Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Saturday, February 13, 2016
The Bible as bad writing
**When I was a Bible student, reading it every day, reading about it often, interpreting it for various audiences I would deal with the obvious mess that the Bible is by explaining that the message got so polluted by various political, mental, technical and cultural influences that the REAL meaning, the SPIRITUAL meaning became obscured.
This is how Mary Baker Eddy explained it. She of course set herself up —as so many have —as someone who had the unique divine inspiration to comb through it and discern the SPIRITUAL meaning that others mostly missed. But in the end she did what just about every Bible thumper does: cherry-pick passages here and there and weave them into support for a particular thesis. (Her "proof" that she was indeed this inspired scribe was that the system of "spiritual healing" that she invented based on it worked. But it doesn't.)
I didn’t grasp this at the time because I, too, was working under the assumption — delusion — that there is a divine Agent active in the universe who is trying to get through to us but for some never-explained reason has to use these woefully inadequate scribes to do it. As I studied more about the history of what we today call the Bible, I learned that it was a particular compilation of various myths, rumors, cultic rituals and other so-called doctrines of christianity, which freely circulated within that halcyon land mass we today call the middle east. Which stories got compiled into the present Bible depended on the opinions and political clout of various church authorities and scholars at the time. The Emperor Constantine, knowing that nothing unites like a common delusion — diverse people holding to the same religious precepts — decided that there should be one religion, and therefore one religious document that everyone would have to take as the final statement on the truth of Christianity. So he commanded that it be created. Yes, the Bible was created at a certain time and place. Those texts that became the canonical “winners” excluded many — most — of the “gospels” floating around in the 4th century and earlier. With the discovery of the Nag Hammadi, an ancient library, biblical scholars had to deal with some of those contemporaneous texts: The gospel of Thomas, of Mary Magdalene, and a slew of other luminaries that would have been quite well known to the average person in the 4th century but who got obliterated by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. Not that those other pieces of oral tradition were much clearer or more “inspired” than what got canonized but they illustrate the arbitrariness of what so many people consider a finished, divine work. And reading them was one of the reasons why my faith eventually crumbled.
Recently, it was refreshing to encounter a blog called Southern Skeptic, since I now live in the middle of the Bible belt where the State legislature is currently working on six or seven bills about “religious freedom,” which obviously is only about freedom for the mainline christian religion, preferably of the evangelical variety, and oppression for everybody else. (You can imagine what atrocities they will try to push through.)
The writer, known only as “Matt,” explores his journey from fundamentalism to skepticism. His article, 7 Reasons God is a Terrible Writer does a good job of filleting this revered mashup that has been directly responsible for so much evil in human history. He asks:
This is how Mary Baker Eddy explained it. She of course set herself up —as so many have —as someone who had the unique divine inspiration to comb through it and discern the SPIRITUAL meaning that others mostly missed. But in the end she did what just about every Bible thumper does: cherry-pick passages here and there and weave them into support for a particular thesis. (Her "proof" that she was indeed this inspired scribe was that the system of "spiritual healing" that she invented based on it worked. But it doesn't.)
I didn’t grasp this at the time because I, too, was working under the assumption — delusion — that there is a divine Agent active in the universe who is trying to get through to us but for some never-explained reason has to use these woefully inadequate scribes to do it. As I studied more about the history of what we today call the Bible, I learned that it was a particular compilation of various myths, rumors, cultic rituals and other so-called doctrines of christianity, which freely circulated within that halcyon land mass we today call the middle east. Which stories got compiled into the present Bible depended on the opinions and political clout of various church authorities and scholars at the time. The Emperor Constantine, knowing that nothing unites like a common delusion — diverse people holding to the same religious precepts — decided that there should be one religion, and therefore one religious document that everyone would have to take as the final statement on the truth of Christianity. So he commanded that it be created. Yes, the Bible was created at a certain time and place. Those texts that became the canonical “winners” excluded many — most — of the “gospels” floating around in the 4th century and earlier. With the discovery of the Nag Hammadi, an ancient library, biblical scholars had to deal with some of those contemporaneous texts: The gospel of Thomas, of Mary Magdalene, and a slew of other luminaries that would have been quite well known to the average person in the 4th century but who got obliterated by the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. Not that those other pieces of oral tradition were much clearer or more “inspired” than what got canonized but they illustrate the arbitrariness of what so many people consider a finished, divine work. And reading them was one of the reasons why my faith eventually crumbled.
