I have so many more plans and I keep imagining bringing it to California, despite it being huge.
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I read this blog entry today, discussing something called Atheism 3.0. Which is the new "New Atheism", "New Atheists" being a group of people that are "vocally vicious" about there being no god, as opposed to "Old Atheists" who just kept to themselves and were nice and didn't make people uncomfortable. Atheism 3.0 is for people who think religion is a good thing, they themselves just don't believe in god. It reminds me of my old boss saying that he himself didn't recycle because he knew it didn't actually do any good, but he though it was a nice thing to do and certainly encouraged his 6 year old son to do so.
The argument for faith given in the RNS article:
Faith provides meaning and purpose for millions of believers, inspires people to tend to each other and build communities, gives them a sense of union with a transcendent power, and provides numerous health benefits, Sheiman says. Moreover, the galvanizing force behind many achievements in Western civilization has been faith, Sheiman argues, while conceding that he limits his analysis, for the most part, to modern Western religion.
These "many achievements" may or may not have needed religion in order to reach fruition. The real question is, why are we still relying on it? Surely we've come out of the dark ages, we understand why a lot of things happen and we're continuing to move forward. The things moving society forward today, towards bigger, brighter and better achievements, are arguably not religion and faith. You could even argue that religion is sending us backwards, what with the absurd creationism-in-public-schools-thankyouverymuchOklahomaandKansas. I'm not even going to get started on all the horrible things religion has been responsible for. You can watch a debate about it for yourself.
And this is where I start to pine optimistically for a beautiful, Utopian society full of well read people who appreciate, value and seek intelligence and common decency.
The argument for faith given in the RNS article:
Faith provides meaning and purpose for millions of believers, inspires people to tend to each other and build communities, gives them a sense of union with a transcendent power, and provides numerous health benefits, Sheiman says. Moreover, the galvanizing force behind many achievements in Western civilization has been faith, Sheiman argues, while conceding that he limits his analysis, for the most part, to modern Western religion.
These "many achievements" may or may not have needed religion in order to reach fruition. The real question is, why are we still relying on it? Surely we've come out of the dark ages, we understand why a lot of things happen and we're continuing to move forward. The things moving society forward today, towards bigger, brighter and better achievements, are arguably not religion and faith. You could even argue that religion is sending us backwards, what with the absurd creationism-in-public-schools-thankyouverymuchOklahomaandKansas. I'm not even going to get started on all the horrible things religion has been responsible for. You can watch a debate about it for yourself.
And this is where I start to pine optimistically for a beautiful, Utopian society full of well read people who appreciate, value and seek intelligence and common decency.
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