From 86450b3dd8bec3b76e2b2a03b8cdc8a708c5f3bc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Joe Carstairs <65492573+joeacarstairs@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sun, 5 May 2024 21:00:40 +0100 Subject: Infrastructure as code (#3) * Moves website to website/ * Adds terraform gitignores * Terraform with AWS provider * Initialises Terraform * Locals and variables for provider * Fetches SSL certificate from ACM * S3 static website bucket * CloudFront distribution * Route53 records * Deployment workflow uses secret S3 bucket suffix * Adds README --------- Co-authored-by: Joe Carstairs <65492573+Sycamost@users.noreply.github.com> --- src/content/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion.md | 77 ---------------------- 1 file changed, 77 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 src/content/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion.md (limited to 'src/content/blog/2024/01/14') diff --git a/src/content/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion.md b/src/content/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion.md deleted file mode 100644 index b484557..0000000 --- a/src/content/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,77 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: Harari’s Sapiens on Religion -description: >- - In which I discuss why I think Harari’s characterisation of religion - is inadequate because it’s too materialistic. -pubDate: - year: 2024 - month: 01 - day: 14 ---- - -I’ve been slowly re-reading Yuval Noah Harari’s 2014 classic, -Sapiens, -which apart from being ridiculously over-scoped and hilariously -under-evidenced, is proving delightfully entertaining. - -I’ve just finished chapter 12, covering the world history of all -religion in thirty pages. Of course, at that level of brevity, -there will be many deficiencies. But here’s some thoughts - not -terribly well organised - which stand out to me. - -Hurari generally assumes a materialist metaphysic (a problem which -blights the book more generally). Nothing exists except physical stuff. -This gives him severe tunnel vision. As a consequence of this -restricting metaphysic, he is forced to adopt limiting accounts of what -the role of religion is in world history, and therefore what religion is. - -> The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman -> legitimacy to [all social orders and hierarchies]. -> Religion can thus be defined as a system of human norms and -> values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order. -> - -It might seem a little unfair to criticise Harari for giving a -materialist account of religion. Sapiens is, after all, a -materialist world history. - -But this account is just one extreme example of how that project, to -give a materialist account of world history, will inevitably lack the -metaphysical resources to really understand the human story. - -On Harari’s view, any human enterprise which attempts to understand -that which transcends direct human experience is at best an effort in -imaginative story-telling. All scientific theory, theology, ethics and -metaphysics either contorted out of all recognition into a pragmatic -fiction or is cast to the flames. - -In particular, it’s a view which is incapable of taking seriously some -of the most important questions human beings have grappled with in the -course of their history. Those who know me won’t be surprised at which -ones I’m going to pick out: who was the being which made their covenant -with Abraham? How is that promise being fulfilled? And who the heck was -Jesus of Nazareth? - -If Harari’s characterisation of religion is adequate - and the Abrahamic -faiths come under that banner - then those questions are reduced to -nothing more profound than Doctor Who fans arguing over ‘canon’. The -question of who God is becomes a mere tool for the organisation of -society, rather than a substantial and important question on a matter -of fact. - -This is a shortcoming for its own sake: a materialist account of -religion cannot adequately account for the phenomenon of religion -itself. - -But it is also a shortcoming even by its own lights. Without giving -serious consideration to the substantial matter of what Harari calls -‘religion’ (which, to his mind, includes the Abrahamic faiths, -Hinduism, paganism, animism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism, -capitalism, communism and Nazism), even the material facts are -inexplicable. Why would, as Harari is keen to point out, out, people -fight and die over and over again for a fiction? - -The material facts themselves prove that ‘religion’ as he construes it -is not window dressing to the real story of history. It cannot merely -serve as a mechanism in the churning of material history. It is itself -the centre of the story. -- cgit v1.2.3