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| From Southern Skeptic article |
Recently, it was refreshing to encounter a blog called Southern Skeptic, since I now live in the middle of the Bible belt where the State legislature is currently working on six or seven bills about “religious freedom,” which obviously is only about freedom for the mainline christian religion, preferably of the evangelical variety, and oppression for everybody else. (You can imagine what atrocities they will try to push through.)
The writer, known only as “Matt,” explores his journey from fundamentalism to skepticism. His article, 7 Reasons God is a Terrible Writer does a good job of filleting this revered mashup that has been directly responsible for so much evil in human history. He asks:
“So what would we expect to find in a book that was written by God (or “divinely inspired”)? Here are seven suggestions.(I’ll just quote the top line items and encourage you to read the details:)
1. It would be well-organized.While many would object to that last feature, he makes a convincing case that most of the stories are strange, pointless and/or disgusting. He prefers hundreds of other, human writers. As do I.
2. It would be more specific.
3. It would be easy to understand.
4. It would be perfectly consistent.
5. It would have specific, verifiable prophecies
6. It would contain knowledge that humans couldn’t have had.
7. It would have beautiful, heart-rending poetry and stories
Ask a believer why the Bible is inspired and the answer you get is, the Bible says it is. That's known as a tautology. But even if you accept that it could be inspired and absolutely true and an unerring guide to righteous human living, that acceptance would most likely crumble once you start reading it Because the writing is so bad.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Lamar Smith: what kind of scientist?
**VOX.COM recently published a troubling article about the current chair of the House science committee, Lamar Smith (R-TX) .
The headline proclaimed:
I met Smith in 2004 while I was working at the headquarters of the Christian Science church in Boston. We exchanged mere pleasantries at a church event, but his attendance attests his commitment to its teachings. Unless he has become a worse Christian Scientist since then, people need to consider the implications if he still believes what his religion teaches. And fundamental to that teaching is the specious nature of the material world – the same material world that most scientists study and work in. If you personally know some Christian Scientists you probably don't think of them being as crazy as that. And perhaps the reason is that in order to appear less fanatical, Christian Scientists tend to practice an unstated dualism, holding privately to the primacy of absolute spiritual reality while going along with the "seeming reality" of the physical world. This sustains a subtle hypocrisy whereby many, if not most, believers indulge in all sorts of materiality, including medical treatment, rationalizing that they and the rest of the world haven't advanced to the wisdom of their teachings. What suits this dualism is a characteristic velveteen veneer, a terminal niceness that hesitates to get all absolute on people – and having to put up with all that push-back. Smith exhibits this veneer, even while wearing the brass knuckles of his newly amped subpoena powers.
Government officials like Smith frequently allow their religious beliefs and power to infiltrate the legal realm to generate religious exemptions* that include practices like Christian Science "healing." Though fortunately many of those exemptions, especially for children, have been overturned in recent years, it would not be surprising that a believer like this newly-superempowered chair of the House science committee would try to influence public policy based on his religious convictions. He is and will be as anti-normal-science as his religion, in its purest form, teaches.
Yes, I'm playing the religion card. But not in the way it was played against Romney, whose religion had little to do with government and more to do with its (and his) weirdness. It's more akin to JFK, whose opponents suggested that as a Catholic president he would be more loyal to the Vatican than to the US. But Kennedy stated publicly and firmly that in a conflict between his religion and his country his loyalties would always be with his country. How likely is it that Lamar Smith will publicly proclaim his allegiance to normal science versus that other kind?
