RE: Church of the atheists and prayer and supplication
August 28, 2022 at 7:33 am
(This post was last modified: August 28, 2022 at 7:37 am by Belacqua.)
(August 26, 2022 at 9:33 am)Eclectic Wrote: Church of the atheists and prayer and supplication
hello friends
Look at the positive functions of the Christian Church:
1- Creating unity and spiritual solidarity by attending every Sunday
2- Announcing the needs of the church and society to the followers to meet the needs
3- Encouraging and encouraging people to do good deeds through the priest's speech
4- Discussions about worldview and ideology in speeches and conversations.
Replace the word Christian in the above 4 cases with atheist! The same functions will be useful for the society of atheists.
Note that atheism and agnosticism have many contradictory branches, for example, atheist humanists and atheist communists are completely different! So they cannot have a common church.
I saw on the BBC a few years ago that a church of atheists had been established. I don't know if it is active now or not?
Also, praying is a method of spiritual inspiration in God believers, which has worked well in terms of psychology. For this aspect, what alternative does atheism have?
Matthew Arnold pretty much started this conversation in 1869, with his book Culture and Anarchy. The idea is that since religion is no longer appealing to a large number of people, we should find something else to take over its positive aspects.
Arnold suggested "culture," which for him meant "the best which has been thought and said." The arts, philosophy, various kinds of wise writing. Since then others have suggested different versions of this answer, about what could serve the function that religion used to (and still does for many).
Terry Eagleton has written well on this topic. Of the various things suggested, it appears that none can fill the role that religion does. Shakespeare, for example, may offer a set of stories that challenge us to think at a high level about what humanity is and can do. But his work doesn't allow insignificant individuals to feel that the universe finds them important at some level. It doesn't provide an across-the-board system for cultural unity.
Currently where religion has been displaced as that which structures social relations, the vacuum has been filled by capitalism. Though we may find a great deal of fault with the history of various religions, the omnipresent propaganda of capitalism is certainly no better.
