Scientific American - Charles Q. Choi - September 12, 2011


Peace of Mind: Near-Death Experiences Now Found to Have Scientific Explanations

Near-death experiences are often thought of as mystical phenomena, but research is now revealing scientific explanations for virtually all of their common features. The details of what happens in near-death experiences are now known widely—a sense of being dead, a feeling that one's "soul" has left the body, a voyage toward a bright light, and a departure to another reality where love and bliss are all-encompassing.

Approximately 3 percent of the U.S. population says they have had a near-death experience, according to a Gallup poll. Near-death experiences are reported across cultures, with written records of them dating back to ancient Greece. Not all of these experiences actually coincide with brushes with death—one study of 58 patients who recounted near-death experiences found 30 were not actually in danger of dying, although most of them thought they were.

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Los Angeles Times - By J. Anderson Thomson and Clare Aukofer, July 18, 2011

Before John Lennon imagined "living life in peace," he conjured "no heaven … / no hell below us …/ and no religion too."

No religion: What was Lennon summoning? For starters, a world without "divine" messengers, like Osama bin Laden, sparking violence. A world where mistakes, like the avoidable loss of life in Hurricane Katrina, would be rectified rather than chalked up to "God's will." Where politicians no longer compete to prove who believes more strongly in the irrational and untenable. Where critical thinking is an ideal. In short, a world that makes sense.

In recent years scientists specializing in the mind have begun to unravel religion's "DNA." They have produced robust theories, backed by empirical evidence (including "imaging" studies of the brain at work), that support the conclusion that it was humans who created God, not the other way around. And the better we understand the science, the closer we can come to "no heaven … no hell … and no religion too."


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This can be inferred from the fact that, rather than "vigorously" defend himself against the charges that he used his spiritual authority and material enticements to get young men to have sex with him, as he promised he would do, Long has settled out of court with the men in question.

At issue is not his attraction to young men. Nothing wrong with that. It's the stinking hypocrisy, as always, and the gullibility of his adoring fans.

Bishop Eddie Long settles sexual misconduct suit out of court
By Elizabeth Tenety


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If you think about it for a minute or two, you can easily understand why some people are drawn to the belief that the world is going to end soon. There's been a lot said about the proliferation of billboards and other forms of announcement concerning the imminence of judgment day (next Saturday!), and about the gullibility of people, some of whom have spent their life savings to spread the word.

But in all that I've read about them, I haven't seen anything about the attractiveness of the idea.

Life is challenging, especially in a bad economy. There's a lot to worry about. So what could bring more relief of all the stress and anxiety over life's troubles than the belief that it will all be over soon? For these people, there's no more need to be concerned about keeping the job they have, or about finding one if they're unemployed. There's no need to worry about paying the mortgage, or getting the kids through college. All of that and more gets wiped away in their certainty that, in just a few more days, they'll be taken away from all of life's badness, transported to heaven, and taken care of for the rest of eternity.

And when that day comes and they're still here, and the troubles of life are still here, what will they do then? They will keep the faith and hope for the world's end to come another day. Because it's a nice idea.

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Washington Post - April 13, 2011 (by Paula Kirby)

“The discrimination against women on a global basis is very often attributable to the declaration by religious leaders in Christianity, Islam, and other religions that women are inferior in the eyes of God,” former President Jimmy Carter said last week. Many traditions teach that while both men and women are equal in value, God has ordained specific roles for men and women. Those distinct duties often keep women out of leadership positions in their religious communities. What is religion’s role in gender discrimination?

“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Here, in Ephesians 5, attributed to St Paul, we have in a nutshell the church’s attitude to the respective positions of man and woman. The man’s role is to be the head, the woman’s to submit to him. The meaning is crystal clear, unmistakable; and yet, despite the fundamentalists who firmly believe such Iron Age prejudices still apply today, there are many liberal Christians who have the decency to cringe at the primitiveness of such instructions and who therefore bend over backwards to pretend they’re not as bad as they quite patently are. “Ah yes,” they say, “but Paul goes on to say that husbands must love their wives. And not just love them, but love them as they love themselves. So clearly this is a reciprocal arrangement, equal in value, imposing constraints of equal weight on both man and wife. All is well with the world and we can continue to pretend that Christianity is the friend of women.” But no. All is not well with the world, and only the deluded or the disingenuous could claim to see equality where there is only subservience.


