Whatever the struggles, failures and compromises in Fallada’s personal life, and even in the circumstances of his writing this book, `Alone in Berlin’ poses the huge moral question of the value and virtue of the pursuit of idealistic conviction in… Read more ›
T C Boyle’s writing is utterly engaging. He draws his characters deeply, vividly, and empathetically. You get to know them. Their very personal life stories are set in the context of major cosmic issues – the hostility of nature intertwined… Read more ›
Emmanuel Carrère’s self portrait is unflattering. The mélange of TV journalism into the release of Hungarian war veteran András Toma from incarceration in the sad lost Russian town Kotelnitch where he has suffered long term abuse, Carrère’s prima donna obsession… Read more ›
José Saramago details the grinding abuse of power, the economic injustice, the destruction of human hope and potential, all inherent in feudalism as it seeks refuge from modernity by morphing into fascism in rural 20th century Portugal. The account is… Read more ›
André Degorce is a child of the French Enlightenment. He studied advanced mathematics. He is aware of the deeper moral insights and meanings of Christian religion. But an unrelenting sequence of brutalisation starting in the Gestapo station in Besancon, then… Read more ›
Lieutenant Anton Hofmiller suffers from a disastrous conjunction of naivety and delicate conscience. He is buffeted by events, by inner turmoil, by familiar practices, by worries of what others may think of him, by advice from his seniors, by arrangements… Read more ›
Books on atheist spirituality André Comte-Sponville ‘The Book of Atheist Spirituality’ Bantam 2008 Geoff Crocker ‘An Enlightened Philosophy – Can an Atheist Believe Anything?’ O Books 2011 Richard Holloway ‘Godless Morality’ Canongate 2000 Brian Mountford ‘Christian Atheist : Belonging without… Read more ›
We put almost total trust in the principle of democracy. If something is democratic it must be good. The primacy of the ‘will of the people’ is a necessary result of a humanist atheist perspective. We have nowhere else to… Read more ›
‘You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules’ Francis Crick,… Read more ›
It’s often said that atheism leaves us with no meaning in life, no point to it all. Compared to the infinity of time and space, our short lives are microscopic and seem trivial. Theists claim that God gives meaning to… Read more ›
It takes courage to challenge, and courage to implement, courage to speak, courage to act. Sometimes it’s courage not to act, courage to disobey, but always courage to do what’s right. Having the ‘courage of our convictions’ will mean that… Read more ›
Purpose appears to motivate and concern us. There are levels of purpose, from the immediate purpose of a functional task, to the purpose of life itself, whether our individual life, or the totality of all human life. A bird has… Read more ›
Fear is a pervasive and powerful phenomenon. Fear may be rational. There are good reasons to fear a real danger, alerting us to act cautiously. But even here, the extent of our fear is not predetermined or necessary. It depends… Read more ›
‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887 All human societies are characterised by power structures and power struggles. Power is often considered to be a cynical idea with negative connotations.… Read more ›
Trust is very important to us. It figures large in our thinking. We want to feel able to trust others. We feel disappointed and hurt if we feel they have let us down. It’s a very common feeling. Being trustworthy… Read more ›
Forgiveness is a gift generated by generosity. It is generosity of spirit. It is an element of a shared spirituality. Socially, it is an expression of Richard Titmuss’s ‘gift relationship’. Forgiveness recognises the existence of wrong, of imperfection, and seeks… Read more ›
Mercy is the option to gratuitously limit a cost, penalty, payment, or harm we are legitimately entitled to impose on another person. It can also be the option to freely give care to someone, regardless of whether the other person… Read more ›
Review of a new book by Geoff Crocker Read more ›
Respect is a strong concept in our consciousness. It incorporates politeness and courtesy, but is more foundational. It might be clearer to say that respect generates politeness and courtesy. To respect someone is to accord them value. Its opposite is… Read more ›
An opening Bible story in Genesis chapter 4 is that of Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve. Cain is a farmer and Abel a shepherd. Abel gets greater favour for the meat he provides. Cain gets jealous and… Read more ›
The idea of maturity conveys mixed messages. To young people enjoying life with freedom from rules and responsibilities, maturity is a state to be avoided. Maturity is conventional and boring. On the other hand, no-one wants to be considered immature.… Read more ›
Religion is traditionally interpreted in terms of literalism, doctrine, dogma, and institution, with ethics as a supplementary and often much weaker interpretation. It is therefore about what you believe, which in turn qualifies you to belong, and, less strongly about… Read more ›
Everyone, well nearly everyone, is passionately in favour of justice. It is almost the one single core rallying virtue for humanity. It’s surprising then that justice is in fact indefinable! This is where the endless argument starts. One person’s, or… Read more ›
It may seem strange to include a post on mathematics on a web site about atheism and spirituality. But questions about the nature of mathematics inform our view of the natural world and our place in it. There are many… Read more ›
To most of us, friendship is valuable. It brings help and joy, endorses our identity, accepts our behaviour, shares our self back with us, and says we are OK. Or tells us when we’re not. It is a mutual mapping… Read more ›
Language normally conveys our meanings. It is our servant. But there are times when it lets us down, and misrepresents our intended meaning. So called ‘false friends’, words which are very similar between two languages but which actually have different… Read more ›
Formerly considered a classic virtue and a hallmark of spirituality, humility gets little press these days. On the contrary, we value assertive behaviour. Self respect and self belief are important to us. We boost our confidence and promote our potential.… Read more ›
‘The love of money is the root of all evil’ Paul’s letter to Timothy in The Bible In our modern society, money plays a major role, not only in the economy, but also in defining people. We are poor or… Read more ›
We seem to have immense faith in markets. We even commonly describe them as ‘free’ markets, implying that markets, and the overall idea of market, are essential to human freedom. We debate how far to allow ‘the market’ to manage… Read more ›
