The latest On Being radio program/podcast features a terrific conversation between host Krista Tippett, astrophysicist Natalie Batalha, and "Brainpicker" Maria Popova, who begins by saying:
I am an atheist who finds a lot of meaning and nourishment and spiritual sustenance in nature — particularly in, I would say, the cosmic nature of reality, the cosmic aspect, but also, very much, the earthly, the — being out in these beautiful redwoods today. And I don’t think it’s an accident it’s called a “cathedral” down there. I don’t know how many of you went — I really recommend it. I suppose more of the Whitman bent; of: When all else is exhausted, and society and business and politics — what remains? Nature remains. And of course, we are part of nature; and this connection between the rest of the natural world and ourselves I find the most elemental nourishing force that there is.Podcast and transcript here. Highly recommended.
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See also Popova's recent post,
Alan Lightman on the Longing for Absolutes in a Relative World and What Gives Lasting Meaning to Our Lives -
"...in Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine(public library) — a lyrical and illuminating inquiry into our dual impulse for belief in the unprovable and for trust in truth affirmed by physical evidence. Through the lens of his personal experience as a working scientist and a human being with uncommon receptivity to the poetic dimensions of life, Lightman traces our longing for absolutes in a relative world from Galileo to Van Gogh, from Descartes to Dickinson, emerging with that rare miracle of insight at the meeting point of the lucid and the luminous..."==
Also recommended, historian Jon Meacham's essay on resurrection:
Where Did the Concept of the Resurrection Come From?
...Those seeking an understanding of the historical elements of Jesus’ saga might find it profitable to engage the vast work of David Friedrich Strauss, the German intellectual, whose monumental “The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined” was translated into English in the 19th century by George Eliot. (At times, the translation reads like a scholarly “Middlemarch,” much to its credit.
Strauss works his way through the scriptural accounts, systematically arguing that the miraculous elements of the New Testament were theological inventions, not historical reports. “Piety turns away with horror from so fearful an act of desecration,” he writes archly, yet facts are facts and metaphors are metaphors. God will not be mocked, but if Strauss had his way neither would reason.
I'm looking forward to reading that Strauss's book. I'm currently reading Dr. Ehrman's book, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. He mentions Strauss's book and my distant cousin Dr. Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. I like the way he discusses some current writers on Mysticism who reflect little or no scholarship in their work. They find a few "nonscholarly books that say the same thing" they say and then quote them. Good reading requires critical thinking skills and lots of experience to recognize writing that doesn't rise to the scholarly level.
ReplyDeleteCorrection to earlier post - I mentioned mysticism when I was referring to "Mythicist" which was first coined in German and English to describe people who doubted the historical veracity of the Judeo-Christian Bible.
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