Lucretius - De Rerum Natura - Matter and Void

In his fascinating book, The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt tells the gripping story of the rediscovery, during the Middle Ages, of one of the philosophical masterpieces of the Classical period in Rome: Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), an epic exploration and development of Epicurus' materialist, empiricist and soteriologically hedonistic philosophy, all set to the most beautiful of Latin poetry.

Greenblatt shows how the Christian obsession with asceticism, suffering and self-righteousness came perilously close to annihilating any traces of a philosophy that eschews the supernatural, and that celebrates life and sees it as worth living and enjoying. It was by sheer chance that an Italian humanist scholar, Gian Francesco Poggio, discovered Lucretius in a palimpsest and started circulating it. In Greenblatt's opinion, the dissemination of this beautiful work of antiquity (measured by the famous thinkers who managed to get their hands on and were inspired by it), may have been one of the leading factors that gave rise to modernity.

In the following audio rendition, read by the inimitable Charlton Griffin, you'll get a sense of the piercing power of Lucretius' philosophy and poetry as he sets down the basics of Epicurus' metaphysical materialism and his fight against religion. They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but in Lucretius' hands, it's more like a nuclear bomb!

This is just the beginning... stay tuned for more excerpts from this fascinating work!

And if you're interested in the text of the above excerpt, you can find a copy here.

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Pat Robertson - Want Miracles? Be Simple-Minded, Credulous and Uneducated

In a strange case similar to that of Benjamin Button, it seems as though Pat Robertson's senility is firmly advancing in the direction of reason, to the point that I've been wondering lately whether he's becoming one of the most interesting exponents of religious nonsense and an unexpected advocate for secularism. Well, either that or he's so far gone the deep end that he's not even trying to be ironic... Here's a case in point:

Ah, those simple, primitive people... they'll believe any nonsense you tell them :)

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Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions

If you believe in reincarnation, you could reasonably believe that Kurt Vonnegut was the reincarnated soul of Mark Twain. With their brief and minimalist styles, as well as their no-holes-barred aphorisms, these two authors managed to drive American literature to a place where substance could take a front seat in our collective consciousness in a way that's rarely accessible through other authors. In the process, they got us to question many of the sacred cows we usually take for granted. In the following reading of an excerpt from Breakfast of Champions, we get to see Vonnegut touch, in his uniquely hilarious way, on the American experience of racism, capitalism, free will, family values, patriotism, religion, parenthood and personhood. Best of all, we get to see that he was so funny he could make himself crack up :)

How awesome was that? :)

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Physicists Confirm They Found and Killed the 'God Particle'

Virtually since the inception of its moniker, many atheists have hated the fact that the Higgs Boson, a theoretical subatomic particle thought to be responsible for attributing mass to matter, has been referred to as the "God Particle."

But as The Onion reports, they may finally have reason to celebrate, as news have been revealed that physicists have finally found, and then killed, that goddamn particle...

But if you actually want to get an idea of what the Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field are, you can check out the LHC tag, or just watch this short clip with the awesome Sean Carroll:

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Fear and Trembling - The Story of Abraham and Isaac

I'm currently re-reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, one of my favorite books of all time: a gripping philosophical and theological analysis of one of the most macabre stories in the Bible: Abraham's unquestioning willingness to sacrifice Isaac, the son that had been promised him by God, and who was destined to start the nation that was to trace its lineage back to Abraham.

As I also re-read the biblical story, I noticed that while it tells us what Abraham did, it doesn't say a word about what went through his mind when he first heard the injunction, nor what he thought/felt when he drew the knife that was to kill his son. This silence allows Kierkegaard to explore the paradox that Abraham, as the knight and father of faith, represents.

And through a lyrical exposition (for this is not the kind of thing that can be argued for), Kiergegaard shows that Abraham's silence also implies that we can't use the universal categories of language and the ethical to understand him, since his move transcends the universal, the intelligible, the communicable. This is why Kierkegaard explores the question of whether there can be a teleological suspension of the ethical, and why, while he simultaneously admires, praises and shudders at Abraham and his conviction, he cannot understand him.

