Morality without God

What if you are wrong? - Beliefnet Forums: "The problem with this whole line of thinking is that with God whether it is the Old Testament God of Abraham, or the New Testament God of Paul, The moral laws given by God are contrary to any reasonable formula for living in a pluralistic society....
Thank you I will struggle along with a social foundation for separating out good from evil that takes into account the inherent worth and dignity of all people of both genders, regardless of the God they worship, where they come from, and the color of their skin.

Fundie Atheists

What if you are wrong? - Beliefnet Forums: "What is it with the term fundie, anyway? Everybody seems to be offended as if it is a terrible insult.

I used the term for a common attitude on this board which is the refusal to accept the testimony of theists that the experience of God changed their behavior in observable ways as evidence for the existence of God.

To take an extreme example Paul Hill maintained through his execution for murder that God instructed him to save babies by killing a doctor that was aborting fetuses. The fundie atheist will say that God had nothing to do with this, that the man was insane, filled with religious fervor, deluded, or anything but that God actually told him to do it and therefore must have existed at least for Paul Hill. Personally, I think the simplest, most efficient explanation of Paul Hill's behavior is that an entity separate from Paul Hill exerted a powerful influence on him to cause his behavior, that might as well be called God just as Paul Hill said it was.

Is God going to affect me? No, I am an atheist. I do not accept God in my space. But do I believe God exists? For Paul Hill certainly. For my other friends who experience God? Of course. I will even pray for them. Hey, it is their God, Hesh listens to prayers, why not? No skin off my nose.

Atheism is

A Cool Utterance - Beliefnet Forums: "Being alive in a society that includes other people, involves interacting with them, finding a reason to do so, and finding meaning, that is stimulation of the pleasure centers of the brain, for those interactions. This is all done with the awareness that life may end at any time and will end eventually.

Atheism is the process of developing solutions to these issues that do not involve a little tinhorn in the fancy dress in an overdecorated balcony or a supernatural omnipotent alpha humanoid. A lack of belief in God, gods, or fairies is absolutely irrelevant to my atheism. My atheism is living a rich, full, meaningful life for as long as I can, and leaving a rich, full, meaningful legacy for those that follow. The fact that God is nowhere to be found is absolutely meaningless."

Living in the space between birth and death.

How do you think about death? - Beliefnet Forums:

"From a different part of Legacy, from John Dobbs:
Quote:
REMINDER
The world began the day that I was born
and on the day I die the world will end.
Between these dates there will have been
matters of great importance.


I have no problem with the fact that the world began on the day that I was born. From my predecessors, alive and dead, I was left a rich legacy of a valuable space, filled with beautiful music and wonderful people. Many of of those wonderful people are dead, some long dead, but I can still appreciate their art and thinking from their legacies. Each day I look forward to the exciting challenge of incorporating as much as possible into my space. I eagerly do what I can to make the space even more valuable. Then, with as much love as possible I pass it on to those who will pay it forward.

I have no problem with the fact that, again from
Quote:
REMINDER
...there is nothing I can leave
on the final date
but a legacy of urgencies.

If I have lived my life well, and loved enough, there will be many around willing and able to deal with those urgencies."

Creating Gods

Darwinists for Jesus - Beliefnet Forums: "humans have been creating gods since the beginning of being sapient. Some of the earliest prehistoric figurines were fertility goddesses. Gods are useful for Kings and Shamans to make the buck stop somewhere up there instead of here where it belongs. But be that as it may, I was created from an extraordinarily long line of individuals doing their best to survive and pass on their genetic and recently memetic heritage. ...We are much too busy surviving and doing our best to pass on our genetic and memetic heritage so that those that follow us will have a better and more intellectually exciting world to live in."

The source of meaning.

How do you think about death? - Beliefnet Forums: "My meaning comes from a single, observable universe that I occupy temporarily, and affect in a way that those important to me will have a slightly better place to occupy temporarily to affect for those that follow. I am a way point in an extraordinarily long sequence of individuals occupying their space temporarily leaving a legacy of something a little better for their successors. There were failures along the way, and perhaps I will be another, but my meaning comes from insuring that it isn't so. I can only do so much and must trust my successors to carry on when I am no longer able to do so, and I will die, if not willingly, with the confidence that I have given them the valuable and useful space to do so."

