Tag Archives: atheism

by

Friday Link Love

Plenty of choice goodies today for all your Friday procrastination needs:

~

Welcome to the Jungle — Luke Lukas

This has gotta be the best version of “Welcome to the Jungle” EVER. Who needs Axl’s sweet licks when you’ve got a kazoo!!

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

~

Maurice Sendak — Fresh Air 

This quote from an interview with Terry Gross has been making the rounds:

There’s something eucharistic about this.

~

Returning to Church, Despite My Doubts — CNN Religion Blog

Although I never experienced that dramatic reconversion moment, I did come to peace with two slow-growing realizations.

First: My doubt belonged in church.

People who know my story ask what I would have changed about my spiritual journey. Nothing. I had to leave the church to find the church. And when I came back, the return wasn’t clean or conclusive. Since then, I’ve come to believe that my doubts belong inside the space of the sanctuary. My questions belong on the altar as my only offering to God.

With all its faults, I still associate the church with the pursuit of truth and justice, with community and shared humanity. It’s a place to ask the unanswerable questions and a place to be on sojourn. No other institution has given me what the church has: a space to search for God.

Read on for her other realization, and more. Amen.

~

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Agnosticism/Atheism — The Big Think

Neil deGrasse Tyson identifies as an agnostic:
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

This video has sparked some serious, and in some cases virulent, debate about what it means to be an atheist. But I think I get what he’s going for. For one thing, he doesn’t want to part of a movement, partly because some aspects of that movement are, well, mean. But I also think he doesn’t want to be claimed by the atheists because belief in God, and disbelief in God, are just not the questions that animate him.

I think Tyson’s saying, God isn’t a part of the picture, not even as the thing I reject. Unless and until evidence comes to light that proves or disproves God, the idea of God is completely irrelevant to my life. 

Claiming Tyson as an atheist is like someone claiming me as a fan of their favorite cricket team.

I’ve often thought we have a language problem here. Atheism is defined in negative terms: disbelief in God. Maybe it would be more helpful in terms of building understanding if there was a word that explained what people are for rather than what they disbelieve.

~

Is Evolution a Lousy Story? — Science and Religion Today

Polls show that fewer than half of Americans accept evolution. Most of us still don’t buy it. As the comedian Louis C.K. asked in a bit about people who insist that they can’t possibly be related to monkeys: “Why are you fighting this?”

Dan McAdams offers one possible, rarely discussed reason: Maybe evolution is a lousy story. Actually, McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, doesn’t think evolution is a story at all. There is no protagonist, no motivation, no purpose—all crucial elements in a narrative, whether it’s Frog and Toad Are Friends or Fifty Shades of Grey.

He mentioned this idea recently during a presentation at the Consilience Conference,which also drew researchers from biology, economics, and literary studies. Afterward, a seemingly annoyed audience member questioned McAdams’s apparent criticism of evolution, countering that it’s in fact a wonderful, elegant explanation of life. McAdams agreed that it’s wonderful and elegant. He just doesn’t think it’s a story.

I found this intriguing, partly because “creationists are idiots” just doesn’t give you much to go on. And, I love thinking in terms of story.

A new site for me, but one I now follow on Google Reader.

~

10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You – WSJ

“Some of your worst days lie ahead,” and other uncomfortable truths.

~

Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret – LifeHacker

It’s very simple: Don’t break the chain.

~

Crush the “I’m Not Creative” Barrier – Harvard Business Review

The bad news is that if you don’t think you’re creative, our survey data say that you probably are not. But there is good news: You can actually become more creative by changing your mind-set. Anyone can innovate, if they choose to. Disruptive innovators do it by choice, not chance. Their everyday actions swap out an “I’m not creative” mind-set for an “I am creative” one. And then magical (not mystical) things unfold.

Oh, those hippy-dippy flakes at the… Harvard Business Review. What do they know? :-)

An interesting article, and not just because they love on Evernote, the software that makes my life better every day.

~

Have an excellent weekend.

by

Friday Link Love

If you haven’t already, check out my previous posts from this week (spiritual genius and mentoring) for additional links.

Onward…

~

My friend Susan shared this on Facebook yesterday:

Excellent reminder.

~

Showing Death with Humanity and Dignity — New York Times

A photographer in Mexico City documents the effects of Mexican and North American policies on the border region where he was raised. I appreciated this interview about one of his heartbreaking images:

I shot the scene a bunch of different ways, but the way that worked best was just showing it from the front. These people were killed by one single bullet. The woman is far into her pregnancy. The hit man came in from the left-hand side of the car and fired a bullet into the man’s head when they were embracing and killed both of them.

