Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the second Spirituali-Tea of the semester. The topic is "Meditation and Mindfulness"; as I said previously, I plan to be there as a fly on the wall-- a silent, 260-pound fly.
Michael Shermer, the founder of Skeptic Magazine, is speaking on Whitman College campus on Wednesday evening at 7PM. The posters I've seen for the event offer no phone number to call, nor any indication of whether admission will be free, so I'm hoping to crash the party.
The topic of the lecture: "Why People Believe Weird Things." This is apparently the title of a book he wrote, as well.
Religious folks should pay attention! Despite my interest in religion, my generally pluralistic attitude toward religious beliefs, and an inkling that the scientific worldview doesn't quite cover all the bases (though I'd say I'm largely a physicalist), I do think Carl Sagan was right to argue that religions contain a great deal of bamboozlement (read his wonderful The Demon-Haunted World). Anyone who professes to be religious has an obligation, in my opinion, not to suppress their critical, skeptical faculties in the name of faith or obedience or revelation. This may put me on shaky ground with fellow religionists, but as someone who appreciates the commonsense nature of Zen and often has little patience with magical thinking, I feel it has to be said.
Heh... I may have lost most of my readership right there, but for those who remain, I do plan to sneak my voice recorder into the proceedings. I'm unsure of the legalities involved in transcribing Shermer's speech and putting it on the blog, but we'll eat that bridge when we come to it.
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Marathon
12 years ago
1 comment:
I don't know about the rest of your readers, but I think you have a good point. I believe in faith, but I don't believe in blind faith.
I also think that Galileo was on to something when he said: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
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