Le Libérer
22nd January 2012, 10:25
Religions are cultures of repetition. They circle the great truths again and again and again. We associate repetition with boredom. "Give us the new," we're always saying. "The new is better than the old."
This is just one tactic that has worked for the church and other religious organizations.
Quoting Alain De Botton
The other things that religions do is to arrange time. All the major religions give us calendars. What is a calendar? A calendar is a way of making sure that across the year you will bump into certain very important ideas. In the Catholic chronology, Catholic calendar, at the end of March you will think about St. Jerome and his qualities of humility and goodness and his generosity to the poor. You won't do that by accident; you will do that because you are guided to do that. Now we don't think that way. In the secular world we think, "If an idea is important, I'll bump into it. I'll just come across it." Nonsense, says the religious world view. Religious view says we need calendars, we need to structure time, we need to synchronize encounters. This comes across also in the way in which religions set up rituals around important feelings.
What prompted my posting this here was the ted talk done by de Bottom.
Alain de Botton suggests a "religion for atheists" -- call it Atheism 2.0 -- that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.
While I an vehemently opposed to thinking of atheism as a religion, secularism does not apply the same engrained tactics / brainwashing techniques as religion does.
Does secularism and atheist bodies want to make that jump into evangelizing the world anyway? What aspects of religion should atheists adopt?
Source
2Oe6HUgrRlQ
This is just one tactic that has worked for the church and other religious organizations.
Quoting Alain De Botton
The other things that religions do is to arrange time. All the major religions give us calendars. What is a calendar? A calendar is a way of making sure that across the year you will bump into certain very important ideas. In the Catholic chronology, Catholic calendar, at the end of March you will think about St. Jerome and his qualities of humility and goodness and his generosity to the poor. You won't do that by accident; you will do that because you are guided to do that. Now we don't think that way. In the secular world we think, "If an idea is important, I'll bump into it. I'll just come across it." Nonsense, says the religious world view. Religious view says we need calendars, we need to structure time, we need to synchronize encounters. This comes across also in the way in which religions set up rituals around important feelings.
What prompted my posting this here was the ted talk done by de Bottom.
Alain de Botton suggests a "religion for atheists" -- call it Atheism 2.0 -- that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.
While I an vehemently opposed to thinking of atheism as a religion, secularism does not apply the same engrained tactics / brainwashing techniques as religion does.
Does secularism and atheist bodies want to make that jump into evangelizing the world anyway? What aspects of religion should atheists adopt?
Source
2Oe6HUgrRlQ