Faith, hope, gratitude, decency: James Earl Carter, 1924-2024

 Has there been a more admirable, estimable, and under-valued public figure in our time than Jimmy Carter? Every semester, I talk about him in class as the anti-Machiavelli (and obviously the anti-Trump).

"A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity."

If this decency and quiet strength came from his enduring faith, a Jamesian pragmatic pluralist must applaud its value for living. Fruits, not roots. “I found I was absolutely, completely at ease about death. I’m going to live again… Faith in something is an inducement not to dormancy but to action.”

And yet, I have to say I’m even more impressed by those whose decency flows not from belief in everlasting life but from recognition of its finitude. That’s the value, to me, of a humanistic sensibility. 

My form of faith, I’ve been told. 

I’m not sure faith is the right word, though. I prefer hope. And gratitude. “What a precious privilege, to be alive…”

We are, as Dawkins said, lucky to get to die. We got to live. The great challenge is to live well. Jimmy did.

I think he had plenty of hope and gratitude too. Whatever the deepest roots of his exemplary life, its fruits will continue to inspire. We need to hold that example before us in the years just ahead. We're going to need it.

Defending experience against 'philosophy'

  

Feeling It Out

Alice Gregory’s article on the philosopher L. A. Paul and her circle of oddly amusing philosophers was itself amusing and instructive (“Note to Selves,” December 9th). A great deal of what passes for the pursuit of wisdom in academia these days is, indeed, esoteric, technical, and, finally, irrelevant. But it should be noted that Professor Paul is hardly a pioneer in asserting, however “hesitantly,” that “experience has a kind of value” and that philosophy ought to be less “detached from ordinary life.” William James and the pragmatists said it long ago. In 1900, James, immersed in preparing lectures that would become “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” described the “problem” he set himself as “to defend (against all the prejudices of my ‘class’) ‘experience’ against ‘philosophy’ as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life.”

Phil Oliver
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Middle Tennessee State University
Nashville, Tenn.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/letters-from-the-december-30-2024-issue

For the record, though, my own experience remains the backbone of my atheistic humanism.

Poe: the evolution of religion

Humanist common sense (in the UK)

"Opinion polls and surveys show that humanist beliefs are now very widespread–that this life is the only one we know we have; that science and reason can explain the universe; that morality and meaning are human creations, not divine gifts. Although many people's world views are still fuzzy, with a range of different beliefs and values, many aspects of the humanist approach have become common sense. But there are still not many opportunities for people to encounter explicitly humanist ideas, framed as such. Messages I received from listeners to the podcast often said what a refreshing experience it had been to hear views they shared explained at length, sometimes for the first time in their lives."

— What I Believe: Humanist ideas and philosophies to live by by Andrew Copson

Atomic Whirl

A Version of the Atomic Whirl: Created by the American Atheists in 1963, this symbol represents the idea that scientific inquiry & the scientific method are the best ways to achieve human progress. Has a broken lower loop to represent that all is not known. @atheists.org

NdT on the god of the gaps and “the whole point of science”

https://www.threads.net/@ohgodidontknow/post/DDa1qncpith?xmt=AQGzn-xS57hfn3Er_7fYcnsyOPqY3BPzONCJXGLkhe9esA