Referent for stimulated God response.

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "The brain does not exist in a vacuum. The brain operates by electromagnetic and chemical stimulation, normally naturally occurring. A muscle twitches, the nerve impulse is transmitted to the brain, is sorted out and directed to the appropriate areas of the brain to generate a useful response.

A natural response can be generated artificially by chemical or electromagnetic stimulation of the appropriate areas of the brain. This is routing neuroscience. Stimulate the pleasure centers and you get a reflection of previous pleasure responses. But the previous pleasure responses are critical. I don't think anyone argues that the stimulated pleasure response is imaginary in the sense that it arises without a previous history of similar natural responses.

So my question for you is what is the source of the previous history of religious experiences that is stimulated by the electromagnetic signals or naturally overstimulated by Temporal Lobe Epilepsy? A related question is what is source of the electromagnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes in the few hundred million ordinary believers without TLE who have experienced the presence of God? As far as I know EM stimulation was extremely uncommon prior to the 20th century and a lot of people claimed to know God back then."

Referent for stimulated God response.

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "The brain does not exist in a vacuum. The brain operates by electromagnetic and chemical stimulation, normally naturally occurring. A muscle twitches, the nerve impulse is transmitted to the brain, is sorted out and directed to the appropriate areas of the brain to generate a useful response.

A natural response can be generated artificially by chemical or electromagnetic stimulation of the appropriate areas of the brain. This is routing neuroscience. Stimulate the pleasure centers and you get a reflection of previous pleasure responses. But the previous pleasure responses are critical. I don't think anyone argues that the stimulated pleasure response is imaginary in the sense that it arises without a previous history of similar natural responses.

So my question for you is what is the source of the previous history of religious experiences that is stimulated by the electromagnetic signals or naturally overstimulated by Temporal Lobe Epilepsy? A related question is what is source of the electromagnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes in the few hundred million ordinary believers without TLE who have experienced the presence of God? As far as I know EM stimulation was extremely uncommon prior to the 20th century and a lot of people claimed to know God back then."

Soruce of stimulated God responses.

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "The brain does not exist in a vacuum. The brain operates by electromagnetic and chemical stimulation, normally naturally occurring. A muscle twitches, the nerve impulse is transmitted to the brain, is sorted out and directed to the appropriate areas of the brain to generate a useful response.

A natural response can be generated artificially by chemical or electromagnetic stimulation of the appropriate areas of the brain. This is routing neuroscience. Stimulate the pleasure centers and you get a reflection of previous pleasure responses. But the previous pleasure responses are critical. I don't think anyone argues that the stimulated pleasure response is imaginary in the sense that it arises without a previous history of similar natural responses.

So my question for you is what is the source of the previous history of religious experiences that is stimulated by the electromagnetic signals or naturally overstimulated by Temporal Lobe Epilepsy? A related question is what is source of the electromagnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes in the few hundred million ordinary believers without TLE who have experienced the presence of God? As far as I know EM stimulation was extremely uncommon prior to the 20th century and a lot of people claimed to know God back then."

An atheist finds God quite naturally.

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "Because of my fascination with the Mass, I have frequently joined good friends who were devout Catholics to their worship services. As you may know I suspend disbelief from the time I leave home, and try to participate as a Catholic in the service. I stay closely in emotional contact with my friend and try to mimic herm responses to better understand what it is that hesh is experiencing. My friends are in agreement that once they enter the church and genuflect, they feel they are in the presence of God. So I tried it. Like Dawkins I don't have much in the way of religious experiences to work with, but on a few occasions I have been able to mirror my friends feeling of the presence of an other. I don't have a God referent in my temporal lobes, so the presence was undefined, but seemed to be identifiable as separate from the others in the church."

