{"id":10958,"date":"2013-01-10T14:01:24","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T22:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=10958"},"modified":"2013-01-10T14:01:24","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T22:01:24","slug":"father-flanagans-advice-to-the-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/10\/father-flanagans-advice-to-the-religious\/","title":{"rendered":"Father Flanagan&#8217;s Advice to the Religious"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Greetings from <a href=\"http:\/\/philcosmo.physics.ox.ac.uk\/events\">Oxford<\/a>, where I&#8217;m having fun talking to the assembled scientists, philosophers, and theologians, but not left with any extra moments for blogging. So I will leave you with this quote from <a href=\"http:\/\/fds.duke.edu\/db\/aas\/Philosophy\/ojf\">Owen Flanagan<\/a>&#8216;s book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Really-Hard-Problem-Material\/dp\/0262512483\/\"><em>The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World<\/em><\/a>. I wanted to include it in my first talk at the conference, but ran out of time. He&#8217;s offering advice to Catholics (and has offered very similar advice to Buddhists), but the spirit is of wide applicability.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Believe none of the theology or metaphysics. But be a  cultural or ethnic Catholic (the way many Jewish atheists are). Go to Mass, meditate and pray in a Catholic way if you wish, consult the right saints depending on your needs, have fun, etc.<\/p>\n<p>This is a reasonable way of affirming your identity, you can  find wise moral guidance in places, and you can drop all the hocus-pocus stuff. That stuff is silly, unbecoming to thoughtful souls, and can be dangerous.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(The &#8220;Father&#8221; bit is a joke, as Owen is not really a priest, but he would be an awesome one.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greetings from Oxford, where I&#8217;m having fun talking to the assembled scientists, philosophers, and theologians, but not left with any extra moments for blogging. So I will leave you with this quote from Owen Flanagan&#8216;s book The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. I wanted to include it in my first talk at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10960,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10958\/revisions\/10960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}