Universism Mentioned in New York Times

[nemorathwald]

Science journalist John Horgan, who was a guest for a live chat event with the Universists a few months ago, has now written an op-ed column about us in the New York Times. (Some of you might remember Universism from my blog entry The O'Doul's of Religion.) Mr. Horgan panned us, but brings up some important points for improvement. Most importantly he got us exposure through one of the world's biggest media outlets. Our registrations at meetup.com have increased by the hundreds in a single day!

Comments

[the-leewit.livejournal.com]

Hrm... perhaps calling oneselves "the first rational religion" is begging for throat-clearign? It seems the wish to apprehend the universe is one of the major drives behind religion, and half of any major religion's hypothetical FAQ page is "How does this thing your religion says make sense to you?" and the other half is, "It makes perfect sense; you see..."

Why, we've got this crazy church down the street that says "In the beginning was [this thing we've labeled with a Greek word meaning 'reason,''rationality,'and 'the Word,"], and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God..."

Not that I'd ever associate with them, but it's an interesting concept.

Good on yer for going into it with eyes open!

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

There are perfectly valid issues with re-phrasing such things as "the first rational religion," depending on how one defines the terms. It's meant to imply that the important distinction is that religions up until now have emphasized faith in what one is told to believe, and employed personal observation and reason only far enough to discredit personal observation and reason in favor of believing whatever one is told. The problem that the church down your street has, is that their Logos has already done all their important thinking for them. This is a nod to the value of somebody somewhere doing some thinking, but it remains only for them to learn it by rote. One can't have a message from Perfection Personified and simultaneously have room for improvement. That wouldn't be Perfection Personified. That's why dropping the "G" bomb is so final and absolutist. The concept of "god" can only be used as a sanction that asserts perfection and puts ideas outside of the realm of discourse.

This is why on that United Church of Christ TV ad that was recently rejected by CBS and NBC (although it's well-intentioned and it's true that people should accept all the groups the commercial names) the slogan "God is still speaking" is either confused or scary. It's bad enough for the UCC to have a set of doctrines that you and I are not allowed to deny. It's worse if they get to change what we are not allowed to contradict, from year to year. People reject progressive churches for the much better reasons than they reject the latest findings about cholesterol. If God's not even better than science, that's not very godlike.