A Requiem for 2017

Hi everyone!

Today:

We had a great conversation today at Secular Sunday. While, as usual, there were a great many tangents, our topic was basically about whether or not it's okay to make fun of religious people. How non-religious people Engage is something we've talked about at great length. Charles and Andy began by pointing out that this a case by case, person by person, situation by situation thing. To wit, it might not be a great idea to start a conversation with a significant other's parents by pointing out a lineage of justifying rape and murder within the religious text of their choice. But, if someone shows up on your doorstep and wants to tell you about the dangers of Xenu, their religion is fair game. A few people shared their feelings on this: ranging from (and I am paraphrasing and probably taking some big liberties, correct me if you feel that I misrepresented or did not represent what you meant) "I just want to be left alone" to "if you're going to knock on my door, be prepared to listen to my feelings" to "if it's someone I care about, I'll act out the act because their comfort is important to me" to "the religion of the person is inconsequential to me, so long as I can sense that they are good people."  Again, responses vary as much as the people involved and the situation at hand.

Somewhat predictably, the conversation eventually found its way to the political, pointing out that if a group of people is intentionally forcing religious beliefs, via laws, on another group of people, being polite just isn't going to cut it. That having been said, we talked a bit about how to talk to religious people without coming off as what Michael had aptly described as "the stereotypically combative atheist", which will often turn the discussion into a contest rather than an actual discussion. We talked about having to out-Christian the Christians. And Betty Bowers name was deservedly mentioned. Christian pointed out that attacking fundamentalists of any religion is 1) pretty low hanging fruit 2) a kind of straw man argument. If we were judged - and I'm sure many of us have been - by the craziest examples of atheists, it's a logically fallacious as it counterproductive. That having been said, if a gauntlet has been thrown down and there is no way out, it could be beneficial to make sure that expectations are made clear in the beginning of the discussion. Additionally, if someone is a frighteningly fundamentalist variety of any religion, we discussed the possibility of pointing out to them that there are people, say Episcopalians in the Christian religion, whose views aren't quite so draconian - I don't remember if it was brought up during the discussion, but I think it is quite probable that a true fundamentalist would see any tepid believers as undeserving of whatever reward their religion has promised them  or even heretical. That having been said, I think it does stand to reason that we'd be in a lot better world if all of the Baptists were Episcopalians - to make a sweeping generalization. After all, they're the Church of England in America, and we know that they can't have an Inquisition (NSFW and the relevant bit is at the end, but it's worth a view if you haven't seen it.)

Mike asked how much success people have had confronting religious people with the fallibility of their own beliefs, which then brought up what percentage of people's beliefs they actually believe. After all, when Jesus walked (if he existed to walk) the earth, the ideas of Virgin Birth and Resurrection weren't the sole property of any one religion. Followers of Jesus probably even knew this, but at a certain point it wasn't so much whether or not the story was believable as much as it was: is this a good story? And, for better or worse, Jesus' ideas of inclusivity, humility, and charity give Christianity a kind of soft power that's lacking in other religions. Now, many Christians have about as much truck with loving their fellow man as the church did in the poem in Tolstoy's The Brothers Karamazov. (Sorry, English teacher.)  As Christian pointed out, these are bad Christians.

There was more to the discussion than that, but I was honestly enjoying myself so much that I didn't take notes. Still, I hope everyone had as good a time as I did.

Next Meetups:

I need to amend what I said at this past meet up and let everyone know that I'm going to be absent for the next two meetups, per plans for Saturnalia and the ushering in of 2018. I shall return on January 6th, perhaps with Douglas McArthur corncob pipe and aviator glasses. The Meetup dates will still be open so that people interested in them can RSVP if they'd like to. Please, if you can think of a topic you'd like to discuss or any changes you might want to float past the group for one of those two dates, you can post them in the conversation threads for December 24th and December 31st, respectively.

2017:

2017 was a year that brought about a lot of changes. I don't think that I am alone in saying that a lot of them were terrible. What I do want to say though, as this will be my last mass e-mail of the year (I think?), is that I love this group. You are all people with whom I feel a significant bond, and I want you to know how important your friendships have been to me. I've been really busy and stressed out since I started teaching in High Point, but I look forward to Sundays as a respite from the pressures and stress of the week. I never had that when I was religious. I either felt bored, felt bad that I felt bored, felt bad that I wasn't good enough, or (as a teenager) was really just pissed off that I had to be there. The members of this group (that's YOU even if I haven't seen you in a while!) challenge me, laugh with me, and make me want to be the best me that I can be. 2017 stunk, but we're about to see the other side of it. I believe that 2018 will be a better year, if for no other reason than the simple dark fact that 2017 hasn't set that bar particularly high. And, even if it isn't, I look forward to facing its challenges with a great group of friends. I know that I am not the only person in the group that feels that way, but we never know unless we tell each other. So, reach out! And, because I cannot resist, if you don't believe me, take it from him! Have a great couple of weeks till I see you again!  

(Don't forget to check out www.jovialitybeforemortality.org! I'll be updating it as I've just bought the domain for another year - though right now, it's just going to be this e-mail and a backlog of our older meetings and content. But still, check it out!)

A Few Topics and Other Items

Hi everyone,

I hope that this finds you well, and that everyone is as happy and as healthy as they can be. I just wanted to throw out an update for a few things.

1) Topics

I'm putting together topics for a few Secular Sundays, starting with the next one - November 19th. At that, I plan to discuss Skepticism vs. Denial. We've discussed things pursuant to this several times, and I find it worthy of revisitation. Hope to see you there.

