Atheism 2.0

Alain de Botton doesn't believe in supernatural beings, but suggests that non-believers should change the way they think about religions and their followers. Through their religions, followers are seeking many of the sorts of things the secularists seek, or should seek. Many people enjoy Christmas carols, old churches and the ritualistic and community aspects of religions, but don't believe in any sorts of fairies. Until now, they were forced to live in "a spiritual wasteland" in order to partake of the parts of religion that they enjoy. In this TED talk, De Botton suggests that atheism should be about sorting through religion and picking up the things that are worthwhile and ignoring the rest. Secularists intend to replace scripture with culture, but higher institutes of society, including institutes of learning see humans as rational adults needing only information and data rather than guidance and didactic learning. We do need guidance, though, and this is best delivered through some sort of scheduled and somewhat repetitive sermons rather than mere lectures (which deliver merely data and information). We all need ritual, which can be a simple as scheduling that we look at the moon on a regular basis, to remind ourselves that we are small in a vast universe. In a religion, the ideas are delivered through a particular type of rhythmic talking, and physical actions and movements. Religions also recognize the importance in art. The modern world, through our system of museums and schools, puts art in a hermetic bubble and tries to explain art rather than allowing it to become a visceral encounter. Religion allows art to be didactic. In the modern world, artists tend to be isolated individuals, not collaborating their efforts through an organization. He adds that religions are big well-monied machines that can encourage this sort of collaboration--the secular world should consider similar collaborations for spreading ideas of higher meaning. He adds that there need not be any particular leaders for this effort--he offers that perhaps it can be done though a wiki. Religion offers powerful communal advantages, even for those who don't believe any of religious dogma. Religion offers a highly effective mechanism for spreading ideas. Atheism 2.0 can use these techniques to cultivate the idea that the world is about much more than any particular person.

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What happened on July 24, 2010?

I recently watched "Life in a Day," a montage consisting of video clips submitted by people from all over the world through YouTube.   It's a unique and fascinating video that you can view here: Here's a brief description from Wikipedia:

Life in a Day is a crowdsourced documentary film comprising an arranged series of video clips selected from 80,000 clips submitted to the YouTube video sharing website, the clips showing respective occurrences from around the world on a single day, July 24, 2010. The film is 94 minutes 57 seconds long and includes scenes selected from 4,500 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions from 192 nations.
As I watched the many clips featuring so many people, it first occurred to me how "different" we are from each other.  As the video continued, though, what became overwhelming is, despite the superficial differences, we are all substantially and deeply similar, regardless of where we live and regardless how we dress and what we eat. In other words, the powerful undercurrent of "Life in a Day" is the lesson taught by Donald Brown, that human animals are incredibly similar to each other. And see here. Brown once asked, “The world’s cultures may be diverse, but diverse compared to what?”

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Ralph Nader criticizes Obama’s lawless militarism

On Democracy Now, Ralph Nader criticized President Obama's stark militarism:

Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says Obama’s criticism of income inequality and Wall Street excess fail to live up to his record in office. "[Obama] says one thing and does another," Nader says. "Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail." On foreign policy, Nader says, "I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. [Obama] was very committed to projecting the American empire, in Obama terms."
Nader argues that Iraq was not a victory (as Obama claimed), given that we have allowed one million Iraqis to die and essentially destroyed the country. He has sent American soldiers on "lawless militarism" and then draped them as though they were Iwo Jima heroes. Nader calls Obama a "political coward," because he was unwilling to even mention the Occupy movement, the major citizen movement of our time. Obama cannot utter the word "poverty," but refers only to the "middle class," which is shrinking into poverty. Nader asserts that Obama's claims that he will prosecute financial fraud are vapid, given that he hasn't done anything significant in this area for years, and he hasn't pushed for the necessary financing to staff a meaningful financial crimes unit.

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Christianity and communism

What do Christian scripture and Communism have in common? At Daylight Atheism, Adam Lee explains:

The Bible goes so far as to say that the first community of Christians weren't just socialists, but communists:

"And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need."

—Acts 2:44-45

By some accounts, this verse is what inspired Karl Marx's dictum, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Irony of ironies: Communism began in the pages of the Bible!
The above is an excerpt from a post titled "Why We Should Tax the Churches," and Lee develops this theme in detail, dovetailing with the modern-day struggle between the 1% and the 99%. He isn't shy about bluntly stating why:
Even when it begins among the poor and disenfranchised, religion almost always ends up being co-opted by the wealthy and powerful and used as a convenient excuse to justify inequality.

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3 Idiots: “Aal Izz Well”

This may not be the perfect forum for a review, but the film "3 Idiots" is about education versus training, science versus engineering, fear versus hubris (and the happy medium), life and death, love and despair, laughter and tears. And it has colorful Bollywood dance numbers, too! I rented it on a whim, as it was billed as a movie about too-smart engineering students versus the educational system. I was puzzled when it began with English subtitles during the (Indian accented) English dialog. I remembered a 1990's PBS/BBC series on the English language, when some of the impenetrable-to-me accents of the U.K. had no subtitles, but the perfectly intelligible-to-me Cajun and Ebonic dialects did. But as the blend of Hindi and English became apparent, I saw the need. I loved this movie. Once one gets into the esthetic swing of Bollywood productions, it makes perfect sense when serious issues become silly dance numbers, and all characters are played as borderline caricatures. One can observe the essential cultural differences between our familiar American dilute-Christian one-life-to-live and anyone-can-become-president attitude and the Indian institutionalized attitude that reincarnation is the only way to improve your lot except through extraordinary means. Why I think this is appropriate to this forum is the take on education. The protagonist has a scientific mindset that is often at odds with engineering philosophy and even more with institutionalized education. The system of teaching to the test is questioned, as is the principle of square pegs hammered into round holes. Vocation versus avocation is central to this, and expounded toward the end. The 3 Idiots - Official Trailer has embedding disabled, but preview is fun even without subtitles. You get the idea of how English and Hindi have merged in their culture. I defy you to watch it and not have the songs "All izz well" and/or "Zoobi Doobi" stuck in your heads.

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