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Dennett on Breaking the Spell

Daniel Dennett says there isn't anything spiritual about religion that science cannot explain. Forget about religion as being hands-off for scientists. Prayer, the need for God, belief in an afterlife, religious faith: science says it can explain them all very well, thank you.

My Materialism is Bigger than Your Consciousness

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." (Max Planck, who originated the quantum revolution.)

Philip Kapleau Left the Rat Race Behind

In 1953, at age 46, Philip Kapleau was a New York businessman making good money but tired of the rat race. There had to be an answer to it all and peace, he thought, so he decided to go to Japan to study Zen but, about to embark, his friends warned him he was making a huge mistake. He began to think so himself. His journal entries recorded his thoughts.

Turtles All the Way Down: "Nothing" Is the Most Important Question in the World

Why does this blog article exist? Because its author poured himself a cup of coffee the other morning and sat down in front of the computer to read a book review. Where did the book review come from? From the reviewer who wrote it, silly. Where did the book come from? Its author wrote it. This is becoming tedious.

Okay, how about this?

John Wren-Lewis' Endarkenment

Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of everywhere into here. (Children's nursery rhyme)

As a professor and humanist psychologist, John Wren-Lewis was in the forefront of a 1960s Death of God movement before his experience. He saw mysticism as "an escape into fantasy" and a shirking of "creative struggle." He was a "skeptic about all things mystical," and "saw mysticism as a ' failure of nerve'." Then something happened.

American Amnesiac Michael Boatwright Wakes Up Speaking Swedish

What if some morning you wake up in a motel room and don't know who you are?  You don't know how to access your bank accounts to survive. You don't know if you have a job. You don't know if you have a wife. If so, what is her name? The names of your children? What is your country?  You look in the mirror and don't recognize yourself. You talk in a language  not your native tongue.

Gettysburg 4th of July 1913 Reunion Between Yankees & Rebels

100 years ago today. We are creatures of time and time is a kind of amnesia. Most of what falls into the past is lost to us while that which is recalled becomes filtered through the present. Baz Luhrmann's 2013 movie The Great Gatsby is an example. With its modern-music sound track the film seeks to please modern sensibilities rather than lead viewers into how the world was seen then. For some, TV commercials and movie stars are the way the world is, without question, without doubt. Yet we are descended from ancestors whose stories and lives are unknown to us--from 1861 to 1865 mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, lost over 700,000 loved ones in the American Civil War.  Their world was fragile, not to be trusted.  It is a war that defined the United States of America and today its citizens go about their daily business without knowing whence they came.

Meditation, Neuroplasticity, & Happy-Wiring the Brain

All at once the roshi, the room, every single thing disappeared in a dazzling stream of illumination and I felt myself bathed in a delicious, unspeakable delight. . . . For a fleeting eternity I was alone--I alone was.

Man's Best Friend Revisited

They are uniquely loyal to their masters. Unlike cats, they are oriented to what we want, and they understand that we are trying to communicate. They have an uncanny ability to read and respond to human emotions. Humans, in turn, respond to them with oxytocin, the same hormone responsible for bonding mothers to their babies. How did this incredible relationship between them and humans come to be? And how can they, so closely related to fearsome wild wolves, behave so differently? And of course you know what am I talking about, don't you?

Sparrows, Nature & Nurture

I walk among the shadows of my memories and in the distance I see a boy playing in the hay mow of an Iowa barn built over a century ago by his ancestor.

Spooky Action at a Distance & Reinhold Bertlmann's Socks

John Bell said there was no mystery in Albert Einstein's Hidden Variables. In the 1935 Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox, the four scientists posited that spooky action at a distance --nonlocal interaction of objects spatially separated-- could be explained by Hidden Variables. That is, two entangled particles could affect one another though light years apart, and this mutual influence was due to something hidden from observation. In 1981 John Bell said it could be explained by the socks on his friend's feet.

Richard Halliburton Lost at Sea

On October 5, 1939, the Chancery Court in Memphis, Tennessee declared Richard
Halliburton officially dead. “Lost at Sea,” newspaper headlines declared of him, his crew, and his Chinese junk, Sea Dragon. This was big news. Another famous adventurer had disappeared. The year before, Amelia Earhart, with her navigator Fred Noonan, had ditched a Lockheed Electra somewhere in the Pacific.

Morality, Wall Street, & Capuchin Monkeys

In Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic, Charleston Heston descends from Mount Sinai to deliver morality from God to His people. The Ten Commandments  indicates that it comes from the top down, from the deity to us. We are told what to do and that is that. But does moral behavior depend on rules from on high?

Facts You Always Wanted To Know But Were Afraid To Ask About

Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet. Hence, "to take a crap". I can think of many ways for my name to be remembered, but that isn't one of them.

Poet Hart Crane's father invented Life Savers candy. Crane committed suicide by jumping off a cruise ship into the Gulf of Mexico. Defying all logic, there is really no connection between the two facts. Dare I say he did not have a life saver?

Famous last words:

The Curious Case of the Benjamin Button Jelly Fish

Is immortality worth it? What if you could turn off the aging clock? You see your loved ones die around you as you keep your fresh face. Or, is there another way to look at all this?