The 26th of November, I won't be able to make it to Geeksboro that morning, but I will leave the event open to anyone who would like to be there.

I'd like to discuss Artificial Intelligence on December 3rd. I am reading up on the subject and would like the discussion to keep its footing in what is currently possible as ground work before we start mentally inventing HAL or even Johnny 5.

December 10th, I think we can take a break from topics, unless a reason presents itself.

December 17th, I was thinking we could talk about blasphemy/insult/hate speech and nuances and baggage that come with all three. Credit to Lyn for thinking of it, and I'd agree that it's a very relevant thing to discuss. After all, how many of us have been accused of nastiness in the name of truth. Beyond that, is it wrong to make fun of something that gives other people hope? Is it wrong to profane that which others will kill and die for? We've had a lot discussions along these tracks, but every time, we come away with some new ideas, and new people get to share their thoughts.

2) Potential Topics

I have wanted to talk about Quantum probability for a very long time. That having been said, it's not a topic that too many people understand. The implications of it are, I think, certainly worth discussing - if my understanding of it is correct. If anyone is versed in the subject or knows someone who could be invited to our Sunday discussion, that would be fantastic. I don't want to, as several of you have heard me say, enter into ultracrepadarianism. 

If you have a topic you'd like to discuss and a date you'd like it discussed, let me know!

3) Directory Information

Those of you who have given your directory information, I'm going to send private e-mails to you in the next few days with the rest of the list included in it. If you've submitted info, but would like to opt out. Let me know.

4) Memories

I just wanted to let you all know - and this is NOT a guilt trip - that I haven't seen some of you in a while, and I miss you! I do not in any way want for Secular Sunday to ever feel like an obligation. After all, isn't that sort of thing why people leave religion? The "thou shalt" sort of mentality? Anyway, even if you can't drop by, I understand. I just hope that everyone is doing and feeling well. Drop me a line!

Have a great one! Love you all!

I Fear the Greeks and Their Gifts

Hi everyone!

Today's Summary:

We our initial discussion today centered around entitlement, privilege, and tribalism. James brought up this TED talk. We talked a bit about the kind of mindset that people enter into when they enter into the anonymity of being part of a crowd or a team. Ann pointed out that this famous experiment has been banned (? I can't remember if you said "banned" or if it just wouldn't be acceptable in today's society.) Steve brought up Lies My Teacher Told Me, and the idea that public school was essentially design to turn children into productive cogs in a machine. I talked a little bit about the fact that education is becoming more of a reinforcement about the entitlement that comes with money and the competitive aspects of a zero sum society.

At this, James brought up a topic that a lot of people in our group have probably had to deal with: whether or not to accept anything from religious organizations at work. James presented several of his own thoughts on the topic, each of which we discussed in some detail.

1) Religious organizations making donations to places of work often make the assumption that everyone there is Christian. It's an errant assumption or, if you prefer, an attempted negation of the identity of those who are unlike what the church members see as their "tribe."

2) Slimy feeling for accepting something from a group whose *ahem* philosophical inclinations do not match our own - if it was the NRA, would you take the food? What about the Westboro Baptist church?

3) Take advantage or a stand for yourself - if no one can start a conversation with you about the food because you're in a secure area and there is no "prayer card" or whatever to add strings to the meal, what's the harm in taking advantage of a bunch of people who are clearly not interested in maintaining equity in the world anyway? Or would it be better to stay true to ourselves in such a case - don't take food from a church because it is not something that we agree with?

4) Bait - does it seem like a person is participating as prey in a predatory activity? Does it seem like the normalization of an activity that should be in no way normal? Churches use bait all over the place - Charles pointed out that many Christians became that way, either first or second hand, because of predatory churches in the developing world. "Come to our meeting; we have food." Or, as I liked to put it, everyone is being baited into Christianity with the use of bait-after-death.

Ann continued our discussion by bringing up another local concern: a church meeting being held in a public school gym - it's apparently being rented by the group, but run by adults (please correct me if my notes are wrong). We talked about that kind of thing in a professional setting - whether a person is working in the public or private sector. While we are often, if not always, well within our rights to take issue with this sort of thing, it might not be a hill worth dying on, so to speak. We shared anecdotes of people losing out professionally and even at the high school level (This sounded like what we talked about, but I'm not entirely sure that it's the same). Subjective attacks can be really, really difficult to combat - once our colleagues decide that they don't like our faces because of our beliefs, it can be a short trip out the door. Economic reprisals are surprisingly, insanely easy for Christian colleagues to use against us in the sense that we can easily be professionally undermined, simply for not believing what the rest of the "tribe" believes.

We talked about how, as people get farther along in their careers, they become less and less interested in "playing nice" or *ahem* "caring about our jobs." Again, we come back to the debate over whether its important to not allow the normalization of prejudice against us in the workplace or to not have to worry about our career because of what we believe.

Ann told us an anecdote about the entitlement of some preachers who deigned it necessary to knock on her door at 8:30 one evening. The conversation wended toward, "Well, what are you going to do when you die?"

Ann: "Be dead!"

