I noticed that I have recently started recommending things other do more than I produce new material myself (with regards to this blog). Nothing wrong with that I think!
Today I want to recommend one TED lecture by Alain de Botton who in beautiful English suggests that we can be atheists and yet steal the good things that religion has to offer. Don't accept the argument that if you are atheist you cannot celebrate christmas - I for one have always loved christmas - getting the family together and getting that Galaxy Nexus that I have dreamed about for a year (true story)!
Anyway, great speech about Atheism 2.0:
I also want to recommend, wait for it, a sermon. Yes, that is right a sermon (defined as an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy). However, this is a special type of sermon, it is an atheist sermon by Jeremy Beahan. Jeremy Beahan is one of the hosts for one of my favorite podcasts - reasonable doubts. In this sermon which is in a church Jeremy answers questions such as "from where do atheists get their morality" (and do they have any?).
Link to Sermon:
http://www.doubtcast.org/podcast/rd_extra_an_atheists_sermon.mp3
Thats it for now...
1 comment:
Ah, Alain, He's more of a Christian who doesn't believe in God: If you don't follow religion, you certainly shouldn't borrow it's rites, Anyway, Religion, sermons and such are a more dangerous part of Christianity, Islam, and the like, that the gods themselves are!
I believe he may be missing the point: he also has proposed a temple to humanity. Dangerous. Bringing up children as atheists in this way is creating a belief system, where atheism should be without a belief system. Getting atheists to go to a sermon is indoctrinating 'information' into them.
Also, what happens with the preacher? A person may not believe in a god, but believe in superstitions and pseudo-science which is just as dangerous, damaging, and incorrect.
His point about bodies is feeble. We are just minds, it is cognition which suggests otherwise which leads to religion and the like. Art is percieved in the mind, as are all feelings, both 'physical' and emotional.
Religion has nothing to teach us. Pilgrimage, gathering, sermons, art, education, and the like are not things created by religion, that we should follow, but things which religion adopted from societies because they, in the cases of education, art and the like, are good, interesting, and attractive ideas, and in the case of sermons and pilgrimage, because they are fantastic ways of controlling people as a single entity rather than allowing them to examine the facts, and be individuals who decide for themselves.
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