Posted inFree will

No free will is easily misunderstood. Some blog comments prove that.

I readily confess to being a no-free-will addict. However, I'd never join a 12-step program aimed at, um, freeing me from this addiction, because I consider it a good thing to embrace the reality of determinism instead of the illusion of free will. I've been feeding my taste for no-free-will for quite a few years. I've read every book published in English on this subject that I can find. Some of them have been read repeatedly. Most recently, I studied Robert Sapolsky's instant classic Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will closely, since Sapolsky has written the definitive critique…
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Posted inFree will

Emergent properties can’t produce free will, says Sapolsky

I enjoyed Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, so much, I've been listening to You Tube interviews of Sapolsky while I do a workout every day with my Monkii 360 Core Training System (the Monkii ball and resistance bungees are an enjoyable way to exercise). His interview with Michael Shermer was interesting because Shermer had some compatibilist views about free will that Sapolsky strongly disagreed with. Compatibilism is a misguided attempt to save a form of free will by saying that even though our thoughts, actions, emotions and such are determined by causes, free will…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Kant is difficult to understand, but pleasingly irreligious

I haven't read much of Immanuel Kant directly. Basically, all I've known about this great philosopher is his distinction between noumenon, which can't be known, and phenomenon, which can be known. But since the book I'm reading now, The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, contains a heavy dose of Kant, I'm gradually learning more about his worldview. Which is pleasingly irreligious. I had no idea that Kant was so down on religion and the supernatural. Here's some passages about his philosophy from what I read today. Like Kant's writing itself, they aren't the…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

We can’t grasp reality as it is, only as we know it

My new favorite book, The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, had such a provocative title, as soon as I saw it recommended in The New Yorker I knew that I'd have to buy it. Wow. It's a work of literary genius, based on my reading of the first part of it. The author, William Egginton, is a humanities professor, but he clearly has an excellent grasp of modern science also. The front cover has a one-sentence summary of what the book is about. A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest…
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Posted inFundamentalism Science

“I could be wrong” is what separates openness from dogmatism

Two wonderful sayings that every person should embrace are "I don't know" and "I could be wrong." Each points toward openness, humility, and a rejection of dogmatism. My favorite, though, is I could be wrong. One reason is that there are so many things that each of us doesn't know. The number of things we know is far, far, far exceeded by the things we don't know. This makes I don't know a commonplace statement. But I could be wrong is about a belief we hold that seems true to us, yet there's at least some chance we're incorrect about…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Delusions

Belief in life after death precedes religious belief

Religious believers, of whom I used to be one, so I know what I'm talking about, like to view tenets of religiosity as being a higher form of knowledge than ordinary knowledge of this world.  But from my current more enlightened atheist perspective, it's much more likely that the actual situation is reversed: religions make use of how people view things before religion comes along, which helps explain the appeal of religiosity. It feels natural. Here's a good example. Death. Not the cheeriest topic, but a important one, since death arrives for everybody. The October 14, 2023 issue of New…
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Posted inAlan Watts Buddhism

Alan Watts on how we create an illusory problem, then want it solved

You Tube works in mysterious ways. After I started listening on my iPhone to a video of Robert Sapolsky talking with an interviewer about how the brain constructs emotions, I noticed that an Alan Watts talk had popped up in a list of supposedly related videos. Okay, I thought, I like Alan Watts, and the title sounds intriguing, "Alan Watts: Live Without Worry or Fear." Wow, all I have to do is spend 53 minutes listening to an Alan Watts talk, and I'll be worry and fear free.  Of course, that didn't happen, unless there's a delayed reaction after hearing…
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Posted inAtheism

More atheist wisdom from “We of Little Faith”

The more I read of Kate Cohen's book, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too), the more I enjoy what this talented writer has to say about openly, honestly, and bravely proclaiming one's atheism. Here's some additional excerpts from the book, which I wrote about in an initial post a few days ago. First, I recall that one of the comments on the post said that it isn't possible, or at least very difficult, to be a Jewish atheist, since Judaism is a religion that believes in God. That ridiculous, as anyone…
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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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