And this inability to understand, this absolute necessity for silence and absence of language, communication and rational intelligibility, is further reinforced by the fact that Kierkegaard wrote this philosophical work under the pseudonym of Johannes de Silentio: even if Abraham did what was most appropriate in the particular situation he found himself in, there is nothing we can extrapolate from his choice; he cannot be understood, and his greatness, if it isn't just madness, cannot be communicated.

For Kierkegaard, faith isn't the lazy cop-out answer that's given by most believers nowadays when they simply fail to explain something they don't understand: it is something that has to be experienced permanently, in fear and trembling, because it represents a conviction that stands at the edge of the most dangerous abyss, and that is affirmed existentially in virtue of its absurdity.

Anyway, while Kierkegaards's philosophical investigation is as serious as it gets, since it deals with the nature of human existence and choice, the story of Abraham reminded me of this hilarious clip I saw a few years ago:

For those of you who are not religious, I still highly recommend this book because beneath the religious surface, Kierkegaard explores the paradoxical nature of profound existential topics that we can't help but confront, despite our secular inclinations. Agree or disagree with him, he will stimulate your mind, and you'll get to read a master of writing. Here's just a small sample:

No! No one who was great in the world will be forgotten, but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of that which he loved. He who loved himself became great by virtue of himself, and he who loved other men became great by his devotedness, but he who loved God became the greatest of all. Everyone shall be remembered, but everyone became great in proportion to his expectancy. One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became the greatest of all. Everyone shall be remembered, but everyone was great wholly in proportion to the magnitude of that with which he struggled. For he who struggled with the world became great by conquering the world, and he who struggled with himself became great by conquering himself, but he who struggled with God became the greatest of all. Thus did they struggle in the world, man against man, one against thousands, but he who struggled with God was the greatest of all. Thus did they struggle on earth: there was one who conquered everything by his power, and there was one who conquered God by his powerlessness. There was one who relied upon himself and gained everything; there was one who in the security of his own strength sacrificed everything; but the one who believed God was the greatest of all. There was one who was great by virtue of his power, and one who was great by virtue of his hope, and one who was great by virtue of his love, but Abraham was the greatest of all, great by that power whose strength is powerlessness, great by that wisdom which is foolishness, great by that hope whose form is madness, great by the love that is hatred to oneself.

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Bill O'Reilly - Christianity Is a Philosophy, Not a Religion

Unfortunately, the word philosophy is used, misused and abused by all kinds of people. For some, like the local drunk at your nearest bar, for instance, it means the semi-coherent and misogynistic ramblings about the "deep truths" he has "discovered" through dozens of failed relationships, and that he can't help but share with you. For others, it means some sort of "deep" motto, like "believe in yourself." A slightly more respectable version still is that of a worldview: a set of ideas by which you lead your life, and which, with any luck, are not incompatible with each other.

But for philosophers, philosophy is not a thing... it's an activity: it is the pursuit of wisdom (the good and the true) by means of rational conceptual analysis, by rigorous and systematic observation, by synthesizing the very best knowledge that we acquire from the sciences, by subjecting claims to rational scrutiny, by questioning what others take for granted, and by developing the existential courage to confront the harshness of reality head-on without having to delude ourselves with comforting beliefs and illusions. Philosophy is something we do, not something we "have."

Whatever its merits, however, religion is not that. In philosophy, we investigate to find answers, and we go where the evidence takes us. In religion, you start with your preconceived belief first, and then look for ways to back it up later. Philosophy is inquiry; religion is rationalization.

So, when I heard that Bill O'Reilly recently claimed that Christianity is a philosophy, and NOT a religion, my first reaction was, predictably, WTF? Ah, but when Papa Bear wants to play logic and semantic games, you know that Jon Stewart is ready to call him on his bullshit :)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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And hey, have you noticed that there are a lot of similarities between the Jesus and Socrates stories? Well, this is no mere coincidence. As Nietzsche once put it, Christianity is Platonism for the herd. It's the same basic story, without the actual philosophy part...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Sometimes I wonder if Jon Stewart is proof of God's existence...