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| "Are you now or have you ever been a climate scientist?" |
The House science committee is worse than the Benghazi committee
The article claims the committee's "open-ended, Orwellian attempts to intimidate some of the nation's leading scientists and scientific institutions" has more dire consequences for the nation than Gowdy & Co's brazenly partisan attack on just one politician, Hillary Clinton. That's because recently Republicans granted chairman Smith vastly more subpoena powers than previous chairs, which Vox points out has much wider and more devastating implications than the Clinton witch hunt. Think of all the critical issues the science committee can affect – climate, NASA, stem cell research, etc – and think of the damage it can do if its aim is to discredit and halt the work of the scientists and institutions that focus on them.But it's even worse than that
It would be bad enough for any clueless politician with only a secular ideological agenda to head up such an important committee. But it's even worse when you consider this individual's religious beliefs, which few seem to have noticed. I wrote a response to Vox, and this post is an expansion on it:
Thanks for a well-written article on the abuses of Lamar Smith as chair of the science committee. I think the problem is even worse than you detail when one considers that Smith is a long-time Christian Scientist. No, not a scientist who happens to be a Christian, but a card-carrying believer in the religion of Christian Science. I am a former believer and teacher of Christian Science doctrine and can verify that the ideas that his religion espouses are diametrically opposed to what the rest of the world knows as “science.” And the mission of the House science committee. A fundamental concept of the religion is that “matter,” the stuff that normal science investigates, is “unreal.” Yes, the very substance of science is an illusion, and those who profess to be normal scientists are deluded and therefore erroneous from the get-go. The first premise of Christian Science is that only “spiritual” things are real. His hidden agenda, then, is to destroy or at least weaken the credibility of the whole field of all normal science. Republicans in general tout the idea that it’s good for a government official to let religion influence his or her governance. It’s pretty obvious that Lamar Smith, whom I’ve met, intends to shape government policy by his religious beliefs and agenda. Most Christian denominations are not this radical, and have a long history of opposing Christian Science. Do Republicans think that the religious tenets of this politician are acceptable?How many of his colleagues understand the nature of Lamar Smith's religious convictions? Could it be that current Republican reasoning is as simplistic as to conclude that if he's a Christian Scientist, well, that's close enough to head the science committee? It's not really that far-fetched. And as the visibility and influence of Christian Science has waned almost to invisibility, he might even seem innocuous, maybe like Ben Carson's Seventh-day Adventism. But he's not.
Who am I to criticize?
Though I am hostile, for what this blog chronicles are good reasons, I am not an ignorant sniper at Christian Science, as many of its opponents are. My knowledge is deep and extensive: I was a believer and church member for over thirty-five years; wrote for its publications, lectured about and taught its precepts and practice. For twenty of those years I was a professional practitioner of what I ultimately came to realize is the sham of "Christian Science healing." It eventually didn't seem right taking money from people in order to convince them of the unreality of their problems, especially when there was never any discernible, verifiable physical healing as a result. I even pressed those precepts on a mother who let her child die of diabetes even while he screamed for medical attention. That horrendous event and its legal consequences plus five years snarled in the gears of Christian Science church politics led to the end of my faith.Playing the religion card?
Let's remember that what Republicans mean when they blow the dog whistle of "religious liberty" is that government officials (like Kim Davis) should be free to institute, change or overrule public laws according to their personal religious beliefs. The world is a lot scarier place when legislators like Lamar Smith have extraordinary legal power to frustrate, harass and squelch real scientists and their work. The whacko fringe of the party (arguably not just a fringe) may have found a velveteen-clad wrecking ball in this mild-mannered "scientist."Government officials like Smith frequently allow their religious beliefs and power to infiltrate the legal realm to generate religious exemptions* that include practices like Christian Science "healing." Though fortunately many of those exemptions, especially for children, have been overturned in recent years, it would not be surprising that a believer like this newly-superempowered chair of the House science committee would try to influence public policy based on his religious convictions. He is and will be as anti-normal-science as his religion, in its purest form, teaches.
Yes, I'm playing the religion card. But not in the way it was played against Romney, whose religion had little to do with government and more to do with its (and his) weirdness. It's more akin to JFK, whose opponents suggested that as a Catholic president he would be more loyal to the Vatican than to the US. But Kennedy stated publicly and firmly that in a conflict between his religion and his country his loyalties would always be with his country. How likely is it that Lamar Smith will publicly proclaim his allegiance to normal science versus that other kind?
Friday, October 23, 2015
Play mystery for me
**About a month ago we moved into our present home. A couple days later I met our next door neighbors. It was a very brief wave and just a few words from my porch to their driveway. Their names are Scott and Misty.
Yesterday I was putting the recycling on the curb when Scott and Misty passed by walking their son to the bus stop a block away. We exchanged a few more words about the travails of moving, etc.
Early this morning I awoke to the lyrics of the song “Misty” drifting through my consciousness. I have heard the song before. It’s a good song but I don't recall fixating on it as portrayed in the movie “Play Misty for Me.” But the lyrics kept coming to me as though I had deliberately memorized it. Well, I actually had memorized it — without intending to.
The brain is a mysterious place. Even slight experiences are stored for a long time and can come bubbling up with no conscious intention. That’s just the nature of memory and brain functioning.
