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atural thing they are caused by the calming down of the brain and moving into a more relaxed state obviously anyway i reckon atheism 2 0 sounds a lot like unitarianism unitarians have been welcoming atheists without trying to change their minds about being atheist since the 1920s unitarians have been non creedal that is each person is free to seek their own understanding of the truth since the earliest days of the movement in poland unitarians also draw inspiration from literature yes praise shakespeare science darwin came from a unitarian family and reason atheists 2 0 would also be welcome in buddhism a non theist religion quakerism includes many non theists and atheists and much of paganism what did surprise me was that de botton did not mention spiritual practices like meditation these to my mind are the most effective bits of religion not because they inculcate you with morality but because they make you a calmer and less aggressive person when the compère asked him why he didn t mention spiritual experience and de botton replied that you can have spiritual experiences without religion that rather missed the point of course you can have spiritual experiences without religion but religion provides you with techniques that allow you to access that level of consciousness on a regular basis in my view religion is spirituality practiced in community also he was talking as if atheism 2 0 was a new idea but as i said unitarians have been welcoming atheists since the 1920s buddhists have always been non theist and lao tsu just refers to the ultimate mystery as the tao the way and leaves it at that he also says the tao that can be named is not the true tao so as soon as you try to give it a name it disappears in a way the same truth is pointed to when moses asks the burning bush who it is and the reply is i am that i am the mystery has no name there s a lovely hymn by brian wren a member off the iona community which begins name unnamed hidden and shown knowing and known which is about the ineffability of the great mystery apophatic theology is really important here too apophatic theology is the idea that anything you say about the divine can be negated it is not light it is not darkness it is not wisdom it it is not love it is like all these things but it is not them i think the reason atheism became so popular in the first place is because people lost all sense of the mystery of god and tried to define it as a person or as three persons and got bogged down in all the literalness whereas if you just regard god as a metaphor for the mind of the universe that s a lot easier de botton also says it s obvious that god doesn t exist let s move on but wait there have been some really interesting theological ideas around that non existence spinoza with his idea of god as nature tillich with his theology of the ground of all being eriugena with his view that god cannot exist in a material universe pagans and pantheists with talk of energies and immanent deities another thing he suggests is that if all religious belief systems are equally untrue then pick and mix is ok well yes up to a point but the problem is how do you know whether you re rejecting a particular symbol or practice because it is objectively bad or because it pushes up against an issue that you have for example in wicca we call the quarters with the four elements which are seen as symbols of aspects of the psyche earth sensation air intellect water emotion fire passion and intuition so if someone was just picking the bits they liked they might pick the element which most closely corresponded to their psychological makeup but if they work with all four elements and their symbolism it might create a balance in their psyche i think atheism 2 0 is an idea whose time has come apart from the fact that s it s already been invented several times before posted by yewtree at 9 07 pm 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels atheism 2 0 pagan quaker unitarian wednesday january 18 2012 a bible for every school apparently michael gove wants a king james bible in every school whilst i agree that the bible is a foundational text of our culture and that the 400th anniversary of it becoming available in english is worth celebrating i do not think it should be accorded a status above other important books like on the origin of species or the works of shakespeare and why wouldn t schools already have a copy of the bible in their library along with other important sacred and secular works posted by yewtree at 10 37 am 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels bible darwin sacred secular shakespeare tuesday january 10 2012 sense of humour failure bisexual ftw tweeted really unimpressed with pridelondon and petertatchell referring to the pope as pope betty emasculating him is sexist and out of order referring to a man as if he was female is potentially sexist towards women because it implies that women are inferior but referring to this as emasculating sounds as if bisexual ftw thinks it is sexist towards men however i think what they are doing by referring to him as pope betty is the old time polari habit of referring to everyone up to and including god who is known as gloria as female it also implies that he is a closet case and given the propensity of catholic clergy to wear dresses sorry robes and froth at the mouth about gay sexuality that s not an unreasonable conclusion posted by yewtree at 11 04 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels catholic lgbt polari sexism monday january 09 2012 a symbol for science there s an interesting article by paul root wolpe in the opinion section of new scientist putting forward the idea that science needs a symbol so that people can express support for science because it is under attack is science really under attack apart from by a few nutters on the extreme end of religion the article