December 2010
1 post
November 2010
25 posts
“Against logic there is no armor like ignorance”
– Laurence J Peter (via anarchyofthemind)
“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road,...”
– Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (via changingperspective)
“Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that...”
– Carl Sagan (via vocal-static)
“Gods always behave like the people who make them.”
– Zora Neale Hurston
“Enlightenment is the understanding that this is all, that this is perfect, that...”
– Osho (via anarchyofthemind)
“A Christianity which is not basically mystical must become either a political...”
– Alan Watts, Behold the Spirit (via zurik)
“Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer (via ageofreason)
“There is no surer basis for fanaticism than bad history, which is invariably...”
– Diarmaid Macculloch, Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years (via sanateo)
“You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.”
– Scott Adams (via gcapet) (via sanateo)
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own...”
– Oscar Wilde (via ergoapollo)
“I think an almost unbelievable amount of false philosophy has arisen through not...”
– Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge. Essays 1901-1950 (via fuckyeahexistentialism)
“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is...”
– Arthur Schopenhauer (via ageofreason)
absurdreasoning asked: So, I'm curious. What led you to become non-theist? By non-theist do you mean atheist/agnostic, or more along the lines of a monist/pantheist/panentheist belief set? How does one live as a secular christian?
'The planet won't be destroyed by global warming... →
A Republican congressman hoping to chair the powerful House Energy Committee refers to the Bible and God on the issue of global warming.
Representative John Shimkus insists we shouldn’t concerned about the planet being destroyed because God promised Noah it wouldn’t happen again after the great flood.
Speaking before a House Energy Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing in March,...
“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and fails to...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. (via mcole)
Atheism’s Poster Boy Sam Harris on the Science of...
Olivia Koski: How can you scientifically determine whether something is good or bad?
Sam Harris: The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It’s really no more inflammatory than that. Obviously it would be a good thing to stop nuclear proliferation and genocide and climate change, and to better educate our children. These are things that would be good for everybody and bad for nobody. People seem to believe that there’s no ground for truth-claims about human values—that these are not the sort of facts that science can ever deal with. But there is a place for science to argue, for instance, that the Taliban is really wrong. Its beliefs lead to unnecessary human suffering. Any conception of human well-being you could plausibly have, the Taliban patently fails to maximize it.
Olivia Koski: Religion makes those sort of truth-claims all the time.
Sam Harris: But religion is precisely the wrong software for analyzing human well-being. It’s the one area of our lives where people win points for saying, “I’m not going to change my mind no matter what happens.”
Olivia Koski: But hasn’t religion made some people behave more morally?
Sam Harris: The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good. Is it better to alleviate famine in Africa because you think Jesus Christ is watching and deciding whether to reward you with an eternity of happiness after death? Or is it better to do that because you actually care about the suffering of your fellow human beings?
Olivia Koski: Why is science a better alternative?
Sam Harris: Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don’t have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.
Olivia Koski: Science has suffered when it’s seen as the enemy of religion. But in your book you criticize scientists who have tried to build bridges.
Sam Harris: A religious scientist is someone who has decided he can behave rigorously in his scientific profession but has no obligation to connect that way of thinking to his larger worldview. If he did, he would notice contradictions between his science and his religion. Besides, the point is not to get religious people to accept evolution—it’s to get everyone thinking honestly about the nature of the world.
“I swear to you, gentlemen, to be overly conscious is an illness.”
– The unnamed narrator, Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky (via new-mind) (via dostoyevsky) (via booklover) (via bugseatbooks, new-mind-deactivated20100228)
“I swear to you, gentlemen, to be overly conscious is an illness.”
– The unnamed narrator, Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky (via new-mind) (via dostoyevsky) (via booklover) (via bugseatbooks, new-mind-deactivated20100228)
“I’m a little critical of science. It overplays its hand sometimes. But for the...”
– Jennifer Michael Hecht (via bballanger)
“My concern at present is not with morality, but with value in a more general...”
– —T.M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other.
(leda-swanson via ex-ist)
“So the first step down the rabbit hole is that we choose human longevity as the...”
– Jennifer Michael Hecht
click here and go read the whole thing—totally worth 5 minutes
(via ascendingcoherence)
“Introverts are collectors of thoughts, and solitude is where the collection is...”
– Laurie Helgoe, Revenge of the Introvert
This is the best single sentence I’ve ever heard or read that I could use to describe my introverted tendencies. This whole article is a fantastic read if you are an introvert, or if you know and love some introverts.
(via absurdlakefront)
“When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of...”
– Rick Perlstein, How the Left Enables the Right (via absurdlakefront)
“Devote yourself to wisdom, self-knowledge, friends, family, and give some...”
– Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History (via skimmingthesurface)
May 2010
1 post
What's in a name?
My point of view regarding religion, spirituality, the universe, and personal meaning can be described in various ways: religious naturalist, contemplative atheist, spiritual secularist, etc. But I sometimes describe myself as a secular Christian when discussing my change of mind toward my former faith with those who remain committed to it. This is admittedly a bit of a mind frak, as it joins two...
March 2010
20 posts
For Good Reason podcast, with D.J. Grothe The...
Age of Reason: I’m creating a list of all the... →
I’m creating a list of all the Atheists who are here on tumblr. If you are an Atheist, and wish to appear on this list, please reblog/like (if you’re already on this list please only reblog) this post and I will update it as often as I see fit!
Added 3/13/10
http://ageofreason.tumblr.com/
…
“Neither the fact that the prayer is denominationally neutral nor the fact that...”
– U.S. Supreme Court, Engle v. Vitale (via ageofreason)
“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these...”
– James Madison (via ageofreason)
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source...”
– Albert Einsten (via catprism) (via quitecheeky) (via unwrittenwords) (via booklover)
“The idea that there could exist a state of communication that would allow games...”
– Michel Foucault: ‘The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom’ (via fuckyeahphilosophy)
“We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies...”
– Albert Camus (via nihilnoetia) (via booklover)
“All I know is that I exist, that the world exists, and that I am mortal.”
– lets tumble our way through an existential crisis.
Theological Doubt
Before I get to any of my planned posts, I want to share something a personal journal entry from last night.
My doubt is theological. It’s not that I believe it is not possible for there to be a God, or that the very idea of a transcendent something is utterly ridiculous. It is more rooted in the conviction that the finite cannot grasp the infinite. If there is a God, we cannot see it,...
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and...”
– Leo Tolstoy (via wordpainting)
Coming Up
By way of introduction, I am planning on writing a few particular posts.
I think a brief summary of the portion of my theological journey which led me to nontheism would be appropriate.
Also perhaps an explanation of what I mean by “secular Christian”, which I’m sure many would consider a contradiction in terms.
I’ve been reading Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich,...
“Graduate school in the humanities is a trap. It is designed that way. It is...”
– Thomas H. Benton, The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind’ (via wnstnlinks)
Wow, great quote. Oh how true it is for me. I guess I’m one of those impoverished, demoralized, and damaged graduates who is wandering the professional wilderness rather than working in the field of my study.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent...”
– Bertrand Russell. Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia (via giantrobotlasers) (via lipglossblackleather)
“…if one is to account for the possibility of Evil, one has to presuppose a split...”
– Slavoj Žižek about Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) (via fuckyeahexistentialism)
“The Christian resolution to see the world as ugly and bad has made the world...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche (via nogodsnomasters) (via friendlyatheist)