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The Neural Buddhists - New York Times

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:25:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems.

the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate.

The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation.

Tags: neuroscience religion science

Posted by: amortal

Harun Yahya - The Evolution Deceit - Special Preface

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:32:56 -0000

Tags: creationism evolution islam

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Salon.com Life | You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:23:42 -0000

Tags: mysticism religion science

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The Book of Creation

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:09:36 -0000

Tags: creationism humor science

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The Observer - Interface of science, faith to be analyzed

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:06:52 -0000

Tags: faith science

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Seed: Suspending Life

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:30:15 -0000

Tags: evolution science

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3.06: A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:00:00 -0000

Tags: faith god science teilhard

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Teilhard de Chardin's Evolutionary Philosophy

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:59:23 -0000

Tags: faith philosophy science teilhard

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CMC Magazine: Teilhard de Chardin and the Noosphere

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:58:44 -0000

Tags: faith noosphere science teilhard

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TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:49:33 -0000

Tags: faith god science teilhard

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CrossCurrents magazine: the best thought and writing on religion and the world. Crosscurrents. Cross Currents.

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:48:52 -0000

Tags: faith god imported powermarks science

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God and Science

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:47:49 -0000

Tags: faith god science

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin -- Toward a Science Charged with Faith

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:45:38 -0000

Tags: teilhard

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Articles and Papers - Scientific Papers - Morphic Resonance - Morphic Fields

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 05:45:59 -0000

Tags: biology fields habits morphic morphogenetic rupert sheldrake

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Rupert Sheldrake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:20:45 -0000

Tags: metaphysics science

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Rupert Sheldrake Online - Homepage

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:16:29 -0000

Tags: biology evolution metaphysics science

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BBC/OU Open2.net - Philosophy & Ethics

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:30:25 -0000

Tags: ethics faith philosophy

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microclesia - Jill Taylor’s TED Talk

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:44:48 -0000

Tags: meditation

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Godless evangelicals - John Gray

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:25:28 -0000

Tags: no_tag

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Books | The atheist delusion

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:24:18 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The mass political movements of the 20th century were vehicles for myths inherited from religion, and it is no accident that religion is reviving now that these movements have collapsed. The current hostility to religion is a reaction against this turnabout. Secularisation is in retreat, and the result is the appearance of an evangelical type of atheism not seen since Victorian times.

As in the past, this is a type of atheism that mirrors the faith it rejects.

the idea of free will that informs liberal notions of personal autonomy is biblical in origin (think of the Genesis story). The belief that exercising free will is part of being human is a legacy of faith, and like most varieties of atheism today,

Zealous atheism renews some of the worst features of Christianity and Islam. Just as much as these religions, it is a project of universal conversion. Evangelical atheists never doubt that human life can be transformed if everyone accepts their view of things, and they are certain that one way of living - their own, suitably embellished - is right for everybody. To be sure, atheism need not be a missionary creed of this kind. It is entirely reasonable to have no religious beliefs, and yet be friendly to religion. It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion.

But religions do not consist of propositions struggling to become theories. The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory.

In an interview that appears on the website of the Edge Foundation (edge.org) under the title "The Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion", he predicts that "in about 25 years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe that it does today". He is confident that this will come about, he tells us, mainly because of "the worldwide spread of information technology (not just the internet, but cell phones and portable radios and television)". The philosopher has evidently not reflected on the ubiquity of mobile phones among the Taliban, or the emergence of a virtual al-Qaida on the web.

Both science and religion are systems of symbols that serve human needs - in the case of science, for prediction and control. Religions have served many purposes, but at bottom they answer to a need for meaning that is met by myth rather than explanation. A great deal of modern thought consists of secular myths - hollowed-out religious narratives translated into pseudo-science.

Dawkins seems convinced that if it were not inculcated in schools and families, religion would die out. This is a view that has more in common with a certain type of fundamentalist theology than with Darwinian theory, and I cannot help being reminded of the evangelical Christian who assured me that children reared in a chaste environment would grow up without illicit sexual impulses.

Dawkins's "memetic theory of religion" is a classic example of the nonsense that is spawned when Darwinian thinking is applied outside its proper sphere.

Unfortunately, the theory of memes is science only in the sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a theory. Talk of memes is just the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors.

Dawkins makes much of the oppression perpetrated by religion, which is real enough. He gives less attention to the fact that some of the worst atrocities of modern times were committed by regimes that claimed scientific sanction for their crimes. Nazi "scientific racism" and Soviet "dialectical materialism" reduced the unfathomable complexity of human lives to the deadly simplicity of a scientific formula. In each case, the science was bogus, but it was accepted as genuine at the time, and not only in the regimes in question. Science is as liable to be used for inhumane purposes as any other human institution. Indeed, given the enormous authority science enjoys, the risk of it being used in this way is greater.

might there not be a connection between the attempt to eradicate religion and the loss of freedom? It is unlikely that Mao, who launched his assault on the people and culture of Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison", would have agreed that his atheist world-view had no bearing on his policies.

the idea of religion itself - have been shaped by monotheism. Lying behind secular fundamentalism is a conception of history that derives from religion.

the belief that history is a directional process is as faith-based as anything in the Christian catechism.

Secular thinkers such as Grayling reject the idea of providence, but they continue to think humankind is moving towards a universal goal - a civilisation based on science that will eventually encompass the entire species. In pre-Christian Europe, human life was understood as a series of cycles; history was seen as tragic or comic rather than redemptive. With the arrival of Christianity, it came to be believed that history had a predetermined goal, which was human salvation. Though they suppress their religious content, secular humanists continue to cling to similar beliefs.

it is obvious that the idea of progress in history is a myth created by the need for meaning.

The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society.

People live longer and kill one another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.

Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it.

evangelical atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of liberal freedoms - rarely inquiring where these freedoms have come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating them.

The key liberal theorists of toleration are John Locke, who defended religious freedom in explicitly Christian terms, and Benedict Spinoza, a Jewish rationalist who was also a mystic.

It may be true that Jews first developed monotheism, but Judaism has never been a missionary faith. In seeking universal conversion, evangelical atheism belongs with Christianity and Islam.

Islamists owe as much, if not more, to the far left, and it would be more accurate to describe many of them as Islamo-Leninists

It is not necessary to believe in any narrative of progress to think liberal societies are worth resolutely defending.

Some neocons - such as Tony Blair, who will soon be teaching religion and politics at Yale - combine their belligerent progressivism with religious belief, though of a kind Augustine and Pascal might find hard to recognise. Most are secular utopians, who justify pre-emptive war and excuse torture as leading to a radiant future in which democracy will be adopted universally. Even on the high ground of the west, messianic politics has not lost its dangerous appeal.

Religion has not gone away. Repressing it is like repressing sex, a self-defeating enterprise.

Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace.

The attempt to eradicate religion, however, only leads to it reappearing in grotesque and degraded forms.

Tags: atheist john gray

Posted by: amortal