11.27.10
Can new atheists learn tolerance?
Karl Popper, On ‘Tolerating The Intolerant’ By SCHRODINGER’S CAT
Added: Friday, 26 November 2010 at 5:36 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/553940-karl-popper-on-tolerating-the-intolerant
Life after atheism
After five thousand years of religions on earth, we have the following tidbit from a New Atheist.
Life after atheism By DIPEN SHAH
Added: Saturday, 27 November 2010 at 11:12 AMhttp://richarddawkins.net/discussions/554271-life-after-atheism
Dear all
Prior to my conversion to the cause I was a man with a belief in the afterlife. I was covered in a soft and cosy blanket that basically said “If you screw up in this life … don’t worry, there are plenty more to come … just make the amendments then and everything will be ok!”Recently I have discovered the fallacy of my old beliefs … complete and total rubbish. An afterlife? Yeah right!
Leaking Siberian Ice
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=12204420&page=1: Leaking Siberian Ice Raises a Tricky Climate Issue
As Siberia’s thawing permafrost leaks methane, some see another emerging climate threat
Earth Art Displays
Published on Saturday, November 27, 2010 by Environment News Service (ENS)
Giant Earth Art Displays Dramatize Climate Urgency
CANCUN, Mexico – Events this weekend will cap 350 EARTH, a week-long series of giant public art displays around the planet to help raise awareness of the climate crisis before the United Nations annual climate summit begins in Cancun Monday.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/27-0
No Bailout for the Earth
Johann Hari: There Won’t Be a Bailout for the Earth
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3316?akid=290.96588.5C5vya&t=20
Global Food Justice
Global Food Justice: Billions Starve, Others Eat Themselves into Obesity
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3314?akid=290.96588.5C5vya&t=16
Poverty and trade liberalization
Report: Global Poverty Doubled in Era of Trade Liberalization
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3308?akid=290.96588.5C5vya&t=4
Peter Dale Scott
RG mail
Subject: Fwd: Peter Dale Scott: Continuity of Government – Is the
State of Emergency Superseding our Constitution?
To: The A-List
Rushing into backwardness
RG mail
Rushing into Backwardness
by Professor John Kozy
Global Research (November 11 2010)
The mythical United States of America Read the rest of this entry »
Why head north?
RG mail
The Real News
November 26, 2010* *Why Do Mexican Workers Head North** Timothy Wise:
Mexican agriculture was undermined by NAFTA and companies like Smithfield*
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5863
Pentagon issues grim review of Afghanistan war
RG mail
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/afgh-n26.shtml
Pentagon issues grim review of Afghanistan war *By Bill Van Auken
26 November 2010
Violence has reached record levels in Afghanistan, and the resistance to the
US-led occupation is more widespread than ever, according to a report issued
by the Pentagon.
Endgame
RG mail
The endgame for the peace process
Future historians will argue over the precise moment when the Arab-Israeli peace process died.
By Robert Grenier Read the rest of this entry »
Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall on JFK assassination
Cooment to our Green Tea Party post:
Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
stuartbramhall.com
111.69.246.164 2010/11/25 at 2:38 pm
I don’t understand why every generation has to “prove” who killed JFK. All existing evidence demonstrates conclusively the assassination conspiracy originated with the Joint Chiefs – and was financed by a bunch of NASA and defense contractors and oil execs. This is what French intelligence concluded in 1965. And New Orleans DA Jim Garrison validated in his 1967 grand jury investigation – by interviewing all the witnesses that were still alive – including Manuel Gonzales, the sharpshooter who fired from the grassy knoll. And the House Committee on Assassination proved all over again in 1978 and Oliver Stone in his 1992 movie JFK.What makes me sick is that all this material is in the public domain – available from most public libraries. I write about this – and how my life changed totally after making the acquaintance of a JFK assassinaiton witness – in my recent memoir THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE (www.stuartbramhall.com). I currently live in exile in New Zealand.
