god*

Here and there I use the word 'god'. Or 'the divine'.

I'm an atheist Quaker. It would take a long time to fully explain what I mean when I use those and similar terms, but in brief: I don't believe in any god that is external to humanity. I also don't believe in any spirit or other mysticism that links humanity together.

However, I do believe in humanity. I believe that, as individuals acting collectively, we have the capacity to be, and to work towards, good. That, for me, is the divine.

I am mostly comfortable with people using 'god-language', and I will use it myself when I am quoting, developing an argument, or just want to save time. This does not imply an acceptance of any particular god or theology.

(However, I do in particular reject the Christian God as depicted in the Old and New Testaments.)

Update: 13/08/14

Welcome to the revived and revised Well Red Quaker.

As I write this I'm still processing a lot of thoughts from YMG 2014, and just about to start my year as co-ordinator for YFGM. Going forward, this blog is going to focus on Quakerism - what it means to me, where I think it should be going, and most likely snippets of the historical research I'm doing.

I'm going to aim to write something at least weekly.

Hope you enjoy!

Gender, gender, and privilege.

Note: This post is a direct response to this post by a friend of mine, Oliver Cox, and some of this post won't make much sense without having read that.

A couple of days ago I saw that Oliver had put up a new post, entitled "Gender". Ooh, that'll be interesting, I thought; Olly usually has something worthwhile to say, and gender is a pretty interesting issue.
Unfortunately, I had a few issues with some of what he'd written, so here's a response.

OccupyLSX Eviction

So I'm sat in front of the telly watching the incredibly biased BBC News coverage of the eviction of the Occupiers outside St Paul's Cathedral,and listening to the much more informative livestream by naffyolsx (http://bambuser.com/channel/naffyolsx), and once again, that accursed conscience of mine is crying out at the injustice; hence this post.
More detailed thoughts on the Occupy movement are one of the posts I've got planned for this blog, but the urgency of this situation is not lost on me, so here are a few comments on the eviction...

Quakerism and the Monarchy

So this post started out as a simple status update on Facebook, and then... it started growing. What follows is a fairly lengthy post about the face that British Quakers are sending a delegation to give a 'loyal address to the queen' as part of the jubilee celebrations, which I really don't agree with. Please forgive the length, and do share your thoughts and opinions.

Welcome to Well Red Quaker!

Hello and welcome to Well Red Quaker.

This is (or more accurately, will be) a blog about things which interest me. This is going to mean a lot of posts about politics (in particular left-wing politics), Quakerism, the English Civil War, the Diggers, the Labour Party, Model United Nations, real United Nations, theism and atheism, secularism, the Occupy movement, and.... I'll be honest, it could be about anything. Don't be too surprised to see posts about young adult literature, board games, Android, or the latest PC games, to mention a few.

A few words about me: my name is Tim Rouse. I am a socialist and a Quaker (hence the name), and a student of History at Reading University. I spend my time playing PC games, reading about the seventeenth century, participating in Model United Nations (MUN), and on occasion protesting.

Politically, I place a lot of value on the ideas of equality and pacifism, and I'm a believer in building a socialist society which will eliminate (or at least minimise) poverty, hunger, illness, and suffering. There's no conflict there with any fundamental rights or liberties apart from the so-called right to property.

I'll leave it at that for now, but no doubt I'll expand on all this in the future. For now, welcome to the blog, and I hope you decide to stick around.

Tim