Francis Spufford introduces Unapologetic
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- Francis Spufford's new book, Unapologetic, is much more personal and polemical than anything he has written before. The subtitle makes plain his purpose: 'Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense'.
Rejecting arguments about the existence or non-existence of God as an ultimately futile pursuit, he instead offers an impassioned account of what Christianity means to him as a lived experience, and one which meshes very well with the true character of human nature, an attribute which, he contends, the new atheists take little account of.
It is, he says, 'a report from inside my head, because some of this stuff has been boiling on my tongue for a while -- I've been wanting to get it said, with a mixture of frustration and passion'.
I read the book in 2017. It was undoubtedly one of the very best works of nonfiction I've ever read (and I've read quite a few).
I wholeheartedly agree with the comment below. It is brilliant. The chapter entitled 'Yeshua' is one of the most imaginative and creative retellings of Jesus's life I've ever come across.
A great book.
The book is excellent!
I think those who comment with name calling or who are fully unimpressed by this book not being a work of reporting on the minds of atheists (because it isn't) probably cannot see their feet beyond their bias. If you don't like a book written from someone's personal experiences because their experiences are unimpressive to you, then you have completely missed the point of the book.
Religion answers to an emotional need in humans. It answers nothing, with credibility, as to the objective truth if its propositions. For me, Hume summed up better than anyone before him or since how we should look upon religion/metaphysics: *If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.* 📚
I'd be more impressed by Spufford if I thought he had actually talked to some atheists instead of arguing with the strawman atheist which exists solely in his mind.
Just as an example, Spufford doesn't seem to know that most atheists were theists before we let go of gods. We're quite aware of religion's emotional appeal. We're also aware that there's no factual evidence for gods (please note the plural, we not only reject Spufford's god but all the others that human imagination has created).
You seem to be one of the nicer atheists around. A gentleman perhaps. But there are atheists who lack intellectual discipline. What annoys me about two I know is that they have no room in their lives for anything greater than them. That would impede on all the attention they devote and direct to their egos. Yes, they are insufferable snobs, which is convenient to them, considering they really are not very well read. I would call one of them (a woman who is always talking about herself) an extreme empiricist, meaning that she cannot fathom how anything exists outside her direct experience. Of course smarter people know that our senses are only filters of reality. They are limited in their ability to perceive the full extent of reality. E.g. a dog can smell hundreds of times more, certain animals "see" infrared, etc. So I see some atheists as smugly self-centered with little ability to see the bigger picture.
For me, there is Brahman, the Hindu concept of an impersonal Absolute beyond all human comprehension. (I could never accept the whole "God the Father" stuff I was taught in grade school.)
@@rr7firefly Sorry but since there's no evidence for your "impersonal Absolute" (love the capital A, makes it seem even more impressive than an lower case a would be) then I don't think it exists any more than Allah, Wotan, Quetzalcoatl, or Jesus. But you do what you want. I'm sure that this "impersonal Absolute" does something or other that pleases your psyche and reality can be so unabsolutely impersonal.
Also, why did it take you eight years to respond to me? You might want to get a faster internet connection.
@@Ambidexter143 Comments just appear below any particular video. Yours was on top. I do not look at when any comment was posted. Does that satisfy your insatiable curiosity? As for capitalizing Brahman and Absolute that is a widespread convention. Maybe you need to be more comprehensive with your reading materials. You could look up Absolute (philosophy) on Wikipedia to see what I mean. Hegel and Heidegger (no intellectual slouches) both used that term. Since my college days many years ago I have been an objective reader on philosophical and cultural subjects. Hence my own knowledge. No evidence of any other dimensional phenomena? Are you an empiricist too? According to Einstein (no intellectual slouch either), that is boring. His words: "It is better to believe than to disbelieve."
@@rr7firefly Brahman is a proper noun and so is capitalized. Absolute is a common noun and doesn't get capitalized except when it's the first word in a sentence.
Einstein was wrong if he said "It is better to believe than to disbelieve." I believe in things for which there is reasonable evidence that they should be believed in. "Absolutes" have absolutely NO evidence that they exist, therefore I'd be foolish to believe in them. If I'm presented with reasonable, reliable, falsifiable evidence that such things exist then I'll change my opinion. Until then, I'll continue not being foolish enough to believe in them.
@@Ambidexter143 You can believe what you want. The curious thing is that no one has proven conclusively that the Absolute (I am using it as Hegel and Heidegger would) does not exist. It's like dark matter. There is no conclusive evidence for it either. Dark matter has not yet been observed directly. If it exists, it barely interacts with ordinary baryonic matter and radiation. Most dark matter is thought to be non-baryonic in nature; it may be composed of some as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particles. "As yet undiscovered." Only a fool believes he is always right when he makes assertions (much like some undisciplined atheists do -- I refer to the ones I know). The wise man waits for conclusive proof.