It’s also the nature of human consciousness to fabricate rationales for why these things happen. What is the MEANING of this mysterious appearance of lyrics to a song heard long ago? Am I being clairvoyant? Is someone trying to communicate with me mentally? Am I getting premonitions of future events? What about the words themselves, are they trying to tell me something? I barely remember them, but in these episodes they come streaming back as though I’m actually thinking or saying them for some reason.
The brain works in mysterious ways. Some even call those workings “god.”
Harry Cook is a writer I much admire. He’s an Episcopal priest who realizes that much of religious theory is bullshit, and that people foolishly believe and do things based on theology or religion that don’t make sense, or worse. He calls himself an agnostic, and seems critical of avowed atheists. Much as I generally agree with him I take exception to parts of his latest essay: “Invention of the Gods.” He claims that the “god idea” has always been part of human nature,
“It seems to be hard-wired in Homo sapiens,” he says.
He then goes on to assume that there is such a thing as “god” simply because people have always thought of it. Many would argue that it is a natural response to mystery. “Anthropologists try to help us with that kind of inquiry, but I suspect they might have a hard time distinguishing fear and superstition from a human-divine encounter.” The “human-divine ENCOUNTER”? Does he really mean there's something to "encounter" outside the influence of fear and superstition?
A mystery doesn’t prove anything other than its own existence. Not the existence of another world, another dimension or some kind of supreme being. Fear and ignorance go together like … fear and ignorance and religion. It’s easy to want to counter an overwhelming question with an overwhelming answer, i.e. god. But easy isn't the same as true.
And while such delusions offer comfort there’s also no doubt about the brain’s susceptibility to jiggering. Move a few chemicals around and one feels happy. Move them another way and one feels sad. Any emotion that can happen can be induced without an objective stimulus. It’s what brains do. And anything one can imagine can feel real, even to the point of persuading others to believe the same thing. Religions come from that.
We are not complete captives of our brains. We also have the ability to supersede the dramas that brains produce. Science, facts, reality are discernible by our brains, But it takes education, a dedication to reason and a willingness to dispense with some synthetic “convictions.” It took me a long time, and much pain, to finally dispense with the comforts of religious belief. As I’ve said many times, this has not made me happier, Indeed, it has made me more unhappy. It’s the “bone on bone” of the reality that we are alone and without external assistance. We can strive to be humanists, with the hope that progress can be made toward freedom from delusion, and perhaps toward some kind of durable happiness in spite of the facts.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Connect with Sam Harris
**Sam Harris is one of the five writers who eased me across the boundary from religion in general and Christian Science in particular. His early books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation pushed him into the spotlight of those "New Atheists" eloquently exposing the deception and hazards of religious belief. I recently read his latest book, Waking Up, which deals with the nature of the self and meditation. Can't say I've crossed over into meditation territory but his ideas on consciousness intrigue me.
I also subscribe to his podcast. His latest is an interview with Joshua Oppenheimer who recently released his two films about the genocide in Indonesia in the mid 60s. The films are apparently devastatingly powerful and uniquely produced. Take a listen to this interview. Coming so close upon reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me it adds another splash of cold water to my white privileged life. Though I've been jailed, put on trial, successfully sued for $1 million, all for practicing my religion at the time, I am unscathed by prejudice and ignorance compared with those who have suffered in these ways.
I also subscribe to his podcast. His latest is an interview with Joshua Oppenheimer who recently released his two films about the genocide in Indonesia in the mid 60s. The films are apparently devastatingly powerful and uniquely produced. Take a listen to this interview. Coming so close upon reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me it adds another splash of cold water to my white privileged life. Though I've been jailed, put on trial, successfully sued for $1 million, all for practicing my religion at the time, I am unscathed by prejudice and ignorance compared with those who have suffered in these ways.
Friday, June 12, 2015
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind"
**I read many books. Most of them are for enjoyment, or to pass the time during exercise. Some of them change my perspective enough to afford me new directions to explore. Such is Yuval Noah Hariri's "Sapiens." One thing it made realize more deeply is the ability of religious belief to mitigate suffering. I've always contended that religion is a kind of mind-altering drug that induces calm and hope despite external conditions. Hariri shows how this had an evolutionary role. A peasant in the Middle Ages might live a miserable daily life but was probably happier than today's skeptic, cynic or atheist. I know this from personal experience. I wrote a song, Bone on Bone, that suggests the pain of living without the buffer of spiritual illusions. There are plenty of other anesthetics, of course, and I have availed myself of them. Still, I can't say that I'm happier overall. Life is still hard. I came away wanting to look into Sam Harris's work a little more. Harris was one of the first "Four Horsemen" who eased me out of religion and spirituality. He's since developed along different lines from the other Horsemen and he may have something to say to me.
