Over the 10 years, we have met ~48 times. Averaging about 5 times a year. Our intention was to meet once a month. At first we met on Saturday evening in our church, and later switched to Sunday afternoon.
But we often have to cancel our meetings when the venue is not available due to important events, when Rev. Yung is not available, when I am travelling, … Then we had to stop completely during the pandemic.
At our meetings, one of us (usually my wife or myself) leads a discussion on a book or a topic (based on a set of books).
The number of people who attend these meeting range from 10+ to ~70. Over the years, more than 200 people have attended these meetings. Yesterday ~35 people came.
We had quite a spirited discussion on the three stages of the evolution of consciousness and faith, according to Owen Barfield and Mark Vernon. Starting from Original participation which was primal and tribal. Which evolved into Reciprocal participation during the Axial Age with the rise of the individual and monotheism. Ending in the present Final participation with alienation from God and the question of how we can reconnect.
We had time to cover only about half of the material. So we shall continue next session which is likely to be in November.
All are welcome.
1 comment:
Not too long ago I listened to Yuval Noah Harari in one of the podcasts that I follow. He certainly is an interesting guy, has a lot of interesting thoughts, and Sapiens is definitely on my to read list (which unfortunately only grows and never shrinks).
I guess if they haven't been studied before, some of the books by Richard Dawkins are probably worth going through. I saw one of his talks a while back, and, perhaps I project too much of myself onto him, I had a feeling that he and I both miss the relatively simpler times of arguing with church people (especially Christians). Turns out the biggest threat to science and reason is not the traditional religions, but the increasingly intolerant postmodern progressives. As academia becomes more illiberal, to me, it's quite an irony that some schools of theology are now the new bastions of free speech.
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