The problem, though, is that Mr. Deity is now upset:

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Richard Dawkins - Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life (1)

Dostoevsky's dictum "without God, anything is permitted" is often used by religious believers to make the point that, quite aside from the issue of its truth, religion plays an important role, perhaps even a necessary one, in fomenting moral behavior and virtue. Without God, where would morality come from? If we were simply left to our own devices, what would be there to prevent absolute chaos, violence, crime and wanton lasciviousness?

Well, whatever you may think about the moral foundation of morality, as an empirical claim, it simply isn't true that without God or religion we would turn into savages. How do we know? For one, because non-human animals, presumably not being religious believers, do have all sorts of customs and rules by which they abide without having to descend into anarchy. And second, because when you look at the behavior or religious and non-religious people, you find that there is almost no difference there.

What religious people do have, though, is a lot of shame and guilt for things that should not be quite as big a deal as they think. So it seems as though religion is a self-perpetuating industry of devotion based on making its followers feel bad about themselves and then making them turn to religion for "salvation." Not much different from drug pushers, huh?

And it's getting to the point that religious people will go to all kinds of extremes to reconcile the inevitable cognitive dissonance they experience from the conjunction of their religious beliefs and their biological nature. Richard Dawkins explores these and other related issues

What exactly is the fascination with virgins? I never understood that one...

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A Christian Nation?

A great number of Americans believe that the U.S. is a Christian nation. Can this claim be justified?

Well, if what one means by that claim is that the majority of Americans are Christians, that's most likely an empirical fact: most Americans really are Christian. However, it doesn't follow that because the majority of citizens are Christian, the nation itself is Christian. Why not?

This would be an instance of the logical fallacy of composition: assuming that what's true of the parts is necessarily true of the whole, as in, most Americans are women, therefore America itself is a female nation; or most Americans are white, therefore America itself is a white nation (I hope only racists and white supremacists would be convinced by such a blatantly obviously bad argument); or most Americans are old (hello Baby Boomers!), therefore the U.S. is an old nation! The problem, in other words, is that you can't automatically transfer the properties of the parts to the whole made up of those parts.

What else could the claim that America is a Christian nation mean? Maybe that our Constitution and guiding principles are based on Judeo-Christian tenets? Well, if you compare the First Commandment and the First Amendment to the Constitution, we can put that claim to rest: while Yahweh prohibits you from worshiping any other gods (how insecure), the Bill of Rights guarantees you the right to worship any goddamn thing you please, or not to worship anything at all. You could not find two more mutually exclusive claims if you tried.

What about the Founding Fathers? Weren't they Christian? Well, I think you're starting to get the point... none of these claims is really going to hold up to a bit of rational and historical scrutiny:

God bless America? Thanks, but no need: our success is a result of our drive, our ingenuity, our ambition, our geographical luck, our historical vicissitudes, and most importantly our secular values. We are great despite being Christian...

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Sean Carroll - The Case for Naturalism

If you follow current events in the world of public intellectualism, you probably know that over the past few decades, and increasingly over the past couple of years, some prominent physicists (Richard Feynman, Steven Weinberg, Stephen Hawking, and Lawrence Krauss, for instance) have been taking jabs at philosophy. The usual charge is that philosophy doesn't help us make scientific progress, which, for the most part, is kind of true. But, of course, who ever said that the job of philosophy is to make scientific progress? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what science is supposed to do?

You probably wouldn't criticize a sculptor for not hitting a home run, for not breaking a 100-meter dash world record, for not building the LHC, or for not discovering the Higgs Boson, etc. Why? Because that's not what sculpture is about! So for those physicists, all of whom I love but who don't know what the hell philosophy is or even what it's supposed to do, please stop talking about things over which you have no expertise. You kind of sound as ignorant as religious fundamentalists when they talk about science...

