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Create whatever this visual prompt inspires in you!
Photo by josef.stuefer on Flickr.
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sexton: A church official who looks after a church and its graveyard and may act
as a gravedigger and bell-ringer.
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, or poem about a church sexton.
Journaling Prompt: Write about an experience you’ve had in a graveyard.
Art Prompt: Sexton
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about a graveyard and the history contained within it.
Photo Credit: infomatique on Flickr
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Distrust is the central motivating factor behind why religious people dislike atheists, according to a new study led by University of British Columbia psychologists.
“Where there are religious majorities — that is, in most of the world — atheists are among the least trusted people,” says lead author Will Gervais, a doctoral student in UBC’s Dept. of Psychology. “With more than half a billion atheists worldwide, this prejudice has the potential to affect a substantial number of people.”…
“This antipathy is striking, as atheists are not a coherent, visible or powerful social group,” says Gervais, who co-authored the study with UBC Associate Prof. Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff of the University of Oregon. The study is titled, Do You Believe in Atheists? Distrust is Central to Anti-Atheist Prejudice…
The religious behaviors of others may provide believers with important social cues, the researchers say. “Outward displays of belief in God may be viewed as a proxy for trustworthiness, particularly by religious believers who think that people behave better if they feel that God is watching them,” says Norenzayan. “While atheists may see their disbelief as a private matter on a metaphysical issue, believers may consider atheists’ absence of belief as a public threat to cooperation and honesty.” -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a character sketch about your character’s religious beliefs. Include how he or she feels about people who hold different beliefs.
Journaling Prompt: Write about the biases that you have towards people who hold religious beliefs that are different from your own.
Art Prompt: Religion
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Inform your audience about the basis of religious distrust and give them tools to guard against it in themselves.
Photo Credit: Life in Flintville on Flickr
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How would you choose?
Sunday was church again, and the sermon wasn’t too bad. It even made sense without having to rely on divine authority and grace. That kind of preaching — the kind that inspired human striving toward a better world—I could take, at least in small doses. Larger doses might have been harder, because I was definitely guilty of some significant sin, especially in the old sense of the word, and it didn’t make that much difference to my own feelings of guilt that I really hadn’t had much choice in the matter. I suppose that was one of the things that bothered me about the moralists—either the secular or the religious kinds. They both had lists of immoral acts, but no one talked about the structures in society and religion that often put people like me in a situation where the only “moral” course was to get killed or take great abuse, or both. I had both personal and philosophical objections to any system where martyrdom was the most moral course. -L.E. Modesitt Jr., Flash
Writing Prompt: Write about a character who is in a no win situation. What does he or she choose?
Journaling Prompt: What would you choose? Ethics or survival?
Art Prompt: Preaching
Photo Credit: Garrette on Flickr
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Every society for as far back as we can study has had a set of religious beliefs and rituals. The current research shows that this is about how our brains work. Whether they were created that way to lead us to the Divine or evolved that way in order to create community for advantage in survival we may never know as scientific certainty. And that brings us back to faith, as this study predicted it would.
“…religion is not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf. We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies. This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.’ -Roger Trigg in Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Exercise your imagination and create a world where there is no religion.
Journaling Prompt: What do you believe about the afterlife?
Art Prompt: The Religious Brain
Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney on Flickr
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I’ve had a love affair with proverbs for many years. Many proverbs have cousins in other cultures, but there are some proverbs that are unique to the culture where they were born. I love this Scottish proverb. I’ve included the explanation for it, because if you’re not from Scotland it’s probably nonsensical.
Like Cranshaw’s kirk—there’s as mony dogs as folk, and neither room for reel nor rock. -from The Proverbs of Scotlandedited by Alexander Hislop (free for your Kindle or Kindle software)
“In a remote pastoral region, like that of Cranshaws, lying in the midst of the Lammermoor hills, it is or was usual for shepherds’ dogs to accompany their masters to the church; and in times of severe stormy weather, few people except the shepherds, who are accustomed to be out in all weathers, could attend divine service; and in such circumstances, it may have occurred that the dogs may have equalled in number the rational hearers of the Word. We have heard the saying applied by bustling servant girls to a scene where three or four dogs were lounging about a kitchen hearth, and impeding the work.”—G. Henderson
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about dogs in church.
Journaling Prompt: What do you believe about animals and the after-life?
Art Prompt: Dogs
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Use a little known proverb to inspire your message.
Photo Credit: brownpau on Flickr
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