Happy Thanksgiving

This year, I am particularly thankful for all the participants on CCD, and their willingness to be honest in the discussions of some of their most personal thoughts and beliefs. Kudos to all of you for commenting, posting and debating! I think we need more debate in this world. We need more debate, more argument, more discussion, more questions, more doubt and more willingness to really engage eachother with honesty. I applaud you for joining in, and I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving Day, if you celebrated.

CCD,

Ben

An Interesting Look at Evolution Courtesy of Carl Sagan

CCD,

Ben

Sam Harris: Faith and Reason in the Modern World

As many of you know, Sam Harris is one of my favorite defenders of Reason. Sam is one of the many people that helped me define my current worldview, and I find his speeches to be incredibly lucid. He is honest, engaging, calm and absolutely clear about how we can have transcendent experiences, love, meaning and real humanity without necessitating a God.

The following videos exhibit some of the best speaking on the topic of Faith & Reason available ANYWHERE, and I highly recommend you take the time to watch all five (less than an hour).

If there are specific things Sam says that people find interesting/lacking/inspiring/harmful, please comment and begin some discussion/debate.

Enjoy!

Ben

Obama Promises to “Throw His Weight Around”…

…on the topic of the college football playoff system during his 60 Minutes interview tonight. He wants an 8 team playoff and I think he’ll make it happen. Hi-yo!!!

Ok, back to serious stuff.

Ben

Hitchens 1, Wolpe 0

Tonight I attended (thanks James Tracy at www.anatheist.net for getting me tickets!) a debate/discussion between Rabbi David Wolpe and Christopher Hitchens at the La Jolla Jewish Community Center. Wolpe is generally considered America’s most well known Rabbi, and Christopher Hitchens is, well, known as an inflammatory anti-theist and anti-religionist who usually has either a drink or a smoke in his hand. You can find videos of previous debates here and you can see Rabbi Wolpe debate Sam Harris here.

Even though Hitchens is a sharp and entertaining guy, I still think I prefer Sam Harris, Dan Dennett and Richard Dawkins to Hitch, in general. That said, and even though I suspect that Hitchens was drunk, he absolutely mopped the floor with Wolpe. It was fun to see them go back and forth, but if you want my opinion, Hitchens was landing haymaker after haymaker, while Wolpe retreated to many tired old atheism myths and claims about the origin of morality. I mean, I think discussions like the one they had are fascinating to me almost not matter what, but Wolpe didn’t put up much of a fight. In fact, he nearly conceded that God and religion are man-made SEVERAL times, and Hitchens had to encourage him to take back his words on more than one occasion.

But what really interested me was that Hitchens posed an interesting challenge to Wolpe and the crowd. He even offered a reward if someone could give an answer. “Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”

So I thought I’d pose that question to CCD. What do you think? Is there an answer to this question?

CCD,

Ben

The Opposite of Pascal’s Wager? If you could live forever, would you? – A Guest Post by Thor Odhner

Hi CCDers. I thought I’d write a quick and dirty guest post on a little thought experiment I find interesting. I hope you enjoy it.

With all of the recent technological advances in genetics, health, robotics, virology and other areas of science, we all may, within our lifetime, face an incredible choice: do we want to live forever? I remember reading a very interesting article not too long ago (I don’t recall the author or title) that suggested the ability to create robotic/organic hybrids to replace or complement our blood, organs, etc. which could prevent the breakdown and aging of our bodies and minds might not be too far off. It is possible that, generationally, we may be at just about the cutoff point where some of us will survive to have the option to take advantage of such technology, and some of us will not. The article called it “Surviving long enough to be immortal,” although realistically, it would probably just mean a very large increase in life expectancy (maybe multiplying it by a factor of 100 or so) and we would still be susceptible to sabotage, getting buried by a rock slide, etc.

So I invite you to ponder this possibility and offer what you think your reaction would be. If the technology suddenly came along that allowed you to live at peak physical and mental health for an average of, say, 5000 years, would you go for it? For believers, does this present a sort of reverse-Pascal’s wager? Even if you’re fairly sure about your God and your afterlife, don’t you want to stick around here for awhile longer just in case there’s nothing else? How strange would it be to see some of your friends, and some of their children, and some of their children, and some of their children, etc. choosing to die and go on to Heaven while the rest of us stay on here. What would happen to the movements of those who chose this path over time? Would these sentiments slowly go out of style as the memory of times when we only lived for 80 years or so faded, eventually to be seen as some kind of odd romantic, mythical tradition? Would most religions adapt and decide that God now wanted us to love longer, or else he wouldn’t have allowed for this? It’s especially interesting to think that the Survivors and the Departed might both continue for quite some time with no one here ever knowing whether the Departed were living happily in paradise, or just gone.

It’s also worth noting that we’re culturally and evolutionarily fine-tuned to expect to live within a certain range of years, and some might debate that they wouldn’t WANT to live that long. But would our frame of reference change? Would 100 years fly by and leave us wondering how anyone could have felt that they had led a complete life in so short a period of time? 500 years from now, how would you think about the people who were born 20 years before you and missed the boat?

So what would YOU do? How would you react to the news that this capability had become available? Do you expect we’ll get to that point? How soon do you expect it?

-Thor Odhner

Not So Blind Watchmaker?

The research in this ScienceDaily article was funded by The National Science Foundation.

According to ScienceDaily.com:

A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.

The research, which appears to offer evidence of a hidden mechanism guiding the way biological organisms respond to the forces of natural selection, provides a new perspective on evolution, the scientists said.

The researchers — Raj Chakrabarti, Herschel Rabitz, Stacey Springs and George McLendon — made the discovery while carrying out experiments on proteins constituting the electron transport chain (ETC), a biochemical network essential for metabolism. A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order.

“The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if evolution is completely random, operating like a ‘blind watchmaker’?” said Chakrabarti, an associate research scholar in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton. “Our new theory extends Darwin’s model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness.”

Also worth noting, I think, is this small bit:

“The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature.”

Anyhow, food for thought. Personally, I think this is rather groundbreaking stuff.

CCD,

Ben

Is Religion Child Abuse?

As I watched this video, I was struck by the fact that I have never seen a child make a speech like this. Obviously a talented little performer/speaker. Hopefully one day, he’ll be able to put some distance between himself, and whoever wrote those words down for him. If he does, he may be able to put those talents to use. Until then, he’s doomed to sounding unintelligent, even though he’s obviously got skills. In my opinion, this poor little guy has definitely been abused.

Is Religion child abuse? Well, like everything else, there’s a grey scale. Whatever denomination produced this wretched performance can go at/near the top of the scale, and yes, I’m sure there are religions that are less obvious. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

As you watch this short video, be sure to think of the children in your religion/church, and what ‘fact statements’ they might make about the nature of God. Do they have a healthy skepticism instilled in them? Do they understand the importance of doubt? What do they believe without really knowing why? Maybe go ask them some questions. See what they think they know, and then ask yourself, “How could they know that? Do I even know that?”

My prediction is that no matter your denomination, your children are being taught to ‘know’ certain things without your church making an honest effort to represent the best information available to us all. To the same degree that this is happening, it is a problem.

CCD,

Ben

Keith Olbermann on Prop 8

I especially liked his reference to cognitive dissonance, around the 4:45 mark.

Enjoy,

Ben

Obama on Dogma and Policy

An amazing speech given by Barack Obama about dogmatism, the Bible, this “Christian” nation and policy decision-making. Very interesting, only 5 minutes long.

CCD,

Ben