even admits that plenty of people of faith do support science my own research into pagans and science found a lot of support for science dr wolpe himself is an expert in bioethics so i guess he comes up against a lot of overlap and potential conflict between religion and science in his work american atheists use the atomic whirl as a symbol and it is recognised as the symbol for atheism on veterans gravestones that symbol might be one possibility the new scientist article points out that the dna double helix won t do because the symbol must represent physics and chemistry as well as biology he goes on to say and it should be easy to modify perhaps to identify a subject area able to accommodate within it a double helix or an atom or the word nasa or any other refinement locating the bearer in the scientific firmament perhaps it could even accommodate a cross or star of david or some other symbol to state i am a christian or jew or muslim and support science as an enterprise you could certainly fit a pentagram or a chalice in the middle of an atomic whirl as to the points that the symbol would express support for i m not sure that i want a rigid demarcation between the areas that religion and science can pronounce upon as i am not a supporter of the non overlapping magisteria theory may the person with the best evidence win the debate i do want to express support for the scientific method and empiricism generally i think that politicians all too often make decisions which fly in the face of scientific evidence i do want to show that i am full of awe and wonder at the beauty of the universe as revealed by science however i do think science could be more open to phenomena that do not appear to have a material basis they probably do but no one has worked out how to measure them yet i don t believe that scientists are entirely objective they are too often influenced by politics and ideology i don t want to express support for dawkins dismissal of myth and fairy tales i am sure no one ever took them literally they express mythopoeic truths and i do think science should take ethical and environmental concerns into consideration more often i would like to see more awareness among scientists of kuhn s theory of paradigm shifts i would like to see more awareness among scientists of the history and philosophy of science generally and how many times science and technology has made situations worse instead of making them better so i probably wouldn t wear the symbol even if it existed because i might not be able to sign up for everything it stands for even though i think science is a jolly good thing and should form the basis of more decisions than it does the symbol could be an atom except that it is already in use for a particular group it could be a chemical flask but that would not encompass astronomy it s difficult to think of a symbol that would encompass the whole of science maybe a pair of compasses to represent the idea of measuring or a pair of scales to indicate weighing up the evidence posted by yewtree at 11 07 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels pagans and science science symbol in praise of alain de botton quite possibly single handedly responsible for reviving interest in philosophy among the general reading public that is to say the small proportion of the population that actually reads books de botton has certainly made philosophy accessible to me i wanted to be interested in philosophy but found the long winded overly abstracted and tortuous way it is generally written completely inaccessible de botton s engaging and laconic style however makes it available and interesting and applicable to the real world i started with the art of travel which explores the experience of travel why we do it and which bits we focus on and which we ignore then i read the consolations of philosophy which explores the approaches of various different philosophers to the common problems of life love death meaning then i read the architecture of happiness which looks at which types of architecture make us happy and which make us miserable and why i am currently reading the pleasures and sorrows of work i ve only got as far as chapter 1 on logistics which explores why we ignore the romance of goods coming from far away places and being delivered to our doorsteps and why we allow warehouses and distribution centres to be so ugly and boxy but it s very good indeed and promises to be as interesting as his other stuff i look forward to reading his next book religion for atheists a timely offering if ever there was one there are plenty of religions which don t mind if you re an atheist unitarians quakers pagans and buddhists all welcome atheists and don t try to change them into theists de botton s writing does what good poetry and comedy should do it looks at the world from a different perspective and makes connections between things that no one else had noticed a connection between presumably that is what good philosophy should do too he also asks why things are as they are and whether the status quo could or should be changed or if he doesn t ask this question himself he certainly provokes it in the reader and gives the reader the conceptual tools to ask the question and work towards an answer it is a truism that the in france philosophers are held in popular esteem whereas in england they are regarded with suspicion de botton has single handedly reversed that trend so that it is cool to be seen reading one of his books and about time too of course there have always been people who enjoy wittgenstein and bertrand russell and so on but they were few and far between now there are more people who read and enjoy philosophy thanks to de botton who has succeeded in popularising something without dumbing it down posted by yewtree at 8 52 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels philosophy newer posts 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