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I enjoyed reading Hitch's 'take no prisoners' approach. He discards the sycophancy and views religious people and institutions in the same critical light as most of us view politicians and political parties. Very refreshing. But I still think we should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and wonder if some form of non-theistic intellectually honest religion might be possible?
Yeah, I'm quickly becoming a fan of the Hitch. I did, however, find his constant ranting to get a wee bit irritating toward the end of the book.
I like the idea of a "non-theistic intellectually honest religion," Graham, but isn't that ethics in a nutshell? Strip away all of the theism, and you're left with a core set of rules about how to act around/treat other human beings. I see no need to associate it with the connotations of "religion" if there is no theistic aspect, since all religion is predicated on belief through faith in the absence of fact. If there's no theism, what's there to believe in?
Pam wrote: "since all religion is predicated on belief through faith in the absence of fact..."
I'm not sure 'all' religion is or should be predicated on belief. My thoughts on religion are currently evolving. I've always been a sceptic and never been 'religious' in the conventional sense. I guess I started off debating theists in the early days of the internet, but started to get bored debating the whole belief thing about the time that the 'new atheists' got into full swing. Since then I've read books by John Shelby Spong, Karen Armstrong and most recently Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
I'm starting to think that if you can get over the whole belief thing, then there are good bits to religion that go beyond simple ethics. It's more about providing a forum for mutual support. Once you've got rid of that denial of doubt and blind intellectual assent then I think it takes away a lot of the dangers that the new atheists see in religion. Actually, the Unitarian Universalists seem to practice religion along these lines already: http://www.uua.org/ I've been aware of them for a few years, but may check them out, more out of curiousity than anything else. I know little about them at this point and so I am not proselytising. It would be interesting if mainstream denominations could evolve into something more progressive and less predicated on belief, like the Unitarians. I suspect that there are many Anglicans who are already pretty similar, if only in private.
Hitchens is an "practising" atheist. It's not the same as having Hawking's conclusion in the Grand Design book.
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Graham
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Jun 06, 2012 02:45AM
I enjoyed reading Hitch's 'take no prisoners' approach. He discards the sycophancy and views religious people and institutions in the same critical light as most of us view politicians and political parties. Very refreshing. But I still think we should be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and wonder if some form of non-theistic intellectually honest religion might be possible?
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Yeah, I'm quickly becoming a fan of the Hitch. I did, however, find his constant ranting to get a wee bit irritating toward the end of the book.I like the idea of a "non-theistic intellectually honest religion," Graham, but isn't that ethics in a nutshell? Strip away all of the theism, and you're left with a core set of rules about how to act around/treat other human beings. I see no need to associate it with the connotations of "religion" if there is no theistic aspect, since all religion is predicated on belief through faith in the absence of fact. If there's no theism, what's there to believe in?
Pam wrote: "since all religion is predicated on belief through faith in the absence of fact..."I'm not sure 'all' religion is or should be predicated on belief. My thoughts on religion are currently evolving. I've always been a sceptic and never been 'religious' in the conventional sense. I guess I started off debating theists in the early days of the internet, but started to get bored debating the whole belief thing about the time that the 'new atheists' got into full swing. Since then I've read books by John Shelby Spong, Karen Armstrong and most recently Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...
I'm starting to think that if you can get over the whole belief thing, then there are good bits to religion that go beyond simple ethics. It's more about providing a forum for mutual support. Once you've got rid of that denial of doubt and blind intellectual assent then I think it takes away a lot of the dangers that the new atheists see in religion. Actually, the Unitarian Universalists seem to practice religion along these lines already: http://www.uua.org/ I've been aware of them for a few years, but may check them out, more out of curiousity than anything else. I know little about them at this point and so I am not proselytising. It would be interesting if mainstream denominations could evolve into something more progressive and less predicated on belief, like the Unitarians. I suspect that there are many Anglicans who are already pretty similar, if only in private.
Hitchens is an "practising" atheist. It's not the same as having Hawking's conclusion in the Grand Design book.