Looking at Yesterday's Genes for Tomorrow's Cures: Scientific American

Looking at Yesterday's Genes for Tomorrow's Cures: Scientific American: "And Ivics, who in 1997 reanimated another ancient transposon that he dubbed Sleeping Beauty, showed last year that he could control its insertion site by directing it to specific target sequences. “Even if this technology is not mature enough yet for clinical use, the proof of concept has been done,” he says. Studying how the Harbinger3_DR transposon naturally targets specific sequences may also reveal some useful new techniques."

How do you think about death?

Death - Beliefnet Forums:
To paraphrase Forrest Church, who by the way, is a theist, death is the reason many of us try to live a life that will be worth dying for. Most atheists have come to terms with the near certainty that death is the recycling of the body and the recycling of The proud thoughts and the humble things that were important to the deceased.

In the extremely unlikely event that there is some continuity after death, it will be a natural result of being alive. The only possible scenario that I can conceive of is that the continuation, spirit if you will, will be able to interact with all the other deceased spirits that were important prior to death.

As noted the probability of this is so close to nil that I had better enjoy The proud thoughts and the humble things of the legacy of all that have preceded me and enabled the richness of my living. I devote most of my effort to contributing to and enriching that legacy, that those that follow me may have even more to work with and recycle."

Paul's Contribution to Christian theology

Dust - Beliefnet Forums: "The good news is that in order to support Paul the council had to preserve the Gospels to give Paul the charisma of Jesus to build his Christ on. The bad news is that Paul's proscriptive top down theology appealed to the Christian priesthood, and not incidentally to Constantine, who needed a unifying religion that he could control through the same priesthood to keep order in the populace. The preservation of the Gospels is about the only good thing Christianity did theologically for over a thousand years. Opinions may vary on their political contributions."

Evolution and the God Gene

The Atheist Test - Beliefnet Forums: "The elimination of the God Gene is clear evidence of modern evolution. Prior to the 18th century it was almost impossible to survive in western society without this adaptation to living in a church dominated culture. With the Enlightenment, those without the God gene who were able to think for themselves about important social and political issues prospered and in many areas of Europe and the US have become dominant in the society."

On sin and hatred.

The Atheist Test - Beliefnet Forums: "We are all sinners. Everyone of us."
Speak for your self, Christian, the rest of us are basically good people. Acts of unkindness are generally inadvertent, and yes, we repent and try to learn from them to be even better people, more empathetic, and compassionate toward the people important to our society. Ideally that would be everybody, but some Christians and Muslims make it hard to even come close to that ideal. It is hard not to return hatred with antipathy, but I try to return hatred with its opposite, indifference. Your hatred, like your God, means nothing to me, I refuse to accept its relevance to my life."

On the Bible, the Liturgy and Paul

The Atheist Test - Beliefnet Forums: "Please understand that I can live without God for my entire life. I find the Bible to be a poor guide to anything, too much extraneous garbage getting in the way of the message. I much prefer the distillation of the meaning of the bible contained in the Mass and other Christian Liturgy. There are some useful messages there, but even in the liturgy there are inclusions from the teachings of Paul which I reject in their entirety. The most important that I reject is the concept of Christ as Savior. I find nothing in the teachings of Jesus suggesting that concept which was created out of whole cloth by Paul and grafted on the charisma of Jesus, who after all was too dead to complain."

Thoughts on Dies Irae

Hell - Beliefnet Forums: "Some should fear the discordant Brass in the Berlioz Requiem. It is summoning them to infamy. The human choir tries to call them to harmony, but for many the brass wins. (It always does in the Berlioz, I guess there is something discordant in us all that needs to be dealt with.)"

Dies Irae- Judging the deceased.

Hell - Beliefnet Forums: "Although I am not a believer in an afterlife of the body or soul, I do find that a semblance of immortality is achieved in how we are remembered by those whose lives we touch. Perhaps this is why I like the Dies Irae in the mass. The trumpets sound and we think of our deceased acquaintances. Surely they are judged, as they have sown, 'He brought laughter and irony into my life' 'He was a stinking asshole. Shitting on everything that he disagreed with.'"

