The Radio and Spinoza

Tonight on the radio, I was listening to "To the Best of Our Knowledge," a public radio program. I was fortunate enough to catch Segments 1 and 2 of their "Science vs. Religion" piece. Fascinating. My favorite piece was the interview with Rebecca Goldstein, who wrote Betraying Spinoza: the Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. I enjoyed everything she had to say, especially as she recounted her Orthodox Jewish upbringing and how she was first introduced to Spinoza. He was presented as a brilliant man who was led astray by asking dangerous questions.

I'm interested in questions that a religion would say are dangerous. Goldstein said that religion is not about the pursuit of truth, and shouldn't be perceived as such. She is pretty big on being rational.

Then there was Francis Collins, who was formerly an atheist but was converted to evangelical Christianity after reading Mere Christianity. The DH got really pissed off by this guy because Collins set up a couple of straw men (e.g. claiming that scientists like to state "There is no God."). I don't know what Collins' deal was, but I was a little bored by the idea that if you decide to believe in God, it must be the Christian God. He also strongly suggested that people who didn't believe in God were demonstrating "hubris" and were children. He worked on the human genome project and recorded a strange song about it.

Lastly, there was a piece on paganism. I know so little about "paganism and witchcraft" (as it was put forth in this segment), and wanted to know how some pagans felt that their belief in magic didn't contradict science at all. Some points were made about following nature, the laws of physics. What most intrigued me though, was when one of those interviewed talked about how at their pagan place of worship, people come in with different beliefs about gods/goddesses, and that this is all right. The impression I was left with is that paganism bears some similarity to UUism in that it doesn't have a dogma, and those who practice it are free to interpret different aspects of it in the way that makes most sense to them.

At this point I began to wonder if the questions about whether UUism is really a "religion" are asked about paganism?

In any case, it was an hour well spent. You can listen to this program here. (There is a Real Audio stream).