Samir Gandesha is an Associate Professor in the Department of the Humanities and the Director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University. He specializes in modern European thought and culture, with a particular emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.
A key element of humanism must be a critical assessment of religion. Today such a critical assessment is more important than ever given the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the US, Hindutva or Hindu fundamentalism on the Indian subcontinent as well as politicized forms of Islam. In this talk, Dr Gandesha sketches out some of the key criticisms of religion in the work of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Frederich Nietzsche, before going on to show how their ideas might help us understand the combustible connection between religion and politics in our contemporary world.
Recorded at the Sunday, March 13, 2016 meeting of the BC Humanist Association in Vancouver. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher.
Intro music: We are all connected instrumental - Symphony of Science www.symphonyofscience.com