The Axe Murderess's DNA Lives On

Consider this. You are a neuroscientist with a special interest in the brains of psychopaths. Knowing your interest, your mother suggests you check your own family tree for skeletons in the closet. Some of your ancestors were strange indeed, she says. You do that and discover that, among other psychos, Lizzy Borden, the Axe Murderess, is in your family tree.  You check DNA in your immediate family and are astonished at what you find.

There I Was, Minding My Own Business When Socrates Spotted Me

To sharpen my wits, sometimes I imagine myself in ancient Athens queried by Socrates. But suppose this, I ask myself--suppose he has been asking people very tough questions so when I see him I try to duck out of sight, but it is too late. He spots me on a street corner.

She Has No Fear, Which Is Dangerous

Near the opening of David Lean's epic movie, Lawrence of Arabia, we view Lawrence with non-coms in the mapping room of British HQ, Cairo, during WWI. As if damning the British class-system, Lieutenant Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) strikes a match to light a corporal's cigarette, then very slowly closes his finger and thumb upon the flame. His face is very attentive while the sergeant and corporal watch, fascinated, as Lawrence extinguishes the flame. The corporal then tries the trick with a burning match but drops it in pain. He complains that it hurts, to which Lawrence answers, "Certainly it hurts."

"Well what’s the trick then?" asks the corporal.

"The trick," says Lawrence, "is not minding if it hurts."

The scene serves as a metaphor of what neuroscience has learned about pain.

Around the World in a 1928 Graham-Paige

Top speed 40 mph. After driving their way through Africa, the Zapp family has another continent on their to-do list--Europe. "For the last 13 years, Herman and Candelaria Zapp have traversed the coasts of South and North America, Asia, Australia and Africa in their 85-year-old vehicle which has also been their home. Along the way they have covered almost 200,000 miles and visited more than 40 countries. Oh and they've also had four kids--all born in different countries.

In the Middle of Siberia the Train Left Him Behind

True story. You are a Frenchman riding on the Trans-Siberian railway and you find some Russians who befriend you and ply you with drinks. The drunker you get, the more you like these guys. They are great pals. Then your pals tell you that there is no more vodka. At the next whistle stop they push you, thoroughly soused, off the train to buy more. You are dressed in pants and T-shirt and you don't know where you are. You look at the departing train as you shiver. It is thirteen degrees below zero (-25C). Far away, now, speeding down the track, your pals have taken the money from your wallet and flushed the billfold down the toilet. You speak no Russian and are in the middle of nowhere. What are you going to do? More

It's Not A Reality In Russia

"The fundamental premise for most Western reality shows is what people in the industry call ‘aspirational’: someone works hard and is rewarded with a wonderful new life." They have tried reality shows in Russia and things are different.

The Lonely Crowd of The 21st Century

"Americans, plugged in and on the move, are confiding in their pets, their computers, and their spouses. What they need is to rediscover the value of friendship. . . .

. . . today 'friends' are everywhere in our culture—the average Facebook user has 130—and friendship, of a diluted kind, is our most characteristic relationship: voluntary, flexible, a 'lite' alternative to the caloric meshugaas of family life.

But in restricting ourselves to the thin gruel of modern friendships, we miss out on the more nourishing fare that deeper ones have to offer. . . .

Want To Get Rich? Found Your Own Religion

What do these Tinsel-Townees have in common?: Kelly Preston, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Issac Hayes, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, Katie Holmes, and Tom Cruise.

Can An Expert Violinist Pick Out A Stradivarius? No

Can You Pick The Strad? In a double-blind test by professional violinists, most couldn't determine by sound alone” which violin was an original Stradivarius and which was a modern instrument.

Bastøy: Prison That Promotes The Responsibility of Freedom

There are two kinds of freedom, each defined by its preposition: freedom to, and freedom from. To implies responsibility (freedom to do); from implies security (freedom from fear or want). This prison emphasizes freedom to. The island of Bastøy in Norway is one of the most liberal prisons in the world. With hardened criminals, there are no walls, no bars on the windows and no regimentation of prisoners' lives. The idea is to teach them how to manage their time themselves.

Randomness or Purpose In The Universe?

"Despite the noisy atheists, two trends in spirituality and science have started to converge. One is the trend to seek God outside the church. This has given rise to a kind of spirituality based on personal experience, with an openness to accept Eastern traditions like meditation and yoga as legitimate ways to expand one's consciousness. . . .

We are conscious beings who live with purpose and meaning. It seems unlikely that these arose form a random, meaningless universe. The final answer to where they came from may shake science to its core. I certainly hope it does." More

What You Eat When You Eat Poultry

"A turkey chick is fighting its way into life, hatching somewhat more slowly from its shell than the others. Its egg, perhaps, was a little too far from the top.

There are 125 others, all hatchlings looking at their new world for the first time. Their nest is a plastic box, 85 by 60 centimeters with narrow slits in the sides -- the legs and beaks of those buried further down stick out.

The chicks are thrown out of the box onto a steel chute, from which they fall onto a conveyor belt . . . .

Does the Universe Care about Us?

Steven Pinker sneered at ‘the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker’. The Guardian called it ‘the most despised science book of 2012’. The man was no less than a great modern philosopher and the book expressed his deepest concerns, a counterpoint to the prevailing paradigm of modern science, particularly thinking on evolution.