Week in Review (June 24-29)
Post-Religion Fast-Tracking , Upbeat Nihilism, and Inventing a New Word
What Subscribers are Saying
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I appreciate Colleen’s review. Every person’s religious deconstruction process is different, filled with unique challenges, layers, complexities, and nuances. "Hermeneutical injustice” is a concept I consider in the deconstruction writing I do. The word hermeneutical means “to interpret”, while injustice means a “lack of fairness”. Hermeneutical injustice is when a person interprets a situation to someone unfairly by withholding relevant or significant information.
For example, if you went to your doctor with an illness, and he prescribed an aggressive and risky treatment plan, which represented only one of several options that he never informed you about, this could be considered an injustice. Why? Because the doctor failed to represent the situation fairly in order for you to participate in making an informed decision.
When I write about religious deconstruction, I make every attempt to represent the spectrum of issues and choices involved, as opposed to prescribing a direction based on my own biases, preferences and personal experiences. The whole point of “intersectionality” applied to religious deconstruction, is that people experience toxic religion differently, depending upon factors such as race, gender and sexual orientation.
Occasionally I will pass along books that relate to religious deconstruction. The three books below could be useful for a person’s leaving-religion process. I read both of them:
Outgrowing God: A Beginners Guide by Richard Dawkins
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
No Nonsense Spirituality by Brittney Hartley
A few thoughts about these books.
Dawkins and Harris are atheists. Keep this in mind. In the past, both of them have been quite harsh in their criticisms of religion/Christianity and there have been times when I wish they acknowledged the nuances of religious belief and appreciated the perspective of the philosophy of religion. However, in recent years I have noticed that Dawkins and Harris have been slightly kinder and gentler in their critique of religion.
These two books could possibly help a person plow through a litany of deconstruction topics in half the time (or less) it might take a person otherwise. However, depending on where you're at in your process, you may be a bit rattled by what you find in these books. Dawkins’ background is in evolutionary biology and Harris in neuroscience. The two books deconstruct the most foundational pieces of religion/Christianity, which is why I fond them useful.
As always, do what you will with these two books. Read them with critical thinking. In my view, they are useful but that doesn't mean giving Dawkins or Harris the keys to your deconstruction car. You do you. Put the pieces together in a way that makes the most sense to you.
Brittney Hartley, an ex-Mormon, is a personal friend of mine. Her book is a more practical in terms of cultivating a post-religion spirituality. She connects the rigor of rational inquiry with the depths of human spirituality, untethered from the realm of religious faith or supernaturalism.
Roundup of Notable Reads
As far as my Substack publications this past week, on Tuesday I published, The Ten Non-Commandments: Can you be good without God? The Louisiana ruling, requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, sparked my interest in sharing my thoughts about it, which included examining the relationship of religion to ethics and morality, and the question: Can you be good without God?
Yesterday, I began a new series entitled, The Parable of the Only Person Alive. The series is based on a thought-experiment in which you are the only human being alive. I begin the series with these words:
What if you were the only person alive? In some inconceivable twist of fate, you were the sole Homo sapiens who survived the process of evolution. Far fetched, I know. But for the purpose of this article, I want you to imagine that scenario.
In this week’s Part One of the series, I use this parable to begin discussing the deconstruction of something that is critical and inseparable from every aspect of our lives. Our religious or philosophical beliefs, all our relationships, our health and well-being, and virtually every need and desire represented in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, ranging from basic survival to the actualization of our fullest potentialities and possibilities, are all dependent upon this one thing. Next to breathing, this may be the second most significant aspect of being human.
This past week, I read several articles of significance you might also find meaningful:
What constitutes “winning” the presidential debate June 27, 2024 |
What does it mean to be religious? |
The problem with Deepak Chopra |
Upbeat Nihilism | Boston Globe | Wendy Syfret
Something is deeply wrong with the United States |
Religious Trauma, DSM, LGBTQ+ | NBC News
Billie Eilish and Existential Dread | Yahoo News
Why aren't smart people happier? |
Currently Reading/Watching
Reading
Yes, that’s a coffee mug with a picture of my daughter when she was long ago in middle school. I’m currently reading The Infinite Conversation by Maurice Blanchot. It’s not an inexpensive book, but speaking of said-daughter (Jessica) she got me a $50 Amazon gift card for Father’s Day.
Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) was a a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. I came across him initially when I read his novella, Thomas the Obscure. In The Infinite Conversation, Blanchot sustains a dialogue with a number of thinkers whose contributions have marked turning points in the history of Western thought and have influenced virtually all the themes that inflect the contemporary literary and philosophical debate today. Jacques Derrida, who I discuss in my article this week, The Parable of the Only Person Alive, wrote, “Blanchot waits for us still to come, to be read and reread. I would say that never as much as today have I pictured him so far ahead of us.”
Watching
Lately, Amy and I have been watching true crime docuseries. We most recently watched, American Nightmare, which is about the 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins from the home she shared with her boyfriend Aaron Quinn in Vallejo, California. The Vallejo police department and FBI assumed the kidnapping was a hoax staged by Huskins and Quinn, and Huskins was labeled “the real Gone Girl” by the media. The couple is eventually vindicated when a detective connects another home invasion in Dublin, California, to Huskins’ kidnapping, leading to the arrest and conviction of Matthew Muller.
The series highlights how easily one’s perception of reality can be manipulated, and how preconceived biases can influence our interpretation of events. It’s a cautionary tale about approaching information with a critical eye and avoiding hasty judgment.
Substack
This past week I participated in the , organized by and others. Though I am a published author, and have written countless articles and columns over the years, I am relatively new to Substack, about six months into it.
My Substack publication is named “Deconstructionology”. It’s a word I invented. The term deconstruction means to disassemble and examine something in its individual parts. The noun ology refers to a branch of knowledge. Putting the two terms together, I define deconstructionology as the vigorous exploration of far-reaching issues in order to engage them more deeply and meaningfully.
The lived human experience is filled with all kinds of tensions, contradictions, nuances, lessons and complexities, which may not be apparent on the surface or through the lens through which we most familiarly see the world. As a public philosopher, theologian, religious trauma counselor and promoter of existential health, I often deconstruct life’s biggest questions, and issues of ultimate significance.
Whatever your religious, spiritual or philosophical beliefs, I hope this Substack community empowers you and us to be deconstructionologists, and become more profound, deep-thinking and courageous human beings.
Religion Gone Wrong
It may not always be this overt, but…