[Magdalen] Religion Without God?

[Jay Weigel]

UUs at least *used* to believe in what the late Nelson Rockefeller referred
to as BOMFOG....Brotherhood of Man, Fatherhood of God. Now I suspect many
of them might be insulted if you suggested they believe in any sort of
deity, although they might say they believe in The Universe, or some such
concept. OTOH, many folks now proclaiming themselves as atheists are not
atheists at all, but are anti-theists and as such, seem to be very angry
and want to tell the whole world why. I find them awfully tiresome.

On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 at 6:03 PM, Roger Stokes <roger.stokes65 at btinternet.com
> wrote:
>
> 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
>