Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue). Come early for coffee and conversation at 10:30 am.
This Sunday our featured speaker Dan Cooperstock will present material from Tim Crane‘s very interesting book with this title. Tim Crane is an atheist professor of philosophy. Dan learned about the book from a review in one of the Skeptic magazines he reads. The presentation will use a PowerPoint kindly given to Dan by the author. The following paragraph is also partly adapted from the book’s liner notes.
The book’s thesis is that the reason the “new atheists” such as Dawkins, Hitchens etc. can make no headway with most religious folks is that they misunderstand religion, treating it as a primitive cosmology, plus some morality. As a result of that, they conclude that religious believers are irrational, superstitious, and bigoted. Crane offers an alternative view of religion, that it is based on two things. The first is the idea of a religious impulse: the sense people have of something transcending the world of ordinary experience. The second is the idea of identification: the fact that religion involves belonging to a specific social group and participating in practices that reinforce the bonds of belonging. The book offers a way of understanding religious belief and offers an explanation of what tolerance of such belief (within limits) should mean, given that it’s not going away!
Tim Crane is a Professor of Philosophy at Central European University, Budapest. Dan Cooperstock is the Toronto Oasis Treasurer, an atheist Quaker, and a software entrepreneur, writing and selling software for churches and charities.
Our featured musician will be Erika Werry. Erika Werry is a band leader, singer, songwriter and has a background in classical and modern dance. Her song material is inspired by travels and day-to-day experience, and through a love of classic French and English literature. Erika brings deeply personal, uncompromising and new perspectives to the age-old themes of life and love. The songs are short and fun, often with tongue-in-cheek lyrical humour and sometimes with devastatingly poignant lyrics on relationships. A consummate performer, Erika sings and dances through her fast-paced sets. Her songs are delivered with her signature vocals, in a “… lovely… grainy alto”, and The Alphabet, her band, delivers razor sharp accompaniment to her lyrical melodies. Her website is http://www.erikawerry.com
To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.
We have a short video recapping this event:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gry2zf5EAwHOCBQ6HdVWJ85UO37_hkID/view?usp=sharing