How to Whistle Through the Graveyard

Woody Allen said he has nothing against death. He just doesn't want to be there when it happens. He also said he didn't want to achieve immortality through his work... He wanted to achieve it through not dying.

So what is all this fear of death? Why should we fear it so much?

Are we governed by unconscious processes?: David Eagleman and Raymond Tallis

 First point, then counterpoint.

POINT. As much as we like to think about the body and mind living separate existences, the mental is not separable from the physical. The brain is utterly alien to us, and yet our personalities, hopes, fears and aspirations all depend on the integrity of this biological tissue. How do we know this? Because when the brain changes, we change.

Stephen Pinker, Language, & Human Nature

Named in 2004 by Time Magazine as one of 100 most influential scientists and thinkers in the world,Stephen Pinker's books include The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Blank Slate, and The Stuff of Thought. They combine cognitive science with behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology. He was also named as one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's 100 top public intellectuals in 2005. Above is an animation adapted from a speech on language and human nature given by Steven Pinker.
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Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?

Nancey Murphy is a Christian theologian and philosopher at Fuller Theological Seminary. Psychologist Warren S. Brown is director of the Lee Edward Travis Research Institute there. He spent 11 years as a research scientist at the UCLA Brain Research Institute. As their background might suggest, their book, takes as key interests the physicalism of science and the room it leaves for the existence of God. I offer a review of the book, but do not want it to become overlong. For that reason, I do not develop explanations of some of their points.

Both Murphy and Brown believe in God but hold that the world can be explained by a physical account of it. Still, they argue that a physicalist account alone cannot make sense of meaning. We find meaning in our lives and in the world, which cannot be explained by a resort to only physical explanations. More
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