The Daily

The Daily has a poorly written story on Peter Singer's lecture last night that a lot of us went to. Sure there were protesters, but they hardly mentioned the reason he was there in the first place and how the vast majority of the evening did not revolve around them.

In my opinion, with an event like this you write a section on what the speaker said, what the protesters say, and end it with the speaker's response. I'm not the journalism major here, but I think this is standard practice. Joe?

Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority

Recent study on public opinion of atheism (conducted right here at the good ol' U of M!)

"Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism."

Also, here's a link to a story about statistics showing that evangelicals and Catholics support torture at a significantly higher level than those who are secular.

To quote the previous article on atheism:

'“Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”'

So...torture supports the common good...?

PUBLIC DEBATE: MONDAY, APRIL 3RD

Ok, so this is yet another presentation about intelligent design and education. But this time, there's pizza! Can't be all bad, right? (I'm talking about the pizza of course...)

SHOULD THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FUND SCHOOLS TEACHING INTELLIGENT DESIGN?

What place do theories of origin have in US public schools? Should the federal government restrict funding of religious curricula? The U of MN Parliamentary Debate Society will address these tough questions on Monday, April 3rd, as part of The College of Biological Sciences' Bioethics 2006. Arguing for federal funding of Intelligent Design programs will be Vance Whitaker and UMPDS debater Tom Meyer. Whitaker is a Research Assistant in the department of Horticultural Science, and Tom Meyer is a junior majoring in neuroscience. Arguing against federal funding will be UMPDS debater Rebecca Mitchell and a speaker from the College of Biological Sciences (to be announced). Mitchell is a junior in the U of MN pre-med program. The debate will be preceded by a speech on medical ethics by Dr. Steven Miles, at 5 pm. Miles is a practicing physician and professor of medicine at the U of MN Medical School. He has served as President of the American Association of Bioethics, and has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. Come to a riveting discussion of these important and controversial questions. Audience participation is encouraged, and pizza and pop will be served. Monday, April 3 at 5 pm in Moos Tower 2-690.

Utilitarians vs. Christians

I was just reading about Singer's Utilitarian roots and was inspired to pick up "On Liberty" again. These are some passages that've stuck with me:

"When a religion has come to be an hereditary creed, to be received passively, not actively -- when the mind is no longer compelled, in the same degree as at first, to exercise its vital powers on the questions which its belief presents to it, there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the formularies, or to give it a dull and torpid assent, as if accepting it on trust dispensed with the necessity of realizing it in consciousness, or testing it by personal experience, until it almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being... The creed remains, as it were, outside the mind."

"[Christians] have an habitual respect for the sound of [the doctrines], but no feeling which spreads from the words to the things signified and forces the mind to take them in and make them conform to the formula. Whenever conduct is concerned, they look around for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ."

And some words of encouragement for the oddball in us all:

"The evil is that individual spontaneity is hardly recognized by the common modes of thinking as having any intrinsic worth, or deserving any regard on its own account. The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody."

"It does not occur to them to have any inclination except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like in-crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done; peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct are shunned equally with crimes, until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and starved; they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth... Now is this, or is this not, the desireable condition of human nature?"

"In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desireable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricitiy in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time." [!]

Peter Singer Redux

I'm bored at work, so I found all this on Peter Singer, who's speaking tomorrow on campus.

Overviews
Homepage
Wikipedia
Controversial Views

Political Views
Exerpt of "A Darwinian Left" - Book advocating the political left to take Charles Darwin's principles into its platform
Negative Review of A Darwinian Left
Interview on the ethics of President Bush

Feel free to post or comment any thoughts or other links!

Science and Religion on the Daily Show!

Don't know if any of you caught this interview a week or so ago, but it's an interview with a former Biblical literalist who talks about the problems translating the Bible.

In response to my earlier thoughts...

Many of you know that even though I am an atheist, I often have problems with the fact that there's no overriding and objective moral code besides one's own belief guiding their actions. I have changed my mind because of this thought:

How many atheists have killed in the name of something?
A lot less than theists who have killed in the name of god.

It seems to me now that an overriding and objective moral code is exactly the problem. With it, you can justify anything.