This turned our discussion to the insanity that surrounds funerals and death - Charles talked about the Egyptians imagining that their rulers would continue to need food and other comforts after dying. We talked about the whole industry surrounding the treatment of corpses - which is antithetical toward a lot of Christianity anyway. Why does a body need to be sealed in a leak proof tomb if the soul is going to heaven? What if there is a resurrection and the bodies are sealed under six feet of dirt in a coffin, inside of a metal container? Would this complicate a zombie apocalypse? Obviously, we went a little ad absurdum with this, but zombies are written into Christianity from the get-go. After all, what would you call a group of people beyond death, who have no free will? Does that mean that heaven is full of zombies? After all, heaven wouldn't have any evil in it, right? Soooooo... will-less post-death corpses, right? There are some great takes on heaven - Twain and Dar Williams. 

Charles brought up the man who asked Jesus for a seat next to him in his kingdom - (James or John, I think?) It does seem a lot like heaven's just an extended church session. Yikes. I jokingly added that in the time period when Jesus was living, the idea of having a chair may have been very, very attractive - even just having the ability to sit around at leisure may have been blissful at the time it was written. Dunno. Wasn't there.

We talked a bit more about the many faces of YHWH, El, and, eventually, Kal El and Jor El

Steve brought up a book that Lyn has spoken of many times: The Chalice and the Blade. I'm probably adding that and, maybe, Stargate - according to Joe and James (I saw the original, but never the tv show), which is about the USAF killing alien gods - to my queue of Things to Check Out.

Next Time:

I won't be around on the 15th or the 29th. If someone has a topic, that'd be awesome (let me know, and I'll e-mail everyone). If not, by all means, get together and be a community. I plan to have a topic for the 22nd, but I'll update you about that soon! Have a great week! See everyone as soon as I can! Have an awesome week! 

Not Your Average Sunday Summary

Hi everyone!

Our conversation ranged sort of all over the place, but we started with the definitions of

"tautological" and "teleological." *Ahem* Per Wikipedia:


In rhetoric, a tautology (from Greek ταὐτός, "the same" and λόγος, "word/idea") is a logical argument constructed in such a way, generally by repeating the same concept or assertion using different phrasing or terminology, that the proposition as stated is logically irrefutable, while obscuring the lack of evidence or valid reasoning supporting the stated conclusion.

TL;DR: tautological pertains to reasoning that we don't want to use.

Teleological is as follows:

teleology

[tel-ee-ol-uh-jee, tee-lee-] 

 


Word Origin
noun, Philosophy.
1.
the doctrine that final causes exist.
2.
the study of the evidences of design or purpose in nature.
3.
such design or purpose.
4.
the belief that purpose and design are a part of or are apparent innature.
5.
(in vitalist philosophy) the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but that they also move toward certain goals of self-realization.

---

I think it is safe to say that these are related. Teleology will use tautology to obscure the fact that "design" and "purpose" are often illusions brought on by the human resistance to the idea that the universe is (at very least often) an indifferent and random place.

We, then, went on to talk about potential future topics, future activities, the ins and outs, as it were, of those future activities.

There will be more posts on this page and on our content page in the coming days. I hope that everyone has a fantastic week and joins us next time for our Spectacular Secular Sunday! In the meantime, here are some notes about our discussion:

Also, I think, next time we're planning on having a topic - so stay tuned!

-Sean

Short, Sweet Summary for September 10th.

Today:

As per usual, we had a meandering discussion that wound around a variety of topics. This time, we touched on politics, philosophy, and linguistics - to name a few. I'm going to endeavor to keep my summaries short from here on out because this time of year (the beginning of the school year) I'm up to my armpits in work. We talked about the structuring of the education system and the boons and banes of public/private sector of education. People shared personal experiences in public and private education. We talked a lot about nuance and the necessity in expressing clarity and being concise. Specific points touched on tribalism, America's arrival at its "place" in the world, what that place is, and what people believe it to be. Jon pointed out that the government generally does not do a great job of changing tracks once certain programs have momentum. We talked about competition vs domination and the future of the school system.

There was discussion of why politics come up in our discussions so much and whether or not that can be avoided. Lyn showed off her oh-so-stylish FAACT t-shirt and told us about this great wine. So, we joked about infowars' Alex Jones hocking his junk - not a goal of our group.

We talked about future discussion topics - Artificial Intelligence and That Which We Do Actually Believe came to the surface as good ideas. I'll be in touch for when we are going to do those, but we also said if you have any ideas for future topics, let me know. 

Upcoming events:

Don't forget! Next weekend is Greensboro Beautiful! If you're interested, here is the sign up!

Also, Lyn's movie night and potluck is nigh!

OH! CHECK THE CONTENT PAGE OF THIS SITE FOR SOME OLDER UPDATES!!!

Sunday, July 30th: Ghosts and Memories and Information and the Hadron Collider

This Sunday: Information, Identity, Memories, and Ghosts!!!

We've talked in the past about the possibility of a deity-free life after death scenario. Well, there are a few articles that have come to my attention recently that are pretty wild.

1) http://gizmodo.com/does-the-large-hadron-collider-actually-disprove-ghosts-1792686748

2) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ghosts-brian-cox-large-hadron-collider-cern-real-truth-standard-model-physics-a7598026.html

3)  http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/scientists-have-discovered-how-to-implant-false-memories


One and two are at odds. Three is an interesting point because it speaks to what a person's existence sort of is. Check them out or just come join the conversation! I'm back from Pennsylvania and will be happy to see anyone who comes on the 30th.

Come and talk. Come and listen. This is a judgement free zone. Hope to see you some Sunday!

Secular Sunday - New Setup!