One of the physicists who does understand the ways in which philosophy and science can make great allies and help each other in their respective disciplines, however, is Sean Carroll. He's a great thinker, with a gift for precision, clarity and profundity. The following video has nothing to do with the physics/philosophy stuff I mentioned above, but it is a nice example of just how great he is at breaking down complex ideas into an accessible and nicely organized format without sounding the least bit condescending:

I'll check out the rest of this apparent debate later on, and if it's good, I'll post it in its entirety in the weeks to follow.

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Sex: An Unnatural History - The Church

One of the ways in which religions have managed to control their followers is by controlling their sexuality, telling them what's allowed, what's forbidden, what they can be punished for eternally, what the purpose of sex is, and so on. And for a very long time, religions managed to do this quite well, primarily because they also controlled the means of indoctrination and communication, but then modernity and education happened...

Few events have shocked the church quite the way the introduction of the anti-contraceptive pill did because, for the first time in history, sexuality became democratized and people finally had some control over their own reproduction, control that had previously been the dominion of the church.

With the sexual revolution of the sixties, and the general secularization of the zeitgeist over the last few centuries, orthodox traditional religious restrictions on sexuality (like their adherence to natural law theory and its injunctions against birth control, abortion and homosexuality), though still strongly supported by church officials, have been mainly ignored by the faithful, and the church has lost its grip on the conscience and soul of its constituents.

But is sex only about physical gratification, or is there some important spiritual component to it over which the church really ought to have something to say? Or can such components be achieved without it? Does the very idea of sex as metaphorical forbidden fruit enhance the sexual experience? Are atheists missing out?

And check out a brief summary of the history of the church and child sexual abuse.

Or check out the Unnatural History of Sex (The Revolution and Love).

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The Center of All Things

Historically, it is perfectly understandable why our ancestors believed that we were the center of the universe: it really looks like we are!

What naturally happens during the development of an individual in infancy, absolute ego-centrism, is mirrored at the collective level during the infancy of a civilization. But just like children grow up and become disabused of their former ego-centrism, civilizations also have to grow up and give up childish fantasies about holding some special place in the grand scheme of things. The upshot is that instead of being surrounded by the universe, we actually get to be a part of it :)

And if you feel some Carl Sagan nostalgia on this chilly and rainy morning, knock yourself out with these entries.

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Beautiful Minds - Richard Dawkins

If you've been following this blog for a while, you're probably familiar with the various documentaries, debates and lectures Richard Dawkins has delivered over the years. Sure, his fame of late has to do with the religion/atheism and creationism/evolution controversies, but he's a much more important thinker than that. Dawkins is such a prolific thinker that even when he's wrong, he manages to make you think and to reconsider your own position. The man doesn't know how not to be interesting.

His original fame derives from a fabulous book he penned over 30 years ago: The Selfish Gene, which was originally inspired by the ground-breaking work of biologists like Bill Hamilton, and which provided a powerful and eloquent new way of understanding behaviors and traits that did not originally seem to conform to Darwinian natural selection, but which, after careful consideration, turned out to be remarkable revelations that confirmed and enhanced the theory.

The following documentary is all about the man, his story, his influence, his courage, his intellect and his ideas:

For a defense of The Selfish Gene, you might want to watch Nice Guys Finish First.

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The Burden of Proof

Why yes, obviously you should believe in and bow down to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Let yourself be touched by His noodly appendage. Feel the power of his balls! What do you mean that's nonsense? Can you prove he doesn't exist? If you can't, aren't you just being dogmatic in your atheistic a-pastafarianism?

As you may already be inferring, today we're dealing with the philosophical question concerning the burden of proof. Who has the responsibility of proving her case? The believers or the skeptics? Which is more reasonable: to believe something until it is disproven (or weakened by reason and/or evidence), or not to believe something until it is proven (or substantiated with reason and/or evidence)?

