Anders Reagan is a peace entrepreneur, philosopher, academic, and technologist. He is founding director of the Peace and Conflict Science Institute (PACS), an academic think-tank and advocacy organisation with special consultative status at the United Nations that aims to put peace and rights mechanisms on more rigorous, evidence-based foundations. Anders is also an AI Consultant at the University of Oxford.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and "how can we make a better world?"
Sentientism answers those questions with "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
00:00 Clips
01:06 Welcome
02:58 Anders' Intro
03:58 What's Real?
- "My upbringing and emotional impetus for initiatingthe academic journey that I went on... happened because of a clash between a non-theistic, agnostic background and a religious, Christian environment"
- Born in Boulder, Colorado "rather liberal"
- Agnostic parents, father interested in Buddhist traditions
- Moving to Arkansas at 7 yrs old "quite conservative leaning"
- "A sudden transition happened with our social relationships... encountering people who had a Christian religious doctrine at such a core place... in their personality"
- "Oftentimes the first question you'll be asked is 'what church do you go to?'... and at the time we didn't have any answer"
- "It is an ingratiating tactic... These people are so kind and approchable... they're clearly looking for common ground to build off of"
- "But when you respond with 'I'm atheist I don't go toany church at all'... the reaction... would be suspicion, confusion..."
- "My mum... took the tactic of saying we would 'homechurch'... either indicating that we have no religion at all or we're way more intense than the rest of you" :)
- At 7 years old: "That was intense... I didn't haveany concept of god or theism or religion - I'd never heard of any of these things... it was like living through a culture clash even though I hadn't left my own country"
- "We eventually did find a home in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship... very welcoming of what they called liberalreligion... people who had found themselves ostracised by other congregations... LGBTQ+... Muslims... the Wicca faith... they would congregate in this space... exchange ideas... trying to find common ground across all of these different religious doctrines... I found that to be very enriching"
- "Sunday School programme which offered a survey ofreligions. By the time I finished that programme... I felt like I had a pretty thorough understanding of the full range of religious and spiritual traditions"
21:54 What Matters?
42:14 Who Matters?
01:09:40 A Better World?
01:32:30 Follow Anders
- andersjreagan@pm.meAnd more... full show notes at Sentientism.info.
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