For the foreseeable future at least, our Secular Sunday page will read as follows:

This is us getting together and being a community. We meet every Sunday at Geeksboro. Sometimes, there are specific topics: morality without divinity, deconversion stories, historical relativism, etc. 
Come and talk. Come and listen. This is a judgement free zone. Hope to see you some Sunday! 

We still may have specific topics from time to time - as people suggest them, but it was recently decided that discussions often open up more and can go deeper if there isn't some sort of "central goal" to them. I will still update this site with notes (as well as an e-mail) whenever I can. Have a great day everyone!

Open Forum Notes

As per usual, we had a lively and many faceted discussion today. We began with a discussion of the Elevation church (someone's daughter has taken a recent interest in it).  This begat the reasoning that churches have evolved into a capitalist mindset - of course they want their preachers to be trendy and have outgoing personalities - how else will they save as many people as possible? (Lining their pockets, of course, in the meantime.)

Steve pointed out one of Marx's comments on religion - no, not that one: Religion is the cry of the oppressed.

It was then discovered that this was part of a chain of churches. Franchurches - to coin a portmanteau. Joe found their website (link above) and regaled us with some information about their various, *ahem* services. The idea that we are all inherently sinners is a pretty capitalistic thing from the get-go. After all, what is a sinner but someone needs something (absolution, for instance)? We talked briefly about how one might go about persuading a younger family member to understand that this whole thing might be a pretty terrible idea, which we  circled back around to again later. At the time, we left it at the idea that people who have been raised without religion and come to it later have at least been given an alternative (Gina, I believe said that.) An intelligent person who has been shown an alternative will most likely not choose religion when all is said and done. The idea of choice segued our conversation around to a topic at which it often seems to arrive these days, good old 45. We also spoke of the Tree Effect (sorry, can't find a citation for that one) that confronts many people when they see just how vast and interrelated societal problems can be.

People began making comparisons between the current administration and other countries where leaders are allowed to push religious agendas. After a few references to covfefe, we eventually landed on the idea that the religious (and other) conservatives may be taking advantage of something like dementia. Joe refuted this by pointing out that many of 45's gaffs may be more intentionally timed than not - look at the passage of certain bills and the timing of said gaffs. We talked briefly about which would be worse: if Trump was being led astray or if he was consciously making decisions that buoyed the Christian right, as it were. Joe, again, pointed out that the gestalt effect makes it inconsequential. We got back to our discussion of some weeks ago about evil, prompting a reference to Hitler and Charles mentioning that it is quite likely that Hitler believed in what he was doing. This brought up Godwin's Law. Something that should be more hyperbolic than it is these days: the more insane elements of the far right literally are Nazis - no Godwin involved. We hit upon the repetition of history, the idea that History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce (Marx), and the idea of history being a Markovian process. (Not actually just a Bad Religion song - it's a mathematical idea where variables cancel out and cause cyclical repetition.)

We talked a bit about progress and pendulum swings to the left and to the right, that things have been worse in human history, just not recently. Bob at one point objected to the idea that "we" elected 45 because so many of us actively worked against that outcome. There was discussion of how we might have stopped it and how perhaps our own hubris, thinking "there's just no way that he'll ever be elected," and "I do not need to extend any kind of olive branches to people who might vote for him,"  and - let's not forget - the infighting and finger pointing that caused the anti-Fascists to lose the Spanish Civil War... And we've Godwinned ourselves, again.

A great many opinions were voiced about intellectual laziness, the lack of critical analysis, and how used people are to being lied to. We talked about the difference between being educated and intelligent. Cheryl brought up, I believe, this article from the New York Times. There were parallels drawn between faith, dogma, and a lack of ability to think of things in a nuanced fashion. Part of what allows our brains to function as well as they do, chunking, is one of the things that begets every avenue of racism, prejudice, and intellectual laziness. Throughout history, more intellectual groups of people, who do not agree on every single facet of every single point refuse to walk in lockstep with each other - I believe Lyn pointed this out - and are regularly defeated because they cannot do that to muster the numbers to achieve victories. Often, those that do will excuse their lack of citation as "common sense" and bury their fear of change in tradition and its ilk.

We talked about the New Economy and how easy it is to contribute money to something and not even know that you are doing it. James pointed out that clickbait ads, such as weather.com's prognostications of doom, are often evidence of "if you are not paying for a product, you are the product." Sensationalist news editorial will garner more attention than honest - and relatively boring but truthful - reporting every time. We got back into a few different points dealing with how different  viewpoints - cue Obi Wan Kenobi - can color our truth of events. And how one political party might see a president's inaction as positive while the other side can see him as an empty suit - or perhaps, Schrödinger's President: someone who takes away your rights while not doing anything at all. We tried to orbit back to our original discussion topic and brought up that there are more intellectually dominating religions that one could be pulled into. A cursory, critical, and objective look at a religious text generally comes to the conclusion that most of them are on the same page. After all, if one is going to be led skyward (and keep in mind what science tells us is actually up in the sky) by a musical group of winged people after their brain dies, it might not be prudent for someone who believes that to laugh at the Mormon idea that Jesus is hanging out on another planet or something of that sort.

I apologize for missing any points that anyone brought up - there was at least one from Michael and one from Suzy that I cannot summon, and my notes are failing me. Sorry!

We closed up shortly after the conversation got onto G. Gordon Liddy, Human, Nietzsche's All Too Human, and Camus. Here's a picture associated with at least two of those. Love you all. Good night. See you next weekend or sooner!

Laughter!

Today's Secular Sunday conversation discussed Laughter and Humor. Oddly enough, it was fairly dark.

