(March 23, 2021 at 10:27 am)Eleven Wrote: I only ask because it seems I already posted all the brilliant stuff I'm ever going to post.
What about you?
Maybe not compared to just yesterday (I just got up after all) but I'd say I'm making gradual improvement.
Recently I've done two things that inform my thoughts about religion.
1) I researched and wrote a longish essay about how the British Aestheticism movement (Pater, Wilde, etc.) was largely inspired by ancient Greek philosophy. They had a complicated relationship to Christianity, but rooted their ideas about pleasure and the good life firmly in pre-Christian sources, like the Philebus and the Nicomachean Ethics. (The essay will be published in one of those academic journals that nobody reads.)
2) I've been reading the books of Jeffrey Kripal, a historian of religion who started examining the erotic side of certain kinds of Hindu thought, and now writes more generally about mystical experiences. He is not a kook or gullible, but he takes seriously the many reports people send him about mystical experiences. These are fascinating from a psychological or anthropological viewpoint (think William James).
So yes, I'd say that my understanding of religion and its role is a little better than it was a few months ago, and this makes me a better atheist.