Noah's Ark: Continued

Wake up, fools! This is all just a publicity stunt. They're trying to hype Indiana Jones 4: Raiders of the Lost Ark 2: Noah's Ark. Sheesh. Could you be any more gullible?

Anyway, check it out at IMDB. It sounds incredible. Noah's the bad guy this time. (Back story: after being stranded atop Mount Ararat after the Great Flood, left to take care of 100 million species without ANY help from God, he totally just flips out and becomes a pirate. His boat can't go anywhere, though, because it's on a MOUNTAIN, so he starts terrorizing the poor beasts of his ship.) PETA (that's "People for the Emancipation of The Ark" in this film due to legal issues) hires Indy to rescue all the animals and castrate Noah (the castration part was God's idea... that sick Bastard!) and at the very end they battle. Noah commands his fiercest slave-warriors -- bears, lions, camels -- to attack our Hero, but Indy defeats them all with his cunning and whip. And then, in a surprise cameo performance, Jesus comes tearing into the scene in a Hummer with two fly Angels in the back seat (played by Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz, of course) and He gets Indy's back. But then Noah seizes his whip and starts going to town on Jesus and everyone's like Oh No! Not Again!

***SPOILER ALERT***

They never find the boat. Turns out it was all a hoax. (Who saw THAT coming?)

Road Trip to Turkey?

I just came across a bizarre crossing of science and religion. Apparently, Mount Ararat, a mountain in eastern Turkey, is believed by biblical literalists to be the resting place of Noah's Ark. In religious circles, it is referred to as the Ararat anomaly.

A recent story on CNN has more people talking about the legitimacy, including PZ Myers, who fundamentally disagrees with the expeditions. I'm definitely in favor of his view, since the photographs that they've been examining remind me of the face on Mars, bigfoot, and flying saucer photographs.

Regardless, I think we should take our own trip to Mt Ararat. Maybe we can get the fees committee to fund our expedition??

Share!

I was feeling a bit of nostalgia today for our beloved Science and Religion course, so I thought it would be cool if those of us who took the class could dig up an old writing assignment and post it on here. If you're unable to do so or if sharing your work makes you ill in the stomach, then your alternate assignment is to draw a sketch of your favorite deity and bring it to the next meeting (and remember, any obscene or blasphemous image will result in an automatic F.... for Freethinker!)

Don't be bashful, don't be shy...


“Love not the world, for all that is in the world is not of the Father.”

The above statement is attributed to Jesus Christ and can be found in the Book of John, chapter two, of the Christian Bible. It is an impassioned call for all of humanity to live out of their collective spiritual nature and to identify themselves not with the passing sorrows of the day-to-day world, but with the transcendent reality of God. When read as a metaphorical concept with real-life significance, it is capable of motivating a person to travel inward to the deep recesses of the human mind (or “soul”) in an attempt to find within his or her self that which is eternal and beautiful -- the Ultimate Source of all that is, which in Christian thought is referred to as “the Father.”

However, many followers of Christianity have since interpreted it as a command to renounce the external world altogether: nature is seen as something to be overcome. It is fallen, corrupt, full of temptations and distractions that seek to lure a person into Satan’s Kingdom, and one must confess one’s innately sinful character if one wishes to leave the wickedness of this world behind for everlasting life in Heaven.

It is unfortunate when a Christian today ignores the beauty and sacredness of the Creation in favor of a life-denying fundamentalist outlook. When that Christian is the leader of the United States of America and has the last word on major environmental policy, it becomes dangerous. For example: the Bush Administration’s anti-environment agenda includes oil drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge, logging of formerly protected forests, loosening of the Clean Air Act, and arrogantly disregarding the advice of scientists who have warned the administration about the dangers of global warming.

To be fair, religion alone cannot be blamed for the environmental problems of our time. Ian Barbour, in his book Nature, Human Nature, and God, makes note of the misconception that Christianity is responsible for man’s disrespect of the natural world, and cites other important reasons for our modern-day dilemma: first, the dualist separation of the body and spirit which originated with Greek thought and Western philosophy, second, the rise of capitalism, and third, the onset of the technological and industrial age (121). The most problematic and deep-seated of the three is the first one -- the very root assumptions of Western thought, which include a reliance on “conventional” knowledge and mental abstractions, or symbols, such as language, that we have come to believe are the only means of determining what in the world is of value. Such a mindset is limiting because it fetters contemplation to that which can be represented or communicated from man to man, and it ignores the vehicle of spiritual consciousness: the intuition.