We started out by bringing up the point that most evolutionary biologists believe that laughter developed as a coping mechanism, but Francie quickly pointed out that there are all sorts of laughter. People chimed in by talking about nervous laughter, joyous laughter, and even (later) scornful laughter - these are all things that represent extreme displays of emotion, but aren't necessarily coming from the same place. Additionally, there are culturally specific responses that involve laughter. Schadenfreude, for instance, might seem callous, but many of us have experienced it. Though, as Francie pointed out, the context of this is very important - laughing at the misfortune of someone who has seemingly earned their "reward" is inherently more humorous than someone who is helpless or - in our estimation - undeserving.

What might cause amusement in certain situations could easily cause stress in others. In many countries, laughter is seen as a way to add levity to a difficult situation - some westerners have a very difficult time adapting to this. Especially, when it appears that someone is laughing at a misfortune that we've suffered.

Obviously, laughter is one of few external "extreme" displays (as opposed to smirking, etc.) of emotion that we have at our disposal, so it is going to have to pull double or triple or whatever duty - to wit, laughter isn't just laughter.

A few people said that slapstick is not their cup of tea and more likely to make them uncomfortable than cause them laughter.

Obviously, tickling, for instance, is a display of a kind of distress. This might have developed so that children had an instinctual and audible reaction to being touched - for safety's sake.

Bob pointed out that different cultures find different things funny. Betty pointed out that at times, forcing laughter can have a "fake it till you make it" sort of effect on people. Even if a situation isn't funny, laughing can help us rise above it. Cheryl then produced a study from Mt. Sinai hospital that showed how many positive physiological effects laughter can have: relief of stress to better functioning of many of the body's systems. Additionally, the article mentioned that, while uncommon, laughter has had some bad side effects - most notably, monocular blindness and syncope (fainting). I would very much like to be the comedian who could say that they caused someone to go blind from laughter - can you imagine?

We also talked about maturity and laughter - what seems funny to us at a young age often doesn't after some time. We talked about the maturing of comedy in pop-culture. The early episodes of South Park, for instance, we completely scatology. The newer episodes, while still having some similarly low-brow stuff, often have political and social commentary. While we did enjoy talking about Charlie Chaplin's Hard Times and The Great Dictator, it seems that a lot of the mass media entertainments have become more sophisticated - Sitcoms, with plenty of exceptions, have to be relate-able, humorous, and, at certain levels, compelling in order to keep an audience. As terrible as some of them are, comparing, say, The Big Bang Theory to Leave It to Beaver, shows a lot more ability on the writers' parts.

We talked about humor not being a coping mechanism anymore - just as the desire to accumulate resources for survival eventually gives way to greed in some people. Humor cannot entirely be attributed to a coping mechanism. We talked about situational comedy and the subversion of expectations in things like the Zucker Brothers' Airplane! and Top Secret. We brought up that as our society has matured, Chaplin's words, that life is a tragedy in close up and comedy in long shot, makes a lot of sense in terms of some darkly comedic jokes about some of the greater tragedies in human history.

This led to a discussion of the current presidential administration and its need to be taken seriously. We bantered about whether or not Trump has ever been responding jovially to a quip at his expense - something that even George W. Bush found a way to do. I pointed out that Trump's brand of humor is often the kind of thing that would make the average person sick. Take, for instance, his imitation of the handicapped reporter. There are people out there that, no doubt, found that to be the kind of thing that he "has the balls to say". It is, however, humor of a certain type.

This brought us through another round of the cultural appropriateness of certain types of humor, and, eventually, to the point where we talked about politically correctness, the book Infidel, the horror of silencing protest in the name of not offending people, and our discussion for next time. 

Joseph Lantz felt - and for good reason - that our comedy discussion was a tad depressing. So, he pointed out that KFC has released this in time for Mother's Day. Thank you Joe. That's amazing.

I hope to see you all there! Have a fantastic week!

Laplace's Demon and the Bad Guy

Today's subject was choice. At the outset, it seems obvious that people have choice. We talked about, essentially, sentience and the importance of choosing to choose - metacognition. A lot of people pointed out that going through life on autopilot is fairly common in this day and age. We all do it at certain points, whether it's because we don't feel the need to, we haven't the concentration, or we have other things on our minds.

The conversation took another bend as it became necessary to define our terms. Free will and metacognition are different things. Yes, we do not always make specific choices, that's true, but whether or not our ability to make decisions is an illusory facet of our lives, is something that we got into a lot more.

A few people were really uncomfortable with the idea of causal determinism: the idea that every cause is an effect and, in turn, another cause. Some of us felt that that was a sort of damning prognosis on life and an abnegation of responsibility. After all, if all of your decisions are the product of genetics, circumstance, and biology no one can really blame anyone for anything else, right?

Susan pointed out that understanding that a person does things because of a confluence of forces helps us to empathize with them, rather than believe them to label them.

This segued into a talk about the criminal justice system, and something that most of us - it seemed - could agree on: the idea of punishing criminals, rather than trying to figure out ways to prevent them from committing crimes or getting the to understand why wrong is wrong, etc. is not terribly beneficial. This is one of the things that Harris talks about specifically in this (long) video:

Some of us did feel that it might be impossible to get people to understand their own moral deficiencies. Psychopaths, for instance, may have neurological make up that does not allow them to be taught moral lessons - see Jon Ronson's The Pyschopath Test.

