We discuss the biggest questions: "what's real?", "who matters?" and "how to make a better world?" with scientists, celebrities, activists, writers and philosophers. The Sentientism worldview is "evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a simple, yet radical, philosophy that's grounded in reality (naturalistic epistemology) and has compassion for all sentient beings (mostly human and non-human animals). Naturalism & sentiocentrism combined.
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Louisa is a Religious Education (RE) Teacher and Head of Life Skills at a school in England. She is host of the RE podcast, an RE Subject reviewer for Oak National, a member of the NATRE (National Association for Teachers of Religious Education) executive committee and the Surrey SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education) as well as being a public speaker and author.
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!
00:45 Welcome
– Kids today are “The most enlightened generation… so
socially aware… so aware of, for better or worse, the bigger picture… so passionate about things that really matter.”
– Jamie’s appearance on The RE Podcast talking about Sentientism
– “The reason we love RE [religious education] is because we love those big questions… this is like a proper geek out for me!”
– The balance between neutrality and authenticity for RE
teachers… how much to talk about your own worldview
05:45 Louisa’s Intro
– 22 years of RE teaching in UK secondary schools
– The RE Podcast “little lockdown project… I’d been
wanting to do something creative… the first dedicated podcast for students and teachers of RE”
– “I had no idea what a podcast was… the RE community… have been so supportive… now nearing 4 years of doing this… I absolutely love it”
– Religious Education “fairly unique… to British schools… a national entitlement… every child up to the age of 18”
– How RE has evolved from religious instruction “how to
be a good Christian” to now: “religion and worldviews – everybody in the world has a worldview… we all stand somewhere… show respect… compassion for people who think differently… religious and non-religious worldviews”
– NATRE exec
– Oak National online teaching platform
09:19 What’s Real?
– #catholic mum, #atheist dad, brought up Catholic
(christening, school, church)
– “You just accept the reality that you are given by your caretakers. And that was then reinforced at school… reinforced at church… with my friends…”
– Despite atheist dad: “At no point did I really consider that atheism was a valid worldview”
– At 8 yrs old “My dad had this big conversion… from
being a complete and utter atheist and hating religion to becoming quite an evangelical Christian… he had a religious experience… he heard a voice… felt a pressure… waves of energy going through him.”
– Going to protestant evangelical church with dad “so
very different from my Catholic version… quite exciting… my whole family left the Catholic church and went to the Protestant church.”
– “It was quite fundamentalist… to the point of it being quite judgmental”
– “University was the first time I really questioned anything… taken out of my little religious bubble… exposed to… alternative ideas”
– “A lot of the things I’d been told just didn’t hold
up… going to hell… attitudes to homosexuality…”
35:34 What Matters?
46:15 Who Matters?
01:11:26 A Better Future?
01:30:50 Follow Louisa
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