Preparing for Higher Education

I can add nothing to this Doonesbury cartoon from today's paper.

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Completed - The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

I finally finished The Moral landscape.  Well worth the time.  While I am not really into book reviews, here is one set of comments from the book cover:

Richard Dawkins - "I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals.  The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me.  Moral philosophers, too, will find their world exhilarating turned upside down, as they discover a need to learn some neuroscience.  As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris."

(BTW - I read a lot of Dawkins, too.)

New Years Reading - The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

If you are familiar with him and/or his writings you know that his book is related to religion. (Click on the title to go to his web site.)  In this case the neuroscientist approaches beliefs and morals, among other related subjects as subjects to which scientific study may ultimately be applied.  It is interesting but difficult reading (at least for me.)

In his chapter dealing with religion he broaches the issue of scientists who profess deep religious thought but ignore the potential conflicts between that religion (or any) and scientific knowledge.  Here, he takes direct aim at the current director of NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, who was appointed by President Obama.  Though being a physical chemist, a medical geneticist and former head of the Human Genome Project Collins is also a serious Christian believer.  Harris draws upon Collins' book, The Language of God.  He notes that "To read it is to witness nothing less than an intellectual suicide.  It is, however, a suicide that has gone almost entirely unacknowledged:" and he then takes Nature magazine to task for ignoring the "intellectual dishonesty that Collins achieves on nearly every page of The language of God."

In his review of the book, Harris notes that "It is on this basis (fundamental Christian teachings) (previous parenthesis mine) that the current head of the NIH recommends that we believe the following propositions:
1.  Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually, murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.

2.  He promptly ascended, bodily, to "heaven" - where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasions, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.

3.  Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother's knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truths ever revealed about the cosmos.

4.  Every other member of our species, pas and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.

5.  In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases, curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not), consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency."

Harris concludes with the obvious related question, and many others of a less direct nature - "Is it really wise to entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who believes that understanding ourselves through science is impossible, while our resurrection from death is inevitable?"

Marriage

Marriage as viewed from the Bible. Click on the title.

Sacrifice - (equal time)

On Saturday, Sept 18, 2010, The Sun ran a picture captioned "Sins remembered on Day of Atonement" noting the symbolic transfer of sins to a chicken. The chicken is later slaughtered and donated to the poor. As with the Muslims' goat (see earlier post), wouldn't a wafer be more humane? (Besides, why do the poor want a chicken with sins when your typical chicken is sinless?)

Religious tolerance - (but my god is better than yours!)

Wow! Can you believe the world-level turmoil stirred up by one crazy minister and a small band of faithful Christians? "Let's burn copies of the Quran." What a great idea! And, as part of our actions, we can incite an entire culture of brain washed, overzealous Muslin believers. Why not?

He is crazy. Right?

Or, is he the only Christian, Jew, or whatever, with balls behind his belief. How can the Pope stand there (sit there?), for example, declaring the glory of his God, Christ, and the Catholic hierarchy, and preaching a modicum of religious tolerance; while winking at the idea that anyone else's god is as good as his God and that women should be priests? The same goes for other religious institutions and their various leaders. Either yours is the best or it isn't God. And, if is the best, then by definition, the rest, including the god of the Quran or (fill in the blank____) simply isn't God.

Reverend Terry Jones puts his actions where his mouth and assumedly his beliefs are. But, why stop there? Burn a few Torahs too? Maybe some Bibles, the Book of Mormon, and countless others texts could be added to the bonfire mix. Surely anyone with complete faith will gladly defend that faith and remove the competition by ceremoniously burning its books. (Do we really think that these other groups would go "off the deep end??" What makes this so different?)

And herein is the point - those people who react with vehemence and venom, are "believers." This includes Rev. Jones. Most of the rest, the "doubters," have moved to a different plane. This is the place where the uncertain possibilities of their own religions can be examined. It is a place where the existence of other religions can be recognized as also being in a constant state of self-examination and growth; growth over time, toward some future fruition, possibly to a common cosmic understanding and, dare I say, belief. Or, perhaps lack thereof.

It seems to me that here is an example of a pre and post religious development which is seemingly based upon the corresponding historic development of man. Those groups who are only now emerging from the intellectual dark ages have no way of relating to the uncertainties of life including such uncertainties in their religions. Their world is colored by their narrow perceptions. These fanatical Muslins and Rev. Jones are not alone or new. Think of the cultural, a.k.a. "religious," wars that still ravage such places as Africa, Pakistan, and Iraq. Add to it the past (present?) mix of the the atheistic fanatics of Communism, etc. and you see that the problem is not just religious. It is, among other things, generational, cultural, and both religious and anti-religious. (It seems to me that collectively, we have better things on which to concentrate our efforts.)

Did you ever wonder if suicide bombing of mosques is god's way of saying there is no god?

Lost in Sin

"Those of us who were brought up as Christians and who have lost our faith have retained the Christian sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyzes us in action." Cyril Connolly (1903-1074)

Sources of Morality

"Because morality is a social necessity, the moment faith in god is banished, man's gaze turns from god to man and he becomes socially conscious. Religious belief prevented the growth of a sense of realism. But atheism at once makes man realistic, and alive to the needs of morality." (aware of the need for cooperative survival?) Edmond de Goncourt, 1822-1896 Parenthesis added.

Teachings?

"What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married..." Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

Tolerance, a Two-way Street

"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant...then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994)

Doubt

"It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while....But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." Yann Martel (1965 -)

The Dark Ages

"In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide....When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides." Heinrich Heine

Atheism

Atheism should mean getting, and laughing at, the mother of all jokes: that we're animals--animated mud--agglomerations of molecules that have evolved the ability to reproduce themselves and have formed into large colonies that we regard as plants, animals, people (but which our selfish genes "regard" as cities and vehicles)--colonies whose Weblike web of neural interconnections can even produce an impression of consciousness. We, the "most evolved" of these colonies, anointed ourselves the center and purpose of the universe, only to discover that we're not, but that the likes of us have apparently been left in charge of a planet in a universe without purpose, center, leader, or moral authority; that we're all, as the Firesign Theater once put it, "just bozos on this bus." Which suggests we'd better put aside tribal myths, absolute truths, and obsessional mass neuroses and learn to get along. Jack Hubberman

Multiculturalism Bias in Religion

"... At the same time, multiculturalism has taught us that while it may be okay to trash fundamentalist Christianity (a freedom that this books will eagerly avail itself of), we mustn't presume to tell non-Western societies what they should or shouldn't believe.

But with creeping theocracy at home and religious fanaticism on the loose everywhere, this is no time for ironic detachment (read, intellectual laziness). It's time to get post-postmodern about religion; less indifferent, less respectful, less relativistic -- frankly, less tolerant--toward religion per se, not just its more "extreme" (read pure) manifestations. The problem with religious moderation is that it helps keep barbaric, scripture-based beliefs respectable. Religious moderation, Sam Harris notes, "is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance." Moderates ignore or pay lip service to scriptural injunctions; Osama bin Laden acts on them. In an age of suitcase bombs, tribalistic irrationalism in any degree is no longer just a harmless anachronism." Jack Huberman

Evolution Meets Creationism

Another grouping or Label that I will have on this blog is called simply Today's Image. Here I will put any image that needs no or little comment. Today I have posted the first one. It said it all and is from the May 18, 2009 Baltimore Sun cartoon section, Non Sequitur by Wiley: