Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 13 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Though I haven't been doing too well on this, 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.
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Posted inBooks Science

Steven Pinker defends Enlightenment values

My wife, Laurel, belongs to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which publishes an excellent publication, Free Thought Today. The most recent issue has an edited version of Steven Pinker's speech to the FFRF convention in 2017 where he talks about the message of his new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. You can read the Free Thought Today story, "Knowledge has enhanced human flourishing," online. Here's how it starts out: It is an honor to speak about my forthcoming book in public for the first time in front of this audience. We’re going to begin…
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Posted inScience

Small causes can have big effects

Somebody emailed me some questions and observations about karma, and the notion of "equal and opposite reactions." Here's what they said, followed by my reply. Hi Brian, Thank you for your reply and further insights. A follow up question then. Keeping reincarnation issue aside and following the thread of vegetarianism and law of karma, with your new understanding, insights do you still believe that that aspect of law of karma is a valid postulate.   Meaning on a physical, mental, and thought level do you still believe what we sow that we reap, our actions good or bad invite an…
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Posted inReligions

Here’s a good definition of religion

Most people are religious. But sometimes it's hard to tell what is a religion, and what isn't. Is Christianity a religion? Is Buddhism a religion? Is being devoted to your favorite sports team a religion? (I'd answer "yes," "probably," and "no" to those three questions.) The Patheos site has a story, What is Religion, Anyway?, that contains a definition that makes a lot of sense. Here's how it starts out: Christian Smith is the Notre Dame sociologist who identified the religion of America’s youth as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and who exposed the bias in the field of sociology.  Now he attempts…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Keep the feeling of religion, and discard the theology

I don't believe in God. But I believe in the feelings that accompany belief.  So now that I've realized the falsity of religion, I've discarded the theological aspects of my former belief system and kept the positive feelings. Here's some examples. I used to enjoy the feeling that God was looking out for me, managing my life in such a way that even bad experiences were aimed at bettering my long-term salvation chances. This made me feel hopeful about the future, since I considered there was a trajectory to my life that would end with me becoming familiar with divinity,…
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Posted inGod Humor

Young Sheldon beats a pastor at the God game

Young Sheldon is the precursor to Older Sheldon in the popular TV series, The Big Bang Theory. So says Wikipedia. Here's a video of Young Sheldon showing his scientific and logical skills as he gets the best of a church pastor. This clip gets Einstein wrong. He didn't believe in the Christian God. Einstein believed in Spinoza's god, which is Nature.
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Lousy reasons to believe in an afterlife

A post on the Why Evolution is True site, "Dennis Prager explains why he believes in the afterlife," contains some really bad reasons for such a belief. I'll copy in the post below for easier reading. Click on the link if you want to see the video in which Prager presents his reasons for believing. Here’s a five-minute video by conservative Jewish “pundit” Dennis Prager; it’s part of his “Prager University” series of short videos, some of which are okay but most of which are dire. In this one, Prager himself explains why he believes in an afterlife.  The reasons boil…
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Posted inBooks

Great advice from Alan Watts: wisdom lies in letting go

I'm a big fan of Alan Watts' "The Wisdom of Insecurity." I've read this book several times and have written about it in numerous blog posts.  (You can search for the posts via the Google box in the right sidebar.) Here's an article about a core message in that book, letting go: "Alan Watts: Anxiety, Enlightenment, and the Wisdom of Insecurity." Thanks to a Church of the Churchless visitor for sending me a link to the piece. Excerpts to whet your appetite for reading it: Throughout the history of civilization individuals have had access to myths which conveyed the sense…
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Posted inGod Personal/Stories

My atheist interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer

Sometimes I feel like praying, even though I don't believe in God. The only prayer that I remember from my brief time in Catholicism as a child is the Lord's Prayer. So I enjoy interpreting the familiar words from a scientific atheist point of view.  Our Father who art in heaven, The laws of nature aren't bound by time and space, being both universal and responsible for the space-time continuum of our universe. These laws are our father, mother, sister, brother, and every other sort of familial relationship we might consider ourselves having with them. Hallowed be thy name. We humans…
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Posted inGod Religions

If God is real, why do religions disagree so much about God?

One of the best arguments against believing in God is that there so many varieties of religious belief. This doesn't happen in science, where there isn't an Eastern or Western science. Nor is there a Chinese or American science. Because modern science deals with entities that are real, there's agreement on, say, how subatomic particles behave, or the equations needed to put a satellite into orbit. A friend of ours recently overheard a conversation between two men sitting behind her while she was on a plane. It started with one of the men asking the other, "Are you a believer?"…
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