Rod Dreher shared recently a letter from, apparently, an orthodox, conservative, episcopal priest explaining why he was remaining in that denomination despite all of its problems. It’s an interesting and encouraging read if you care about that sort of thing. At the end of the letter the author said,
The image of an atheist that is painted on the walls of our brains might still be one of the Dawkins-et-al four horsemen era. Jordan Peterson never tires of wondering about the success of his Biblical lectures. Jonathan Pageau repeatedly comments on how many atheists are watching his videos (he also goes into interesting and very cicilized discussions with them). Douglas Murray and Stephen Asma, who both consider themselves agnostics, have written about the importance of religion. Raymond Unger (another German author; my translation, I might be making up words as well...) speaks of two rival mind-sets:
1. There is a God, and it is not me.
2. There is no God, but if there is one it might as well be me.
The distinction between atheists and religious people seems to be finished with the comma, but I consider the second halves of the sentences to be essential. Only be agreeing that there is something above us all (as an atheist you might consider this a useful, even indispensable, illusion) we can remain human beings, and treat others as such.
A note on the obsession with health theme. Kevin Roche, who has a website called Healthy Skeptic and has criticized most lockdown policies, just wrote up some numbers on the financial status of the U.S. heath care industry: https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/12/19/how-about-some-health-care-for-a-changeup/
Two quotes: "We are spending almost 20% of our GDP on health care."
"The cost of administering both government and private health care went up greatly in 2020, and private insurers made a lot of money. "
The image of an atheist that is painted on the walls of our brains might still be one of the Dawkins-et-al four horsemen era. Jordan Peterson never tires of wondering about the success of his Biblical lectures. Jonathan Pageau repeatedly comments on how many atheists are watching his videos (he also goes into interesting and very cicilized discussions with them). Douglas Murray and Stephen Asma, who both consider themselves agnostics, have written about the importance of religion. Raymond Unger (another German author; my translation, I might be making up words as well...) speaks of two rival mind-sets:
1. There is a God, and it is not me.
2. There is no God, but if there is one it might as well be me.
The distinction between atheists and religious people seems to be finished with the comma, but I consider the second halves of the sentences to be essential. Only be agreeing that there is something above us all (as an atheist you might consider this a useful, even indispensable, illusion) we can remain human beings, and treat others as such.
Not palliative- a thinker escaped from the hive:
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-masking-of-america/