In Celebration: George Carlin 1937-2008 - Beliefnet Forums

In Celebration: George Carlin 1937-2008 - Beliefnet Forums: "By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth,” read a message on Mr. Carlin’s Web site, GeorgeCarlin.com, and he spent much of his life in a fervent effort to counteract the forces that would have it so. In his always irreverent, often furious social commentary, in his observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and in groundbreaking routines like the profane “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” he took aim at what he thought of as the palliating and obfuscating agents of American life — politicians, advertisements, religion, the media and conventional thinking of all stripes."

God is?

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "The sensation in the minds of religious believers that there is a strong presence of another entity in the space with them, not identifiable with any of the other people that may be present. The characteristics of the sensed entity are normally determined by the traditions of the local society, and may or may not contain supernatural attributes like extraordinary wisdom or power."

The responsibility of the living.

How to get through the tough times - Beliefnet Forums: "Yet we who must live have a responsibility to continue the legacy, yes, frequently blinded by tears, and crippled by the shared pain, we must do for the dying what they cannot do for themselves. Your father is crying because he cannot pop over and see his grandchildren, can you not do that for him?"

How I got here.

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "Until I was about 20 I was a hard scientist, chemist mainly but physicist as well. Did the science fairs, formal and informal, and learned all I could about becoming a chemist. About the middle of my sophomore year I discovered that I was a wise moron, wise about chemistry and a moron about everything else. I didn't like the self image. I had always been interested in 'living' issues, religion, sociology, and philosophy and spent three quarters getting a academic foundation in those subjects. I maintained my scientific worldview even in these areas, and participated in experiments in mass hysteria, and crowd manipulation."

I was a milk atheist.  And did not become interested in religious studies until my pre-teens. 
Then it was pure social curiosity and understanding the music I was singing.  It still does not bother me that others choose patronizing ignorance. Some seem to need it. 
Nonetheless as a moral human I must do what I can to resist the imposition of patronizing ignorance on those who do not choose to accept it, and to expose it for what it is to those who may wish to understand and/or escape its pernicious influence.   

Charles Fiterman

Needs a post of his own on this blog. His influence is pervasive. He has been a part of my valuable and useful space since I first encountered his small statues, and cavemen beating each other on the head and the body on the atheist boards at beliefnet. I return to his Appreciation/Celebration thread frequently to remind myself of my debt to him and to keep him an active participant in my space.

God is neither natural nor imaginary.

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "The God that my believer friends pray to and depend on for meaning and purpose in their lives is neither explainable by the physical sciences we are familiar with today, nor imaginary. They are tapping into some reservoir of collective wisdom about living in their society."

On heros and Gods

Questions for Atheists 2 - Beliefnet Forums: "Humans tend to make their heroes larger than life. Why should Gods be exempt?"

A Friend's tribute to his late wife

An atheist friend of mine lost his wife of 33 years recently. The following tribute is his beautiful response:

When someone has sweetened your existence with a strong “sense of life,” transforming every dark and shaded place around you to warmth, even the grief one feels in the hours of separation appears out-of-place in the brightness of her after-glow. It is easy to see her mark upon the Earth, etched forever in the hearts and minds of those that she loved and those that couldn't help but love her, too.

When a life-thread so vibrant is unexpectedly snapped, this awful circumstance comes upon us like a dark cloud; for some time we feel we cannot find our way without her guidance. Look carefully and you will still see a trail lined with candles that she left for each of us, to help us find the path to joy, to take up those candles, to light them and to share them with another person trying to find their way through life.

Morality of Consumption

The Religion of the Market - Beliefnet Forums: "As one trained in Economics, it is not clear that consumption is particularly immoral. Whatever is consumed, is produced, and the producers derive economic benefit from the production. They in turn consume the production of others, who benefit right down to the peasants driven off their subsistence farms in China."

Emotional Resonance

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "There is credible evidence for me of some sort of emotional resonance between humans. Between lovers I don't think there is any question of the resonance although the transmission medium(s) can generate lovely arguments between skeptics arguing the normal 5 senses, and those arguing for some sort of ESP.

If that emotional resonance can be demonstrated in larger groups that have no (5) sensual connections, it is a small step to a large group including all people, or even all sentient entities which might be called a cosmic presence. As you know, I weigh in on the small group resonance scale with the village or parish being about the limit for strong resonance. Although I have experienced a general panic in a large city."

