Humanist Centrality

February 1st, 2007 Fred McVittie

A Humanist (like myself) places the individual human being at the centre of experience, but this does not necessarily mean that they cannot recognise the inherent chauvinism of the viewpoint. It is more a recognition of the embodied nature of human being which requires a centrality, much of which is unconscious. This centrality is accompanied by both an accountability appropriate to the position, to be central is to be ultimately responsible; together with a humility that this ‘centrality’ is a product of human embodiment and its inherent limitations, not a mark of status. We are at the centre of creation because, at some level, we are incapable of conceiving ourselves to be anywhere else.

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Religion as Folk Cosmology

November 13th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Cosmology is the study of the Universe and the place of humanity within it, although ’study’ is perhaps too objective a word for it. It seems to be a universal human tendency to derive, construct, or imagine a structure for the Universe, a ‘big picture’ if you will, in which the human being is somehow represented, but the means of arriving at this big picture are not necessarily coterminous with what we tend to think of as ’study’. Study implies a dispassionate, rational, distanced investigation of the matter under scrutiny, whereas the majority of cosmologies in which the human is present as anything other than pond-life are anything but distanced. Typically these humanist cosmologies are populated by spirits, gods, ethers, panpsychic forces and otherworldly energies that would not stand up to the most rudimentary rational assault.

The beliefs inherent in most religious practices, represented in their commonality in the form of the Perennial Philosophy, can be regarded as a form of institutionalised Folk Physics, or more specifically, a Folk Cosmology.

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