James and Suzy helped articulate a few of our linguistic problems a bit better. James pointed out that if we believe that everything in the universe is material and must follow material rules, then it must all be predictable. If we do not accept that everything in the universe must be material, then things may not be as predictable.  The if clause here is the key: if we accept that. Our group was a bit divided on this point.

Suzy eloquently pointed out that we are talking about the difference between whether or not human beings are complex robots or there is, to borrow a phrase, a ghost in the shell, so to speak.

Laplace's Demon is a thought experiment - untestable because of practicality and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - pointing out that if - like James said - everything is physical and follows the same rules, and we could isolate every piece of matter in the universe and determine its velocity, we would be able to figure out everything that ever had happened and ever would happen. It's one way of talking about causal determinism (perhaps a better name than scientific determinism). It's also a character in a comic that I've been drawing. :D

Again, it was brought up (Lyn, I believe, pointed it out) that this is only true if we believe that everything in the universe is material.

Randy pointed out that to attempt to make changes in a world of causal determinism might be paradoxical - how does one influence a closed chain of causality when one is in said chain? Technically, it wouldn't be possible. The choices that we make would be our experience of that illusion. But even if choice is illusory, it isn't as cynical as it sounds. What we see as our choices are actually a confluence of neurological variables, shaped by biology and circumstance, it doesn't change the feeling of choosing. It would be important to make the best choices that we can because that would be part of the causal chain.

At a few points in the discussion, we talked about different religions' obsession with free will because without people being able to be judged good or evil based on their actions, punitive or rewarding afterlives make no sense... then again, Calvinists just sort of go there anyway.

My point in bringing this up is as a segue into our next topic:

SATAN!

The idea of evil creates a lot of problems, even in a non-religious world. It's much easier to chunk that which we think of as "bad" by ascribing it to a sentient evil being. A lot of religions have some manner of anti-god. Soooooooo... Let's discuss!

Created in Man's Image

Notes from Anne:

April 16, 2017

Our topic today was “God Created in Man’s Image?”

Sean gave us some guidance to start the discussion: “What is it with Western (and some Eastern) religions and women? Obviously, the founders were male, so it stands to cynical reason that they would set things up to treat women, often, as second-class believers. Does this say something about us as a species?”

Most religious apologists point to the restrictions their faith places on women, such as modest dress (which can run the gamut from not wearing booty shorts all the way to full burqas), sexual purity or restrictions on the roles women can fill within society, as a way to protect women and actually reflect honor and respect for women. Judging from the expressions of the group, most of us disagree with this assessment. So the question is, is this a case of religion influencing culture, or culture influencing religion?

Charles pointed out that in ancient religions with both male and female gods, the male god is always the creator, though female gods are often nearly as powerful. The misogyny began with the Sumerians and was transferred into the Jewish and Muslim cultures from the creation myths which make up most of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. This seems odd, given the fact that women are the child bearers. The group agreed that this could be, in large part, due to men being physically stronger and perhaps because of men’s role in building and invention (although there are many examples of women scientists and creators, even in ancient cultures).

In Polynesia and parts of Africa, misogyny did not exist before the influence of outside cultures. Lyn brought up the difference between domineering and partnership cultures, which could also be linked to differences between patrilineal and matrilineal societies.

We have made some progress in recent years, but in Muslim countries and some others, things for women are still very bad, with honor killings and female genital mutilations still happening with sickening regularity. Both of these things are filtering into the United States as well with the influx of immigrants from other parts of the world. Several people shared personal stories of sexist treatment they have experienced, although we all agree that the men in our group are great examples of men who fully support women's rights.

We discussed why women support misogyny, for example, women who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment and conservative Christian women who support traditional roles for women or who argue that women have equal rights or even superior rights, within the framework of Biblical teaching. Although there are many reasons for this, Lyn summed it up by saying that most have “drunk the Kool-Aid.” This extends to LGBTQ rights, with either Bob or Joe (sorry, I didn't catch who) pointing out that children are more likely to be assaulted by a Republican congressman than a trans person.

In other religions, culture also seems to play a big part in the treatment of women. In some Native American cultures, elder women elect tribal leaders. Shinto, the majority religion of Japan, is a nature-based religion, and from what we could discover, treated women as equals until the introduction of a particularly misogynistic Buddhist sect from China into Japanese society, although within Buddhism, treatment of women is a mixed bag, with some groups supporting equality and some not so much. Hinduism strictly regiments society into castes and not surprisingly, women have fewer rights. Cyrus pointed out that Baha’i  is quite egalitarian towards women.

We ended with a question from Charles: If the god of the Hebrew Bible had been a woman, would societies based on that tradition be different? The consensus seemed to be that in order for the god of the Hebrews to be a female, early Jewish society would have had to be significantly different, not the other way around.

Announcements: The Science March is next weekend, on April 22^nd. We are not sure what plans have been made for Greensboro and Raleigh to participate. Also, ReasonCon is next weekend, beginning on Friday, the 21^st with dinner and a concert, continuing through Saturday, the 22^nd with discussions starting at 9 am and ending with a party Saturday night. Joe is planning to go and will report on this to the group. He wasn’t sure if tickets are still available, but the website is www.reasonnc.com

Thank you for allowing me to facilitate today.

