tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76095411248173863762024-03-19T03:47:19.750-05:00Atheism & PhilosophyPHIL 3310. Exploring the philosophical, ethical, spiritual, existential, social, and personal implications of a godless universe, and supporting their study at Middle Tennessee State University & beyond.Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.comBlogger1292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-22605139274123932962024-03-17T08:41:00.001-05:002024-03-17T08:41:29.562-05:00With a twist<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1mNzipuljdsI1sXRkDJkMye2VN033CIw5QwP-JxnmbfR5CsNX3BPHi9-IAy0E9fp1VABvRVzJQCDktyIkh5lwSC8uFPZ5htHGEggJqfB4L_OYpjRnlTwXIAOVWwIkAVBNUbWYxkmXL96IU6v_sAXZ9Zmfc-APv-Vq_1L28lcZT-Xhn66TaPuyvjFAwtE"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1mNzipuljdsI1sXRkDJkMye2VN033CIw5QwP-JxnmbfR5CsNX3BPHi9-IAy0E9fp1VABvRVzJQCDktyIkh5lwSC8uFPZ5htHGEggJqfB4L_OYpjRnlTwXIAOVWwIkAVBNUbWYxkmXL96IU6v_sAXZ9Zmfc-APv-Vq_1L28lcZT-Xhn66TaPuyvjFAwtE=s320" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_7347327066784805554" /></a></p><a href="https://www.threads.net/@secularstudents/post/C4ldY7RpyuK/?xmt=AQGzS4EPsZQrPIeTnFjkg65_dfbvAoTPAeUoISINPLSjvQ">https://www.threads.net/@secularstudents/post/C4ldY7RpyuK/?xmt=AQGzS4EPsZQrPIeTnFjkg65_dfbvAoTPAeUoISINPLSjvQ</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-48173537588898403062024-03-17T08:36:00.001-05:002024-03-17T08:36:40.539-05:00Religion is losing influence in public life, 8 in 10 Americans say | Pew Research Center<div dir="ltr">…<span style="font-size: 16px; caret-color: rgb(42, 42, 42); color: rgb(42, 42, 42); font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Overall, there are widespread signs of unease with religion's trajectory in American life. This dissatisfaction is not just among religious Americans. Rather, many religious and nonreligious Americans say they feel that their religious beliefs put them at odds with mainstream culture, with the people around them and with the other side of the political spectrum...</span></div><div dir="ltr"><font color="#2a2a2a" face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"><span style="caret-color: rgb(42, 42, 42); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></span></font>https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/03/15/8-in-10-americans-say-religion-is-losing-influence-in-public-life/</div><div dir="ltr"></div>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-49386196277509053072024-03-16T08:09:00.002-05:002024-03-16T08:09:16.156-05:00Colbert and Simon of faith, gratitude, happiness, sublimity<p> This interview is "incredible"-meaning <i>delightful</i>. </p><div>I don't agree, I do think happiness (not sublimity) is the more profound "goal"… but I respect <a href="https://www.threads.net/@masiosare/post/C4jfiitP5XI/?xmt=AQGzuP6bbtpP7jsGJfjwHTW428lD8s8dsDcTQlp0zKsXWw">Stephen's thoughtful (if slightly manic) reflections here</a>. And his experience, and his pain and suffering. And I share his gratitude. I just don't think I owe it to a god.<br /><br />But as Montaigne said, "Que sais-je"… I don't know, and neither do you. Believe what you will.<div><br /></div><div>Paul's a Yankee fan and a scorekeeper, and his gratitude is unconditional. He and I are co-congregants in the Church of Baseball. Time to cue up Graceland...</div><div><div dir="ltr"></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vmP3rzBeXkw" width="320" youtube-src-id="vmP3rzBeXkw"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div></div></div>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-53376057324156380882024-03-13T07:12:00.001-05:002024-03-13T07:12:45.684-05:00Ripples: Terry Pratchett'No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away... The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence.' The great humanist author Terry Pratchett. He was our patron and is sorely missed. He died #OnThisDay 2015. GNU Terry Pratchett.