Unless we're dealing with emotionally charged subjects, the answer seems pretty obvious: the burden of proof is always on the person making an affirmative claim. The skeptic is free to reject any claim that doesn't satisfy her standards of reason and evidence. When we are dealing with emotionally charged subjects, however, especially those on which our sense of personal identity depends, all this cool reasoning goes out the window and we tend to engage in some special pleading, unreasonably demanding that the skeptic disprove our assertions, but that's a philosophically unenlightened position to maintain, as the following thought-provoking animation by QualiaSoup demonstrates:

While the burden of proof is always on the person who makes an affirmative claim, insofar as such a claim is epistemic or ontological (and related only to whether something is likely true), the case is more difficult for moral questions, partly because these questions involve practical choices that have to be made (often immediately) rather than merely beliefs that can be held abstractly and without urgency. The difference, of course, is that with moral questions, we are not merely concerned with the question of whether some moral claim is true but also with the question of whether it is good or bad, and whether it is worth choosing and acting upon, or not...

Other difficult cases: instances involving imminent danger... but that, again, has more to do with caution and prudential choices than with mere truth.

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Paul Ayn Rand Ryan

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Unfortunately, some people don't grow intellectually past the age of 14, and having once read the cultish work by Ayn Rand, go on to pontificate to the rest of us how Rand was a great intellectual and "philosopher," apparently without realizing what a shallow and psychopathic 'thinker' she actually was (there's a reason real philosophers, with minor exceptions, don't take her seriously).

One of those sheepish followers is Paul Ryan, a self-professed Catholic who apparently doesn't see the contradiction between his Catholicism (including Jesus' message of charity and compassion for the downtrodden) and his devotion and worship of an asshole atheist who promulgated self-interest and greed as the highest virtues, and social responsibility as one of the worst moral crimes.

Well, the Catholic church called Ryan on the contradiction of his beliefs, and Stephen Colbert talks to the priest who sounded the wake-up call

The Colbert Report
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And here is the best part: a total takedown by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, who just rips Ryan apart:

Even xkcd recognizes what's up:

Hat tip to Tony!

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Tribute to Christopher Hitchens

Widely considered to be one of the Four Horsemen of Atheism, Christopher Hitchens is an intellectual hero to many agnostics, skeptics and nonbelievers. I greatly admire the man's intelligence, erudition, candor, humor and eloquence, but I have to admit that I don't find his arguments against the existence of God to be very persuasive.

Hitchens, in my estimation, suffers from exactly the same kind of logical flaw that many believers do: his nonbelief seems to be based more on his desire for God not to exist (because God is, in his opinion, the ultimate arbitrary dictator who can violate our innermost privacy and convict us of thought-crimes) than on sound ontological or epistemic arguments. Believers, of course, make the same mistake of concluding that because they want God to exist, he actually does. But wishful thinking says more about the wisher than the wish, either way.

Where I do think Hitchens has made substantial contributions is on his critique of religion, religious morality and the religious instinct. It's his moral and historical arguments, and not any ontological claims, where I think he has a lot of interesting things to say. And if nothing else, he has that rare gift of helping us to think about many ideas, that we tend to take for granted, from refreshingly and interesting new angles, as the following excerpts show:

Cheers, Hitch!

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Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Born Equal

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection provides a wonderful scientific explanation of biological adaptation and diversity. The theory is wonderful. The process of evolution itself is torturous, blind, indifferent, and cruel.

And when you take a ruthless process, and mix it up with some extreme political and social ideology, what you get is the pseudo-scientific distortion of scientific evolution: social darwinism in its many forms, the most extreme version of which resulted in the infamous movement of eugenics, but don't blame the Nazis for this one. This idea came from the Brits, got instituted by the Americans, and only then did it make it back across the Atlantic to Germany.

Fortunately, as Andrew Marr explains in the second part of the fascinating documentary Darwin's Dangerous Idea, a better understanding of evolution, as well of ethical philosophy, is giving rise to a new, positive sense of eugenics, one in which individual choice and autonomy, without government imposition, is helping create a healthier and more prosperous world.

Wow... we've come full circle :)

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Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss - Something from Nothing

One of the most persistent intuitions we humans rely on when thinking about the question of the origin of the universe is captured by the latin phrase ex nihilo nihil fit, which can be roughly translated as "nothing comes from nothing," so where did everything come from?

