Dobson and Obama

Jon Stewart calls out James Dobson regarding his comments about Obama. I can't believe I used to listen to this guy's radio show. Funny stuff!

Click here to watch.

Chiggers

Okay, no one wants to discuss Freewill and Ethics, so what is your best chigger bite remedy?

A nice memento of my mountain biking day with Homebrewer....

Free Will and Ethics

Why Materialists Cheat

The 2008 Shift Report: Changing the Story of Our Future, published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, recently arrived at the offices of WIE. Among its many other compelling facts, we were struck by this description of an experiment conducted by Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia that investigated the ways in which believing, or disbelieving, in free will affects moral choices:

[W]hat one believes about free will has an important social consequence.... In the Vohs and Schooler study, [some] participants read passages from The Astonishing Hypothesis by Nobel laureate biologist Francis Crick, which promotes the idea that free will is an illusion: “Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons.” Others read more neutral statements as a control condition. The results of the study showed that participants who read [Crick's] anti-free will statements were significantly more likely to cheat on several experimental tasks. If exposure to [anti-free will messages] increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then what does this same message, repeated by authoritative scientists and promoted by the media, do to societal behavior?

Interesting. If we are told a bunch of neurons have burned in pathways in our brain that determines our behavior we are likely to be unethical.

I wonder what would happen if they would have said:

You are bunch of neurons, in fact you have as many neurons as there are stars in the universe, with potential to be as creative, beautiful and destructive as the universe itself.

Suffering

The Buddha's discovery to end the problem of suffering started with the realization that life is suffering. Now I had to think about that for awhile. I'm not that sharp, you know. Yeah, I know you know.

Anyway, what I get from this is, that as long as we are alive we will suffer in some form. Birth is a beautiful suffering event form mother and baby. Many people are tortured with mental suffering from abuse, guilt, and psychological disorders. Most of us have one physical malady or another at the least. We have lost loved ones in tragic accidents, or simply from old age. Yes, perhaps to live is to suffer.

As a species, in general, we do not like to suffer. How many inventions, rationalizations and myths have we used to circumvent or delay suffering? Air Conditioning, Refrigerators, Spinal Blocks, Multiple Personality Disorder, and thousands of drugs invented to delay death and ease suffering. . . I could go on, and all would be attempted solutions to the problem of suffering.

Here's the kicker: Most of these "solutions" cause us to suffer even deeper. For instance, a person may develop Multiple Personality Disorder (or a host of other disorders) as a way to deal with a terrible experience and avoid suffering. As we know, psychological disorders are not a path to life without suffering. We create antibiotics to cure bacterial infections, and then we overuse them and develop resistant strains of bacteria for which there is no cure. We create technology that does the "hard work" for us and we get fat and live with lower back pain from sitting on our asses all day. We extend our lives with wonder drugs to cure every ailment, and often wind up in nursing homes with little quality of life. . . Again, I could go on.

Maybe the solution is simply to do as the Buddah said, and accept that suffering is part of life.

What do you think?

Question For You

If you could have witnessed any part of the Gospels first hand, which would it have been?

Freedom and/or Paranoia?

Call me crazy (most people do), but I had some real issues with a letter that came home from my daughter's middle school stating that they were going to have random searches involving police dogs while the kids were at there. It really didn't make me happy when my daughter came home and said it was scary. Not only does it bring about visions Nazi POW camps, but they are treating the good kids criminals, which make up the vast majority of the school. I also just don't like the fact that she will have police dogs barking through the halls as a memory of her school experience.

Next, we have all these red light cameras appearing in our town with no warning. I don't like these things in the first place, but they seem to be appearing at EVERY red light in town. Then I read this article today about a town nearby putting up surveillance cameras everywhere even though the town does not have a crime problem!!! These cameras can zoom in from one mile away. The town has NO written policy regarding the cameras which allows them to use them as they see fit.

I may be paranoid, but I have to say that I called this one.

Coming soon, to a town near you....

“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” -Ben Franklin (maybe)

What's your thought?

"Something religious is going on even in scientific work, not in the scientific information itself but in the commitment to the idea that the universe is intelligible and truth is worth seeking. Those are religious convictions. You can't prove scientifically that truth is worth seeking, but it's the conviction that it is worth seeking that underlies all good science. Religion lifts this up and makes it more explicit. It symbolically names that depth, that truth, that meaning, and refers to it in Western theology as God or Allah, or in Eastern thought as Brahman or Tao." - John Haught (Georgetown University)

What is your thought about why we seek truth as species?

Wahoo!!

Just purchased this. Now I need to get these.

Weirdness

We have some wonderful neighbors in our neighborhood! I've never lived anywhere quite like this.

Anyway, we were over at "the girls" house last evening, having a few beers, and we started talking about "spiritual things". We told them that we knew we were weird because we have this intense spiritual journey that most "normal" people don't seem to ever think about.

I guess I am ruined. I just can't help but look at the beauty and diversity of nature and people and see God...