The Newish Testament

Today:

This morning we talked about beauty. While there are some obvious evolutionary benefits to sexual attraction/attractiveness (reproduction), our ability and proclivity to get aesthetic pleasure out of seeing colors and patterns is not as easily explained. Our conversation almost immediately went to the strange treatment of beauty in the Bible. There are some parts of the Song of Solomon that are clearly about beauty - even sexual - that seem to be in direct contradiction to some of the less *ahem* progressive parts of the old Testament. We talked about how our brains, which not only seek patterns, but love to be rewarded for being right, can and will find beauty and patterns everywhere. Much like the scene in "Amadeus" where Mozart hears musical notes in the seemingly dissonant screaming of a woman. Still, we do see beauty in design, in symmetry, and in real or imagined patterns - the Fibonacci sequence, lowercase music, and the near symmetry of faces.

The absence, or perhaps opposite of beauty, is something that we can see for any number of different biological reasons. We're repulsed by the smell of the corpse flower for the exact reason that carrion beetles, etc. are attracted to it. Even still, personal preferences are as diverse as people. Someone out there probably loves that smell. Then, there is the common phenomenon of finding thing so ugly that they are beautiful - the adjective "campy" is a close approximation. Even though our interests are diverse, there tend to be commonalities. Most people find nature to be beautiful. The concept has even been monetized with things like trees in office parks, etc.

Context can be as important as content in terms of aesthetics. Someone who is used to being terrified may find beauty in what a lot of others would simply see as boredom. Conversely, we are excited by things that out of context could be completely terrifying. We talked about cultural influences on views of beauty - the fluctuating aesthetics of weight and how that is often influenced by the standing power structure. Things like heroin chic, foot binding, and breast feeding have been used as ways of manipulating the population. Beauty, like nearly everything else can be manipulated by patriarchy to make a buck and to reinforce the entrenched status quo. As Chris said, "who benefits?"

Randy asked if anyone had looked into brain imaging and beauty - the answer is, yes.

We talked about happiness and the appearance of beauty, erotica vs. pornography, and linguistic concepts of beauty. The Sapir-Wharf hypothesis, while subject to some debate, shows a lot of recursive logic that could explain some elements of cultural concepts of beauty. Is anything considered universally beautiful? Flowers perhaps? Sunsets? Again, our conversation turned to the rare vs. the mundane. Again, even what most people consider mundane could be beautiful to someone who has survived a concentration camp or something similarly horrific.

Laughter, agreed upon by some evolutionary biologists to be a coping mechanism, has some pretty dark aspects to it. The tortured artist is a trope, but is it that people who have had terrible events in their lives feel more acutely?

Next time:

I mentioned this last time, but I forgot to say anything today - Kia and I will be out of town for the next meeting. Additionally, we'll be returning the day before the meeting after that. So, I don't know if I'll be at that one either. Could I call on someone to coordinate the next meeting (April 9th) and possibly the one on April 16th?

I was thinking that next time our topic could be the New Testament. Is it as friendly as its believers seem to think? Why don't they seem to follow it? How or why do you think it transitions from the gospel accounts to the fever dream-esque imagery of Revelation?

Narcissus Should Have Had Some Swimming Lessons

The Precambrian Rabbit:

(Last time)

Apparently, JBS Haldane, an outspoken proponent of Darwin's theory of evolution, was once accused of religious zealotry in his dedication. He was told that he was unwilling to accept counter-evidence. The stories - there are multiple accounts - say that he replied, "fossilized rabbits in the Precambrian." The more I'm reading about the story, the more it seems to be... scientific folklore? The accounts range, but for our purposes, it doesn't matter. Essentially, as skeptics and free-thinkers, it's important for us to be willing to admit counter-evidence to avoid belief-fossilization. So the question was put: what is your Precambrian rabbit when it comes to religion? Is there something that could make you a believer?

And so the conversation was launched... We talked about problems of verification and direct, observable, divine intervention. Hallucination might explain any appearance of angels or apocalyptic beasts. We eventually stumbled upon the conundrum of whether or not a deity could even be trusted. Surely, any deity powerful enough to come across as a god could easily just be sufficiently more advanced than the human species. James brought up Ardra from Star Trek: the Next Generation. It would be very feasible for an alien to trick humanity in its present state into believing of its divinity. Arthur C. Clark's Third Law was referenced regularly throughout the conversation. Magic isn't always magic.

Cyrus pointed out that the appearance of a deity is entirely different than a system of belief. After all, when it comes right down to it, the possibility becomes far less mystical when we think of the fact that there are essentially three possibilities for the abiogenesis as it were: it was moved; it moved of its own natural force; a third unknown possibility. None of these possibilities jump to religion. As Charles pointed out, the belief in something that isn't explicable, immediately, by science doesn't mean that a person has adopted a belief structure - that's a very large jump.

This eventually brought us to a round robin conversation about our personal experiences that could make us question hard science - I won't go into what people said because some of the conversation ranged from somewhat to deeply personal. Not only was I asked specifically to keep some of these secret, I don't think that I could do some of these justice. I don't know if I remembered to mention this, but as far as helmets go, it's pretty compelling. As time went on, the conversation got lighter - referencing the God of Gaps, 42, and the Game of Roy.

Next Sunday:

On the 2nd of April, I was thinking that we could talk about something that touches intellect, evolution, philosophy, and possibility a person's raison d'être: let's talk about beauty. Why did our species develop it? Beyond sexual appeal - why do we find colors and patterns and various aesthetics so pleasing? Why are religious people so obsessed with using it as a reason for belief? Evolutionary aesthetics? Where do you find beauty? What do you think the reason for this is? Is there a reason?

Why Do They Keep Using Chromosomes In Advertising?

Because sex cells.

BAM.