New atheism and the god obsession
http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/26/kurtz-vs-the-new-atheists-2/,
and http://www.superscholar.org/the-future-of-secular-humanism/
I find the opposition to Kurtz to be a telling indicator of the New Atheist confusion. Paul Kurtz?! Are you guys kididng. If the New Atheists have a problem with Kurtz they are incompetent to a degree even I hadn’t suspected. It shows the way cults differentiate into doctrinal quibbling and sect subdivison.
Secular humanism is not an atheist religion (nor a theistic).
People need help with their religious confusions, and the New Athesits are totally unhelpful.
Secularism was always about a complex view of religion, witness thinkers like Hegel and Kant. This watered down canon of atheist allegiance is the best thing that happened to religion in decline. Religionists can actually point to people dumber than they are.
Arguing about the existence of god is a waste of time, that secularists could devote to more constructive pursuits.
I have often criticized the New Atheist movement, not least because many outstanding atheists (like Kurtz) are the object of doctrinal fanaticism and, amazing, are forced to find a new label for themselves, and in general because a resolution of the metaphysics of religion has backfired and produced a metaphysics of atheism.
Face it, Richard Dawkins is a box set mind and a menace to groupies hungry for simplifying consolations, and the epitome of bad leadership, leading his converted fans into a cultic true believer mode when the whole point of atheism was a fear of doctrinaire positions and beliefs, and a wariness about ‘god fixations’, theist, but also atheist. Let’s face it, atheism leads to delusive beliefs about the universe designed to make it true, e.g. natural selection pressed into service to ‘guarantee’ some kind of atheist perspective. It need not be so. The classic traditions of implicit atheism in Indian religion (which never flaunted their atheism) never let atheist beliefs dictate the laws of the universe, a syndrome sadly evident in Nietzsche who is too often the invisible influence behind the New Atheists.
Current culture in America needs to devote itself to something more productive than cramming atheism down everyone’s throats. The political situation is being perverted by the dumbing down of secularism around a kind of Mencken snottiness and Bryan-bashing.
A much more robust stance would be to realize that you can’t ever resolve the god question, and to stay within a toleran agnoticism that can also study the details of world religion, which is something far vaster than the theism question.
The problem is really the obsession with ‘god’ created by monotheists after the Axial Age. Then the issue is not ‘god’, but obsession. Look at Buddhists, they waster zero time on the god issue, for or against.
Look at current politics. It is being distracted by the New Atheists. We need to focus on cultural, economic and political issues in a generalized liberalism, and socialism, without this wild goose chase (visible to be sure in the first Marxists) of atheism. The secular is not a theistic or atheistic perspective. To bend liberal secularism out of shape on the atheism question (or theism question) is a disaster for practical efforts.
Harm done to question of the ‘Axial Age’
Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation
The harm done by Armstrong’s book on the Axial Age is hard to correct, but I think it is beginning to dawn on many that the data shows us something different indeed, but, of course, the various elite propagandas, secular and religious, don’t want anyone to know anything about it.
The evolution of freedom
Kant’s Challenge:
The story of human evolution must be about the evolution of freedom, and therefore requires something more than a purely causal science.
Booknotes: …Born on the Wrong Continent?
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life [Hardcover]
Thomas Geoghegan f
Our idea of the ‘Green Tea Party’ has been a bit sarcastic so far, but only to remain at abstract distance from specifics until understanding arrives. And the latter is completely absent in American public discourse.
It is worth looking at the book cited above, to see how far gone American society has become, and the way in which economic ignorance is maintained by the media and elites. The stupidity coefficient of the Tea Partiers, quite obviously, reflects that. It is not so clear that that everyone else seems to have the same problem.
Kurtz vs the New Atheists
Is PZ Myers the Future of Secular Humanism?
We linked to the article about secular humanism yesterday, now Dembski gloats over the split, and accurately sees the problem.
What can you say if the New Atheists can’t get along with Paul Kurtz? That’s unbelievable, and a sign that a unique combination of idiocy and gestating fanaticism is infecting the New Atheists.
The New Atheists have wrecked atheism, now they will proceed to wreck secular humanism.