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<br><a href="https://www.threads.net/@humanists_uk/post/C4ajxc3I9ur/?xmt=AQGzKkiKd2K0_NxXdYXJBmuxbTDFt3-Xw8wBpkH7flo3kg">https://www.threads.net/@humanists_uk/post/C4ajxc3I9ur/?xmt=AQGzKkiKd2K0_NxXdYXJBmuxbTDFt3-Xw8wBpkH7flo3kg</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-82941978178009010862024-03-12T05:45:00.001-05:002024-03-12T05:45:30.568-05:00Be gone <p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgKu_4nlCMa0ODBKMIeQ9vP-QqwWuEmm42oGXuLcEn6FfCQRUp7DGF8boRwg9lOGjbDaziIJB2aET_-3K8ntVTei7Q4ikjUg3Y0gx3A4D8Jj-3e1zqeAQtzVsEUujzZ8j3Ige9GqIlhUtnUDunECkBjSQrqczSkbsUS-c9l9nt8QV0vgBCoWPiq0da56mQ"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgKu_4nlCMa0ODBKMIeQ9vP-QqwWuEmm42oGXuLcEn6FfCQRUp7DGF8boRwg9lOGjbDaziIJB2aET_-3K8ntVTei7Q4ikjUg3Y0gx3A4D8Jj-3e1zqeAQtzVsEUujzZ8j3Ige9GqIlhUtnUDunECkBjSQrqczSkbsUS-c9l9nt8QV0vgBCoWPiq0da56mQ=s320" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_7345426286892632322" /></a></p><a href="https://www.threads.net/@mayba_6/post/C4YWlnAgzhS/?xmt=AQGzn6uYZTKLP8qYyRU5XAiC_yp-UDMTsUiILuQ-74Fybg">https://www.threads.net/@mayba_6/post/C4YWlnAgzhS/?xmt=AQGzn6uYZTKLP8qYyRU5XAiC_yp-UDMTsUiILuQ-74Fybg</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-51323691305519777032024-02-14T07:29:00.001-06:002024-02-14T07:29:46.384-06:00Got it "He gets us" doesn't get it:
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<br><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/johnpavlovitz/p/everyone-gets-jesusexcept-american?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web">https://open.substack.com/pub/johnpavlovitz/p/everyone-gets-jesusexcept-american?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-42427458169537260622024-02-08T06:12:00.001-06:002024-02-08T06:12:53.100-06:00This is us (on the cosmic calendar)I don't want this story (ours or Harvey's) to end. But of course, time will march on – with or without us. Eventually without, no doubt. As Russell says, we must in the meantime turn our attention to other things.
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<br>"…In the closing second of the cosmic year there's industrialisation, fascism, the combustion engine, Augusto Pinochet, Nikola Tesla, Frida Kahlo, Malala Yousafzai, Alexander Hamilton, Viv Richards, Lucky Luciano, Ada Lovelace, crowdfunding, the split atom, Pluto, surrealism, plastic, Einstein, FloJo, Sitting Bull, Beatrix Potter, Indira Gandhi, Niels Bohr, Calamity Jane, Bob Dylan, Random Access Memory, soccer, pebble-dash, unfriending, the Russo-Japanese War, Coco Chanel, antibiotics, the Burj Khalifa, Billie Holiday, Golda Meir, Igor Stravinsky, pizza, Thermos flasks, the Cuban Missile Crisis, thirty summer Olympics and twenty-four winter, Katsushika Hokusai, Bashar Assad, Lady Gaga, Erik Satie, Muhammad Ali, the deep state, the world wars, flying, cyberspace, steel, transistors, Kosovo, teabags, W. B. Yeats, dark matter, jeans, the stock exchange, the Arab Spring, Virginia Woolf, Alberto Giacometti, Usain Bolt, Johnny Cash, birth control, frozen food, the sprung mattress, the Higgs boson, the moving image, chess. Except of course the universe doesn't end at the stroke of midnight. Time moves on…"
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<br>— Orbital by Samantha Harvey
<br><a href="https://a.co/5Rz69NL">https://a.co/5Rz69NL</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-19568890200558892112024-02-03T18:35:00.001-06:002024-02-03T18:35:29.097-06:00Ontological Airbnb<style>@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}</style><font face="Calibri"><div align="left" ><p dir=ltr>"...I don’t desire a personal God. (When I went to Jewish services with my wife and read the translations of the prayers, the relentless <i>praise</i> made me cringe.) What I want is not a superhero dad but for the universe to make sense, for it to meet what Hegel called our “absolute need” to be at home in the world. I can see why Baddiel might frame this need in filial terms, as a desire for God the Parent. But those who didn’t feel at home at home may crave a more impersonal consolation: a rational proof, or truth, or narrative that salves our ontological homelessness.<br> </p> </div><p dir=ltr><br> </p> <div align="left" ><p dir=ltr>We may also be more modest in our hopes. I’m as terrified of death as anyone, but I have no dreams of immortality. I cannot think that justice will be done in some divine tribunal, that everything has happened for good reason in the best of all possible worlds. My hopes are more precarious, more painful, more provisional: that we will bend the arc of future history towards justice—an ontological Airbnb..."<br> </p> </div><p dir=ltr><br> Kieran Setiya<br> https://open.substack.com/pub/ksetiya/p/ontological-airbnb?r=35ogp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email</p> </font>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-74969980691572053012024-01-29T19:08:00.000-06:002024-01-29T19:08:00.562-06:00Declaration of Modern Humanism<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Humanist beliefs and values are as old as civilization and have a history in most societies around the world. Modern humanism is the culmination of these long traditions of reasoning about meaning and ethics, the source of inspiration for many of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and humanitarians, and is interwoven with the rise of modern science.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">As a global humanist movement, we seek to make all people aware of these essentials of the humanist worldview:</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">1. Humanists strive to be ethical</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We accept that morality is inherent to the human condition, grounded in the ability of living things to suffer and flourish, motivated by the benefits of helping and not harming, enabled by reason and compassion, and needing no source outside of humanity.