Secular Coalitions
Unless we want an expansion of Dubya's version of Vietnam, Latin America* and the American Genocide win country, I really think it's gonna take theists as part of this group. I know there are plenty of people who think gods likely but support the Secular Coalition of America's legal goals.
Unitarians as a group always seem as if they're open to the idea that there is no creator per se. hehmm... Kinda like I am to an anthropomorphic One. Dubiously.
The Brights email came today as well. They keep me thinking and I appreciate their Vision statement.
I stepped out on the back porch, in Cleveland with a "warm front" of 45 degrees sitting on us, and saw/felt a bird, with about a six or seven inch wingspan, fly directly towards me. About 4 feet away from my face, it swerved on a beautifully tight arc to my right. I felt the breeze of his passage on my skin.
Dude was catching the wind. Was doing' what it wanted with it, without requiring one single tool it wasn't born ith.
Then another flew by, on a line, 3 feet in front of me at eye level. It stopped on a dime on a thin branch and looked around.
That's magic. The fact that it's natural doesn't diminish how one feels as it occurs.
Our Bronze Age ancestors, humans living around the beginning of artifactually recorded History, were brilliant people. The very name their metal forging creations earned their time, can magically impose images of swords and blood and winters which don't seem to end for whole generations.
But also of carnivals, and games of chance and skill, and weddings, and funerals. Families are staying in touch with each other, even as they spread ever farther out, because humans had begun settling down in environmental husbandries. They took off intellectually after hundreds of thousands of years through which their ancestors built them up soundly enough, through all that time experiencing, experimenting, dreaming, realizing, experimenting, hypothesizing, experimenting, experimenting, experimenting ..
Until our bodies of evidence have led to so many more things making the same, observable, empirical sense to everyone, individually and categorically. To be constantly updated when reality demonstrates the need and we discover yet something more!
If you want a philosophical proof of evolution, the evolution of the Scientific Method is inclusive of the evolution of intellectual belief systems of homo sapiens. Theism is as predictable as intelligence, as likely as religion or engineering or atheism. And not a one of them is guaranteed, unless given enough time.
If we just keep remembering and learning how important human intelligence is to this entire planet, with or without Gods, we may actually survive the brutality we're still using against our own kind, both personally and on a planetary level.
* This clash of cultures has continuingly healthy roots to this day, as well.
Unitarians as a group always seem as if they're open to the idea that there is no creator per se. hehmm... Kinda like I am to an anthropomorphic One. Dubiously.
The Brights email came today as well. They keep me thinking and I appreciate their Vision statement.
Persons who have a naturalistic worldview should not be culturally stifled or civically marginalized due to society’s extensive supernaturalism. Rather, they ought to be accepted as fellow citizens and full participants in the cultural and political landscape.It's funny how belief can still feel like it makes some kind of sense.
I stepped out on the back porch, in Cleveland with a "warm front" of 45 degrees sitting on us, and saw/felt a bird, with about a six or seven inch wingspan, fly directly towards me. About 4 feet away from my face, it swerved on a beautifully tight arc to my right. I felt the breeze of his passage on my skin.
Dude was catching the wind. Was doing' what it wanted with it, without requiring one single tool it wasn't born ith.
Then another flew by, on a line, 3 feet in front of me at eye level. It stopped on a dime on a thin branch and looked around.
That's magic. The fact that it's natural doesn't diminish how one feels as it occurs.
Our Bronze Age ancestors, humans living around the beginning of artifactually recorded History, were brilliant people. The very name their metal forging creations earned their time, can magically impose images of swords and blood and winters which don't seem to end for whole generations.
But also of carnivals, and games of chance and skill, and weddings, and funerals. Families are staying in touch with each other, even as they spread ever farther out, because humans had begun settling down in environmental husbandries. They took off intellectually after hundreds of thousands of years through which their ancestors built them up soundly enough, through all that time experiencing, experimenting, dreaming, realizing, experimenting, hypothesizing, experimenting, experimenting, experimenting ..
Until our bodies of evidence have led to so many more things making the same, observable, empirical sense to everyone, individually and categorically. To be constantly updated when reality demonstrates the need and we discover yet something more!
If you want a philosophical proof of evolution, the evolution of the Scientific Method is inclusive of the evolution of intellectual belief systems of homo sapiens. Theism is as predictable as intelligence, as likely as religion or engineering or atheism. And not a one of them is guaranteed, unless given enough time.
If we just keep remembering and learning how important human intelligence is to this entire planet, with or without Gods, we may actually survive the brutality we're still using against our own kind, both personally and on a planetary level.
* This clash of cultures has continuingly healthy roots to this day, as well.
If we just keep remembering and learning how important human intelligence is to this entire planet, with or without Gods, we may actually survive the brutality we're still using against our own kind, both personally and on a planetary level.
ReplyDeleteFor that to happen, we need to get over the widespread belief in our "right" (or even "duty") to "exercise dominion" over other Earth lifeforms. Although that idea is inherently religious, it's expressed in many ways that aren't connected with any religious entity, esp. in economic areas.
Instead of that notion, I like to think of humans as potential trailblazers for other Earthlings -- we're the first to evolve sentience, but it's our responsibility to ensure we aren't the last. To do so, we need to chart a path through the pitfalls of being first to discover various lethal things & practices, largely by consciously replacing our innate short-term, self- and relative-focused attitudes with very long-term (multi-generational)planning that only humans are currently capable of.
to paraphrase Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, I'd much rather our species be remembered by later intelligences as a people that solved problems and thereby gave other life a chance than as one that said "fuck you" to the universe.
.. we're the first to evolve sentience, but it's our responsibility to ensure we aren't the last.
ReplyDeleteThat's indeed what ensured survival of our species depends on now. I don't know that a whole lot of people want that goal, though.
Democracy is still evolving too, eh.
This is my deal:
ReplyDeleteWhere do people draw the line? Like this:
Theist: Homeopathy/psychics/Alien Abductions etc. are bullshit. But GAWD'S REAL!
So you don't believe in those other things because there's no proof, but suspend you rationality when it comes to religion?
Those people in my view are very intellectually dishonest...especially to themselves.