After death what for atheists?

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Maybe this, which is the last paragraph in a NYT Magazine article by Jim Holt, a thinking contributor to the Mag:

If death is not extinction, what might it be like? That’s a question the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died five years ago, enjoyed pondering. One of the more rococo possibilities he considered was that the dying person’s organized energy might bubble into a new universe created in that person’s image. Although his reflections were inconclusive, Nozick hit on a seductive maxim: first, imagine what form of immortality would be best; then live your life right now as though it were true. And, who knows, it may be true. “Life is a great surprise,” Vladimir Nabokov once observed. “I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”

Jim Holt is a contributing writer for the magazine.

I love most of Jim Holt’s contributions. His stuff in my mind is on a par with John Horgan and George Johnson, the thinking man’s science writer cum philosopher.

UPDATE in December 2008: Charles Blow of the NY Times today picked this up from the Pew Center for research about religion and culture, which seems to give credibility to a more wholesome outcome after death for even atheists and I guess agnostics, like me!

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How beliefs (negative or positive) affect us

Concerns about “electro-sensitivity” in UK was the basis for a research study with findings like:

“Belief is a very powerful thing,” said Professor Elaine Fox, of the University of Essex, who led the three-year study.

“If you really believe something is going to do you some harm, it will.”

The study was funded by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme, a body which is itself funded by industry and government.

I extrapolated from Fox’s statement the opposite thesis that “positive beliefs affect us”.

Robert Wright introduced Buddhism without beliefs to me

and I didn’t realize that Batchelor’s views about the Four Ennobling Truths are just another version of Albert Ellis’ approach to psychotherapy, per:

His basic message was that all people are born with a talent “for crooked thinking,” or distortions of perception that sabotage their innate desire for happiness. But he recognized that people also had the capacity to change themselves. The role of therapists, Dr. Ellis argued, is to intervene directly, using strategies and homework exercises to help patients first learn to accept themselves as they are (unconditional self-acceptance, he called it) and then to retrain themselves to avoid destructive emotions — to “establish new ways of being and behaving,” as he put it.

His methods, along with those of Dr. Aaron T. Beck, a psychiatrist who was working independently, provided the basis for what is known as cognitive behavior therapy. A form of talk therapy, it has been shown to be at least as effective as drugs for many people in treating anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other conditions.

Yes, my parents thought that way and I have been fighting that for quite a while, the touchy feely I. And I guess my brother would say that any other way of being is stupid and worthless!

And now the CBC does a new word essay, but it’s

not the original essay about the subject. Heather Mallick is our essayist commenting on Adam Gopnick’s original piece about Bitterosity.

HEATHER MALLICK

Bitterosity

Child’s word defines modern state of grumpiness

July 23, 2007

Bitterosity. It’s not a new disease, but there’s a lot of it about, on your street, in your workplace and in every piece of news that emerges from your screen or paper to make you feel edgy, wired, uncomfortable with your fellow man. Maybe it’s because we’re all supposed to be successful now, and that’s impossible by definition.

Here’s the definition, courtesy of New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik: “Bitterness born of betrayal and disappointment, jealousy and resentment — half of life here involves safeguarding yourself from the plague of Bitterosity. [A young person with dreams] becomes another grumbling embittered crank, a querulous angry radio-talk-show caller, an anonymous poster, a failed writer complaining about his publisher.”

I guess that I would have qualified as a grumpy one a few months ago and I may even now seem so to my wife, Emma. I admit to grumbling aloud about bad drivers in Vancouver, construction road blocks et al. There seems to be a lot to grumble about in our sometime beautiful city and province. Yesterday, news hit us that there was an crude oil leak onto a residential area of North Burnaby and into Burrard Inlet. Grumble, grumble . . .

WW II histories and a’that!

Powells emailed reviews sent me the greatest review of WW II literature I have ever read,

Stalin’s Gift
A Review by Benjamin Schwarz

It’s time for those (mostly male) readers interested in the Second World War to put down that umpteenth account of D-Day and turn to the new crop of books on the most colossal conflict the world has ever seen: the German-Soviet clash on the Eastern Front. Since the late 1980s, a historiographical revolution has been under way, as scholars fundamentally alter their understanding of this epic struggle, which killed 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians and nearly 4 million Wehrmacht troops. They aren’t merely revising an established narrative; they’re discovering facets of the conflict — even entire battles — that had been lost to history.

