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In my experience most of the source of a sense of awe is in an individual's ability to appreciate awesomeness, and that is mostly a matter of nature rather than nurture and has very little to do with religion.
My two older grandsons are different as night and day -- same parents, same household. The older is emotionally fragile, pessimistic, easily frustrated. The other one's response to nearly everything is an enthusiastic and sincere "awesome!".
I can't dredge up much in the awe department if I try. It's just not in me. I'm not a Debbie Downer to be around the vast majority of the time, but neither do I try to be something that I'm not. I appreciate natural beauty, great art, etc., or I'd never voluntarily spend discretionary income to have those experiences -- but my appreciation is rather cerebral and emotionally muted compared to, say, my wife. And then my son makes me look like a holy roller by contrast, he is almost devoid of emotion, sort of like Spock without the pointed ears.
In religion, god always gets the credit for whatever it's desirable for him to have credit for, and never any blame, either. Religion hijacks human aesthetics like the ones under discussion here, societal morality, and a bunch of other things and claims credit for inventing and sustaining them. They are just expressions of the human condition, nothing more.
I certainly feel awe and wonder and an appreciation of beauty, too when I see the size of the cosmos or the world of the microscope and indeed the amazing process of evolution, which of course many believers will see as just part of God's work. I can understand how many would suppose that to not believe means that one simply cannot have this sense of wonder. No God, no wonder.
It is a lack of thought or realization and it would be ok if it was explained that we do have this sense of wonder and beauty and the point was taken on board. Though I don't see much sign of us being listened to.
I certainly feel awe and wonder and an appreciation of beauty, too when I see the size of the cosmos or the world of the microscope and indeed the amazing process of evolution, which of course many believers will see as just part of God's work. I can understand how many would suppose that to not believe means that one simply cannot have this sense of wonder. No God, no wonder.
It is a lack of thought or realization and it would be ok if it was explained that we do have this sense of wonder and beauty and the point was taken on board. Though I don't see much sign of us being listened to.
We are the odd ones out. We are the non drinker at the social event. I'm sure they wonder why we come, after all how much fun can we have at a party when we don't drink the punch. lol I think in their eyes we're a buzz kill.
...I can understand how many would suppose that to not believe means that one simply cannot have this sense of wonder. No God, no wonder.
It is a lack of thought or realization and it would be ok if it was explained that we do have this sense of wonder and beauty and the point was taken on board.
I agree wholeheartedly! Their lack of thought/realization, however is indicative of one of those hiccups in human brain evolution where our intuition developed a faulty rule of thumb rather than the proper and complete logical circuit. Applied correctly: if x implies y, the state of y has no affect upon the truth of x whatsoever. But human intuition, for some irrational reason, developed to thinks if x implies y, then y must imply x as well -- as Winfrey demonstrated in the interview:
if I find [beauty, awe, wonder, etc] to have some property that I can only explain by [God]....then, to doubt God, you must somehow fail to feel/see/experience awe, beauty, wonder, etc.
Which, in turn, caused Oprah to feel instant cognitive dissonance, since it's utterly absurd to suggest a fellow human cannot feel awe, see beauty, experience wonder, etc., so Oprah, like any good theists, was cornered into concluding instead, that that atheists are lying, and Nyad must be "mistaken" about her non-belief. This same faulty mechanism of intuition is what has lead theists for centuries to conclude that atheists must actually know there is a god, but are simply in denial of that fact.
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Though I don't see much sign of us being listened to.
To doubt intuition (the foundation all divine inspiration) is to tug upon the little thread that unravels the whole security blanket....
Neil deGrasse Tyson is revisiting the original Carl Sagan's Cosmos series starting this Sunday on NatGeo and Fox. I am eagerly awaiting this series to start and will suspect my sense of awe and wonder will not be disappointed.
I suspect that many Christian apologetics will not watch, nor allow their children to watch this series, or actually most of the shows on the Science Channel or NatGeo.
Watched the first episode tonight and I am disappointed in it. First of all every few minutes there were 2.5 minutes of commercials. Second, I did not feel like they really utilized Tyson well and the animations showing the problems of free thinkers in a world of Church authority were lame, imo. I hope it get better because this episode was pretty annoying.
I am ordering the original Carl Sagan Cosmos on dvd (it is not in stock and is in copyright negotiations, but I pre-ordered it)
Nyad, 64, who swam from Cuba to Key West last month, said “I can stand at the beach’s edge with the most devout Christian, Jew, Buddhist, go on down the line, and weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity — all the billions of people who have lived before us, who have loved and hurt.â€
Winfrey responded, “Well I don’t call you an atheist then.â€
Winfrey went on, “I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery then that is what God is… It’s not a bearded guy in the sky.â€
Nyad clarified that she doesn’t use the word God because it implies a “presence… a creator or an overseer.â€
Winfrey’s response may have been well intended, but it erased Nyad’s atheist identity and suggested something entirely untrue and, to many atheists like me, offensive: that atheists don’t experience awe and wonder.
Do you find that people lack understanding that an atheist, or non believer can experience wonder, or be moved by all of humanity or astounded at the beauty of the world?
I don't personally think Oprah meant to ditch Nyad but I do think she illustrated what Theists believe they hold the keys to. I find myself going overboard to explain this to believer when they assume I have no awe inspiring moments without a God.
