Sholto has some interesting things to say about the appeal of various religions in The “market appeal” of Ramadan.
I can very much imagine that the more demanding, more regular community-oriented religions will hold on to believers more readily. I wonder if this is why the “you must attend church on Sundays if you want your child to go to our school” approach ends up reawakening religious faith in many.
I also can see that atheism doesn’t specifically offer anything attractive. But why should it? Attempting and mostly failing to understand the universe is its own reward.
More seriously, I wonder how to respond to the “so what do you believe in” question when I explain my rejection of religion. I’m not sure I do believe in any particular movement, label or structure; rather I don’t care for or don’t see any compelling evidence for most belief options. Does that mean I need my own?
Yes, I’m happy to admit that my belief in, e.g., using science to understand the universe has a great leap of faith at its heart. I still prefer that my leap is grounded in the requirement to explain and predict, something I don’t see in many or any of the other options out there.
IME atheism/religion doesn’t have much to do with whether someone’s switched on spiritually, though it can be evidence of their willingness to switch on. It’s interesting that people assume outer practice of faith to be evidence of that area ‘working’ and non-practice to be ‘not working’: the thinking seems to be if it’s not labelled or external it doesn’t exist 🙂
Plus some spiritual people can become very unbalanced in their attempt to escape life through spirituality and because ‘being religious’ has such good press the silliness of that approach to life goes unrecognised.
🙂 glad you had a good dinner signor gourmand!
You are spot on on the “without a label it is nothing” attitude. The media finds it hard to create a fight without opposing labels, so I think it behoves us to avoid using them.
Equally, as you say, using a label like “religious” is too broad to describe in any useful fashion the range of activity and belief even among my friends.
Dinner was fab, now with pictures. I’m happy to be a gourmand: as food is a critical fuel for us which takes some time to ingest and digest, I’m privileged to be able to enjoy the process too.
In the case of Viajante, the food is visually as well as orally stimulating (there are some pictures on the orginal post now). All we need is something like a Heston Blumenthal iPod with relevant tracks (e.g. seagulls and gently sloshing waves with fish and chips) to complete the experience.
I am not a fan of the media by a very long way: to read it you’d think we were all everyman sharing the same experience and life can be sorted out in two soundbite columns by yet another white educated middle class Londoner looking for agreement in conformity 🙂 – quite aside from the end-of-the-bell-curve events that get related on a daily basis, distorting out subconscious thinking towards fear and disaster as ‘normal’ and creating a culture of anxiety.
These days we all seem to be glib know-it-alls from our wide reading: unfortunately there can be a fairly large cost to our ability to assess the truth of our own personal experience and operate from our own instincts.
Yup it’s a rant, right now I find it hard to believe that people pay for this – clearing it out of me has really put me back in touch with myself. I expect I’ll stop being cross about it at some point :p
Your dinner really does sound good though! :)))
I think our thirties (and forties so far) are full of shouting at the radio and saying “there’s nothing worth reading in the papers”. Maybe we have stopped being anyone’s target market, and are therefore not served effectively.
I think we probably should continue to be angry about sloppy journalism, including our personal version of it.
I could rant for days about the culture of anxiety. My personal anecdata: I feel genuinely as if I shouldn’t pause to watch kids playing in school playgrounds as I pass by, because people would automatically think I was dodgy.
Silly answer; don’t wear the raincoat, then, it never suited you.
Sober answer: pause and look. Educate people in what a decent man’s face looks like when he’s pausing to enjoy the sight of children in a playground. The more anxiety culture we feed through fear or hesitation in being good, the worse it gets.
Snigger.
And while thinking soberly, I realised what I’d say if challenged: I am fascinated to see how my godchildren and (extended) nieces and nephews will turn out.