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@AtheistMission: Robert M. Price's May 7th Bible Geek podcast (Myth, Method & The Will to Believe) is superb: http://t.co/ELvyFnlIpK


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@AtheistMission: It's 2013 & I think it's safe to say that we have finally reached the point in Canada where religion has become irrelevant.


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Hippo boy was priceless

I'm currently reading The Confessions of St. Augustine as I acclimatize to post-10,000 feet altitudes near Joshimath, Índia (about 50 km from the Indo-Tibet border).

Hippo boy is golden. Augustine is considered one of the greatest thinkers Christianity has ever known. Here's a priceless snippet from Book II as he regretfully writes about the whoring ways of his youth:

"Else ought I more watchfully to have heeded the voice from the clouds; Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh but I spare you. And, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. And, he that is unmarried thinketh of the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things of this world, how he may please his wife."

Well ... he got half of that right!
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I'm off to find out whether Jesus really lived in India ...

I am off for a trek in the Indian Himalayas. Reading materials include The Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippo and Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten.  Left to look after our three kids at home is my wife and true saviour.

After reading Philosophy for a Better World, the world won't look the same ...

Thought I would share a blurb about a forthcoming publication by Prometheus Books: Philosophy for a Better World:

In this thought-provoking book, Dutch philosopher Floris van den Berg proposes a new perspective, called universal subjectivism, which can be adopted by anyone regardless of religious or philosophical orientation. It takes into consideration the universal capacity for suffering and, through raising awareness, seeks to diminish that suffering and increase happiness. With consistent and compelling moral reasoning, Van den Berg shows that the world can be organized to ensure more pleasure, beauty, justice, happiness, health, freedom, animal welfare, and sustainability.

The author emphasizes that the near-term future is our greatest challenge: our affluent Western lifestyle will soon exceed the limits of the earth’s sustainable capacity and must soon change drastically if we are to ward off a worldwide environmental collapse.

Knowing this, we should all reconsider the daily routines we take for granted: taking the car to work, boarding a plane to a business or vacation destination, eating meat, or using plastic bags in stores. There are ethical and ecological objections to each of these examples, since they are implicated in a lot of avoidable suffering. In fact, when we apply a strict ethical analysis to our lifestyle, we find that most of our activities fail to pass muster. After reading this book, the world won’t look the same.

Concluding with an eco-humanist manifesto, this book offers both food for thought and an urgent and inspiring call to action.

This book is based on the author's doctoral thesis which I had the pleasure of reading last year.  If you would like to be notified when the book is available for order through amazon, please click here.

 

Sam Harris makes a good point here ...

Thanks to Advocatus Atheist blogger Tristan Vick for drawing this to my attention.
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Please give some thought as to why you hold your beliefs

Like all atheists who make their email addresses publicly available on the internet, I receive a variety of unsolicited emails from believers and non-believers. Most of them are polite, like the one I received last night from a small business owner in South Carolina:

"I just bumped into some info about you on the internet…….no big deal…you are a smart guy….
 
But there is one God….and Jesus was His son…..and He left the Holy Ghost to live within us…..
 
And I bet one day….maybe your last day…..you will change your mind and believe that too……I am going to pray for that….
 
Maybe we will meet in heaven and talk about stuff….i hope so……"

Here is my response:"[Name removed], nice to hear from you. I'm always willing to change my mind if provided with satisfactory evidence. The question is whether you are. If you sincerely believe that we'll meet in heaven, I trust that you also believe that we both could also meet in the eternal fat fryer of hell. If you believe that your God would torture beings He created forever, please give some thought as to why you hold that belief.I pose this question so you will understand that what I object to is not the suggestion that there is some kind of supernatural being (or beings) that exists outside of time and space. After all, how could anyone ever disprove that? What I object to is those who profess religious certainty about metaphysical truths which are, by definition, beyond human comprehension. If you think that the above makes me an agnostic rather than an atheist, then so be it. However, I am most certainly an atheist when it comes to your God (i.e. the one described in the Bible) just like you are (I assume) an atheist towards Zeus.

Best regards, TAM.

P.S. If there is a heaven, I hope annihilationism is true because I would consider an eternity of anything to be hell."

At this point, an enlightened theist (such as Randal Rauser, author of "The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails") might chime in and insist that atheists should also give some thought as to why they hold the beliefs that they do. I wholeheartedly agree.