Richard Dawkins on Militant Athiesm

Richard Dawkins — Militant Atheism’s primary argument is that religious fundamentalism has become a major justification for war and inequality. But because it is ‘faith-based’ it is considered to be inarguable — and even unquestionable, even though it has no grounding in reason or fact. RD points out that religion, being faith-based rather than fact-based, sets itself at odds with science and denies physical realities. He is promoting ‘militant atheism’ to confront militant religiousity. He challenges people to publicly ‘come-out’ as atheists and support science, fact and the complexity of the world.

My interpretation of our Richard Dawkins discussion:

Some of us felt there is value in RD’s strident, militant approach because taking a softer line has resulted in the bulldozing of reason and blind faith leading to war and planetary degradation. In contrast, some felt that all people should be able to express their faith as they like. Those leaning more towards RD’s perspective felt that that approach makes assumption that those with ‘faith’ will play fair and allow others their own freedom of different religiosity or spiritualism. RD points out that faith-based people are not playing fair by requiring their leaders to also be ‘faith-based’, which denies science, fact and what might be called truth.

We argued whether RD’s extreme approach is an attempt to ‘correct’ the centre point of the argument. He believes (and supports with reasonable evidence) that he debate is well and truly skewed towards the faith-based end of the spectrum and that reasonable, fact-based points of view are portrayed as fringe by the faith-based.

Our conversation roamed over the people in our lives who are either activity faith-based or are actively non-faith-based. Some of us agreed that both extremes become dogmatic and either inarguable from the outset, or if debate takes place it will reach of a point of impasse. We acknowledged that religion and spirituality is something that is not widely discussed from a personal perspective, possibly (in part) because of this.

Semantics is an important part of this topic. One controversial point is the use of the terms God, god, atheist and agnostic. We looked these terms up in the (highly recommended) New Zealand Oxford Dictionary 2005. This dictionary was specific that ‘God’ is based around monotheist religions and ‘god’ refers to a superhuman being that has power over nature and events. Even so, some people have strong attachment to the term. Others are more comfortable with spirituality. We agreed that it is essential to clearly define words so people can begin to communicate. We also acknowledged that an oratory is more than the sum of the meaning of each word and that the combination of words and context (the space between) is where meaning lies.

We don’t think any of us considers ourselves non-spiritual but several of us say they don’t believe in god or God as defined in the dictionary. However, no one seemed to be comfortable to take on RD’s next step and saying they are atheist, or at least not a militant atheist. Atheism is a very confrontational term and has a sense of anti-social or at least anti-cultural bias to it. One has to wonder if this the flip-side or shadow of the cultural pervasiveness of faith-based God believers?

Someone pointed out how, as humans were developing around 2000 years ago, a number of ‘prophets’ emerged, all saying essentially the same thing: “treat other people like you would like them to treat you.” This was a significant departure from the brutality of the previous tenet that the strong survive and subjugate the weaker. Today’s big religions are built around these prophets. We also noted that religions are a product of their culture and those that promote them. It is possible that they lose their relevance, or become dangerous, if they remain dogmatic and unwilling or unable to change as culture changes.

Tonight's song "Kuna Kunungi" from Hukwe Zawose & Michael Brook is from the CD Assembly

Freecycle

I have started a Freecycle group in New Plymouth as one of my ChangeMaker projects. Here's what it is all about:

The New Plymouth Freecycle™ group is open to all who want to "recycle" that special something rather than throw it away. Whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano or an old door, feel free to post it. Or maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself! Nonprofit groups are also welcome to participate too!

One main rule: everything posted must be free. This group is part of The Freecycle Network, a nonprofit organization and a movement of people interested in keeping good stuff out of landfills. Check out freecycle.org for other cities and info on the movement!

The Freecycle Network has just topped a membership of 4 million in the 4,140 local groups and over 75 countries! This now means that we are enabling over 400 tons a day to be kept out of landfills.

Here's a link to a Freecycle article including a video featuring creator Deron Beal on Yahoonews

Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia

We gathered in our overcoats. There was snow on the mountain for the first time this winter.