Modernity The Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries was a major ‘paradigm shift’. It defined the ‘Age of Reason’ which was implemented as modernity. Now humanity understood the logic of cause and effect. No longer was some capricious divinity… Read more ›
The Enlightenment led to a new human capability to understand and harness scientific processes and then to re-configure, engineer and apply them in technology. This was a huge acceleration in a very long term process. Without some technology, we would… Read more ›
We don’t ever live entirely alone, but always in some relationship with others. Some of our relationships are close, some more distant, and in some cases we might only know about someone, rather than knowing them ourselves. Our relationships can… Read more ›
When we think of cruelty, we usually think of extreme cruelty. But cruelty is more subtle and pervasive in human behaviour. Kathleen Taylor in her book `Cruelty – Human Evil and the Human Brain’ defines cruelty as `unjustified voluntary behaviour… Read more ›
The Christian religion makes much of its doctrine of the Trinity. So much so that the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines it as ‘the central dogma of Christian theology’. This is despite the fact that the word ‘trinity’… Read more ›
Perhaps cynicism is sometimes necessary. Perhaps we are unwise to trust, to believe, to have positive expectation, to hope, to take things at face value. Perhaps the truth is negative, and what we are told is untrue, what is presented… Read more ›
Stephan Hoeller’s book ‘Gnosticism – New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing’ is a very readable, interesting and comprehensive account of the content and history of Gnosticism. It is also very relevant to the contemporary renewed focus on… Read more ›
For some considerable time now, we’ve seen a strong and at times fierce, divide between religion and atheism in UK society. Gladiators from both sides have slugged it out in public debate ; adverts have been posted on London buses… Read more ›
Myths, or epic stories, have been traditionally important in human society. They reflect a shared concern for values. They address moral dilemmas. They celebrate virtue and hope, and they counsel against vice and despair. The American philosopher Joseph Campbell wrote… Read more ›
The way we rate people says a lot about the spirit of our society. Today we have a very strong tendency to rate people according to their fame, their wealth, their media presence. We are fascinated by superstar status. We… Read more ›
An atheist spirituality is naturalist. Spirituality, like intellect and emotion, is generated, hosted by, and wholly dependent on, our physical body, but is not less valued due to its naturalism. This phenomenon is evident in our human sexuality. The most… Read more ›
Current secular thought strongly and almost wholly embraces Charles Darwin’s specific theory of evolution set out in his 1859 ‘The Origin of Species’. This is very often associated with an atheist position, since evolution is seen as trouncing religious creationism,… Read more ›
The holistic understanding is that every human being is an integrated physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual unity. But such a balanced view is rarely achieved. History shows that society at any one time tends to emphasise one aspect of this… Read more ›
We recognise virtue, we value it, but how can we explain it? Religion explains virtue by the existence of a God who is virtue. But this is an inadequate explanation for human virtue. It simple re-labels virtue and renders it… Read more ›
The poet Ezra Pound is said to have taken a Bible and torn out all the pages he disagreed with. He was left with only the pages of Matthew’s gospel known as the Sermon on the Mount. Here it is.… Read more ›
Albania is overpowered and tossed around between predators ; first Italy, then Nazi Germany, then the Soviet Union. Its ancient city Gjirokastër represents historic cultural traditions of honour and virtue, but its population squirms and vacillates under the successive invaders’… Read more ›
This intense portrayal of a destitute writer suffering extreme hunger evokes empathy for the human condition of destitution, and demonstrates the psychosomatic reality that our mentality depends crucially on our physicality. Hunger is a physical condition, but it drives mental… Read more ›
William Stoner is denied love and treated meanly throughout his life. He is born into poverty and hard farm labour. His parents are inadequate – unable to nurture his intellectual gift, or even to hold a social conversation. Life presents… Read more ›
This is a long but charming tale of the Peruzzi family who are evicted from their sharecropping life in northern Italy, and join an exodus south to tame and farm the Pontine Marshes. Steinbeck’s ‘Grapes of Wrath’ is mentioned in… Read more ›
From the perspective of a family and friendship group, Madeleine Thien records the victim’s experience of the rampant evil of the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. It is sheer terror, utterly inhumane, evil. We are left wondering how… Read more ›
The first part of Christopher Burns’ curious book focuses on photographer Gregory Pharaoh’s obsessive sexual attraction to Alice Fell. In classic paradigm, Alice is no more than the object of the male sexual drive. Burns may be presenting some accurate… Read more ›
Developing a just society in post apartheid South Africa was always going to be a challenge in massive social transition. Petty apartheid rules could be easily dismantled, but transiting from resistance to government for the ANC, reversing the huge inequalities… Read more ›
Susan Neiman delivers as promised an accessible text and a great read in which she vigorously defends the Enlightenment against all comers including counter-Enlightenment’s Isaiah Berlin, post modernism’s Michel Foucault (the most amoral man Noam Chomsky ever met!) and evangelical… Read more ›
This is an excellent, readable, inspiring and timely book. Luc Ferry protests that academic philosophy has become too technical, specialised and arid. Instead he develops a fresh focus for philosophy on the great themes and questions of life. Greek philosophy… Read more ›
There is already an embryonic but strong interest in the theme of atheist spirituality, eg André Comte-Sponville’s ‘The Book of Atheist Spirituality’, Alain de Botton’s recent ‘Religion for Atheists’ and Geoff Crocker’s ‘An Enlightened Philosophy – Can an Atheist Believe… Read more ›
Julian Baggini presents a rather moderated case for atheism, based on the argument that naturalism is the best explanation of existence. His chapter 2 on the case for atheism focuses more on questions of intellectual methodology. He could have made… Read more ›