Christianity, though it appears on the surface to be a religion of externalities (God as a separate entity, Heaven as an external reality, Jesus as a historical figure, etc.), nevertheless embraces one’s ability to perceive that which is not available to the senses. When one speaks of the body as a vehicle for the “Holy Spirit”, one is referencing that system of thought which allows for a unity of the mind and body, one that is transcendent of the ego. Consider the words of Lao-tzu, an Eastern philosopher who embodies such thinking: “The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.”

The point of emphasizing religious thinking in environmental issues is simple: man’s environmental consciousness and spiritual consciousness are one and the same. The very definition of spirituality, according to www.nature.com, is: “An inner sense of something greater than oneself. Recognition of a meaning to existence that transcends one's immediate circumstances.” Therefore, human beings will not gain a sense of collective responsibility for the well-being of the planet until there is first established a collective spiritual consciousness among the entire human race. It will not require gods or laws or belief in anything outside of the physical realm; only an acknowledgement of and reverence for the earth, and a joyful participation therein, through which we will all be elevated to a plane of awareness that will fulfill the most basic function of any religion: that of lifting us out of the bonds of the ego and allowing for the fullest expression of man’s creative and spiritual powers.

CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE

I went to one of these things last year. Cool venue, cool people, awesome topic. Y'all should go.

CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE TUESDAY

Organizing Life: A New Evolution, Tuesday, March 14, 6*8 pm, Varsity Theater, Dinkytown. Free. Must be 18 or older to attend. What evolutionary patterns link Earth's species, from microbes to birds to human beings? In conjunction with the Walker Art Center's exhibition "Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005," the Bell Museum presents a special Café Scientifique on taxonomy, phylogeny, and evolution. Join biologist and Bell Museum Director Scott Lanyon for an introduction to a worldwide research effort that is equivalent in scope to the Human Genome Project, and find out how and why researchers like Lanyon are assembling an evolutionary "tree of life" that will organize the 1.7 million described species on Earth.

A Simple Question

We discussed having questions that could be responded to à la the Metaphysical Club from our reading from last week. I'll take a preliminary try at a question.

The topic of happiness comes up often for some of my less well-read friends. I'm wondering what responses the following questions will elicit from this group.

How good are you at making yourself happy? How important is your happiness (in its various types)? For what would you subjugate your personal happiness (as it is manifested in your environment)? Is happiness a means or an end?

Meeting Tonight!

There is a meeting tonight!

What: Science, Religion, and the Search for Human Nature Meeting
Where: Saint Paul Student Center, room 207
When: 6:30 pm, Thursday (tonight!)

The past few articles we've read have been in a downloadable format which would take a lot of effort to put on the internet. If you wish to read them, you can feel free to email me.

The Latest of the Past Week

My dad has sent me two excellent links about the subject in the past week.

First, a Washington Post article on a scholar trying to find research the Bible was based on.

Second, a new poll about how many people don't believe in Evolution.

God in a tea-cup

I tried to create a link to a news story but I'm not sure where it shows up on this thing, so just click around the page for a while and you'll probably find it. Anyway, was anyone else contacted by a reporter for the Daily to comment on the Supreme Court ruling that allows some native tribe to use a hallucinogenic tea for their religious ceremonies? I figured she found us through this blog and decided we're all a bunch of acid-dropping, tea-drinking hippies. My e-mailed response did little to combat that notion. Here it is:


Hi Angela,

I’m aware of the Supreme Court ruling and I think it’s a very interesting development -- one which is indicative of the country’s changing attitudes towards hallucinogenic drugs and the religious experience in general.