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We affirm the worth and dignity of the individual and the right of every human to the greatest possible freedom and fullest possible development compatible with the rights of others. To these ends we support peace, democracy, the rule of law, and universal legal human rights.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We reject all forms of racism and prejudice and the injustices that arise from them. We seek instead to promote the flourishing and fellowship of humanity in all its diversity and individuality.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We hold that personal liberty must be combined with a responsibility to society. A free person has duties to others, and we feel a duty of care to all of humanity, including future generations, and beyond this to all sentient beings.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We recognise that we are part of nature and accept our responsibility for the impact we have on the rest of the natural world.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">2. Humanists strive to be rational</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We are convinced that the solutions to the world’s problems lie in human reason, and action. We advocate the application of science and free inquiry to these problems, remembering that while science provides the means, human values must define the ends. We seek to use science and technology to enhance human well-being, and never callously or destructively.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">3. Humanists strive for fulfillment in their lives</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We value all sources of individual joy and fulfillment that harm no other, and we believe that personal development through the cultivation of creative and ethical living is a lifelong undertaking.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We therefore treasure artistic creativity and imagination and recognise the transforming power of literature, music, and the visual and performing arts. We cherish the beauty of the natural world and its potential to bring wonder, awe, and tranquility. We appreciate individual and communal exertion in physical activity, and the scope it offers for comradeship and achievement. We esteem the quest for knowledge, and the humility, wisdom, and insight it bestows.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">4. Humanism meets the widespread demand for a source of meaning and purpose to stand as an alternative to dogmatic religion, authoritarian nationalism, tribal sectarianism, and selfish nihilism</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">Though we believe that a commitment to human well-being is ageless, our particular opinions are not based on revelations fixed for all time. Humanists recognise that no one is infallible or omniscient, and that knowledge of the world and of humankind can be won only through a continuing process of observation, learning, and rethinking.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">For these reasons, we seek neither to avoid scrutiny nor to impose our view on all humanity. On the contrary, we are committed to the unfettered expression and exchange of ideas, and seek to cooperate with people of different beliefs who share our values, all in the cause of building a better world.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We are confident that humanity has the potential to solve the problems that confront us, through free inquiry, science, sympathy, and imagination in the furtherance of peace and human flourishing.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;">We call upon all who share these convictions to join us in this inspiring endeavor.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">(also known as ‘The Amsterdam Declaration’), declared by the 2022 General Assembly of Humanists International, replacing The Amsterdam Declaration of 2002.</em></p><h3 class="mb-2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 1rem !important; margin-top: 0px;">Suggested academic reference</h3><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2rem; margin-top: 0px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">'Declaration of Modern Humanism'</em>, Humanists International, General Assembly, Glasgow, United Kingdom, 2022</p>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-75507083451495944302024-01-28T05:50:00.001-06:002024-01-28T05:50:59.925-06:00Nones plateaued?<a href="https://substack.com/@friendlyatheist/note/c-48000328?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action">https://substack.com/@friendlyatheist/note/c-48000328?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-3291840854474538622024-01-21T08:37:00.001-06:002024-01-22T07:01:58.200-06:00Is "better" the word?<style>@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}</style><font face="Calibri"><div style="font-family: Tinos;">Or <i>reconciled</i>? <i>Accepting</i>? At <i>peace</i>? <i>Happier</i>, maybe? Less charitably: happily <i>deluded?</i></div><div style="font-family: Tinos;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Tinos;">In any event, it's good to see a positive spotlight on <a href="https://americanhumanist.org/">humanism</a> on the front page of the Sunday <i>Times.</i></div><div style="font-family: Tinos;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3cZ2bsBOs4zYA9-vM6xj5zdzGALFjo2Lg2O8aRkJLrrIP8YXBapHwmv-1yWdmQXjP24BTJnQyzQSOBaTZKn7WSALNMHmvPFRQ_sR0ztZeuAKikfNHUB_C_p6HtlQMRPdL7Ob9t36-mcuDnYrUVqnH-7jI759Ra51fe7S3_QnuL0nimG-HaX_yhO77YpoQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="45" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi3cZ2bsBOs4zYA9-vM6xj5zdzGALFjo2Lg2O8aRkJLrrIP8YXBapHwmv-1yWdmQXjP24BTJnQyzQSOBaTZKn7WSALNMHmvPFRQ_sR0ztZeuAKikfNHUB_C_p6HtlQMRPdL7Ob9t36-mcuDnYrUVqnH-7jI759Ra51fe7S3_QnuL0nimG-HaX_yhO77YpoQ=w52-h200" width="52" /></a></div></i></div><blockquote style="font-family: Tinos;"><b><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/an-atheist-chaplain-and-a-death-row-inmates-final-hours.html?smid=em-share">An Atheist Chaplain and a Death Row Inmate’s Final Hours<br /></a></b><br />Devin Moss spent a year ministering to convicted killer Phillip Hancock. Together, they wrestled with one question: How to face death without God.