Progress: Verb
Scientific progress, the idea that science increases its problem solving ability through the application of some scientific method.
Social progress, the idea that societies can or do improve in terms of their social, political, and economic structures.
Progress trap, the condition societies find themselves in when human ingenuity, in pursuing progress, inadvertently introduces problems that it does not have the resources to solve, preventing further progress or inciting social collapse.
Here’s chapter and verse on a more-or-less comprehensive list of things banned in the Leviticus book of the bible. A decent number of them are punishable by death.
Unless you’ve never done any of them (and 54 to 56 are particularly tricky), perhaps it’s time to lay off quoting 18:22 for a…
Science, you win this round (and every round)
Right on.
I’m not anti-religion, I’m anti-discrimination - especially when discrimination is perpetrated in the guise of religion.
”Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians - you are not like him.”
Bara Dada, Source - Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Indian Road, New York: The Abingdon Press,1925. (Page 114)
Not all Christians ignore the teachings of their Christ, but Paul Ryan certainly seems to do so as a practicing Catholic and prominent politician.
For years, MacBain set her concerns aside. But when she became a United Methodist pastor nine years ago, she started asking sharper questions. She thought they’d make her faith stronger.
“In reality,” she says, “as I worked through them, I found that religion had so many holes in it, that I just progressed through stages where I couldn’t believe it.”
The questions haunted her: Is Jesus the only way to God? Would a loving God torment people for eternity? Is there any evidence of God at all? And one day, she crossed a line.
“I just kind of realized — I mean just a eureka moment, not an epiphany, a eureka moment — I’m an atheist,” she says. “I don’t believe. And in the moment that I uttered that word, I stumbled and choked on that word — atheist.”
Those same questions are where it starts for most of us…
Morality knows no religion.
Belief in God, Critical Thinking Butt Heads
When pushed to think in a more rational way, people experience a dip in their religious beliefs, found a new study. Simply looking at pictures of Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker,” for example, was enough to make people less likely to agree with statements like, “Nothing is as important to me as serving God as best I know how.”
The effects were subtle, and encouraging critical thought is unlikely to destroy anyone’s faith. But the findings suggest that rational analysis interacts with gut instinct in the brain to help distinguish between people who believe fully in God and those who abandon religion.
“This could help people take a broader approach to debates about whether religion is true or not, and realize that subtle cognitive differences might be influencing where people end up on that debate,” said Will Gervais, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, who added that understanding why some people are more religious than others doesn’t say anything about who’s right.
Photo: Rodin’s sculpture, The Thinker, in Paris, France. Getty Images
Something to keep in mind
(via friendlyatheist)
