Guess I Better Keep Schtum This Time Around

IT’S BEEN YEARS since I last visited the USA, certainly before 9/11, but I’m about to change all that on Friday as I head across the big pond for a couple of weeks… but I guess politics, sex, law, religion and so many other topics are off the agenda right? Read more

What If… There Were No Religions?

I WAS READING the comment trail for an article I wrote recently entitled “Alien Anthropology: Religion Is Dead But Faith May Yet Prevail” when it sparked off a few chaotic thoughts in my noggin and got me thinking about a hypothetical scenario. It’s a simple enough question to ask, but the implications for any answer are likely to be far reaching and widely debated.

I’m not looking to evolve a perfect answer here folks, but I do think it might be interesting to see what perspectives you can bring to this topic, so please do feel free to comment on it. And so to the question at hand…

What if there were no religions?

Imagine a world without religion, any religion; what would it be like? Not a world where religions suddenly ceased to exist, rather a scenario where they never began in the first place. Would we be better or worse off as a result?

Please don’t just run to your comfortable corners with this one folks and spew out any practiced positions if you can avoid it, rather take some time to examine the possible implications and then let rip with your views. To kick things off here are my initial thoughts on the subject.

I decided to look at some key topics and examine if they would be significantly changed or not in light of the hypothesis and to be honest (speaking as an agnostic) I was quite surprised by the results myself because I would have predicted a completely different outcome… Read more

Christianity Defined?

Alien Anthropology: Religion Is Dead, Faith May Yet Prevail

WE VISITED AN ALIEN WORLD this morning. It had been many many years since I’d seen the inside of a church, excepting of course the usual weddings and funerals that require perfunctory attendance but none of the usual alertness I’d associate with the giving and receiving of actual organised religion.

This morning SusiQ and I attended a mass (the reasons for which are not really central to the theme of this post) and as I sat there and looked around at the church, the audience, the priest, the whole interaction I was struck by how alien it all was for me. The church in question was one I’d frequented when I was a young boy growing up in Dublin, but by the time I was twelve I’d basically bailed on the whole organised religion thing and left mass and churches behind in the process, much to the distress of my mother.

And so it was that I found myself back in this church, with my mother as it happens and SusiQ, and the occasion provided me with an opportunity, anthropologically speaking, to observe the alien process in action and see for myself how things had changed in the decades since I last found myself in that church.

For starters, the audience congregation had changed dramatically. I’d say only 25% of the seats were taken up, and of those probably 90% of the participants spectators were at the over-sixty stage. I only counted two kids in the entire church and probably four or five middle aged or young couples, most of whom were eastern European by appearance. Attendances have dropped off significantly from when I was a boy.

My first surprise was when the priest stood up and announced the start of the service for ‘those listening at home’; they were broadcasting over a church radio network. An obvious progression I know, but still I wasn’t expecting it for some reason. As the priest droned on in the usual monotones I took stock of the churchgoers in the rows and rows in front of him and would liken them to robots, going through the well established and comfortable motions, rather than active partipants in any religious ceremony. They came in, sat down, switched off and performed when required. There was no real engagement as such.

Then of course it got weirder, which is only to be expected I suppose in an alien landscape… Read more