MINDFULNESS & WISDOM 7: THE PLACE OF WISDOM IN THE HUMANIST TRADITION

At Christchurch, Clarendon Park, for the penultimate session in the course, "Mindfulness & Wisdom", offered by Christians Aware as part of their Faith Awareness programme. The eight-week course has been devised by Ian Grayling and Kevin Commons from the Leicester Serene Reflection Meditation Group.

Our topic this evening: "The Place of Wisdom in the Humanist Tradition", presented by Dr Allan Hayes.

Allan discusses the wisdom of Proverbs and of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels and makes a case for their value as human-created, human-centred sources of wisdom, without the need to appeal to supernatural origin. When asked to clarify what he means by "supernatural", Allan defines it (without recourse to any text) as "an agency with intention, acting with its own purpose, that is outside the normal discourse of science." 

Allan references two books, published within a year of each other, which illustrate opposite ends of the spectrum of belief: Don Cupitt's Jesus and Philosophy (London: SCM Press, 2009), in which the author presents Jesus as a radical humanist and John Shelby Spong's Jesus for the Non-Religious (New York: HarperOne, 2008), in which the author argues that Jesus is such an extraordinary figure, he must be divine.