The tea that was legalized is known to various peoples in South America as “ayahuasca” (which means “vine to the gods”), and it contains DMT, or dimethyltryptamine. The emotional, psychological, and spiritual effects of the drug make it easy to understand why natives have a certain reverence for the substance. Essentially, the use of ayahuasca results in a chemically-induced spiritual experience which is remarkably similar to those described in virtually every religious tradition in history, not just the so-called “primitive” cultures of the deserts and rainforests. What sets it apart from other psychedelics such as LSD is that it’s naturally produced by the human body, in the pineal gland, which is near the center of the brain (the history of the pineal gland is also worth mentioning -- Rene Descartes called it “the seat of the soul,” and mystical traditions of both the east and the west have associated it with the highest attainable level of spirituality). There are several hypotheses involving the natural instances of DMT production -- one is that it occurs during REM sleep and is largely responsible for our dreaming processes, and another is that DMT is released at the moment of death. This would help explain countless reports of Near-Death Experiences.

The court ruling is also encouraging because the history of the West’s interaction with native cultures and religions has previously been one of arrogance and persecution. Early missionaries with the Catholic church denounced the religious traditions of Native and South Americans, calling their use of ayahuasca and other spiritual aids “demonic,” and their attacks effectively destroyed any way of life which conflicted with their own dogmatic assertions. You saw a similar situation when Americans began using psychedelics in the 1960’s for experimental purposes. Any and all psychedelic substances were outlawed and demonized through propaganda, and the taboos which surrounded it then are still in place today -- you just don’t hear any reasonable discussions going on about the potential benefits of hallucinogenic drug use, and that’s a shame. Consciousness and the religious experience are the greatest mysteries of mankind, and I think a better understanding of those phenomena could help unify the human race by showing us how we are all essentially the same. When you strip away outward appearances and behaviors and cultural differences, you’re left with a single species which is driven by this universal impulse to express itself, and to know and celebrate the mysteries of life and the universe. That’s what religion is all about -- it’s not about the rituals, customs, traditions, and beliefs. Those are specific to one particular religion or another, and they are meant to serve as guides to a transformation of thought, and towards a level of consciousness which is beyond words or symbols. The inexpressible reality which a person encounters in that state of mind is what we call “God.” And somewhere in New Mexico right now there’s a very small group of people who are refusing to borrow God from their ancestors [yep, I "borrowed" that phrase from Mr. Zimmer], and who are instead choosing to experience it directly through active participation in the divine spiritual powers of the human mind. And who knows, maybe in the very distant future us “civilized” Westerners will have the courage to grasp hold of that vine to the gods and see what we’ve been missing out on over the past couple thousand years.

"All the Gods within You"

Just read this short excerpt from a lecture by Heinrich Zimmer and thought I'd share...

"We of the Occident are about to arrive at a crossroads that was reached by the thinkers of India some seven hundred years before Christ. This is the real reason why we become both vexed and stimulated, uneasy yet interested, when confronted with the concepts and images of Oriental wisdom. This crossing is one to which the people of all civilizations come in the typical course of the development of their capacity and requirement for religious experience, and India's teachings force us to realize what its problems are. But we cannot take over the Indian solutions. We must enter the new period our own way and solve its questions for ourselves, because though truth, the radiance of reality, is universally one and the same, it is mirrored variously according to the mediums in which it is reflected. Truth appears differently in different lands and ages according to the living materials out of which its symbols are hewn.

Concepts and words are symbols, just as visions, rituals, and images are; so too are the manners and customs of daily life. Through all of these a transcendent reality is mirrored. They are so many metaphors reflecting and implying something which, though thus variously expressed, is ineffable, though thus rendered multiform, remains inscrutable. Symbols hold the mind to truth but are not themselves the truth, hence it is delusory to borrow them. Each civilization, every age, must bring forth its own.

We shall therefore have to follow the difficult way of our own experiences, produce our own reactions, and assimilate our sufferings and realizations. Only then will the truth that we bring to manifestation be as much our own flesh and blood as is the child its mother's; and the mother, in love with the Father, will then justly delight in her offspring as His duplication. The ineffable seed must be conceived, gestated, and brought forth from our own substance, fed by our blood, if it is to be the true child through which its mother is reborn: and the Father, the divine Transcendent Principle, will then also be reborn -- delivered, that is to say, from the state of non-manifestation, non-action, apparent non-existence. We cannot borrow God. We must effect His new incarnation from within ourselves. Divinity must descend, somehow, into the matter of our own substance and participate in this peculiar life-process."