I don’t know. It seemed appropriate as we move into Holy Week.

~

Religion for Atheists — Alain de Botton

I know I’ve linked to his work before, but I find it fascinating as an agnostic theist (I don’t know but I believe):

The French atheist and proto-fascist Charles Maurras, an admirer of both Comte and Nietzsche, was an impassioned defender of the Catholic Church. John Stuart Mill – not exactly an atheist but not far off – tried to fuse Comte’s new religion with liberalism. In marrying atheism with very different ethical and political positions, none of these thinkers was confused or inconsistent. Atheism can go with practically anything, since in itself it amounts to very little.

Most people think that atheists are bound to reject religion because religion and atheism consist of incompatible beliefs. De Botton accepts this assumption throughout his argument, which amounts to the claim that religion is humanly valuable even if religious beliefs are untrue. He shows how much in our way of life comes from and still depends on religion – communities, education, art and architecture and certain kinds of kindness, among other things. I would add the practice of toleration, the origins of which lie in dissenting religion, and sceptical doubt, which very often coexists with faith.

Today’s atheists will insist that these goods can be achieved without religion. In many instances this may be so but it is a question that cannot be answered by fulminating about religion as if it were intrinsically evil. Religion has caused a lot of harm but so has science. Practically everything of value in human life can be harmful. To insist that religion is peculiarly malignant is fanaticism, or mere stupidity.

 ~

Language Cop: Christian — The New Republic

In November I introduced a periodic blog feature called “Language Cop” to “keep track of unacceptable words and catchphrases that enter the political dialogue.” In that column I exiled the terms “optics” and “inflection point.” Earlier this month I inveighed against “pivot,” and last week I suggested this euphemism be replaced with a new term, “shake,” in deference to America’s first multiplatform gaffe. Today I banish “Christian ”—not the word itself, but a specific, erroneous usage.

In other words, a usage that implies that Christians are all conservative/fundamentalist. A- to the -men.

~

And on a whimsical note:

Frame of Mind – Vimeo

Incredible:

Frame of Mind from Steven Alan on Vimeo.

Have a great weekend. I’ve got a session retreat on tap as well as a visit with my cousin B.

by

Friday Link Love

The Cult of Collaboration — Fernando Gros

Just jokin'. Sort of.

…We often need to collaborate in order to solve really big problems. And, as humans, we also need to work alongside other people to satisfy more basic emotional desires for community and belonging.

But, the hard slog of creating, innovating and thinking is something we largely do alone.

That’s something I totally agree with. And, it worries me that in many parts of society, including schools, we are not encouraging people to develop the skills required to work alone, for extended periods of time, on complex problems.

Add in the fact that smartphones mean that we need never be alone again, and this is an issue worth thinking about. Alone. Or together.

~

Religion for Atheists — Alain de Botton

We are far more desperate than secular modernity recognises. All of us are on the edge of panic and terror pretty much all the time – and religions recognise this. We need to build a similar awareness into secular structures.
Religions are fascinating because they are giant machines for making ideas vivid and real in people’s lives: ideas about goodness, about death, family, community etc. Nowadays, we tend to believe that the people who make ideas vivid are artists and cultural figures, but this is such a small, individual response to a massive set of problems. So I am deeply interested in the way that religions are in the end institutions, giant machines, organisations, directed to managing our inner life. There is nothing like this in the secular world, and this seems a huge pity.

The above link is to an FAQ about Botton’s TED talk on Atheism 2.0, which is outstanding and available here.

~

Pomodoro Technique

If you’re not familiar with the pomodoro technique for time management, it’s incredibly simple and very effective. I wrote Sabbath in the Suburbs primarily using techniques like this one.

Poke around the website to learn more about it, though for heaven’s sake, I don’t know why you’d need a $26 book to understand it, let alone the tomato-shaped timer, although it is cute.

~

And along the lines of time management:

The Biggest Myth in Time Management — Harvard Business Review

In a nutshell: That we can get it all done. (Comments are interesting, trying to diagnose “Brad’s” problem in the article.)

I think this simple realization has profound spiritual implications, way beyond simple time management. But then again, I would think that, I just wrote a book about Sabbath…

Have a good weekend. It’s a long weekend for us, what with teacher work days on Monday and Tuesday. We have our congregation’s annual meeting on Sunday, after which the kids and I head to Johnstown, Pennsylvania for a short visit with Robert’s grandmother.

by

Friday Link Love… And More with the Friars

Utmost on my list of links is Rick Ufford-Chase’s heartfelt counterpoint to my point at Two Friars and a Fool. (Or maybe I’m the counterpoint to his point.) Next week we will respond to each other’s articles. Do go and leave your thoughts on civil disobedience there. Thanks again to the guys at TFF for the invitation to write.

