I’ve had several people ask me - online and off – about my
motivation in writing this blog. In the very first post, I set out the vision I had, but as the blog and my notions of what I might
put in it have evolved, you might be forgiven for noting some dissonance with
that initial idea. Three months might be
too early for a retrospective, but I’d like to address how I’m thinking about
the blog at the moment.
Why a blog on religion written by an atheist? The proximate
cause of me picking up my digital pen and getting the blog up and running was,
basically, a surplus of time and a pile of ideas I had been kicking around for
some time. Fortunately for my pocket if not my diary, that surplus of time
resolved itself in the form of a new job in a new city. Upside: new
connections, new input, new ideas. Downside: My original notion of attending religious institutions somewhat
incognito is not forgotten, but has been complicated somewhat by new demands on
my time and a language which I barely speak (as yet). I still intend for this
to be a big part of the blog and I’m looking into ways of making that work, but
that – as much as the rest of the project – is very much a work in progress.
My larger motivation, as you might have gathered, is more fractured
creature. I’ve had several comments to the effect of ‘are you saying atheists
have a lot to learn from religion?’. I’m not dismissing the possibility that
either group might have something to learn from the other – at least not
wholesale. That said, the idea that that there is necessarily something the one can teach the other, or that the
direction of travel of knowledge is one-way, is definitely not a perspective
from which I write.
I’m not advocating spiritualised atheism. I’m not advocating
atheised faith. Nor am I making what I see as the ‘soft’ agnostic cop-out: that
either – or any – point of view is equally valid or parsimonious. As you may
have detected, I learn towards a ‘naturalistic’ point of view. I don’t
personally require a supernatural, transcendent element in my worldview to make me aware of the numinous, or to get me through the day. For me, those things come from other sources.
Insofar as I’m saying anything – and not just publicly
mulling things over - it’s that I find
it interesting that what I see as common motivations – giving meaning to the
human condition and investigsting its elements – lead to seemingly different
answers. The examination of those differences and similarities is what interests me, and how they trace similar, parallel or
completely tangential paths through different areas of human discourse – philosophy,
politics, literature and personalities. I’m also very interested in how individuals
process their faith or lack of it. ‘Atheist’ probably fails to capture the range of views held by the people that might shelter
beneath such a rubric, just as I doubt ‘Christian’ or ‘Muslim’ captures the myriad views of people involved in those
or other faiths.
There’s also some small measure of frustration with the way discussions about these topics revolve
endlessly around in the same hollow orbits we’re all familiar with. The
creationist demands you accept his ‘evidence’, accept the terms of his model.
Eager ‘skeptix’ faithfully battle on behalf of a science they don’t understand
either, doing a disfavour to the very thing they claim to be defending. I personally
think that scepticism, properly applied to all
comers, favours some form of the scientific method
as the best approach to understanding
the world on its own terms. I would place severe caveats on what it possible to
do with it. I don’t think any current canon of facts is definitive or ‘proven’
– they’re merely the best models we have at any given time and are never immune
from retraction or modification. But I still think it’s the best tool we have. On
the other hand - in terms of whatever
mystic or moral manner we may decide to relate to the world in - science can
inform, but it can’t make value judgements – whatever Sam Harris says. That’s not because of some failing in science, or because religions are
the only alternative, or even because science has no place turning its squinty
eye on religiously cherished ideals. It’s just that the method itself, at its
most effective, is valueless. I’ll leave you to decide how to interpret the last
word of the previous sentence.
I’m sick of having the same debate, particularly when there
are more interesting areas of disagreement and parity when we look in places
outside the usual dialogue. I’m hoping I can point to a few I think I’ve found.
I’m hoping to have a discussion too, so please - comment away, post to the
facebook group, email me and send in your guest posts.
Thanks for reading!
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| Beliefs, by xkcd. http://xkcd.com/154/ |
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