Newsweek - Atheist discuss religion

[Kopji]

A gathering of scientists and atheists explores whether faith in science can ever substitute for belief in God.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15653706/site/newsweek/

One of an occasional series.

The nebula picture from the Hubble is a work of scientific art, and not an actual photo. The article by the omission misses an important question it seems to want to ask.

Could science partnered with the arts be a substitute for religion?

[ingoa]

Could science partnered with the arts be a substitute for religion?

Why should one want to substitute a fairy tale? :eek:

[StewartP]

Could science partnered with the arts be a substitute for religion?

Why should one want to substitute a fairy tale? :eek:


I think what is meant is Could science partnered with the arts be a substitute for some kind of "spirituality"

oooh, its a dangerous word - "spirituality". I don't like it. Many people use it and don't mean it to have anything to do with spirits, ie: ghostie ephemeral things, but rather your own spirit, what it is that makes you, your consciousness kinda thing, or sometimes The Spirit of Man.

So, could Science + The Arts plug the gap, the need we have that makes us fall for religion?

My first gut reaction is yes, perhaps it could. Galleries and museaums are edifying, and when I watch science progs on the telly I get the same "wow" I used to get sitting in the church pews.

[Kopji]

Why should one want to substitute a fairy tale? :eek:
I see it differently. What if religon or 'spirituality' were thought of as an expression of something even more fundamental? (A fairy tale is art.)

[glopal]

Is it just me? Or has atheism been getting a lot of attention lately; Time, Wired, Newsweek.

[Kopji]

Is it just me? Or has atheism been getting a lot of attention lately; Time, Wired, Newsweek.
Religion in general has been a popular subject. Magazines exist only to enlighten and inform us. :D Dawkin's book 'The God Delusion' is on the NYT bestseller list so maybe they feel it is a potential source of income, I mean, timely topic.

Atheists can be complete turds or wise and caring gurus, and still be considered an atheist so maybe that's evidence that atheism is not quite the same thing.

[Hawkeye]

Is it just me? Or has atheism been getting a lot of attention lately; Time, Wired, Newsweek.
Don't forget about South Park! ;)

[Kopji]

I missed South Park this week, but I only catch it now and then anywhoo. I saw the 'part one' with poor Richard Dawkins though. Man, NOBODY ever better gripe again about being ridiculed. If he can take that, Tom Cruise & everybody else just s-h-u-t u-p! :D

There seems to be something like a swarm of atheist magazine articles. Hey maybe atheism will come into style. With our current attention span we oughta be able to go from fundamentalist through mainstream to liberal to atheism in about two years.

I guess I thought the Newsweek article missed an opportunity to make a point. Science and art go together in a way that is like cords on a rope. They may not need each other, but are stronger together. The Hubble artwork could have made that point.

[Roboramma]

Definitely. A sense a awe or wonder. A feeling of meaning. Feeling that we into something larger than ourselves. All of these are things that "spirituality" offers, but that we can find elsewhere. One of the places that we can find that is in the natural world. As Darwin said of his works:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

[Beerina]

Is it just me? Or has atheism been getting a lot of attention lately; Time, Wired, Newsweek.

Companies have no problem, when getting wind of a big story someone is doing, to glom onto it out of well-demonstrated crossover interest.

See also the movie industry where someone decides the technology is ripe for an asteroid-destroys-the-earth movie and starts one, then another company or two pick it up.

I first noticed this feature in a Steve Martin movie about 10 years ago, which I categorized as "daily life of a family, nothing much happening plotwise". And there seemed to be a sudden rush of them at the theater. Now that I think of it, it was about 15 years ago, in that movie where he says about his wife's affair, "This has been going on since the '80's?!?!?", i.e. 1989, and it was 1991.