So part of my commitment to occupying my own space here more regularly also means occupying this space more faithfully and more fully, as my full self without fear. That means that, every so often, I will discuss religion, because I am a deeply religious person and it has a lot of bearing on my daily life. And so, just as I would share (and have done recently) other videos I’ve been watching and enjoying, I want to note these two here as lectures I’ve particularly enjoyed of late that just happen to be religiously themed.
They are not free: each lecture is $25US, though if you keep an eye on the site, they do a lecture each month and before it goes live you can pay whatever you like for it and then have access to the recording.
The first one, which I listened to last week, is Restoring All Things: Biblical Roots of Christian Universalism, which is essentially the idea that everyone goes to Heaven in the end and no one goes to Hell, if there even is such a thing as Hell in the first place. I really appreciated the logical setting out of the argument here, the consideration of the pros and cons, and the acknowledgement and treatment of what I think of as ‘optimistic nihilism’, the idea that wow okay, if everyone goes to Heaven then nothing matters so whatever, morality meh, do whatever you like. I appreciated the treatment of this, yes yes. I think you might too.
Today’s lecture was Go To Hell and was a nice segue from last week’s one, going deeper into the consequences of having a Hell at all in your religious vocabulary, what that means for the nature of God, and where our picture of Hell comes from (hint: not the canonical protestant bible). The speaker does a good job of presenting objectively, IMO, though her opinion on the topic is also clear; I found this a really good follow-up to the previous one, like I said.
These are possibly not the ideal place to start if you have no grounding in the Bible and the kinds of cliches and jargon that are used to discuss it in Christian circles, though of course the site does purport to be ‘the Bible for normal people’ and they do try very hard to avoid jargon and cliche as much as possible. However, each talk is only an hour, so they naturally have to assume that you have some familiarity with the basic structure and themes of the Bible.
Anyway, I enjoyed them. Happy Monday!
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