The Jefferson Bible for Atheists

Alain de Botton on NPR's "All Things Considered," saying religion's too good to be left to the Believers.



(But why are they playing The Monkees?)

Kaku & Krauss

To my friends in section 9: following our brief discussion out on the porch this afternoon I checked: Michio Kaku did not write The Physics of Star Trek, that was Lawrence Krauss. Kaku wrote The Physics of the Future.  Either way, as they used to say in The Magic Treehouse, "I want to go there." Beam me up, atoms or bits or both.

"not available right now to answer your prayers"

One good prayer cartoon deserves another.

More Jesus and Mo prayers... More prayer cartoons.

First Principles

Interesting exchange in The Stone, with Alan Sokal suggesting that people of faith suffer not a dearth (as skepics contend) but an excess of epistemic principles.

The trouble is not that fundamentalist Christians reject our core epistemic principles; on the contrary, they accept them. The trouble is that they supplement the ordinary epistemic principles that we all adopt in everyday life — the ones that we would use, for instance, when serving on jury duty —  with additional principles like “This particular book always tells the infallible truth. 'via Blog this'

Sokal and Lynch on First Principles - NYTimes.com

"thinking of nothing and doing nothing"

In "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings" William James quotes an old chieftain who pitied those of us who 

"never know the happiness of both thinking of nothing and doing nothing. This, next to sleep, is the most enchanting of all things. Thus we were before our birth, and thus we shall be after death. Thy people. . . . when they have finished reaping one field, they begin to plough another; and, if the day were not enough, I have seen them plough by moonlight. What is their life to ours,—the life that is as naught to them? Blind that they are, they lose it all! But we live in the present."

When we yoke ourselves perpetually to the plough, we relinquish "the intense interest that life can assume when brought down to the non-thinking level, the level of pure sensorial perception."

Hence the need and rationale for Spring Break. Talk to you later!

Truth Matters

Jesus' and Mo's author says Alain de Botton inspired this one.


"Truth matters because we are the only species we know of that has the ability to find it out. In a way that makes it almost a duty to do so." Ophelia Benson, Jeremy Stangroom

Hoosier science

Michael Shermer:

Imagine this account being taught in public school science classes in America: Around 75 million years ago Xenu, the ruler of a Galactic Confederation of 76 planets, transported billions of his people in spaceships to a planet named Teegeeack (Earth). There they were placed near volcanoes and killed by exploding hydrogen bombs, after which their souls, or “thetans,” remained to inhabit the bodies of future earthlings, causing humans today great spiritual harm and unhappiness that may be remedied through psychological techniques involving a process called auditing and a device called an E-meter. This creation myth, formerly privy only to members who had achieved Operating Thetan Level III (OT III) through auditing, is now well known via the Internet and a widely-viewed 2005 episode of the animated sitcom television series South Park.

The absurdity of teaching religious origin stories in a science class could not be more poignant... (continues)

 But that's just what some legislators in Indiana are proposing to do. In science classes! Shermer: "knowledge that requires the imprimatur of legislation is not science." But what do they know?


Humans really don't have a clue sometimes.

The final frontier

Neil Tyson was fully caffeinated on Morning Edition today, talking about his new book and the case it makes for a significant human future in space. 


Like Tyson, I don't entirely understand why contemplating the vastness of the cosmos makes people feel small and insignificant. The pale blue dot [ext] is cosmically small, sure; but we evolved primates who ride it have grown big enough finally to know just where we stand. Thinking of that makes me feel "alive and spirited and connected" too. And it makes me curious about what's out there. As the SETI chief said at TED, 

We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.

Tyson's right: it takes a big person to do that. 

I also feel large, knowing that the goings-on within the three-pound human brain are what enabled us to figure out our place.

Hypatia

"A Better Life"

Photographer Chris Johnson has a project worthy of your support:

The myth persists. Even in our modern world, countless people believe that without God, one’s life has no purpose or meaning — that our lives are devoid of joy and happiness because we are not religious. Those of us who are atheists know this is not the case. That’s where this project comes in…

I sense a trend coming on.

Remember every Sunday is #AtheistRollCall Day. Let your fellow nonbelivers know they are not alone #Atheism

Godless Atheist ‏ @GodlessAtheist

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This why we need #AtheistRollCall i.imgur.com/xYYeO.jpg #atheism