<br />--<br /><br />“It’s well known that people that really believe, that really have faith, die <b>better</b>,” he said. “How can we help people die <b>better</b> that don’t have supernatural faith?” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/an-atheist-chaplain-and-a-death-row-inmates-final-hours.html?smid=em-share">nyt</a></blockquote><p style="font-family: Tinos;">As noted recently, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/7873186.Andrew_Copson">Andrew Copson</a>, and before him <a href="https://jposopher.blogspot.com/2023/12/a-humanist-funeral-service-and.html">Corliss Lamont</a>, have some ideas on this front. </p><p dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/an-atheist-chaplain-and-a-death-row-inmates-final-hours.html?smid=em-share" style="font-family: Tinos;"></a><span style="font-family: Tinos;">So has Professor Dennett. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Tinos; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L9qh0OnrcRk" width="320" youtube-src-id="L9qh0OnrcRk"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Tinos;"><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><i>"People make a mistake in thinking that spirituality [necessarily] </i></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><i>has anything to do with religion, immateriality, or the supernatural."</i></div></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">The humanist chaplain should consider the words as well of my late great mentor John Lachs in <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stoic-Pragmatism-American-Philosophy-Lachs/dp/0253223768" style="color: #ff1900; text-decoration-line: none;">Stoic Pragmatism</a>, </i>about not counting on winning the supernatural afterlife lottery. <i>"I am prepared to be surprised to learn that we have a supernatural destiny, just as I am prepared to be surprised at seeing my neighbor win the lottery. But I don't consider buying tickets an investment."</i></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Better to invest in smelling the roses, loving life, being grateful for the time we've got.</div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, serif; font-size: 15.4px;">And staying out of prison.</div> </font>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-29771956684535997882024-01-21T08:32:00.001-06:002024-01-21T08:32:55.655-06:00An Atheist Chaplain and a Death Row Inmate’s Final Hours<style>@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}</style><font face="Calibri"><p dir=ltr>Devin Moss spent a year ministering to convicted killer Phillip Hancock. Together, they wrestled with one question: How to face death without God.<br> --<br> </p> <div align="left" ><p dir=ltr>...The gray Oklahoma skies opened into a drizzle. Moss wondered what he had to offer Hancock in these final hours, when ordinary wisdom seemed to fail and prayers, in this case, were irrelevant. Heaven, hell, salvation: He had talked about it all with Hancock, but neither of them really believed in anything but people. What humans were capable of doing, for themselves and to one another. Both men were atheists.<br> </p> </div><p dir=ltr><br> </p> <div align="left" ><p dir=ltr>There is an adage that says there are no atheists in foxholes — even skeptics will pray when facing death. But Hancock, in the time leading up to his execution, only became more insistent about his nonbelief. He and his chaplain were both confident that there was no God who might grant last-minute salvation, if only they produced a desperate prayer. They had only one another...<br> </p> </div><p dir=ltr><br> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/an-atheist-chaplain-and-a-death-row-inmates-final-hours.html?smid=em-share">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/us/an-atheist-chaplain-and-a-death-row-inmates-final-hours.html?smid=em-share</a></p> </font>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-41510777821551307662024-01-15T08:01:00.001-06:002024-01-15T08:01:11.350-06:00Problematic <p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPZUmhDfqfiPTb7xamNdpElujndZKKw_U_MToSO4dpOwIfAChYIeGADRrTQBGSdWQIKidCvj9i9lY_HL-IIMQx553Ol0-Ifo29IloLwktPgFBy18EVLwTCoWWhUdZ3z0MxSAdhR3TBmJCJLksRtfbfXO3rR-dKj4uYpUEgxNhCzRmh8vUwFqhfpfqyGqo"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPZUmhDfqfiPTb7xamNdpElujndZKKw_U_MToSO4dpOwIfAChYIeGADRrTQBGSdWQIKidCvj9i9lY_HL-IIMQx553Ol0-Ifo29IloLwktPgFBy18EVLwTCoWWhUdZ3z0MxSAdhR3TBmJCJLksRtfbfXO3rR-dKj4uYpUEgxNhCzRmh8vUwFqhfpfqyGqo=s320" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_7324324861386060754" /></a></p><a href="https://www.threads.net/@secularstudents/post/C2F7jSmuFaR/">https://www.threads.net/@secularstudents/post/C2F7jSmuFaR/</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-53542458963029885362024-01-15T07:57:00.000-06:002024-01-15T07:58:01.001-06:00Good question "What unfolds when intentional spaces are cultivated to explore the essence of humanity?" That's just one of many questions that course instructor and Humanist Chaplain at Tufts University Anthony Cruz Pantojas asks students in a new course exploring the utility and significance of humanism. <a href="https://thehumanist.com/news/secularism/a-course-on-humanism-for-everyday-life">https://thehumanist.com/news/secularism/a-course-on-humanism-for-everyday-life</a>
