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POPSKilling the Buddha a fascinating and interesting read:from the article: "It is as yet undetermined what it means to be human, because every facet of our culture—and even our biology itself—remains open to innovation and insight."
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POPSGod-Drunk vs. Godless From the Atlantic Monthly's article "The American Idea" - Scholars, novelists, politicians, artists, and others look ahead to the future of the American idea. I thought the juxtaposition of these two pieces in particular was interesting. Sam Harris is the author of The End of Faith (2004) and Letter to a Christian Nation (2006). Tim LaHaye is a minister and the author of more than 50 books, including the best-selling Left Behind series. I have clipped both pieces below because Atlantic Monthly won't let you view the entire article.
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POPSThe Church of the Non-Believers worth read all the article interviewing: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. they cross all the way from ancient beliefs thru today`s demand of `getting out of the closet` 4 the new intellectual atheist and till speculating questions like: "Would intelligent robots be religious?" .... ??
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POPSSam Harris blasts Nature Magazine Sam is pissed at nature magazine for their positive review of Dr. Francis Collins book " The Language of God: A Scientist presents evidence for belief", amongst other things......
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POPSSam Harris: Yahweh Belongs on the Scrapheap of Mythology I’d like to begin this exchange by making the observation that “atheist” is a term that should not even exist. We do not, after all, have a name for a person who does not believe in Zeus or Thor. In fact, we are all “atheists” with respect to Zeus and Thor and the thousands of other dead gods that now lie upon the scrapheap of mythology. ... Did someone around the time of Constantine discover that the pagan gods do not actually exist, while the biblical God does? Of course not. There are thousands of gods that were once worshipped with absolute conviction by men and women like ourselves, and yet we all now agree that they are rightly dead. An “atheist” is simply someone who thinks that the God of Abraham should be buried with the rest of these imaginary friends. I am quite sure that we need only use words like “reason,” “common sense,” “evidence,” and “intellectual honesty” to do the job.
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POPSRational Mysticism Just a brilliant piece from 2005. My experience with meditation would be of much the type Sam describes. It is just plain good for all of us, and religion has no monopoly on "spiritual experience" ....only some don't seem to know that yet, lol.
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POPSHow to Believe in God in Six Easy Steps - Sam Harris Reason is a compulsion, not a choice. Just as one cannot intentionally startle oneself, one cannot knowingly believe a proposition on bad evidence. To believe a proposition, we must also believe that we believe it because it is true. While lapses in rationality can often be detected in retrospect, they always occur in the dark, outside of consciousness. In every present moment, a belief entails the concurrent conviction that we are not just fooling ourselves. Faith enables a person to fool himself into thinking that he is maintaining his standards of reasonableness, while forsaking them. There is a powerful incentive to not notice that one is engaged in this subterfuge, of course, because to notice it is to fail at it. ...every religion has created a black market for irrationality, where people of like minds can trade transparently bad reasons in support of their religious beliefs, without the threat of criticism.
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POPSThe Reason Project needs Volunteers! Sam Says "For the moment, we are only looking for volunteers to collect archive materials, but there will undoubtedly be many other ways to assist the work of The Reason Project in the future. Our website will offer more information about such opportunities as they arise, as well as provide ways for you to network with like-minded people in your own communities. All submissions should be sent to the following email address: archive@reasonproject.org Many thanks, in advance, for your help" Best, Sam Harris and Annaka Harris
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POPSThe Myth of Secular Moral Chaos - Sam Harris As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn’t also happen to have the Qur’an. It is important to point out that we decide what is good in the Good Book. We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses; we read that a woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night should be stoned to death, and we (if we are civilized) decide that this is the most vile lunacy imaginable. Our own ethical intuitions are, therefore, primary. So the choice before us is simple: we can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about ethics—availing ourselves of all the arguments and scientific insights that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse—or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.
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POPSTo believe or not to believe? , contrasting disbelief and belief showed increased brain response in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the anterior insula and the dorsal anterior cingulate, all associated with responses to negative stimuli, pain perception and disgust. Finally, contrasting uncertainty with both belief and disbelief revealed elevated neural action in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region associated with conflict resolution. What do these results tell us? “Several psychological studies appear to support Spinoza’s conjecture that the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit acceptance of its being true, whereas disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection”
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POPSThe 10 Biggest Religion Stories
#4 | The Pope and Latin Mass Benedict XVI relieves priests of having to get their bishop’s permission to celebrate mass in old-school Latin. To many, it is an unwelcome return of church élitism. Others sink happily back into it. #5 | The Slow-Motion Episcopal/Anglican Train Wreck The Episcopal Bishops’ meeting in New Orleans fails to stem the ongoing defection of conservatives over the church’s positions on gays, or the likelihood of a worldwide Anglican split over the same issue. #6 | Green Evangelicals Global warming, along with poverty and torture, have become hot issues to a maturing conservative Christian movement. #7 | The Roar of Atheist Books There may or may not be more atheists, but there are more atheist authors--and readers want to give them a hearing. #8 | Another Blow to a Megachurch A year after Ted Haggard resigned as pastor of Colorado’s New Life Church--having admitted to “immorality” involving a gay escort--a gunman kills two congregants in
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