Recent Lecture: 

This month's Adult RE class was Comparative Religion, Atheism Part 2, Morality, Meaning, and Truth. It was held at the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos on Sunday, January 28th, 2023.

In part one we discussed information from survey questions that showed that Atheists skew male, educated, rich, white, and highly stigmatized. (See https://youtu.be/U-8rOXu3U_I )

This month we will continue our discussion of Atheism from the perspective of comparative religion.

In the second lecture we will discuss the philosophical difficulties of determining truth, defining morality, and finding meaning without appeals to God or the super natural. Then we will discuss how various Atheists do this, using several books by Stephen Hawking, Sean Carroll, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins as examples.

As always, the goal will be to foster greater understanding of a given group of people, not to enter into the contentious debate about whether God exists or does not. This lecture will not attempt to convince anyone to believe, or to not believe, but will hopefully help us to live together with greater respect and understanding of those who may believe differently from us.

Course web pages for Biblical Scholarship and Literacy, as well as for Comparative Religion are available online at the following links:

https://sites.google.com/view/biblicalscholarshipandliteracy/

https://sites.google.com/view/comparativereligion/home/ 

Recent Lecture: 

UULA Adult RE, Comparative Religion 10/22/2023

This month's Adult RE class was held at the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos on Sunday, October 22, 2023. A link to a recording of the lecture can be found here: 

https://youtu.be/U-8rOXu3U_I 

This month we covered the topic of Atheism, from the perspective of comparative religion. 

Whether Atheism should be considered a religion is a contentious topic that largely depends on your definition of a religion (which is also a difficult subject). Presumably, "if Atheism is a religion, then not playing golf is a sport". 

However, from the perspective of Sociology, Anthropology, and Comparative Religion, it can be productive to ask questions about Atheism in the same way we might about Buddhism or Christianity. For example, "Atheism" is often listed in surveys on religious identity, so we can answer demographic questions about those who select "Atheism" relative to other options. We can show if they are growing or shrinking, and we can ask interesting questions about income, gender, or education. We can even address the level of stigma that other groups assign to "Atheists" around them. 

Furthermore, in our past comparative religion classes, we have specifically addressed questions of how people construct a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. We can do the same thing for Atheists, and try to understand how those who do not believe in god construct morality, ethics, and a sense of meaning and purpose. And we will discover that the answer to those questions is very diverse, just like Atheists themselves. 

As always, the goal will be to foster greater understanding of a given group of people, not to enter into the contentious debate about whether God exists or does not. This lecture will not attempt to convince anyone to believe, or to not believe, but will hopefully help us to live together with greater respect and understanding of  those who may believe differently from us. 

In the first of two lectures we will focus on information about whether Atheism is growing or shrinking, and we will ask questions about their demographics. We will discover that in the US, Atheists are disproportionately white, educated, rich, and politically liberal.