Hariri writes (or is translated) beautifully and I took copious notes as I read on my iPad with the Kindle app. I share below those highlights in hopes they might coax someone else into reading it and sharing ideas about it.
Hariri writes (or is translated) beautifully and I took copious notes as I read on my iPad with the Kindle app. I share below those highlights in hopes they might coax someone else into reading it and sharing ideas about it.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari
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Last annotated on June 12, 2015
This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language.Read more at location 415
Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals.Read more at location 452
How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.Read more at location 462
There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.Read more at location 472
As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.Read more at location 548
The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.Read more at location 645
Albert Einstein was far less dexterous with his hands than was an ancient hunter-gatherer. However, our capacity to cooperate with large numbers of strangers has improved dramatically.Read more at location 649
We hardly notice how ubiquitous our stuff is until we have to move it to a new house.Read more at location 723
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.Read more at location 760
Before the Agricultural Revolution, the human population of the entire planet was smaller than that of today’s Cairo.Read more at location 786
The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.2 Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.Read more at location 1273
One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.Read more at location 1403
We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society.Read more at location 1756
A single priest often does the work of a hundred soldiers – far more cheaply and effectively.Read more at location 1776
Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘Follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths.Read more at location 1829
in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.Read more at location 1886
There is no way out of the imagined order. When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.Read more at location 1890
Hives can be very complex social structures, containing many different kinds of workers, such as harvesters, nurses and cleaners. But so far researchers have failed to locate lawyer bees.Read more at location 1907
how did humans organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks? The short answer is that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts.Read more at location 2102
Yet it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.Read more at location 2121
But evolution has no purpose. Organs have not evolved with a purpose, and the way they are used is in constant flux. There is not a single organ in the human body that only does the job its prototype did when it first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago.Read more at location 2337
Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.Read more at location 2395
Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off.Read more at location 2540
From such a vantage point it becomes crystal clear that history is moving relentlessly towards unity.Read more at location 2574
We begin with the story of the greatest conqueror in history, a conqueror possessed of extreme tolerance and adaptability, thereby turning people into ardent disciples. This conqueror is money.Read more at location 2666
People who do not believe in the same god or obey the same king are more than willing to use the same money.Read more at location 2667
The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers.Read more at location 2754
The truth is that empire has been the world’s most common form of political organisation for the last 2,500 years.Read more at location 2975
Much of ancient mythology is in fact a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals – the first chapters of the book of Genesis are a prime example.Read more at location 3269
But once kingdoms and trade networks expanded, people needed to contact entities whose power and authority encompassed a whole kingdom or an entire trade basin.Read more at location 3275
Polytheism thereby exalted not only the status of the gods, but also that of humankind.Read more at location 3288
Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’.Read more at location 3316
it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion. The religious wars betweenRead more at location 3329
religion that recognises the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from God just part of the universal truth. Since monotheists have usually believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only God, they have been compelled to discredit all other religions. Over the last two millennia, monotheists repeatedly tried to strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition.Read more at location 3368
So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.Read more at location 3417
Revolutions are, by definition, unpredictable. A predictable revolution never erupts.Read more at location 3713
There is absolutely no proof that human well-being inevitably improves as history rolls along.Read more at location 3729
What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future.Read more at location 4756
Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.Read more at location 5143
For decades, aluminium was much more expensive than gold. In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III of France commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold knives and forks.Read more at location 5284
If I bake a cake from flour, oil and sugar, all of which have been sitting in my pantry for the past two months, it does not mean that the cake itself is two months old.Read more at location 5653
The decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state. ThroughoutRead more at location 5708
Never before has peace been so prevalent that people could not even imagine war.Read more at location 5783
Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health.Read more at location 5933
People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of.Read more at location 5934
People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies.Read more at location 5999
If we accept the biological approach to happiness, then history turns out to be of minor importance, since most historical events have had no impact on our biochemistry.Read more at location 6039
Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry.Read more at location 6058
As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how.Read more at location 6083
So our medieval ancestors were happy because they found meaning to life in collective delusions about the afterlife? Yes.Read more at location 6091
What happens to concepts such as the self and gender identity when minds become collective?Read more at location 6354
Whereas we and the Neanderthals are at least human, our inheritors will be godlike.Read more at location 6417
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