I think I'm simply saying that I've met many people of intelligence, reason, good character, etc. who have firmly held religious beliefs, and I'm prepared to believe that they genuinely believe them - even if I don't. Sometimes I'm very impatient about that, sometimes I'm glad that there's diversity of opinion in the world.
I have regular and intense experiences of (for want of a better word) the numinous - I call them peak experiences, borrowing from the psychologist Abraham Maslow - but I don't feel the need to explain them in supernatural terms: it's simply part of the range of human experience to me. It is a profoundly positive experience, and I wonder whether this is what people experience as the presence of God in the universe.
I entirely agree that organised religion, like any form of social organisation, can be used for coercive purposes, and I entirely agree that this is a Bad Thing. I think a distinction has to be made between organised religion and individual religious belief, however. But I have the luxury of living in one of the most secular and liberal societies in the world (for all that there's an established church).
I think "Gridlock" is a very subtle piece by writer (and atheist) working at the top of his imaginative powers. I don't think it endorses the belief system of the people on the Motorway, but it does examine its power on them - for good and ill - in terms of consolation. The whole of this season carefully works through the Doctor-as-Messiah theme, and I think acts as a claim by RTD to the power of stories of redemption and salvation without any accompanying supernatural belief system. These stories happen, he seems to say, to people, all the time, and don't require a religious gloss.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 07:05 am (UTC)I have regular and intense experiences of (for want of a better word) the numinous - I call them peak experiences, borrowing from the psychologist Abraham Maslow - but I don't feel the need to explain them in supernatural terms: it's simply part of the range of human experience to me. It is a profoundly positive experience, and I wonder whether this is what people experience as the presence of God in the universe.
I entirely agree that organised religion, like any form of social organisation, can be used for coercive purposes, and I entirely agree that this is a Bad Thing. I think a distinction has to be made between organised religion and individual religious belief, however. But I have the luxury of living in one of the most secular and liberal societies in the world (for all that there's an established church).
I think "Gridlock" is a very subtle piece by writer (and atheist) working at the top of his imaginative powers. I don't think it endorses the belief system of the people on the Motorway, but it does examine its power on them - for good and ill - in terms of consolation. The whole of this season carefully works through the Doctor-as-Messiah theme, and I think acts as a claim by RTD to the power of stories of redemption and salvation without any accompanying supernatural belief system. These stories happen, he seems to say, to people, all the time, and don't require a religious gloss.