Teach your children well

Teach your children well - Beliefnet Forums: "An atheist does not live in a vacuum, and would have no more trouble than the priest, or God in noticing that certain behaviors facilitate living in the society of which hesh is a member. Hesh will adopt those that seem to work, and reject those like the inferiority of women that don't, and will create a moral structure which is relavent and useful for herm present society. This moral structure is much stronger and more useful as it is based on modern realities rather than a desert dwelling warlike tribe."

Mozart's music.

A D Music Hall - Beliefnet Forums: "Mozart turned the formulistic music of his devout predecessors on its ear, and introduced passion into music. He demanded intense involvement both of his performers and his listeners. In the process he changed music forever. It became a true communication medium for exploring the emotional range of human experience."

Are atheists really this stupid?

God exist proved scientificly - Beliefnet Forums: "Quote:
"My point is that we, humanity, will not progress, will not mature, will not coalesce, will not care for all, until we move away from religions and other dividing god beliefs."
I am not sure that all of humanity is ready to move away from religions and god beliefs. Some may be (and of course we will lead the way into the golden future [/sarcasm]) but others may need other paths to follow."

Love-and-Death - Forrest Church Sermon on Mortality

Love-and-Death.pdf (application/pdf Object) somewhere they and we share at least one common ancestor who, with twenty-twenty hindsight, would do the same for us if she were here. In fact, she is here. Those who have come before us must now use our hands to touch, our eyes to see. We carry them in our hearts and bones, we and our blood brothers and sisters, survivors of the miracle, of the ongoing miracle, never ceasing to amaze, pouring itself into new vessels, recreating itself, over and over again.

What caused the first cause? -

What caused the first cause? - Beliefnet Forums: "The God that caused God. It is turtles all the way down."

To Bob on the death of his father.

Bob,

In times like this my thoughts turn to two sources for the bittersweet comfort of being alive after the death of a loved one.

The first is Bob DeCormier's Legacy Which I hope you are familiar with. I will share a recording when you return if you wish.

The other is Forrest Church's stock sermon on Being Alive and Having to Die. made more poignant at this time with the final recurrence of his cancer.

My thoughts are with you and although Unitarians don't pray very well I am working on a prayer theory that might work even for us. I will try it out for you.

With love and hugs,

Love-and-Death.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Love-and-Death.pdf (application/pdf Object)After enjoying a year of fine health, this past Thursday I learned that my cancer had recurred, having spread to my lungs and liver. There is no way to sugarcoat this news. I shall undergo a regimen of chemotherapy, more for palliative than curative reasons, but must face the certainty that my cancer is terminal and the great likelihood that my future will be measured in months not years.

Plum Village - Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

Plum Village - Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh: "Becoming a Buddha is not difficult because 'Buddha' means
someone who is enlightened, who is capable of loving and forgiving."

God Is Also a Flower

Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes | www.qsangha.org: "'God is Black.
But God is not only Black.
God is also White,
God is also a Flower.
So when a lesbian thinks of
her relationship with God,
if she practices deeply,
she can find out that
God is also Lesbian.
And God is Gay, too.
God is no less.
God is Lesbian,
and also Gay,
Black, White,
a Chrysanthemum.
And when you
discriminate against
Black or White
or Flower or Lesbian,
you discriminate
against God,
which is the basic
Goodness in you.'"

Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes | www.qsangha.org

Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes | www.qsangha.org: "Aware of the suffering brought about when we impose our views on others, we are committed not to force others, even our children, by any means whatsoever"

OBEs and the community consciousness.

God Helmets OBEs Illusions and a Cosmic Presence. - Beliefnet Forums: "the mind stays right where it is in the brain of the stressed individual, and it taps into the collective consciousness in an attempt to find a solution. The collective consciousness may be a shared resource made more available to the stressed person by the empathy of caregivers who may be actively seeking the community consciousness to direct assistance to the stressed individual. This is commonly known as prayer, but we don't want to upset the skeptics by a God word in our explanation."

