[Magdalen] Religion Without God?

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Interesting story.

http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/290432.shtml

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better
for people coming behind you, and you don’t do it, you're wasting your time
on this Earth.”  -- *Roberto Clemente

On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
>