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<br><a href="https://www.threads.net/@americanhumanist/post/C2GIguQAxGR/">https://www.threads.net/@americanhumanist/post/C2GIguQAxGR/</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-50638571672529826442024-01-05T07:03:00.001-06:002024-01-05T07:03:59.866-06:00How the Poet Christian Wiman Keeps His Faith | The New YorkerA poet whose religiosity (which "begins at the point where atheists suppose that it must be at an end") is complicated, possibly incoherent, but still fascinating from a humanist perspective. His story would have made the cut for James's Gifford Lectures.<p>"...During his years at Poetry, Wiman came to feel alienated from contemporary poetry and what he regarded as its self-obsessed confessionalism. Before he learned he had cancer, he'd been planning to resign from the magazine—he and Chapman, in thrall to the mythology of another pair of poet partners, Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, living and writing in pastoral bliss in New Hampshire, hoped to leave Chicago for Tennessee and make Fairfield into their own Eagle Pond Farm. But Wiman's cancer treatments can cost more than a million dollars a year; handcuffed by health care, they stayed put. Then, in 2010, Wiman was invited to give a lecture at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, on the campus of the Yale Divinity School. He was so taken by his conversations with the students, the way they talked so straightforwardly about their faith and their fears and what he considers life's ultimate concerns, that when he got home he wrote a letter to Yale angling for a job.<p>Wiman became a senior lecturer in religion and literature, and Chapman became a lecturer in English. He is now the Clement-Muehl Professor of Communication Arts. One Friday morning this fall, at nine-thirty on the nose, he arrived in a seminar room on the Sterling Quadrangle for his course "Poetry and Faith" holding up a stack of handouts like Perseus holding the head of Medusa. He'd woken that morning full of fever and pain and nausea—something that still happens to him every few weeks, most often from colds and viruses his weakened immune system can't fight off—and had considered cancelling the class, but he wanted to clear up something he'd said the previous week, about Philip Larkin's "Aubade." Wiman had told his students that the poem spoke the truth to him as a Christian, which shocked some of them, since it famously describes religion as "that vast moth-eaten musical brocade / Created to pretend we never die."<p>For Wiman, the poem's theological power comes from its confrontation with "a kind of absolute nothingness." His handout contained a few quotations clarifying the point. The first was from the German theologian H. J. Iwand: "Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose that it must be at an end. Our faith begins with the bleakness and power which is the night of the cross, abandonment, temptation, and doubt about everything that exists!" The second was from a letter written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer not long before he was murdered by the Nazis: "We cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur" (as if there were no God). Before Wiman could finish with the handout, a student tried to slip in late. Wiman reminded his class of the punishment for tardiness—memorizing a sonnet—then turned to that week's readings, which were about love..."<p><br><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/11/a-poets-faith">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/11/a-poets-faith</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-70894331177035939742024-01-02T07:17:00.000-06:002024-01-04T10:59:49.843-06:00Humanism is a meliorism"… Humanism is a philosophy, not a religion, so it has no dogma—but it does have a creed: Humanism believes in the equality of all humans and celebrates the rich diversity of experiences between us. Humanism believes our actions are best informed by reason and critical thinking. And above all, Humanism believes in meliorism—that the world can be made better by human effort. That we can alleviate the suffering of our fellow man, and work toward human flourishing for all.
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<br>Thomas Paine penned his own Humanist creed in his work Age of Reason: "I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy."
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<br>And Humanism comes with thousands of years of philosophical texts: Ideas first espoused by the Greek philosophers Cicero and Epicurious, as well as the Chinese philosophies of Taoism and Confucianism, were later resuscitated by Renaissance Humanists like Petrarch, Desiderius Erasmus, and Michel de Montaigne. During the Enlightenment, Humanist writers like Voltaire and the Marquis de Condorcet brought those ideals into our states and governments, and modern writers like Steven Pinker continue the work, all gospel that humans have some agency against the ails of the world.
<br>Throughout history, we took those ideals and made them manifest. As Sarah Bakewell points out in her book Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope: "It was thanks to humanistic beliefs in reason and meliorism that Voltaire argued for tolerance of different religions, Condorcet and Olympe de Gouges argued for including women and non-European races in the French Revolutionary idea of human liberation, and their fellow Enlightenment thinker Jeremy Bentham argued for what would now be called LGBTQ+ rights."
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<br>It was Humanism's insistence on equality that demanded an end to slavery. It created orphanages, hospitals, social work, and women's suffrage. It implored us to devise spaces for disabled persons. It was Humanism's belief in meliorism that inspired human rights movements and liberal democracies. The progress we have made comes from Humanism's central belief that all human beings are equals and that we have an equal right to human flourishing.
<br>Whether or not there is a God is irrelevant to this goal. "I am a humanist," the philosopher Kurt Vonnegut once said, "which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead."
