities, western civilisation will eventually find enough collective proof to debunk the present commonly-believed deity. Of course Richard Dawkins is the leading proponent of debunking!

droogle wrote:

bogbrush wrote:Magic and superstition belongs in the dark ages.

And in tennis apparently, particularly when it comes to bottle placement and suchlike.

Excllent! Post of the day!