Don't Stereotype Atheists - Beliefnet Forums

Don't Stereotype Atheists - Beliefnet Forums: "Until science can show how those worshipers feed off of each other using understood communication channels, that is sight, sound, as anything but tuning mechanisms science might as well say it doesn't understand God and the human spirit. Saying either does not exist is faith not science."

Staycation

I like the "Middle of Nowhere in the middle of everything" The Sawyer Camp trail in San Mateo.

Pick a hotel in San Mateo, Half Moon Bay,SSF,even SFO will do, Woodside or wherever, and enjoy the short drive through the most beautiful country around. When you get to Sawyer Camp get out your bike, skates, walking shoes, running shoes, or even your strolling sandals. One can spend hours on each quarter mile of the 7 or so mile trail, watching the fog playing with the mountains, saying hello to the deer, and watching the most amazing assortment of humanity go by doing their own thing.

Response to "Hi" from internet friend.

Hi Shannon-

Thanks for asking, I have things working just as I hoped they would for this stage of my life, good job, good health, good singing in the SF Choral Society, family well and getting better, and all my friends at beliefnet to feed my need for stimulating conversation about important topics and to feed my blog. In the words of my health care provider, I am thriving!

I hope things are just as well for you and yours! Stay in touch.

God and dualism.

Don't Stereotype Atheists - Beliefnet Forums: "Until your modern scientific theory of consciousness can explain the presence of God in a group of worshipers, without an immaterial part to explain it, your modern scientific theory is simply scientific BS.

By the way, since there is no God in a Walmart, those spirits that try to connect with God for solace or guidance simply get lost and are doomed to haunt the Wallmart."

Collective consciousness defined.

Don't Stereotype Atheists - Beliefnet Forums: "I do find credible evidence for a 'collective consciousness' which is separate from the individual consciousness and accessible to individuals in times of emotional stress. It is nothing supernatural, just a multi-processor reservoir for the collected wisdom and lore of a tribe. The manifestation of this reservoir is called God by many tribes, and in these tribes rituals are created to reinforce the ability to access this collected wisdom called God."

Science, theology and OBEs

Don't Stereotype Atheists - Beliefnet Forums: "It may well be that at the current stage of scientific understanding of mental phenomena the theological explanation for OBEs may be as likely as the scientific."

On Bible study.

what do you think about being homosexual and being a christian? - Beliefnet Forums: "Worshiping the Bible is dangerous because it causes one to read it."

John Galt economics.

Our Economic Systems - Beliefnet Forums: "Randism is the best example of a secular relgion out there with the exception of Scientology. I have disassociated my self completely from objectivism and Randism, and refer to John Galt economics/philosophy when discussing the issues raised in Rand's novels. That offends everybody!"

Teach your children well

Teach your children well - Beliefnet Forums: "atheist children have to deal with fairly advanced moral concepts at an early age. Typical scenario,
Parent 'Don't take Billy's Toy'
Kid: 'Why'
Theist Parent 'God Says So'
Atheist Parent: 'Billy would cry if you took it.'
AK: 'So What?'
AP: 'If some other kid took your toy how would you feel?'
AK : 'I would cry''
AP: 'Just like Billy?'
AK: 'I guess Billy is just like me'
AP: Hugs kid, and finds a nice toy for herm.
AK: 'Thanks, loving atheist parent for teaching me the important moral lesson of empathy and the consideration of the moral rights of other kids to enjoy their toys and not to covet the other kid's toys.
AP: 'Oy Vey, this kid is gonna be a real challenge. I pity herm teachers when hesh gets to school."

Mist Trail and Ahwahnee at Yosemite

Kodakgallery.com Slideshow

I finally got the round tuit to add the top of Nevada Falls and another night at the Ahwahnee to my life to do list. Around 200 pictures in the 2 days distills down to about 30 worth sharing. The log that won't jump Nevada Falls is worth the trip.

Physical manifestations of faith

Is God a chordal resonance? - Beliefnet Forums: "This resonance is reinforced strongly each time the community joins to worship. As each comes to herm pew others will notice and as hesh genuflects the others notice, feel the resonance and reinforce the presence of God in the church."