November 29, 2020

7: From Devout Sunday School Teacher to Atheist, Vegan, Sentientist Academic and Author - Sentientist Conversations - John Adenitire

53 minutes

John shares his story, from being a devout Pentecostalist Sunday School Teacher in Nigeria to being a Sentientist, atheist, vegan academic and author. Video version here.

John is Strategic Lecturer in the School of Law and a Fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London. He is a cellist and dancer.

We discuss:

John growing up in Nigeria, then Italy in an evangelical, pentecostal family (both parents are missionaries and reverends) and community

Being a sunday school teacher and devout believer

Challenging those beliefs as a teenager, both re: evidence and ethics (e.g. rejecting religious homophobia)

The rich integration of Nigerian culture, racial identity and religion and how that made leaving religion behind a difficult struggle

Finding the courage to be open with parents who are very deeply involved with the church

How some religious communities accept non-believing, “cultural” community members while others reject those who drop their supernatural beliefs

Veganism being seen as a rejection of a culture rather than an individual moral choice

How having freedom, time and distance from our culture can help us assess and improve our worldview

Value as the foundation of ethics, not religion. Value comes first

A pluralistic conception of value from the perspective of each individual: community, family, friendship, relationships, experiences

Sentience as a sufficient ground for considering a being valuable because they have a perspective. Things can go better or worse for them. Morality is caring about that perspective of others

Whether non-sentient beings have intrinsic or just instrumental value

Is beauty of value even if no sentient ever experiences it? Let’s not destroy the Mona Lisa just to be safe

The danger of bio/eco centrism and environmentalism neglecting or even harming sentient beings while trying to protect non-sentient things

The full richness of sentient experience. Not just pleasure and pain – but aethetics, awe, wonder, connectedness and love

The importance of setting a philosophical baseline of moral consideration for all sentients. But how even that baseline is the product of deep philosophical thinking by intellectual giants (e.g. Bentham)

Why most of the 8 billion people on the planet disagree with Sentientism

The importance of ensuring that our confidence in naturalism doesn’t lead to our own dogma or closed-mindedness or arrogance

The importance of humility and receptiveness and open-mindedness and constructive conversation

Compassion even for people you disagree with

Basing our ethics on a naturalistic understanding of sentience and sentient beings

How to get to a Sentientist future. Facts and logic won’t be enough… our emotional reactions come first, philosophy follows

Empathy as a way to engage people emotionally

Helping people be more ready change by setting a good, “normal” example

Making better ethics the easier choice

Once people have taken easier, better ethical choices they might upgrade their ethics

Freedom of belief, but not freedom to use those beliefs to harm

When you see something as more important than suffering and death, you tend to get quite a lot of suffering and death

Law is there to restrict freedom to protect others

We already grant rights to corporations and rivers, why not extend them to non-human animals?

How the law and rights fields can help drive positive change.

John at QMUL. @JohnAdenitire. sentientism.info. FBook.

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By Jamie Woodhouse

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