Posted inFree will

A justice system not based on a belief in free will would be much better

Free will is an illusion. There's little doubt about this, though it will make some time for this scientific fact to be accepted by most people. Wrong habits of thinking take time to change. Here's a comic strip example. In my most recent post about free will, I gave a poor review to a book that somehow managed to conclude that even though determinism rules, and free will is an illusion, the justice system still should assume that a person was freely responsible for making the choice to commit a crime.This continues to leave the door wide open to making…
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Posted inBooks Free will

“Free Will Explained” is a poor explanation of free will

I had high expectations when I began reading Dan Barker's book, "Free Will Explained." Being a firm non-believer in free will, I figured that Barker, an avowed atheist, would give free will the same de-bunking as Sam Harris and numerous other scientifically minded authors have. I'm a free will junkie. I find this subject fascinating. I've read most of the books that argue free will doesn't exist, even though we humans believe we possess it. So since the subtitle of Barker's book is How Science and Philosophy Converge to Create a Beautiful Illusion, I expected a rational, reasonable, factual explanation…
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Posted inBuddhism

What is enlightenment good for?

David Chapman, a philosophically-inclined Buddhist'y guy I follow on Twitter, raised an interesting question: It sure is a reasonable question. But I'd like to go further by ditching the word "practical." Which makes the question, in statement form, Show us some thing this "enlightenment" is good for. Meaning, the way I see it, how would anyone know whether someone is enlightened?  Substitute a wording of your choice for enlightened, if you like. Spiritually advanced. God-realized. Possesses an elevated consciousness. The point is, well, to be able to point to some characteristic of such a person that distinguishes them from an…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Wu wei and no free will work well together

Today I got this question via email: Hey Brian, quick question.  But there might not be a quick answer.  LOL Do the concept of  wu wei and the absence of free will work together?  For some reason, I’m having trouble really understanding wu wei and how it works. Most of the time, I think I understand it from an intellectual stand point.  But then walking in it is a whole different animal. Wu wei is a Taoist term that literally means non-doing. But "effortless effort" is how I think of wu wei. It's when things are going really smoothly, when we're…
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Posted inMorality

Sam Harris sums up morality in eight tweets

Sam Harris did a nice job of encapsulating what morality is all about, from a broad perspective, in these eight Twitter tweets: Getting from “Is” to “Ought” 1/ Let’s assume that there are no ought’s or should’s in this universe. There is only what *is*—the totality of actual (and possible) facts. 2/ Among the myriad things that exist are conscious minds, susceptible to a vast range of actual (and possible) experiences. 3/ Unfortunately, many experiences suck. And they don’t just suck as a matter of cultural convention or personal bias—they really and truly suck. (If you doubt this, place your…
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Posted inComments Open Threads

Open Thread 12 (free speech for comments)

Since preachy comments are continuing to show up on posts I've written that have nothing to do with the topic, on Tuesday I'm going to start deleting those comments if they aren't in an Open Thread -- like this one. Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. So you can always find an Open Thread that way. Starting Tuesday,…
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Posted inBooks Plotinus

I’m pleased that my ideas about God have changed

I just had an enjoyable hour-long phone conversation with a man who wanted to talk with me about my book, "Return to the One: Plotinus's Guide to God-Realization."  It has been so long since I'd picked up the book, I read through it really quickly this morning to refresh my memory about what I'd written. I have to say that I was impressed. Hey, I made a lot of sense!  However, early on in our phone conversation I had to tell this guy that my views about both Plotinus, and spirituality in general, have changed quite a bit since I…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Free will and religion are both comforting fantasies

I've just about finished re-reading a great book by a British attorney, Richard Oerton, who has spent half a century pondering the nature, or rather lack thereof, of free will.  Previously I've written about "The Nonsense of Free Will: Facing Up to a False Belief" in these posts: Free will is a wonderful thing to loseSitting in the jury box, I deny free willBelief in free will linked to desire to punish Oerton makes some highly persuasive arguments against free will, building his case with a mixture of logic and facts. I'm enjoying his book even more the second time…
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Posted inScience

Life of a carbon atom fills me with irreligious awe

Here's a scan of a page from a wonderful book by Caleb Scharf, "The Zoomable Universe: An Epic Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from Almost Everything to Nearly Nothing."After I highlighted the section in yellow, I wound my way through the nineteen steps in the scientifically-valid journey of a carbon atom that begins 10 billion years ago inside a massive star, and ends today with the eating of a potato.  Coincidentally, I ate a baked (OK, microwaved) potato for dinner tonight.  When I read the page below this morning, I found it surprisingly moving. Sure, I was familiar with the idea…
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Posted inScience

Good Jerry Coyne piece about free will (the lack thereof)

I'm a big fan of writings that debunk free will. (Just can't help myself.) Here's a good piece by Jerry Coyne that appeared on his Evolution is True blog: "Dawkins and Krauss on free will." It makes the same points that I've made in my own writings about free will, albeit in a clearer fashion. Here's an excerpt. But you really should read the entire post.  If you don’t believe in libertarian free will, then the concept of moral responsibility becomes problematic, though the problem of responsibility itself is not problematic. What changes is how we reward and, especially, punish people. Think…
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Posted inGod

Egos gone wild: religious believers thinking God is on their side

First off, I've been there and done that: thinking God is on my side. So when I say that this is a crazy belief, I'm criticizing an earlier version of myself -- along with everybody else who has an ego massive enough to believe such a thing.Which includes the Green family, founders and owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores. Yesterday I wrote a post on one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark, "Here's 5 good reasons not to shop at Salem's Hobby Lobby." As part of my Google research for that post, I listened to an interview…
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