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<br>-Elle Griffin
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<br><a href="https://open.substack.com/pub/ellegriffin/p/humanism-as-the-future-of-religion?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post">https://open.substack.com/pub/ellegriffin/p/humanism-as-the-future-of-religion?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-12384587413910618882023-12-30T09:29:00.001-06:002023-12-30T09:29:31.057-06:00A Hopeful ["surprisingly upbeat"] Reminder: You’re Going to Die. HAPPY NEW YEAR!<div dir="ltr"><i>Fifty years on, Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" remains an essential, surprisingly upbeat guide to our final act on Earth.</i><br><br>...Only by confronting our own mortality, Becker argued, could we live more fully. To hold that terror is to see more clearly what matters and what does not — and how important it is to grasp the difference. Contemplating death is like a cold plunge for the soul, a prick to the amygdala. You emerge renewed, your vision clarified. "To talk about hope is to give the right focus to the problem," Becker wrote... <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/books/review/denial-of-death-ernest-becker.html?smid=em-share">nyt</a><br></div> Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-59306899411068780682023-12-27T08:12:00.001-06:002023-12-27T08:12:56.679-06:00HUMANIST VOICES<style>@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}</style><font face="Calibri"><p dir=ltr>"It is said that the Devil has all the best tunes. Whether or not true, humanist lyrics often go unnoticed. Maybe that is because they are sensible, reasonable and usually sung somewhat quietly, not ranted from mountaintops, preached from pulpits. Many distinguished voices are humanist even though with no ‘humanist’ label. </p> <p dir=ltr>Humanist voices, with or without the label, deserve to be heard – such as: </p> <p dir=ltr>Charles Darwin: I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars. </p> <p dir=ltr>Ralph Waldo Emerson: You take the way from man, not to man. </p> <p dir=ltr>Mark Twain: God’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn. </p> <p dir=ltr>Albert Einstein: A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. </p> <p dir=ltr>Richard Rorty: The utopian social hope which sprang up in nineteenth-century Europe is still the noblest imaginative creation of which we have record. </p> <p dir=ltr>Philip Pullman: The true end of human life … is not redemption by a non-existent Son of God, but the gaining and transmission of wisdom. </p> <p dir=ltr>We could add today, for example, the voices of Salman Rushdie and Jonathan Miller, Terry Pratchett and Christopher Hitchens, Margaret Atwood and Richard Dawkins. From earlier times, we would hear Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Bernard Shaw and Manabendra Nath Roy. Earlier, we find David Hume, Benjamin Franklin, John Stuart Mill and Giuseppe Verdi – to mention a few. </p> <p dir=ltr>From Midwest America’s Christian fundamentalisms to Middle Eastern and Far Eastern Muslims, many believers understand that their duty is to convert, or deal in some way with, non-believers – with ‘devils in disguise’. This affects their ethics, politics and daily living, leading some determined to bring non-believers to see the religious light or, at least, to live according to religious law. When humanists become vocal about the dangers of religion, they therefore are not making a big fuss about kindly and tolerant Church of England vicars who share tea and cucumber sandwiches with parishioners. They are rightly making a big fuss about those whose godly belief leads to the repression of many here on earth, be it through death threats to questioners of religious belief, or punishment to women who dare to remove the veil in public..."</p> <p dir=ltr>--"Humanism: A Beginner's Guide (updated edition) (Beginner's Guides)" by Peter Cave: <a href="https://a.co/1cKWQjT">https://a.co/1cKWQjT</a></p> </font>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-89829749858801486282023-12-22T05:35:00.000-06:002023-12-22T05:36:03.298-06:00Thank goodness<style>@font-face{font-family:Calibri;panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}</style><font face="Calibri"><p dir=ltr>I'm reading Daniel Dennett's memoir "I've Been Thinking", which begins with the near-death experience that generated my favorite written testimonial of natural gratitude. </p> <p dir=ltr>"ON OCTOBER 24, 2006, I WAS RUSHED BY AMBULANCE from my office at Tufts University to the emergency room at Lahey Clinic, where doctors discovered the problem: the inner and outer layers of my aorta had come apart—an aortic dissection—and I could die at any moment if the blood from my heart burst out into my chest cavity. The day before I had been in Mackerel Cove on Swan’s Island in Maine on my sailboat, Xanthippe. This was the last cruise of the season, joined by my Swedish friend Bo Dahlbom and his son Fredrik, and as I slowly pulled on the heavy anchor line I felt a slight pain in my chest, reminding me of the pain I had felt seven years earlier when I’d had a “silent heart attack” that had led to a triple-bypass operation. We sailed back to Blue Hill in a stiff headwind, moored the boat, took off the heavy sails, put the inflatable dinghy on the roof of my car, and went back to the farm, before I made a quick trip to the local hospital, where I was told I had not had a heart attack but should see my cardiologist as soon as I could. The next day we drove to Tufts, where I asked the department secretary if she had any Tylenol, and she wisely called the ambulance instead. </p> <p dir=ltr>One of the little-known side effects of open-heart surgery is ministrokes caused by debris from the operation clogging up the capillaries in the brain, and my cardiologist explicitly warned the surgical team that since my mind was my life, they should strive to avoid turning me into a “pumphead”—the ugly term heart surgeons use in private for those whose brains are damaged by the heart-lung machine. After the operation, before they removed me from the machine, they reversed the flow of blood to my brain, sending it into the veins and out of the arteries, hoping to flush out any debris that was about to disable my res cogitans, my thinking thing (my brain, not, as Descartes would have it, a distinct and immaterial substance). So I’ve been brainwashed, quite literally. Did it work? As soon as I could sit up in my hospital bed after the operation I got out my trusty laptop and wrote a short piece to see if I still had my marbles. It was put on Edge.org, where it attracted a lot of attention. What do you think? </p> <p dir=ltr>Thank Goodness! (November 2, 2006) </p> <p dir=ltr>There are no atheists in foxholes, according to an old but dubious saying, and there is at least a little anecdotal evidence in favor of it in the notorious cases of famous atheists who have emerged from near-death experiences to announce to the world that they have changed their minds. The British philosopher Sir A. J. Ayer, who died in 1989, is a fairly recent example. Here is another anecdote to ponder..."