Freethinkers/Atheists/Naturalists Unite

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Medusa

Hey AJ!

I was glad to see you start this thread! A lot of these themes have been circling in my head of late. I, too, was raised in a Southern Baptist environment and this time of year always brings up memories for me of being taught that Christmas was a "Christian" holiday, having discussions with my mom about how "Santa Claus" worked for God, and seeing (in my own child's mind) greed and sloth take over in some areas of my family.

I am also a non-theist at this point in my life and incorporate Buddhist principals into my way of being to feel balanced. I feel more peaceful in my life without the presence of a "God" than I ever did while attending church. I often speak of things that the "universe" provides but I think that for me, when I think of the "universe" it is less about an entity and more about all of those forces of electicity that we create as human beings.

My path of late has brought me back around to wanting to expand my knowledge and thinking about the Quantum. I came across this book on amazon: "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum" and thought I might give it a read. Do you have any recommendations for interesting reads?

I love how you characterize a "world view" without supernatural considerations. Can you talk more about what that looks like to you?

Great thread!

Medusa:

I'll take the really difficult bit, your last question, first. What I mean by this is that as far as we are able to tell, this is a material universe with no gods, no afterlife, and no 'supernatural' entities or powers. It also is a universe that has no inherent meaning (by which I mean that the universe isn't here to teach us a lesson, it exists for itself). So any meaning I manage to eke out of the universe is my meaning. It also means that I am responsible for what I do in this life, not an afterlife (which I see no evidence for) or reincarnation (which I also see no evidence for). So I am responsible for how I treat others now, in the moment. My motivation for being whatever kind of decent person I can manage is that I prefer the outcomes from behaving in an ethical fashion more than I prefer the outcomes from the alternative.

It also means that I'm responsible for developing wisdom, two bits of which I think are: "you're not going to get everything you want" and "you're going to die". These seem like common sense but a lot of religious/spiritual thought actually seems to go in exactly the opposite direction. Whether it is the belief in an afterlife ("sure, you're going to die but once you die you live forever in heaven) or the idea that through "quantum healing" you need never grow old (an idea that Deepak Chopra espouses) or the ideas behind "The Secret" or "What the Bleep Do We Know", I see all of those espousing the idea that we *can* have anything we want if we just ask the universe for it and we don't have to face our own mortality. I would rather live in a slightly less comfortable world facing life standing up and clear-eyed than in a comfortable world of illusions. This, of course, I do imperfectly.

Lastly, it means appreciating Nature in all of its beauty *and* its ugliness. There are things in Nature that are heart-achingly beautiful and that's *before* we get to human created artifacts like music. Look at the pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope to see what I mean. There are parts of nature that are just unimaginably ugly and cruel--try to think of the last seconds of life of an antelope from its perspective as the lioness' claws tear into its hind flanks to bring it down. Now try to think of what happens to the lioness and her cubs should she fail. Either the antelope ends its life in fear, terror or pain or the lioness and her cubs end their lives in starvation--either way someone has to die. But that's just nature being nature and I can appreciate the sublime beauty of it all. Nature can inspire awe not because it is here for us but because we are its products.

Hopefully that gives you some sense of where I'm coming from.

As far as some good books on quantum theory, I can think of nothing better than "The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos" both by Brian Greene. I'm planning on picking up two books by Victor Stenger based upon other books of his I've read. They are "Quantum Gods: Physics and Psychics" and "The Unconscious Quantum".

Cheers
Aj