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BBC - 3.22.11 by Jason Palmer

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

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Definitely worth watching in its entirety...



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Oh the delicious irony!

Megachurch Birthplace of 'Hour of Power' Files for Bankruptcy in California

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You have those who use religion to back up their innate prejudice and those who are only anti-gay because of their religion.

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According to the Bible, Jesus said "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money" (Matt. 6:24). Besides the obvious angle of sexual hypocrisy, the other interesting aspect of the Eddie Long accusations has to do with the question of whose money Eddie was spending on these handsome young men, and the larger issue of religious leaders who gorge themselves like ravenous hogs at the trough of their congregants' donations.

A recent article on LA Late News points out that there appears to be a conflict of interest between two of the defendants in the case: Eddie and his church. Since the accusers charge that Eddie used the church's money to seduce the boys with trips, cars, hotel rooms and other gifts, they may not be able to use the same lawyer. So sad. But my big question is this: Why don't donors care that the leaders of these supposedly Bible-believing organizations are clearly serving Money and not the Lord?

How is it that people who are hard-pressed to keep food on the table, who drop their dollars in the collection plate every Sunday, have nary a qualm about how their preachers are living on their dime?

Actually I think I know at least a couple of the answers...

First, the preacher makes me feel good. That's all that matters. It doesn't matter that he's (or she's) buying Bentleys with my money, he makes me feel good.

Second, he says that if I give him money I'll get more back. I have to have faith.

It's hard for me to feel sorry for these people.

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I had an experience a few days ago that brought to my mind this question. It remains one of the the believer's primary arguments for the existence of God, the idea that, without God, there is nothing to make us act rightly, or against our own self-interest in order to do good. (Bear in mind that, even if this were true, which it is not, it doesn't mean that God exists, only that belief in God makes us do good rather than evil.)

But to my experience. Sitting in a managers' meeting with my boss, we're discussing the impending holiday season and how we should prioritize our team members' vacation schedule preferences. The boss tells us that priority would be given by virtue of seniority. One of the managers asks if that means seniority within the company or within our department. Department is the answer.

So we're going around the table and my boss says that means I have first dibs on vacation schedule since I've been here the longest of the members of my team. Right away I feel that I have to point out that, even though I've been with the company longer, I'd come over to the department shortly after another team member. And that's what I say.

Now, why did I say that? If I'd said nothing, I would have gotten first choice. What happened is, I would have felt bad about allowing the mistake to stand. To do that would literally have made me feel bad. And when I corrected the record, and when the others remarked on that, I literally felt good. Not only that, but I could easily see the advantage to me in showing integrity, which would engender trust, a cooperative spirit and goodwill in my peers and superiors.

What's the point? The idea of keeping quiet made me feel bad, and the idea of speaking up made me feel good. Added to that is the long term benefit of showing myself to have integrity. So I have lots of reasons to be good, and God is unnecessary and irrelevant.

(Believers will no doubt claim that my "conscience" is proof of God's existence all by itself. Why? Evolutionary biology explains it quite well, no need to pull God out of a hat, since cooperation and harmony is better for the thriving of my species than the opposite.)

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Nothing has changed. The Catholic church is still afraid of science, as it should be, since science discovers truth about the reality of the cosmos and the church is wholly invested in mythology.

Watch this Leonard Mlodinow, co-author of "The Grand Design," interview: God is unnecessary...



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Friends, this is one conference you don't want to miss!

Sign up here!

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It should escape no one's notice that the biggest controversy in the news lately involves supposedly peaceful religions tearing at each others throats.

Burning the Quran

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You've heard it before: There's no incompatibility between religion and science. They just seek to answer different questions. Science asks how; religion asks why.

Wrong.

First, both religion and science seek to describe the nature of reality. Because of this they must overlap and compete in the arena of explanations for what is.

Second, religion does not answer any questions, in any arena, with answers that can be verified, at least not when it proposes supernatural answers. It can only speculate. To say that God created everything is not an answer with any meaning, since this assertion cannot be verified. Scientific hypotheses, on the other hand, can be, and are, tested. They can either be confirmed as valid explanations of reality or disconfirmed.