</p> <p dir=ltr>Continues: https://a.co/982hZQy</p> </font>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-73210289282131927042023-12-20T11:11:00.004-06:002023-12-20T11:11:28.460-06:00Look Death in the eye and be grateful every day“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. I want to grow really old with my wife, Annie, whom I dearly love. I want to see my younger children grow up and to play a role in their character and intellectual development. I want to meet still unconceived grandchildren. There are scientific problems whose outcomes I long to witness—such as the exploration of many of the worlds in our Solar System and the search for life elsewhere. I want to learn how major trends in human history, both hopeful and worrisome, work themselves out: the dangers and promise of our technology, say; the emancipation of women; the growing political, economic, and technological ascendancy of China; interstellar flight. If there were life after death, I might, no matter when I die, satisfy most of these deep curiosities and longings. But if death is nothing more than an endless dreamless sleep, this is a forlorn hope. Maybe this perspective has given me a little extra motivation to stay alive. The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”<div><br />--Carl Sagan, <i>Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink o<span style="background-color: white; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">f the Millennium</span></i></div>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-4108611020309967892023-12-15T20:13:00.001-06:002023-12-15T20:13:53.332-06:00What if?<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgA2GCH2pdFwPee_wOqBZr2RkdnF0cMA4DOoNyr96dKaCX2gAVVV7TGhZXNFNial1e_t-fHgp0MuomDq8szq2g2dxbAwilf0pitbqjrvHTJELUPr9y5HRaBbc7LXyOgyGaDGj_mo3rBcr-I_Z6eeevThX7TlzQrDGc5d9OfCpOIRpZ9Wpv4sh2K6EGHySY"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgA2GCH2pdFwPee_wOqBZr2RkdnF0cMA4DOoNyr96dKaCX2gAVVV7TGhZXNFNial1e_t-fHgp0MuomDq8szq2g2dxbAwilf0pitbqjrvHTJELUPr9y5HRaBbc7LXyOgyGaDGj_mo3rBcr-I_Z6eeevThX7TlzQrDGc5d9OfCpOIRpZ9Wpv4sh2K6EGHySY=s320" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_7313010034874554338" /></a></p>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-54192944105618542022023-12-15T11:46:00.005-06:002023-12-15T11:48:27.853-06:00Threading the Freethought Lives of Hitchens and SaganBY <a href="https://thehumanist.com/contributors/david-orenstein">DAVID I. ORENSTEIN </a>• 13 DECEMBER 2023<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img height="264" src="https://thehumanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/stars_space_galaxy-300x198.jpg" width="400" /></div><br /><blockquote>“Humans have limitations, and no one knows this better than scientists. But a multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry. At least some of the mysteries of today will be comprehensively solved by our descendants. The fact that we cannot now produce a detailed understanding of, say, altered states of consciousness in terms of brain chemistry no more implies the existence of a “spirit world” than a sunflower following the Sun in its course across the sky was evidence of a literal miracle before we knew about phototropism and plant hormones.”<br /><br />—Carl Sagan, 1995</blockquote><br />December is a time for remembrance. We connect to others while simultaneously taking stock of another year gone by. A turn of the calendar. Perhaps some more wrinkles and a few more gray hairs. We scroll though celebrity deaths, ongoing political shenanigans, follow the latest natural disaster, or crisis, or war with angst for the future. Maybe we also focus on love and kindness if we’re eternal optimists as many in our humanist camp tend to be. We may glitter and glow from new relationships or mourn the loss of friends and family. One thing is for certain, change is constant both in terms of deprivation and the gains we make across the many social worlds we all inhabit...<div><br />When Sagan reminded us that we are all “star stuff” he was speaking about our connection to each other and the universe. An idea that demands we rethink every “us and them” scenario. Every drop of spilled blood over the eons in hate. Every war for resources and territory that have plagued and continues to plague our species on this small blue dot of a planet.<br /><br />Conversely, Christopher Hitchens was tonally very different from Sagan. Hitchens was a born fighter, a journalist and a provocateur... <a href="https://thehumanist.com/commentary/threading-the-freethought-lives-of-hitchens-and-sagan">The Humanist</a>, continues<div><div><br /></div><div>My comment:</div>I admire them both, but Sagan was more than just "tonally" different... his less pugilistic style also reflected a greater sympathy for the varieties of ways in which humans seek meaning and value in their lives. Ann Druyan rightly called attention to Carl's appreciation of William James's sense of religion as a feeling of being at home in the cosmos, a sense which he shared but which (like James) he said had less to do with God than with a deep aspiration for "life, more life..." And that makes all the more poignant the early exits of both Carl and Christopher.</div></div>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-86069450824476184442023-12-10T18:14:00.001-06:002023-12-10T18:14:52.798-06:00The Mystical Catholic Tradition of Jon Fosse<div dir="ltr">"…<span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> I sometimes think that the modern world's true cultural divide is not between believers and unbelievers but between those who think life is a puzzle that is capable of being solved and those who believe it's a mystery that ought to be approached by way of silence and humility. I am a problem solver by disposition, but in my heart I am strongly on the side of the mysterians.