Faith, any faith
Michael Binyon in The Times slobbers over Charles for being interested in lots of religions.
[N]o monarch since the Stuarts has taken an intellectual interest in religion, and none has devoted time and respect to other faiths. The Prince, however, counts bishops and moral philosophers, rabbis, priests and Islamic scholars among those whom he regularly meets and with whom he discusses the spiritual dimensions of life in Britain today.
Find the odd one out. Got it in one. What are ‘moral philosophers’ doing in that mob? Does this beezer think moral philosophy is a ‘faith’?
For him, the concept of faith — any faith — is important in the crusade against the rising tide of secular materialism and scientific reductionism, both of which he detests.
Ah, does he. He prefers the tyrannical rule of an unreachable unaccountable unknowable god, does he. Well that makes sense in a way, of course, given that he too represents a silly anachronistic semi-magical form of government.
All this inter-faith dialogue and respect is a little puzzling to me as a faithless outsider. Do religous practitioners no longer believe thou shalt have no other other god?
Is this development an encouraging sign of certainty dying amongst believers, a discouraging sign that people are willing to welcome warm fuzzy beliefs they consider similar but false rather than abandon their whole metaphysical apparatus for a more sceptical and empirical belief, or something entirely different?
Let’s hope the charlie you refer to in this post does not enthuse about the faith from Nigeria you refer to in the next post.
I’ve always found these interfaith thingies to have a core of either warm, meaningless fuzziness, or a framework for discussion about how they’ll impose their “shared values” on the rest of us. Both kinds are usually dressed up in lots of warm fuzzy words, and you have to look at the players to figure out the true purpose.
When the fundies of any of the three “Great” monotheisms get together, duck. They, especially, tend to want to make arrangements that force the rest of us to do what’s good for us (TM), whether we want it or not.
Believing things is good as long as they’re not actually true.
Sorry, the first sentence is supposed to end with the word ‘episode’.
It’s fascinating how all the religious types are starting to band together in the face of secularism. 50 years ago Catholics and Protestants were tearing into each other over obscure theological points, now it seems like they’re more worried about atheists.
Clearly we’re doing something right.
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neuroskeptic.blogspot.com
Sadly, a lot of people do think of morality as something airy and ethereal and quasi-religious in nature. Not in their practical daily lives, where they take morality for granted, but in theory. I’ve even heard evangelical Christians tell me that they only believe in morals because they believe in God.
This is why I dislike the subspecies of atheist that scorns philosophers of all types and the humanities in general. (Not that this tendency is either endemic to or limited to atheists, mind.) One of the things I admire most about Richard Dawkins is, while he is a proponent of science (and sometimes makes claims on behalf of science I don’t agree with), he is also a staunch advocate for the value of philosophy and art and literature. Without such things we have no hope of building any secular morality.
He’s an idiot.