Great words, thoughts, writing and bibliographic commentary. Atlantic Monthly and Powells are to be congratulated on publishing and repubbing this. Special KUDOS to Ben Schwarz!

Whatta month of July?

We are experiencing several days of dark rainy ugly weather. But nothing compared to the floods in Britain and in the Oxford area too!

This war will not be over until . . .

and it most probably will not end until homo sapiens has a collective awakening that undoes all the damage of God and all his works invented by men/women.

The NY Times this morning reports on the latest challenge to evolution/natural selection from the mythical land of Allah (Allu Akhbar):

July 17, 2007

Islamic Creationist and a Book Sent Round the World

By CORNELIA DEAN

In the United States, opposition to the teaching of evolution in public schools has largely been fueled by the religious right, particularly Protestant fundamentalism.

Now another voice is entering the debate, in dramatic fashion.

It is the voice of Adnan Oktar of Turkey, who, under the name Harun Yahya, has produced numerous books, videos and DVDs on science and faith, in particular what he calls the “deceit” inherent in the theory of evolution. One of his books, “Atlas of Creation,” is turning up, unsolicited, in mailboxes of scientists around the country and members of Congress, and at science museums in places like Queens and Bemidji, Minn.

At 11 x 17 inches and 12 pounds, with a bright red cover and almost 800 glossy pages, most of them lavishly illustrated, “Atlas of Creation” is probably the largest and most beautiful creationist challenge yet to Darwin’s theory, which Mr. Yahya calls a feeble and perverted ideology contradicted by the Koran.

In bowing to Scripture, Mr. Yahya resembles some fundamentalist creationists in the United States. But he is not among those who assert that Earth is only a few thousand years old. The principal argument of “Atlas of Creation,” advanced in page after page of stunning photographs of fossil plants, insects and animals, is that creatures living today are just like creatures that lived in the fossil past. Ergo, Mr. Yahya writes, evolution must be impossible, illusory, a lie, a deception or “a theory in crisis.”

In fact, there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth.

And these guys are well financed. It is ironic that Western cultural hegemony could be undone by consumer spending on every day things from the oil economy. And in this age of quickening oil prices there seems to be no end to the sources of funds for these religious fanatics, who are street and classroom smart. I feel that I am enjoying a good seat here reading about this wide ranging cultural war as I find my own way to a real awakening to the mystery of life and living a better now.

Now an image of commercial debris caused by new ecommerce/Internet

One of the biggest seller of recorded music in Canada was Sam the Record Man. Their home store was on Yonge St in downtown TO or Toronto.

Here is an image of that store when it was recently closed. Music is not bought in super stores anymore. It is bought on the Internet at sites like iTunes created by Apple to legitimate downloading of music, audio, video and now DVDs.

Image of peaceful Canada

Image via Wikipedia

Toronto the Good or so the saying goes. In the middle of University Ave. is Queen’s Park, the central building of the Government of Ontario. If you click on the link in the previous sentence, you will see an image of peaceful Canada, tulips, grass and Art Deco government buildings. The tulips are a windfall gift from the Juliana, the then Queen of the Netherlands. She gave Canada many tulip bulbs when she returned to Holland in 1945 after living in Canada during WW II.

In fact, the Canadian Army spent much of the blood of its infantry in driving the Wehrmact out of Holland especially the Walcheren Peninsula/Islands. Hardly a peaceful picture, but the image of Queen’s Park’s tulips is a peaceful, deceptive albeit!

And if that’s not enough, here is another image that evokes peacefulness but not necessarily Ontario

the individual, his brain, his consciousness and evolution

Gerald Edelman, Nobel Laureate, neuroscientist and prolific writer was recently interviewed by Discover magazine. He said many highly significant things about his recent work on human consciousness. But I have excerpted what I think is the essence of his thoughts here:

Your brain develops depending on your individual history. So, for example, identical twins will not have identical brains because each brain is exposed to different circumstances. It’s very likely that your brain is unique in the history of the universe.