You Can't Start Rationalist Philosophy Without Science

I finished my first set of readings by Bertrand Russell. He breaks religion in three parts; the personal or emotional, the theological and the institutional (i.e. churches). He leaves the institutional consideration to historians and deals with the personal and theological. These two parts connect outside of the institutional. The emotional space we hold for religion is fulfilled most generally and historically through theology. This first paper of his was a summary on how religion has evolved and is highly pragmatic. Karen Armstrong, in A History of God, writes that it is far more important for a particular idea of God to work than for it to be logically or scientifically sound. This pragmatism eludes to how religion does in fact evolve which for me blows any question of doctrinal loyalty out the window.

You can definitely see the shadow of Dawkins as you progress through Bert's philosophy.

I checked out a copy of Hawking's A Briefer History of Time tonight because I need that general background to start understanding much of what I will be reading. While I'm pretty grounded in humanities my scientific knowledge is slush. I don't plan on extrapolating super string theory next week I just want a general understanding on the development of a unified theory. If this doesn't provide me the confidence to plow through Bert and move on to Leibniz then I may pick up The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene.