Quotes by George Pattison

George Pattison

And one thing the void certainly can teach us is how to wait, how to become truly patient, and how to let go of superfluous intellectual baggage – all of which is a good lesson for hyper-agitated multi-tasking goal-focussed contemporary human beings.

Goal

Letting Go

Waiting

And perhaps this has to do with what I sense is a turning away from the idea of religion as being about conserving a certain heritage from the past towards religion as having to do with how we orientate ourselves to the future, to all we truly long for, to hope.

Ideas

Long

Past

And this is also what he takes Christian doctrine, in all its complexity, to be centrally about, that is, teaching an attitude rather than a set of propositions. Call it joyous openness to life. What’s not relevant about that?

Attitude

Christian

Teaching

At a theoretical level, I think a naturalist approach to religion is just asking questions I’m not interested in. They’re perfectly legitimate in their own terms, but they don’t address the actual experience of how one or other aspect of religion becomes existentially meaningful to us in our actual lives. The fact that we ourselves are the subject of investigation makes all the difference.

Asking Questions

Meaningful

Thinking

Barth’s approach tears up any possibility of dialogue between faith and unfaith or between theology and other human sciences. Theology just says what it says on the basis of scripture, and that’s that.

Possibility

Scripture

Tears

But my point is that ‘the death of God’ is not something like the Battle of Waterloo or Magna Charta. It’s not a historic event of that kind. For many people it hasn’t happened yet. Others – to recur to an earlier question – are still in the phase of intense shock.

Battle

Events

People

But why should a religious person be interested in a work like Heidegger’s that many regard as the epitome of nihilism? For a start, because Heidegger forces us in a way that few philosophers do to really think through the seriousness and all-encompassing nature of our mortality.

Nihilism

Religious

Thinking

But, inevitably, as he [Kierkegaard] approaches what we might call his Christocentric climax many readers drop off. Many scholars just leave that part of his authorship alone.

Authorship

Might

Scholar

Essentially I see the new atheism as largely part of the crisis of the left. Having failed to carry through its agenda in relation to political and economic life it’s rounding on religion, ignoring the fact that, in some key respects, many believers are likely to share leftist aspirations.

Atheism

Keys

Political

Ethics arises in the recognition of our obligation to care for others as beings, like us, exposed to mortality – that is, beings who need our help. Buddhism, not wrongly, extends this to ‘all sentient beings’.

Buddhism

Care

Needs

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Asking Questions

Atheism

Atheist

Attitude

Authorship

Battle

Believe

Buddhism

Buddhist

Care

Cfs

Challenges

Character

Choices

Christian

Church

Communication

Departure

Doe

Elements

Events

Example

Giving

Goal

Growing Up

Ideas

Impact

Important

Inspire

Issues

Jesus

Joy

Justice

Keys

Kingdoms

Kyoto

Letting Go

Liberty

Like Love

Long

Loss

Matter

Meaningful

Might

Moving

Needs

Nihilism

Objectification

Party

Past

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by George Pattison

George Pattison

And one thing the void certainly can teach us is how to wait, how to become truly patient, and how to let go of superfluous intellectual baggage – all of which is a good lesson for hyper-agitated multi-tasking goal-focussed contemporary human beings.

And perhaps this has to do with what I sense is a turning away from the idea of religion as being about conserving a certain heritage from the past towards religion as having to do with how we orientate ourselves to the future, to all we truly long for, to hope.

And this is also what he takes Christian doctrine, in all its complexity, to be centrally about, that is, teaching an attitude rather than a set of propositions. Call it joyous openness to life. What’s not relevant about that?

Barth’s approach tears up any possibility of dialogue between faith and unfaith or between theology and other human sciences. Theology just says what it says on the basis of scripture, and that’s that.

But my point is that ‘the death of God’ is not something like the Battle of Waterloo or Magna Charta. It’s not a historic event of that kind. For many people it hasn’t happened yet. Others – to recur to an earlier question – are still in the phase of intense shock.

But why should a religious person be interested in a work like Heidegger’s that many regard as the epitome of nihilism? For a start, because Heidegger forces us in a way that few philosophers do to really think through the seriousness and all-encompassing nature of our mortality.

But, inevitably, as he [Kierkegaard] approaches what we might call his Christocentric climax many readers drop off. Many scholars just leave that part of his authorship alone.

Essentially I see the new atheism as largely part of the crisis of the left. Having failed to carry through its agenda in relation to political and economic life it’s rounding on religion, ignoring the fact that, in some key respects, many believers are likely to share leftist aspirations.

Ethics arises in the recognition of our obligation to care for others as beings, like us, exposed to mortality – that is, beings who need our help. Buddhism, not wrongly, extends this to ‘all sentient beings’.

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