Inspirations were excited science pupils, Wellington aiming for carbon-neutral, herons spotted at Kawaroa, wiser earth.org...Antona played us John Martyn's "He's got all the Whiskey" and "Excuse me Mister".

We watched Jimmy Wales and talked about the radical aspects of an encyclopedia for everyone on earth and compared it to the big vision of William McDonough "for all the children, of all the species for all time."

We attempted to comprehend the implications of "open-sourcing" and the wonder of having passionate voluntary contributers that create the entries "by a thousand tweaks." We were impressed that the veracity of wikipedia compared to traditional academic written encyclopedias which are so sonn out of date and so dependant on the views and vagaries of an individual writer compared to the collective wisdom of wikipedia. We wondered about the implications of copyright and how people might earn a living and make such enormous contribution. Only one wikipedia worker is paid. We thought about the level of commitment and the integrity it evokes when effort is collective and voluntary.

We revisisted "Don't reform unless you can reform with equity. Innovation is not reform" and we thought about how the contributors require that entries be reformed only if value is added and neutrality protected. We thought about these contributers as stewards of neutrality and the commons of wikipedia.

We laughed about Jimmy Wales retaining a monarchist position over a voluntary kingdom of wikipedia stewards in order to protect their creation from the attacks of democracy in the form of bloc voting by advocacy groups from the left or the right. What was his expression about this? We finished with a check out round and another bit of John Martyn.

You can visit John Martyn's website here
Amazon stocks copies of The Church with one Bell

Lease 48 hour film

Lease is the winner of this year's 48 Film competition. I'm just amazed at the creativity and inspiration from this group of Aucklanders.

Sue

5-10-5-10 Changemaking

Faure's Requiem was played. We talked about what had inspired us.

We looked at a model of how your 5-10-5-10 activity could be mapped. This led to thinking together about joining up the resources of time and money with your intention rather than seeing them as discrete categories. We talked about advocacy groups or social entrepreneur groups finding ways to be self-funding so they were sustainable without external backing. Some of us are still defining our projects. Others are well on the way with many more than 10 things to do on their lists. We identified working with joyfulness as a key.

I have started to get that when you are trying to make systemic change you need to be much more thoughtful about where the places you act on are and to really think through the consequences of interventions you make, to use your imagination to do this. That building relationships is a key part of it.

We talked for about three quarters of an hour on 5-10-5-10 and then we reviewed the new format with Ted's talks. There was a general agreement that the talks were going really well, that there was a high committment to and enjoyment of the evenings and the conversations.

We wondered together if we could deepen the experience of dialogue by listening better, by "suspending our preferences as well as our judgements" and by bringing an alive presence of sensation, feeling and mind to the conversation. We also decided it was important not to try and get rules for ourselves or get it right, that the eruption of frustration or mindless fizzing of first thoughts or someone taking the conversation in a new and unexpected direction was all welcome. Some people fizz, some people pop. It's all good!

We discussed the initiative of two members to create a blog that could be a way that our experience was captured for ourselves and perhaps as an example of what can happen for other Changemaker groups. We remembered the three legs of Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline: personal mastery, systemic thinking, and dialogue? One group member has already written a page for the national website on systemic thinking and others are planned on learning friendships, personal mastery. Changemakers as a learning community was suggested as a topic. One of us suggested that viewing the Ted talk on Monday sometime had helped her take in the content.
We finished with another part of Faure's Requiem.

You can find Favre's Miserere on Amazon and also on his website www.pierrefavre.ch

Fundraising for Billy - National Co-ordinator

Hi there

I have put the automatic payment details on the national website at www.changemakers.org.nz for our fundraising for a National Co-ordinator for the 5-10-5-10 Development Group.

As you know, we have invited Billy Matheson to take up the challenge.

We need about 100 people putting in $50 a month to reach our target of funding this position on a sustainable basis.

... sounds like something that can be fitted in to your 5% ??

The Automatic Payment Form can be downloaded from here.