Post 18 2/25/2018

Single Substance Spirituality

Over millennia, the venerable notion of contemplative “spirituality” has picked up lots of spooky connotations & other-worldly associations, such as folk superstitions & hopeful attempts to communicate with ghosts, plus religious behaviors like servile devotion, . . . .

Post 22 3/10/2018

 Musings on
 Meditation

The BothAnd principle is equi-valent to the Buddha's Middle Way of moderation between extremes of Indulgence (e.g. drugs) and Asceticism (e.g. suicide). In religion, it ranges from excess Concern for the afterlife (to the detriment of this life, as in terrorists) to the  to the “what can god do for me . . . .

Post 19 3/01/2018

What’s The Point?


What's the point of a Neo-Deist worldview? If there is no fatherly god in heaven looking out for you, forgiving your sins, helping your football team to win, or assigning a guardian angel to keep stray bullets from hitting you, then why not just be a no-nonsense Atheist, or Agnostic? . . . .

Post 23 3/12/2017

Deism Beyond Reason

In his respectful critique of Deism, he makes one telling observation : «Most deists I know do believe in more (about God) than what natural, unaided reason can discover.» Although Reason is their raison d'etre, Deists cannot deny that some of their beliefs and hopes are not derived from pure Reason, but from reason supplemented . . .

 Post 17  2/19/2018

 
 Divine Justice  for Deists

The Old Testament is full of examples of divine justice that belie the New Testament notion of a grand-fatherly Jehovah, who showers his children with blessings, and even sacrificed his beloved son to save us from ourselves. By contrast, in Genesis, Yaweh commanded Abraham. . . . .

Post 16  2/14/2018

 Atheism 2.0
 & Deism 2.0

In a TED talk a few years ago, philosophical writer Alain de Botton, proposed that the New Atheists were wrong to reject religion altogether. He agreed with them that many religious doctrines are no longer plausible, but some of their tools & techniques may still be useful in modern societies, . . . .

Post 20 3/10/2017

 The Riddle of
 Consciousness

In his recent book, Bacteria to Back and Back, philosopher and cognitive scien-tist Daniel Dennett, continues his analysis of the puzzling phenomenon of Consciousness that he began in Consciousness Explained. From his no-non-sense scientist per-spective, he is not troubled by the fact that, for most people,

Post 21  3/09/2018

The Whole Soul

On the Thoughts Explained Blog, “The Moral Skeptic” discusses a split-brain experi-ment that seemed to show that the human neural system can generate two separate minds. Thus, proving that there is no unique Soul existing apart from brain functions. That empirical evidence would indeed cast . . .

Post 24  3/14/2018

Re-Enlightenment

Several recent science-oriented magazines have had cover articles on topics such as : The War on Science and Knowledge, Anti-Intellectualism in Today's America (SI Mar/Apr2018). One culprit in this rejection of En-lightenment values is the Post-modern philosophy, which views history, not as the hopeful record of an upward trend . . . .

End of
BothAnd Blog 1

Continued on BothAnd Blog 2

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