Singularities is a podcast series that aims to explore religious and theological themes through personal narrative/story. This podcast series is primarily motivated by two tensions:
Our culture seems to be attempting to re-process its relationship to spirituality and religion, and specifically Christianity, in the context of both the breakdown of modernist secular narratives which attempted to replace pre-modern theological narratives, and the un-live-ability of postmodern deconstructive positionality which disenchants the world and leads to a breakdown of meaning structures
I feel that the biggest problem with this re-processing involves the conflict between abstract general universality and personal concrete singularity, with many difficult issues of economics/monetary systems, political power/governance systems, and sexual/libidinal social dynamics being obfuscated by an abstract general religious identification disconnected from the totality of personal narrative/story
Singularities aims to host a discussion about religious/theological themes that may reach universality, but only insofar as they pass through the sieve of the personal story.
The second episode in this experiment was with Peter Robinson, a life-long learner with philosophical interests in the relationship between reason and intuition, the intellectual and the existential.
Throughout the video we discuss:
Life in Northern Ireland growing up with a father in the military, and relocating to England to escape theopolitical tensions between Protestants/Catholics, for a more secular and non-religious upbringing
Early questioning of religion and God, as well as opening the search for truth beyond oneself in science, specifically physics, general relativity, and the mysteries of the universe
Experiences in university as a computer science nerd, finding a home in philosophy, and gravitating towards the work of philosopher Daniel Dennett, and specifically the book Consciousness Explained
The question of whether or not children should be raised with an explicit religious education, or whether they should be allowed/encouraged/enabled to learn their relation to religion on their own terms
The unique place and tension point of Jordan Peterson in Western culture as a man of science and evolutionary/psychological knowledge, but at the same time with knowledge of the importance of mythology and religion
Questions of physical and virtual reality as it relates to historical and future evolution and technological singularity, investigating whether or not the physical/virtual is a difference that makes a difference
The science of religion leading us to the importance of religious values in its symbols and stories, but with a search for the grounding of those symbols and stories in the story of our evolutionary history
Weighting the pros/cons of “religion that is not a religion” or “spiritual but not religious” orientations versus entering a more dogmatic and traditional relation to religion within a specific denomination and community
The value of actually living within a diverse spiritual community with different worldviews, where you are confronted with the truths and values of your own worldview or box in the context of simple human relating
Seeing the value in worldview beyond the materialistic atheistic point of view when it comes to ritual, ceremony, and valuation in relation to being loved and cared for in community context
Building communities that can hold multiple worldviews across and between many generations, the importance of ritual, ceremony and valuation that is emerging from many different age groups (elders to children)
Commitment to interpersonal and interfaith tools to see the commonality through differences, grounding back in the relaxation of the nervous system to maximise potential for human relating
To find out more about Peter’s work, you can find his contribution to the Logic for the Global Brain conference at the following link: