Posted inAtheism

Excerpts from a great book: “We of Little Faith” by Kate Cohen

On one of my other blogs, recently someone shared a link to Kate Cohen's book, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too). I bought it, because while I've read and enjoyed books that praise atheism by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and others, Cohen takes a different approach from these men. Cohen's book is rooted in her experience as a Jewish woman who found her atheist voice and was determined to bring up her children not as secular, spiritual but not religious, or any other euphemism, but as the…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

Why do we exist? (I attempt an answer)

Yesterday I got this message from someone. Just curious, perhaps it would be an idea to make a topic with the title: Why do we exist? I am convinced that we have no free will at all and life seems so useless...(to me). Since I enjoy challenges, I said that I'd attempt a blog post on this subject, though I don't have any firm answer to the question.  So here goes. I'll be sort of rambling in my response, given that quite a few different ideas have been meandering through my brain as I thought about the message at various…
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Posted inFree will

New Yorker review of Sapolsky’s “Determined” is a subtle look at free will

Because I liked Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, so much, when I saw that the November 13, 2023 issue of The New Yorker had a review of it, I was nervous that the reviewer, Nikhil Krishnan, would have a devastating criticism of the book that I couldn't ignore. I say this because The New Yorker has wonderfully erudite book reviews by highly talented writers. So I was pleased when it turned out that Krishnan had a subtle take on free will that managed to combine agreement with Sapolsky's thesis that determinism is how the…
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Posted inAtheism

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for this great atheist message from John.

It's the Thanksgiving holiday today in the United States. We're going to have dinner with some friends in a few hours. My contribution is a Trader Joes vegan Breaded Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast With Gravy. Took me a whole five minutes to prepare before I put it in the oven. Luckily I'd bought extra last year and put some in the freezer, because I was shocked to learn that Trader Joes isn't offering it this year because it didn't sell well. Damn capitalism! My wife and I have tried every vegetarian alternative to turkey and the Trader Joes offering was the…
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Posted inConsciousness

Consciousness arises in the brain (no matter what you may read on this blog)

NOTE (to consciousness geeks): if you've already read this post, I've updated it with an admittedly geeky further description and critique of the "naturalistic dualism" espoused by philosopher David Chalmers. I did this after Googling that term and finding a blog post that I'd written in 2010 on this subject. If you're into zombies, you might find a mention of them interesting. It's kind of weird that I have to distance myself from content on this blog in the title of this post. That's due to me writing blog posts that I do my best to be scientifically and otherwise…
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Posted inComments Science

Denying scientific truth isn’t welcome on this blog

I've loved science since I was a child. Way back when (late 1950s) I crammed a card table into my bedroom closet, hung a light over the clothes rod, and happily conducted science experiments via chemistry sets and science kits delivered every month, thanks to my mother, who also deeply admired science. (I wrote about this in a 2007 post, "Thanks for the chlorine gas, Mom (cough, cough).") Since, I've retained my love of science, even though I ended up getting a B.A. in Psychology and a Master's degree in Social Work. But then I completed the course requirements for…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 47 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread. Also, anti-science comments. [Note to Spence Tepper, a noted anti-science commenter on this blog: your comments denying scientific reality about consciousness or any other subject should go in an Open Thread from now on or they'll be deleted. I can't tolerate your comment spam any more than I'd tolerate someone arguing that global warming isn't human caused or that the Holocaust never happened.] If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it might be because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject…
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Posted inScience

Nature’s imagination is far greater than imagination of humans

This is my favorite quote from the early chapters of a book by theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss (The Edge of Knowledge:Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos) among the passages that I shared in a recent blog post. Because this, to me, is the most fascinating aspect of the cosmos: that it keeps surprising us. The imagination of nature is far greater than the imagination of humans. In my own work, every day I am surprised if I am not surprised. So true. I love the eminently scientific notion that nature surpasses the imagination of us humans. Of course, Krauss, being an…
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Posted inScience

Lawrence Krauss discusses the methods and mysteries of science

Lawrence Krauss is a notable theoretical physicist who I'd heard of, but I didn't really know much about him until I watched a three hour You Tube video of Krauss interviewing Robert Sapolsky about his book, Determined, which explores the illusion of free will. If you're into this sort of thing, and have some time to spare, the interview is fascinating. Sapolsky (on the left) and Krauss talked about their personal lives and approach to science before getting into Sapolsky's book. I loved how these Jewish atheists each had mothers who dearly wanted them to become medical doctors, even after…
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Posted inFree will

Humans are much more complex than many people believe

I enjoy most of the comments left on my Church of the Churchless blog posts, the exceptions being from people who are preachy, closed-minded, or dogmatic (worst of all, preachily closed-minded dogmatic). So when I got a email message this morning from frequent commenter Appreciative Reader, who disagreed with my contention that not believing in free will implies not desiring retribution as a guiding principle in a justice system, leaving rehabilitation, deterrence, and protection of society as the core remaining principles, I told him that I'd convert his message to a comment, then respond to it in a blog post…
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Posted inFree will Science

Emergent complexity helps explain how the brain works

I was planning to set aside Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, having finished it, including an appendix that I wrote about a few days ago. I called that post Neurons and synapses are what we are. That's absolutely true. If anyone doubts this, hire an unethical doctor to scoop out all of your neurons and synapses from your head and see if anything of you remains. (Spoiler alert: you'll surely be brain dead and almost certainly totally dead also.) But here's the obvious thing: we aren't just neurons and synapses. We're so much more.…
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Posted inNeuroscience

Neurons and synapses are what we are

Today I finished reading Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, by making my way through a fascinating appendix that, in 24 pages, gives an overview of how the brain works. It was a mind-blowing description of how, in broad strokes, the mind arises from goings-on in the brain. I'm not going to attempt to repeat what Sapolsky had to say, aside from sharing one of the illustrations in the appendix along with a brief quotation. What neurons do is talk to each other, cause each other to get excited. At one end of a neuron…
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Posted inFree will

The joy of punishment is tough for even free will deniers to give up

At long last, I've almost finished reading Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will. Just have the final chapter to go.  The next to last chapter, "The Joy of Punishment," was both interesting and disturbing. Sapolsky uses history and psychological research to examine how and why we humans find so much satisfaction when a person is punished for something they've done. He goes into grisly detail about the "drawing and quartering" of Robert-Francois Damiens, who in 1757 stabbed King Louis XV of France with what was essentially a penknife, creating only a superficial wound.  Nonetheless, Damiens…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Two complaints ask Delhi police to probe wrongdoing of RSSB guru

Well, it's been a while since there's been fresh news from India about the financial fraud scandal involving the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.  But today a commenter on this blog shared a link to a recent story in the New Indian, "As Dabur eyes Religare, Punjab's Radha Soami chief took ₹1006 cr, company to police." I've shared the text of the story below. Click on the preceding link to see the documents included with the story. Some of the story is old news. However, the complaints submitted to the Delhi Police by Religare's current management…
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Posted inPolitics

Israel-Hamas war is bringing out worst on both sides

I was planning to share more in today's blog post from Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined, which argues persuasively that free will is an illusion. But with disturbing news of the Israel-Hamas war ricocheting around in my mind, I find myself unable to focus on my original intent. Which is how minds work. I'm going to talk about no-free-will anyway, just not in the way that I had intended. Every experience changes us. We are nothing but our experiences, understanding that "experience" includes much more than that word implies. It encompasses the genetic experience of our bodies; the historical experience of…
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Posted inFree will

Robert Sapolsky’s overview of the first half of his book, Determined

Now that I've about three-fourths of the way through Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, I was going to attempt a summary of the first half of the book (the second half focuses on the implications of living without a belief in free will). Then I realized that the best person, by far, to summarize the initial part of Determined is the author himself. Sapolsky does this in a brief "Interlude" chapter. Below is most of that chapter. It should make pretty good sense on its own, though obviously Sapolsky is describing entire detailed chapters…
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