~

Drive Recklessly (YouTube)

Sickly wonderful:

~

A Memorable Evening with Cliff Robertson (Thoughtful Christian)

A sweet remembrance of what sounds like a fine man… and one who understands that the loving gesture can be more powerful, narratively and emotionally, than the explosion of anger.

~

For the Dying, a Chance to Rewrite Life (NPR)

As a psychiatrist at the University of Manitoba in Canada, he did study after study trying to tease out exactly what troubled people most about dying. What he found was that what people found most assaulting and annihilating was this idea that who they were would completely cease to exist after their death. And so Chochinov decided to do something about it.

“If the idea of having something that will outlast even you matters for patients that are near the end of life, then we need to do something that will create something that will last beyond … the patient,” he says.

The something that Chochinov decided to create was a formal written narrative of the patient’s life — a document that could be passed on to whomever they chose.

[more]

Many of our churches do end-of-life courses and retreats, which include everything from estate planning to living will to planning the memorial service to writing a “spiritual will and testament” of lessons and stories to share with the next generation. Some interesting thoughts here as we plan these events.

~

This Time It’s Different (Art of Non-Conformity)

A meditation on the dilemma many people confront when considering a change in one’s life. Do you take the leap now, or plan and wait until all your ducks are in a row?

~

He’s My Favorite Fictional Character! (Julian Sanchez)

Keith Snyder bait: a meditation on belief, narrative and (a)theism:

Fundamentalists of every sect are, pretty much by definition, strongly committed to the literal truth of all of their scripture. But the garden variety “believer,” I suspect, may often be more accurately thought of as a “suspension-of-disbeliever.” (Somewhere in the back of my head is that CollegeHumor video about religion as a species of fanboyism.) When you think about the actual functions that religious narratives serve in people’s lives, literal truth or falsity is often rather beside the point, and yet suspension of disbelief is a necessary condition of immersion in the story. On this view, Richard Dawkins is a little like that guy who keeps pointing out that all the ways superhero physics don’t really make sense.

[snip]

Dawkins & co. are themselves quite capable of appreciating religious and mythical narratives as narratives. What Rée seems to be positing, though, is that they may underestimate the number of soi-disant Believers who appreciate it on something like the same level.

by

Could You Pass as Your Ideological Opponent?

I read with dismay this story about town hall meetings, which have gotten more contentious in recent years.

So what happened to the town hall?

…[T]he tools of citizenship and activism have changed with the advent of YouTube and new, more aggressive strategies from activist groups on both sides. Somehow, an event that was once all about listening has become all about shouting. It now counts as a defeat if one’s opponent is allowed to make a point in peace.

Incidentally, the comments prove the article’s point.

By contrast, consider the Ideological Turing Test. A group of atheists and a group of Christians were asked to answer questions anonymously (e.g. what’s your best reason for being a Christian/an atheist?). The goal was to pass themselves off as members of the other group. Through open voting, readers tried to discern whether “person #6″ was an atheist posing as a Christian or a Christian speaking as herself, and vice versa for the atheist questions.

The responses and results are fascinating and fun. I haven’t crunched all the numbers or read everything on the site, which is not scientific, it should be said. But I did note that in the atheist contest, the top three people identified as atheists were actually Christians. In other words, the Christians were able to represent the atheist point of view well enough to fool the audience.

I’m not sure what to make of that. My initial thought is that doubt in God is actually a component of religious faith, not the antithesis to it, so it’s not hard for a self-reflective Christian to put on that point of view. Or maybe we just fake sincerity really well? (It’s a joke. No pile-ons.) There were also atheists that were able to “pass” as Christian, but not as many as the other way around. But numbers aside… what a cool experiment.

Adam Hamilton, a pastor whom I admire greatly, did a sermon series several years ago on world religions. The purpose was to build respect and see what Christians could learn from other forms of religious piety. He interviewed interfaith leaders in his community and even included video of these leaders in the service. He said his goal was not to build a straw man to knock down, but to represent the other religion’s point of view so accurately that those religious leaders could sit in the front row of his church and say, Yes, that is who we are.

It’s the Atticus Finch thing: ”You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” I do that sometimes as an intellectual exercise, when I hear something on the news that really ticks me off: What might lead a person to come to that conclusion? But it’s hard work, and I don’t do it enough.

We don’t do it enough.

But we could. And the world would be a thousand times better place.

Fewer Angry McShoutertons, please.

More Adam Hamiltons and Ideological Turing Tests.

- – - -

footnote: the original turing test