tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post7955901629570089252..comments2024-03-27T14:45:28.176-05:00Comments on Adventus: "May you live in interesting times"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-3407068121888547662015-08-17T21:48:47.135-05:002015-08-17T21:48:47.135-05:00The more I live with religion, the more I find the...The more I live with religion, the more I find the wisdom in it. Not wisdom of "sage advice" or "knowledge attained over the years," but true wisdom. There is little in the Mosaic law or the teaching of Jesus and Paul that is really about "'thou shalt not," so much as about "you should." But it isn't even "you should:" it's deeper than that, it's what life is about, for, and worth, and what makes it worthwhile. Living is better than not living, but living well is not a skill or an art or even artifice. It is deep connection, and that connection is understood or attained or known (I think I prefer "known") spiritually. Which can be intellectual and can be emotional and can be social, but it's all of the above and a little of none at the same time.<br /><br />Atheism offers just a negation of what is for the sake of...what? Infantile contrariness? A childish "You can't make me!"? It's a faith in holding to anti-faith. Remove that and "South Park" got it right: you're left with squabbling factions of atheists, battling over who is the "right" atheist.<br /><br />And remove it you can't. Human history is not a story of "progress" toward present-day "perfection." To even engage that narrative is to traffic in fairy-tales without even the anthropologists or folklorists understanding of that term. I agree with you: what we are seeing now in atheism is simply the petulance of unruly children. Religion doesn't teach us how to avoid, say, suffering, or to stop"fearing" death; what it teaches is how to cope with suffering, and how to accept the reality of death.<br /><br />Because I can tell you right now if you put Derrida's question to Dawkins or Harris or any "atheist" at Salon or Alternet: "My death; is it possible?," they wouldn't even begin to understand it.<br /><br />And they say I'm the one (the religious one) who is afraid of death!Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-8984079708639391362015-08-17T19:13:55.832-05:002015-08-17T19:13:55.832-05:00If someone told me 25 years ago, when I was alread...If someone told me 25 years ago, when I was already middle aged, that I'd think the way I do about Christianity, Judaism and Islam I'd have told them it was not likely, at all. It's the atheists who made me take another look at those religions, in all of their variety, and the results are that I write blog posts about the meaning of communion and the complete incompatibility of materialism with not only liberalism but with any kind of intellectual activity at all. <br /><br />You never know where things are going to go. I strongly, very strongly suspect that if the human species continues, before long there will be a realization that, like it or not, life on Earth is not possible without people taking what those religions, and others, say seriously. <br /><br />Atheism of the kind we see nowadays, I doubt it has staying power. Neither does agnosticism and agnosticism is a larger faith holding than atheism. And not all atheists are ...... well, not like your typical Salon-Alternet atheist. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.com