Mythic Journeys
Mythic Journeys By BOOKTALKER
Added: Friday, 26 November 2010 at 9:45 AM
Hi – I’m new to the site but not to the ideas… I’m a writer and have been doing a lot of research into the history of religion, particularly the “Abrahamic” faiths. I’ve also been looking into the history of story-telling, and myths (especially the “Monomyth”). I think I’m close to putting two and two together, but as I work alone most of the time, it would be nice to hear what others think about these things, and hopefully to generate some discussion that will help me form a clearer view.
New Atheist ‘smarts’ and other misleading indicators
What is religion good for?Blair and Hitchens are to debate whether religion is a force for good. There is a supplementary, answerable, question
I would not like to go toe to toe with Christopher Hitchens on whether religion is a force for good in the world. He is far smarter – and funnier – than Richard Dawkins.
Hitchens’ treatment of the question of religion is very far from intelligent, and the reputation for being smart is killing us with bullshit.
Keep in mind that the worlds smartest scientists are confused about Darwinism and can’t correct their confusion.
Sewage Water Bacteria Fills ‘Missing Link’
Sewage Water Bacteria Fills ‘Missing Link’ in Early Evolution of Life on EarthScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2010) — A common group of bacteria found in acid bogs and sewage treatment plants has provided scientists with evidence of a ‘missing link’ in one of the most important steps in the evolution of life on Earth — the emergence of cells with a nucleus containing DNA (eukaryotic cells).
Size of Mammals Exploded After Dinosaur Extinction
Size of Mammals Exploded After Dinosaur Extinction, Researchers ConfirmScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2010) — Researchers have demonstrated that the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago paved the way for mammals to get bigger — about a thousand times bigger than they had been. The study titled, “The Evolution of Maximum Body Size of Terrestrial Mammals,” released in the journal Science, is the first to quantitatively explore the patterns of body size of mammals after the demise of the dinosaurs.
Biomass Alternative to Petroleum
A High-Yield Biomass Alternative to Petroleum for Industrial ChemicalsScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2010) — A team of University of Massachusetts Amherst chemical engineers report in November 25 issue of Science that they have developed a way to produce high-volume chemical feedstocks including benzene, toluene, xylenes and olefins from pyrolytic bio-oils, the cheapest liquid fuels available today derived from biomass. The new process could reduce or eliminate industry’s reliance on fossil fuels to make industrial chemicals worth an estimated $400 billion annually.
‘Traffic Lights’ in the Brain
Do ‘Traffic Lights’ in the Brain Direct Our Actions? Delayed Inhibition Between Neurons Identified as Possible Basis for Decision Making
ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2010) — In every waking minute, we have to make decisions — sometimes within a split second. Neuroscientists at the Bernstein Center Freiburg have now discovered a possible explanation how the brain chooses between alternative options. The key lies in extremely fast changes in the communication between single nerve cells.
Watts up hype
In early summer 2010, the pseudo science blog Watts Up With That Read the rest of this entry »
Rethinking the Global Economy
Published on Friday, November 26, 2010 by Share the World’s Resources (STWR)
Rethinking the Global Economy: The Case for Sharing
by Rajesh Makwana and Adam Parsons
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/26-2
As the 21st Century unfolds, humanity is faced with a stark reality. Following the world stock market crash in 2008, people everywhere are questioning the unbridled greed, selfishness and competition that has driven the dominant economic model for decades. The old obsession with protecting national interests, the drive to maximise profits at all costs, and the materialistic pursuit of economic growth has failed to benefit the world’s poor and led to catastrophic consequences for planet earth.
WikiLeaks Release Nears
Published on Friday, November 26, 2010 by The Age (Australia)
Tensions Rise as WikiLeaks Release Nears
by Jason Koutsoukis
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/11/26-0
Speculation last night that WikiLeaks may reveal clandestine US support for terrorism had US embassies across the globe scrambling to limit damage ahead of the latest threatened release of US government documents by the whistleblowing website.
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