On the one hand, you can argue that since ex nihilo nihil fit, the universe, in one form or another, must be eternal and must have always existed. One potential problem with that point of view is the question of whether actual temporal infinities can really exist. On the other hand, the traditionally preferred answer has been: God did it. Of course, this answer doesn't explain anything, since it leaves the question of how even God could have created something (everything, in fact) from literally nothing, unsolved. Yes, God of the gaps argument, not a real solution.

But the question remains: where did the universe come from? And in the following fascinating, amusing and thought-provoking conversation, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss tackle this and other equally important and interesting questions. Of particular interest is Krauss's distinction between the way scientists understand "nothing" from the way theologians understand the same word. It's a really interesting way of turning the question around on the believers. I wonder what you'll make of it...

Hope that leaves you with an intellectually satisfying weekend.

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Atheism is a Religion like Abstinence is a Sex Position

When it comes to debates between religious folks and non-believers, it's not uncommon to hear the former claim that atheism is itself a religion ultimately based on faith. And it's not just your ordinary bible-thumping redneck either. If you've ever watched any of the debates on this blog featuring the philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig, you will have noticed that he's a conniving master at trying to shift the burden of proof to the atheist. He claims that the atheist has to prove that atheism is true (in various logic, probabilistic and evidence-based ways) while the believer merely has to make a case for the possibility of God or to use God as the best explanation for a given set of facts (never mind the fact that he has to posit the existence of the supernatural, without proving it, in order to make his case).

Not only is this disingenuous, and quite possibly impious, but as a philosopher and a self-professed scholar, he should know that those who make affirmative claims (such as "God exists") are the ones who have the responsibility or proving their case. The skeptic is entirely free to reject any claim that doesn't satisfy her own standards of reason and evidence. If I tell you that the Flying Spaghetti Monster touched me in my no-no place with his noodly appendage, it's up to me to prove the truth of this claim. It's not up to you to disprove it.

But back to atheism being a religion. Well, why don't I just let Bill Maher handle this one? Since many people believe that atheism is a religion, then atheists should get to do all the wacky things the religious get to, right? It's only fair. So, Maher decided he's going to unbaptize Mitt Romney's dead father in law :)

Oh, that remark about Ayn Rand just made my day :)

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Alain de Botton - Atheism 2.0

Traditionally, religion has been associated with a number of different concepts: explanation, revelation, salvation and consolation. The so-called New Atheists have made a strong case that when it comes to explanation, religion is no better than child fantasies. Revelation, as a corollary of explanation turns out to be another silly concept, as is salvation... whatever that might mean.

One of the few areas in which religion does seem to thrive (regardless of whether its premises are true or not), that current secularism doesn't quite know how to deal with yet is consolation in its various forms: community, identity, tradition, reverence.

In the following fascinating TEDTalk presentation, atheist philosopher Alain de Botton (narrator of the documentary series Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness) argues that there is much in this area that a more advanced and nuanced and less reactionary atheism can actually learn, and steal, from the lessons developed by religions for thousands of years.

And for more, there is a short Q&A in the TED Blog.

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Dangerous Knowledge

Beneath the surface of the world are the rules of science, but beneath them there is a far deeper set of rules, a matrix of pure mathematics, which explains the nature of the rules of science...

So begins this David Malone tour-de-force tribute to four geniuses who dared to confront the nature of the rules underlying all mathematics, logic and science, and saw in their various ways that the certainty with which we had become so familiar and comfortable was but an illusion.

Their stories are both inspiring and tragic. These men, Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, were all destined for intellectual fame and greatness, if only posthumously, but because of the nature of their research, because of the intense dedication that their academic problems demanded of them, because of the great resistance they had to overcome from detractors, and because of the major threat they posed to our most foundational beliefs, they came to the brink of madness, and their ends were all tragic, lonely and regrettable. For all of that, however, and however briefly, they each got a glimpse of a reality few, if any of us, will ever get to experience.

This is, quite possibly, the best thing you may do for your brain this week...

And for another masterpiece on Alan Turing's intellectual contributions, check out Jim Al-Khalili's The Secret Life of Chaos.

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