You already engage with caring organisations - why us as well?

You are a busy person, with many responsibilities, not least of which is to your own well-being.  In amongst those responsibilities you swing between being energized by doing things for the world and being worn out by what you try to do, by what can't be fixed.  In passing, you have just caught a glimpse of Unitarian thinking and can see it might be a more modern way of being "religious" than  the old institutions - which have never captured your attention.  But whatever, your agenda is full, and there isn't enough time to investigate anything more.

But here's why - as well as supporting the activist organisations you already support - you need to think about coming along with us, on our hunt for soul and soulful living:

The 3 July lecture looking at atheism and Christianity

getting ready for the lecture

We enjoyed presenting a lecture for the people of Ringwood and district on 3 July.  It was given with the support of the Montgomery Trust, a charity which provides speakers of national repute on topics relating to Christianity.  Our speaker for the evening was Michael Poole, author of a number of different books dealing with his research area of the interplay between science and religion, and who is Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King’s College, London.

 

Michael made reference to what is sometimes known as “New Atheism”, explaining that he had had academic correspondence and meetings with Prof Richard Dawkins.  He was saddened by the fact that the language employed in the media and in books by certain commentators has become more strident and pejorative than in past times; otherwise he argued that there is nothing new about the arguments for atheism that are proving so popular with the public today.

 

What he then spent his talk doing, was trying to get us thinking more exactly about what we understood to be the relationship between atheism and a religious view.

 

Michael introduced a number of definitions and logical arguments to show us how we mix up ideas and categories of thought.  He showed that there are usually many different narratives about why any circumstance should be the way it is, and these different narratives do not trump, invalidate or generate conflict between each other.  For instance, it can be explained why a light is on in a room in two ways: (a) because someone wanted it to be on and (b) because the electrons in the electrical supply are flowing through the light bulb.  Similarly, two friends run across each other in the street – it turns out that one person was seeking to make the meeting happen, whilst the other had no thought of it but is always there at that time during the week.  One experienced it as random, but is only able to say this through ignorance of the hidden motive of the other.

 

Science and religion are different narratives about how the world works and it is a mistake to think that one has to be explained in terms of the other.  Michael particularly rejected the model of “God in the gaps”, in which people imagine that contemporary science can only describe the universe so far and then everything that science has not so far described can be put down to God.  He argued that, instead, to sort out what is in the gaps people have to become better scientists – rather than turn God into a leftover bit of the scientific model.

 

He suggested that the words “faith” and “belief” are identical in meaning and they both mean “non-evidenced trust”, that is to say a trust you have of, or in, something despite having no evidence on which to base your trust.  Talking about evidence, Michael showed us that jurisprudence can be used as a useful model for belief.  In court cases, evidence can either be direct, such as the eye-witness accounts, or indirect, where inferences can be drawn from scientific measurements.  In jurisprudence also there is the idea of the “weight” of evidence, where we accept the idea that an accumulation of small pieces of evidence can build up to provide substantial evidence on which we convict.  Science also operates like this.  Yet people are very willing to reject a religious view of life, built upon direct experience or revelation, or indirect evidence from others, and supported by a great body of personal experience over many centuries.

 

In amongst much more that Michael spoke about, we heard that there are problems with some very commonly accepted comments heard today.  “There is no absolute truth” – if this statement is deemed false then it may be ignored, whereas if deemed to be true then it destroys itself (because it says that 'the truth needed for it to be said' does not exist).  Michael also showed that changes in language cause us problems.  “Truth” used to mean a correspondence between a thing and a statement about a thing – something we understand better when we hear phrases similar to “she was being true to herself.”  However, in current usage, “truth” often is used as a synonym for the word “acceptable”.  So: “what is true for you is not true for me” would be more accurately phrased as “what is acceptable to you is not acceptable to me.” Similarly, “to prove something” used to mean “to test or probe something,” whereas now we tend to use it where we might better say “to place this matter beyond any possible doubt.”

 

There was a lively questions session after the talk and of course no overall agreement was found between participants.  But it was agreed that the evening had been enjoyable and stimulating and worth the effort of coming along to.  We look forward to perhaps putting on a similar style of event in Ringwood next year.

May 2014 meeting

Our May meeting took place at the very start of Christian Aid Week.  The two readings that were chosen reflected a theme that is common to both ancient religion and modern science – the interdependency of humankind and the survival need to give mutual aid.  The first reading was from Isaiah 58 and the second was derived from material available on the world wide web on the influence of Peter Kropotkin.  Despite considerable difference in language of the two readings, both perspectives asserted it to be a truth that health, well-being, and the satisfaction of a meaningful place in the world are bound up in helping each other and seeking justice through breaking down of oppression and social barriers.

We looked forward, to working with other churches in Ringwood in the coming week, as part of the Christian Aid Week campaign to deal with the impact and aftermath of war in South Sudan and Colombia.  And also, to giving thanks in joint worship on 18 May in Poulner Baptist Chapel.

The invitation was extended to all the participants to choose readings for future meetings.  We also agreed that we now have a working core to our congregation and discussed our next initiative for growth, which is likely to take a different, drop-in format, early on Saturday mornings.