Oprah is an idiot, I thought so as a fundamental Christian and now as an atheist I think the idiot factor has doubled. She wants everyone to love her so she's on board with whatever anyone suggests and whatever goes on in that confused mind of hers. She's trying so hard to look "accepting" of everything that she just comes off looking like a loony tune. She's just as misinformed about atheists as she is everything else.
Watched the first episode tonight and I am disappointed in it. First of all every few minutes there were 2.5 minutes of commercials. Second, I did not feel like they really utilized Tyson well and the animations showing the problems of free thinkers in a world of Church authority were lame, imo. I hope it get better because this episode was pretty annoying.
I am ordering the original Carl Sagan Cosmos on dvd (it is not in stock and is in copyright negotiations, but I pre-ordered it)
You can also get the disks through NetFlix (no streaming )
Oprah is an idiot, I thought so as a fundamental Christian and now as an atheist I think the idiot factor has doubled. She wants everyone to love her so she's on board with whatever anyone suggests and whatever goes on in that confused mind of hers. She's trying so hard to look "accepting" of everything that she just comes off looking like a loony tune. She's just as misinformed about atheists as she is everything else.
I pretty much bar shows of that type but I did watch hers as she dealt with some real issues and not crowd -pleasing nonsense. But she was totally devoid of logical reasoning.
Let me give one example. They had on some adolescent girls that 'Wanted Babies'. Shock Horror. She immediately started in on them with a preconceived idea of what they meant. Nobody asked. The obvious answer was to let them try looking after some newborns (under supervision) and see whether they liked it as much as they thought they would.
Nobody even looked at this but carried on raving as though the only subject on the table was underage sex.
I would love to talk to her about atheism, but she'd have to start listening and stop acting like she knows it all.
I pretty much bar shows of that type but I did watch hers as she dealt with some real issues and not crowd -pleasing nonsense. But she was totally devoid of logical reasoning.
Let me give one example. They had on some adolescent girls that 'Wanted Babies'. Shock Horror. She immediately started in on them with a preconceived idea of what they meant. Nobody asked. The obvious answer was to let them try looking after some newborns (under supervision) and see whether they liked it as much as they thought they would.
Nobody even looked at this but carried on raving as though the only subject on the table was underage sex.
I would love to talk to her about atheism, but she'd have to start listening and stop acting like she knows it all.
Oprah has allowed her popularity to go to her head, I think. Apparently she feels confident at the head of her cult of personality that she can essentially say whatever she wants and the masses will swoon with understanding and agreement. Unfortunately, that isn't much of an exaggeration.
Oprah's entire empire is built upon exploiting emotional responses. In fact, MOST television programming and advertizing is about exploiting emotion. Gone are the days of documentaries with old footage and a narrator with a British accent. Now even documentaries are visceral, filled with flashing things and pretty graphics along with a "team" of investigators who argue with each other for that reality show drama.
In a culture that often values the heart over the head, what else should we expect? People want to feel, not think.
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Originally Posted by nana53 First of all every few minutes there were 2.5 minutes of commercials.
That's why I can't stand watching television anymore. You forgot to mention that it was 2.5 minutes of insurance and drug commercials.
I'm a collector of documentaries - I have thousands on DVD that I record from the television. I record them onto DVR, and then put them onto DVD minus the commercials.
A year ago, most shows averaged at around 44 minutes long when the commercials were edited out. Six months ago, the shows began averaging 42 minutes, and today I'm actually seeing some shows averaging only 38 minutes - which goes to show you that commercial breaks are getting longer or more numerous.
In fact, they are even chopping up the shows to squeeze in more commercials. For instance, the show Enterprise 360 had one episode which featured a veteran from the ship who had saved a shipmate but kept quiet about it for over 60 years. When he finally told the story, his pals put him in for a medal, which was awarded during a baseball game.
Well... the more recent airing of that episode omitted that entire part of the story to fit in an extra commercial break.
So it's not just your imagination if it seems like there's at least as much advertizing as there is show content.
Oprah is an idiot, I thought so as a fundamental Christian and now as an atheist I think the idiot factor has doubled. She wants everyone to love her so she's on board with whatever anyone suggests and whatever goes on in that confused mind of hers. She's trying so hard to look "accepting" of everything that she just comes off looking like a loony tune. She's just as misinformed about atheists as she is everything else.
Yes, well, she makes a lot of money off of her idiotic manner. lol
But, I must say I was really disappointed that she knows nothing about atheism seeing she surely has talk to atheists prior to this interview. Given her stature as a talk show host it surprised me a bit. Maybe she was just making her mark, and giving her God a "shout out" for the cause. :0
Religion hijacks human aesthetics like the ones under discussion here, societal morality, and a bunch of other things and claims credit for inventing and sustaining them. They are just expressions of the human condition, nothing more.
Just like archaelogy and astronomy uncovers those hidden artifacts of our world/universe religion does it for our contemplation of the 'infinite' realms which have intrigued humans for eons. It offers another value of study to contemplate our role and place in the universe and make us relate to the 'mystery' around us.
It's interesting to see that perhaps the atheistic and theistic approaches to life are sort of like viewing a piece of great art. Both look at a masterpiece. One negates the 'creator' immediately. The other doesn't. So aesthetically who is the hijacker in the approach in evaluating the masterpiece? I'd think contemplation on the 'creator' could elucidate a bit 'more' on the appreciation of the creation.
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