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One of Christian apologists' more common themes is the statement that without God there is no basis for morality. With no "absolute authority," morality can change relative to the norms of the current culture, situation, circumstance, etc. But try confronting them with the morally repugnant commands of their god in the Old Testament and see how they use the relativism explanation without batting an eye.

For example: Why God allowed polygamy:

Why did God allow polygamy in the Old Testament? The Bible does not specifically say why God allowed polygamy. As we speculate about God’s silence, there are a few key factors to consider. First, there have always been more women in the world than men. Current statistics show that approximately 50.5 percent of the world population are women, with men being 49.5 percent. Assuming the same percentages in ancient times, and multiplied by millions of people, there would be tens of thousands more women than men. Second, warfare in ancient times was especially brutal, with an incredibly high rate of fatality. This would have resulted in an even greater percentage of women to men. Third, due to patriarchal societies, it was nearly impossible for an unmarried woman to provide for herself. Women were often uneducated and untrained. Women relied on their fathers, brothers, and husbands for provision and protection. Unmarried women were often subjected to prostitution and slavery. The significant difference between the number of women and men would have left many, many women in an undesirable situation.

So, it seems that God may have allowed polygamy to protect and provide for the women who could not find a husband otherwise. A man would take multiple wives and serve as the provider and protector of all of them. While definitely not ideal, living in a polygamist household was far better than the alternatives: prostitution, slavery, or starvation. In addition to the protection/provision factor, polygamy enabled a much faster expansion of humanity, fulfilling God’s command to “be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth” (Genesis 9:7). Men are capable of impregnating multiple women in the same time period, causing humanity to grow much faster than if each man was only producing one child each year.

So the answer to why god ordered genocide, condoned polygamy, allowed divorce, accepted slavery, etc. is essentially this: Times were different.

(Note: Christians who take the position that the Bible is fallible because it was written by human beings with no supernatural intervention can avoid the problem without hypocrisy, since they admit that god never really spoke to those issues in the first place.)

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Daily Beast - Sam Harris

After weeks of dodging the issue, at a White House Ramadan dinner Friday night, President Obama came out in support of Park51, the planned Muslim community center and mosque two blocks away from the World Trade Center site.The President says he wasn't endorsing the ground zero mosque—only defending the right to build it. Sam Harris on his failure to acknowledge that Islam is different than other faiths.

Should a 15-story mosque and Islamic cultural center be built two blocks from the site of the worst jihadist atrocity in living memory? Put this way, the question nearly answers itself. This is not to say, however, that I think we should prevent our fellow citizens from building “the ground zero mosque.” There is probably no legal basis to do so in any case—nor should there be. But the margin between what is legal and what is desirable, or even decent, leaves room for many projects that well-intentioned people might still find offensive. If you can raise the requisite $100 million, you might also build a shrine to Satan on this spot, complete with the names of all the non-believing victims of 9/11 destined to suffer for eternity in Hell. You could also build an Institute of “9/11 Truth,” catering to the credulity, masochism, and paranoia of the 16 percent of Americans who imagine that the World Trade Center was intentionally demolished by agents of the U.S. government. Incidentally, any shrine to conspiracy thinking should probably also contain a mosque, along with a list of the 4,000 Jews who suspiciously declined to practice their usury in the Twin Towers on the day of the attack.


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And makes a hash of both...

Big Questions Online - 7.28.10 by Michael Shermer

In most surveys, nine out of ten Americans respond in the affirmative to the question “Do you believe in God?” The other 10 percent provide a variety of answers, including a favorite among skeptics and atheists: “Which god do you mean?” And then they offer a litany of classical and non-Western deities: Aphrodite, Amon Ra, Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Ganesha, Isis, Mithras, Osiris, Shiva, Thor, Vishnu, Wotan, and Zeus. “We’re all atheists of these gods,” the stock reply concludes, “but some of us go one god further.”

I have debated many theologians who make the traditional arguments for God’s existence: the cosmological argument (prime mover, first cause), the teleological argument (the order and design of the universe), the ontological argument (if it is logically possible for God to exist, then God exists), the anthropic argument (the fine-tuned characteristics of nature, making human life possible), the moral argument (awareness of right and wrong), and others. These are all reasons to believe in God only if you already believe. If you do not already believe, these arguments ring hollow, having been refuted over the ages by philosophers from David Hume to Daniel Dennett.

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