Lectures 1-2
Feringer notes
Last edited: 11-98
Contents
Lecture – 1
1.The basic problem raised in this essay is; “How do we find unity in our lives? “…which is after all the question of our God.” (p.1)
2.The method of doing this is to speak the truth about important things to everyone. But this cannot be done to everyone in the same language. Peoples of different cultures, different generations, different socio-economic classes must each be told the same truth, but in a different way.
3.”The Gospel is that which can reach all people in the same language. It’s unique.” (p.3) The Bible is a polyglot, it says the same thing in many languages.
4.All living knowledge, knowledge of concern between people, must be regenerated (spoken of differently) each day and in each new situation. Even the same issue will be spoken of differently in different situations.
5.Science, or knowledge about dead things, is different. Anything that can be spoken about in the same way to different people at different times, is dead knowledge. THAT IS WHAT ATHEISM IS, JUST SCIENCE! Science is logic and analysis is dead knowledge, representing the remnants of experience.
6.This parochial view, that we can say the same thing the same way to all people, is what constantly separates people. Facts given out of context are not understandable because human events must be narrated to be understandable. Lack of communication may lead to our destruction.
7.Atheism is an attempt to treat God as a thing. Natural science treats the world (including people) as things (objects to be observed).
8.We can only understand experiences when we participated in them; to understand love we must love. And we cannot know the things we have learned, all the time; we must re-learn them, just as with religion. One cannot know God all the time, only at certain times.
In general this essay is more about the nature of religion than specifically about atheism; religion is the value for which we sacrifice, and atheism is a religion in that it is a scientific way of looking at that events “from the outside.” And this is anti-life or anti-living, because one cannot understand human experience without participating in its processes.
Fashions of Atheism – 1968 – Review
This essay is more about the nature of religion than specifically about atheism. Religion is the value that addresses living social processes, and atheism is a religion that addresses non-social events ( from the “outside”). Atheism is thus anti human life because one cannot understand human experience without participating in its processes.