Synopsis:

This week's discussion started off discussing the difference between Lamarckism (sorry, I believe I called it "Lamarckianism") and epigenetics -  This segued into whether or not positive experiences could potentially produce epigenetic changes. If traumatic events can change DNA coding, could positive events reverse the effects? I postulated that because so much of our evolutionary development is predicated on survival, it might stand to reason that trauma is more of a galvanizing force. This split the group a bit as it was pointed out there are plenty of people who have nurturing, caring families, and that could influence genetics. There are a great many ways that "nurture" can affect us while appearing to be our "nature". The article that I sent out about twin studies talks about this in detail. Francie pointed out that development can even be affected by prenatal events - right down things like where a fetus is in the womb.

After a while, our conversation turned to a more concise definition of epigentics - which Jayne provided us: how genetics are expressed (as in, whether they are or aren't depending on the potential for traumatic experiences blocking them.) Just as our brains produce chemicals when we are experiencing pleasure, they could potentially leave chemical signatures in our DNA. We talked a bit about the temperaments of children even before they are able to consciously manifest said personalities. Much like Darwin's finches, children's personalities can change within a generation.

This led to the point that change is demonstrably generational - particularly with things like lead poisoning. Steve brought up a study about lead, demonstrating this. Kia brought up similar points in Slow Death by Rubber Duck. Eventually, this brought Francie to a deeper realizing that adoption could cause a recursive cycle of stress hormones for several generations. This segued into The Psychopath Test (and, tangentially, So You Have Been Publicly Shamed) and whether or not we could be looking at a preponderance of psychopaths in the coming years. We batted around the possibility of this.

Eventually, we broke into neuroscience and its (lack of) funding. This brought up the fact that genetic tech - from CRISPR to the growing of organs from our own cells - is basically a slave to funding. This makes it problematic because it allows the interests of the wealthy to control any and all conversations about the direction of the advancements. There is still a lot that we don't know, even about the sequenced human genome. 

Another problem with the ability to select genetics is that it would probably pare down diversity, which is a big bonus to resisting things like the blight that is killing off the cavendish banana. Artificial selection has occurred - even in humans - going back to the Spartans. We also talked about government projects that test and potentially influence genetics. We discussed the MK Ultra experiments. After a while, we talked about the ethics of testing prisoners and whether or not that could yield results that could be parsed. This became an argument about ethics. While it was pointed out that the whole idea was to find an ethical testing method. A few other group members pointed out that because of the inherently disadvantaged position of prisoners there couldn't be any ethical way to test them. The discussion of the prison system came back to the societal expectation that pervades our "justice" system in saying that those who have done wrong deserve punishment - rehabilitation is incidental.

This came to a short discussion of pedophilia and the fact that the damning nature of even a prognosis can mean societal shame over something that a person may merely have been born with a neurological proclivity toward. Because our society has placed this in such a realm of taboo that those who admit to it may experience more shame and penalty than if they were to not seek help at all - thereby exacerbating the problem. There was a fantastic bit on NPR about this... which I cannot find... so instead, there is this.

We decided at the end of this discussion that it might be better to come back to these scientific topics in a while - we've been on them for a while.

Next Week:

Firstly, I really liked Scott's idea today: IS there anything that could make you become religious? I would assume that I was hallucinating if I saw Jesus coming down from heaven in the style of the book of Revelation. So what could make me join the ranks of the believers? Have I shored up science in my own mind to the extent that it has become a religion? How do you all feel?

Also, we're going to have our final locker/bench assembly this Saturday. If you've worked on the assembly, you should come to get a picture with the lockers. We're going to try to get a write up in the News and Record. Have a great week!

Ann also wanted to ask if anyone had interest in the TED talk in Greensboro: http://tedxgreensboro.com/

Also: 

Sorry, Francie! 

She sent me this, and I forgot all about it.

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/deep-dives/gene-environment-interaction/

Religious Freedom, Choice, and Children

Hey everyone!

Our topic for Sunday, the 26th, 11 am, will be religious freedom, choice, and children. We've talked about a lot about various religious mandates wherein followers are supposed breed as much as possible. The Quiverfull Christians and god's supposed first commandment to Adam and Eve exemplify this ironically evolutionary measure of success.
My question is this: if people have the freedom to choose what religion to follow and what to teach their children, where does indoctrination become abuse?
I don't know how many people in our group would say that religion should be flatly outlawed, but I doubt many of us would say that Gay Conversion Therapy is something to which parents should be allowed to subject their children. I may or may not make it to the Secular Sunday this weekend, but I thought that this would be a good topic no matter what.
Maybe, someone could take notes for this!
Let me know if you want to organize and/or take notes for this week!

Sex, Lies, Property, and SHAME!

I got a suggestion from one of our members, and I think it's a really, really good one. We've talked about evolution and brushed on the idea of sexual selection, but my Jehovah's Witness upbringing is bristling at one syllable of one word in this sentence. Any guess which one it is?

SEX.

It would be a great topic, if we can get people talking about it, to discuss the taboos, religious control, and the use of guilt to control people. Religions and their attendant belief structures are replete with crazy injunctions and shameful controls of people. The insane preoccupation with gender divides and the obsession with controlling women populate so many religious texts - WHY?

Kia is going to be grinning ear to ear for this one because she knows how uncomfortable my upbringing has made topics like this for me. Obviously, I urge all members to be cautious of everyone's feelings (except mine - I'll be fine. Just, uh, might blush a lot.)  But it should be a really good discussion!

Hope to see you there!