</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">As an institution, the Catholic Church is notably hierarchical and dogmatic, and it has often presented itself not just as a solution to the puzzle of life but as the only possible solution. Yet the church has also always been a home for the kind of mystical, contemplative, apophatic faith that Asle represents. It is the faith of the 13th-century and early 14th-century German friar Meister Eckhart, whom Asle quotes at several points. It is the faith of the 16th-century mystic Teresa of Avila and her follower, John of the Cross. It is the faith of the 20th-century theologian Karl Rahner, who said that "The devout Christian of the future will either be a 'mystic'—someone who has 'experienced something'—or will cease to be anything at all." Each of these figures was formally investigated for heterodox belief during their lifetimes, but all are recognized today as vital communicators of Catholic truth.</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">It's a mistake to treat their tradition as a watered-down version of the more certain expressions of faith typically associated with organized religion. The most sincere believers I've known have also been the most humble, the most perplexed. It may be that those who feel most powerfully the presence of God in their lives likewise feel most powerfully the impossibility of adequately capturing that presence in words. And it may be that those for whom God is not a symbol or a cudgel but a lived reality find this reality most mysterious.</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">Of course, this kind of faith has its critics. On the one hand, many believers consider it a capitulation to secular culture, perhaps even heretical in its mystical acceptance of the many paths to God. On the other hand, many atheists consider it an intellectual sleight-of-hand, an effort to launder with philosophical abstractions the fundamentally irrational and intolerant business of belief.</span><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> </span><em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0" style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: inherit; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">You can call that religion if you want,</em><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"> </span><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">they'll say,</span><em class="css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0" style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: inherit; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-size-adjust: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"> but we all know that's not what most people mean by the word.</em></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(54, 54, 54); font-size: 1.125rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; caret-color: rgb(9, 9, 9); font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">To which one can only respond as Asle would: You're probably right about that too, but then again maybe it isn't so simple."</span></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/opinion/jon-fosse-nobel-god.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare<br>The Mystical Catholic Tradition of Jon Fosse</div><div dir="ltr"></div>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-54031416788258569152023-12-05T05:56:00.001-06:002023-12-05T05:56:16.238-06:00Xian Nation?<a href="https://www.threads.net/@honey_peye/post/C0dkUrsOMfj/">https://www.threads.net/@honey_peye/post/C0dkUrsOMfj/</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7609541124817386376.post-75135151607130111702023-11-08T18:33:00.001-06:002023-11-08T18:33:50.832-06:00Familiar conversions"…how striking it is that when someone has a religious-conversion experience, it is almost always to the religion or one of the religions that are mainly believed in his or her community. Because there are so many other possibilities. For example, it's very rare in the West that someone has a religious-conversion experience in which the principal deity has the head of an elephant and is painted blue. That is quite rare. But in India there is a blue, elephant-headed god that has many devotees. And seeing depictions of this god there is not so rare. How is it that the apparition of elephant gods is restricted to Indians and doesn't happen except in places where there is a strong Indian tradition? How is that apparitions of the Virgin Mary are common in the West but rarely occur in places in the East where there isn't a strong Christian tradition? Why don't the details of the religious belief cross over the cultural barriers? It is hard to explain unless the details are entirely determined by the local culture and have nothing to do with something that is externally valid.
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<br>Put another way, any preexisting predisposition to religious belief can be powerfully influenced by the indigenous culture, wherever you happen to grow up. And especially if the children are exposed early to a particular set of doctrine and music and art and ritual, then it is as natural as breathing, which is why religions make such a large effort to attract the very young.
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<br>Or let's take another possibility. Suppose a new prophet arises who claims a revelation from God, and that revelation contravenes the revelations of all previous religions. How is the average person, someone not so fortunate as to have received this revelation personally, to decide whether this new revelation is valid or not? The only dependable way is through natural theology. You have to ask, "What is the evidence?" And it's insufficient to say, "Well, there is this extremely charismatic person who said that he had a conversion experience." Not enough. There are lots of charismatic people who have all sorts of mutually exclusive conversion experiences. They can't all be right. Some of them have to be wrong. Many of them have to be wrong. It's even possible that all of them are wrong. We cannot depend entirely on what people say. We have to look at what the evidence is."
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<br>— The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan
<br><a href="https://a.co/bvUn4a7">https://a.co/bvUn4a7</a>Philhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02115141650963300011noreply@blogger.com0