the curatorship of possibilities – ben's blog about urban ethos and connectedness
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NPR Published an innovative, interactive map collating five part series – Is This Your Brain on God?
The complete five articles in multimedia:
Another wonderfully contemplative essay from Paul Graham. He writes:
“We’d ask why we even suppose we have a “purpose” in life. We may be better adapted for some things than others; we may be happier doing things we’re adapted for; but why assume purpose?”
As Graham ponders the centrality of an individual it occurred to me that all religions are designed to navigate this very tension. In theory religions strive to infuse a person with sense of meaning and purpose to allow a person to dream about the hot-line he or she has to God and in practice to treat an individual as a disposable ant, to deny a person recognition of creativity, to deny the development of his or her individuality and to prepare the person for being disposed. And the very idea that you are important makes the process of being sacrificed and the murder of the “purposeful individuality” bearable and justified.
Reporting on religion for the major newspapers, two reporters had it with god. One is the LA Times reporter William Lobdell who published a book Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace. The other reporter it Stephen Bates who writes in the Guardian – How I became an agnostic:
“The thing that astounded me was the vituperation directed not at other faiths (a degree of Islamophobia came later) but at those who happened to disagree within the same faith communities.
You get evangelical publications denouncing “liberals” within the Church of England and claiming they are not really Christian, there are reactionary Catholic publications sneering similarly at modernists and attacking those who do not wish for a return of the Latin mass as somehow lesser beings. Attitudes which might otherwise seem quaint, dated or toxic are given free rein…”
(via The Reason Project)
Christopher Hitchens speaking in University of Toronto in 2006, a classic video. ►►►read more
