[Magdalen] Religion Without God?

[Roger Stokes]

On 27/12/2014 22:25, Jay Weigel wrote:
> I'm not a big fan of UUs, although I've warmed to them somewhat in recent
> years. My father's brother was a UU minister and from my teens onward I
> could never really see the point of UU as a religion. It always seemed to
> me like a place for people who felt like they ought to be somewhere on
> Sunday morning but didn't want to have the struggle of belief. *shrug*
> YMMV. However, Sunday Assembly seems to have *really* managed this. Ugh. I
> find that silly and pretentious.

My big question for the Sunday Assembly people and for Universal 
Unitarians is to ask what they believe in.  From what little I 
understand of Unitarianism is that their faith is based on what I can 
best describe as shifting sands - basically no real foundation at all 
apart from being good to each other.

Atheists proclaim their faith in a negative which can never be proved.  
As James O-C has implied, what God do they not believe in because I 
probably don't believe in a God like that either.  Surely we have moved 
on from a God of the gaps to a God who is beyond our power to 
comprehend, whose existence cannot be proved by scientific means because 
they are necessarily limited in their scope to that which is outside of 
the divine that created the universe and all that is in it. It is only 
by opening ourselves to the divine through faith that we can experience 
its reality.

> Asfor the comment comparing UUs to Reform Jews, I'd take exception to that
> too, and so would my friends who are RJs. They would argue that they at
> least have tradition and, in most cases, belief. Non-observant (cultural
> only) Jews would be another matter entirely.

I totally agree.  A quick check of Wikipedia suggests I need to be 
careful here because what is known in the US as Reform Judaism is close 
to what is called Liberal Judaism where as British Reform Judaism is 
closer to the American Conservative Judaism.  We also have Progressive 
Judaism which seems to be intended to cover everything that is not 
Orthodox Judaism or even more conservative than that.

Be that as it may for a time for a time I visited, under the auspices of 
a diocesan scheme for self-appraisal of my ministry, the Rabbi of a 
Progressive Jewish synagogue.  The discussions we had have left me in no 
doubt as to his faith in the Covenant revealed to Moses and its ongoing 
relevance today.

Roger