New scientific center to study altruism

Consider the mission statement of CCare:

[T]he Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, is an innovative initiative of the Stanford School of Medicine within the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences that will employ the highest standards of scientific inquiry to investigate compassion and altruism.

The Center will draw on many disciplines (including psychology, neuroscience, economics and contemplative traditions, including Buddhism) in order to

To explore ways in which compassion and altruism can be cultivated within an individual as well as within the society on the basis of testable cognitive and affective training exercises.

The center will be run by James Doty, a physician who is also a professor of neuroscience at Stanford. According to a recent article in Science (April 24, 2009, p. 458), the Dalai Lama provided $150,000 of the start-up funding. Unknown to many, the Dalai Lama has long has a keen interest in cognitive science. According to the article in Science, the aim of the Center seems to be finding that part of at least one religious tradition that actually works to make people compassionate:

[t]o take a centuries-old religious practice and extract from it a set of mental exercises with no religious overtones that can be scientifically proven to change the way people treat each other.

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Catholic DI author weighs in on salvation

OK, I believe in God. I am a practicing Roman Catholic. I’ve seen many comments, criticisms and conclusory statements here and elsewhere about Catholic doctrine on Salvation which my investigation shows may not only be wrong but, seriously wrong. I assert that as a Catholic Christian it is my call to pray and hope that all are reconciled with God (more on that later). Yes, Virginia, that means even my non-believing brothers and sisters. And, my non-believing brothers and sisters don’t have to do anything other than what they are already doing; being good, loving human animals and taking care of each other. Father John Dietzen, in a St. Louis Review feature “Dear Father,” answered a relevant question in his April 17, 2009 column:

“Q: What does the Catholic Church teach about whether Jews, Muslims and others who don’t believe in Christ can be saved and go to heaven? Several friends claim only those who accept Christ and are baptized receive salvation.

A: Many Christians believe as your friends do. This is not, however, Catholic teaching, which is summarized concisely in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The catechism insists, as we would expect, on the essential place Jesus and Baptism have in God’s saving plan. It adds, however, a crucial sentence: ‘Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Jesus Christ, would either refuse to enter it or to remain in it.’ (No. 846, quoting the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, 14).

If you read those words carefully, you can see that the restriction of salvation would not apply to billions of people on earth now and in the past, including most, if not all, people of the Hebrew tradition.

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Atheism, Humanism, or Other

There was a time in this country that an open admission of atheism could get a person severely hurt in any given community. Ostracism, mainly, which over time can be very damaging. But like so many other "out of the mainstream" life choices, this too is no longer the case. According to this article in the New York Times, "No Religion" has more than doubled on surveys in the past ten to twenty years. Now, that does not mean all these folks are atheists or agnostics. It means, quite specifically, that they align themselves with no organized religion. Some folks might wonder at the difference. What is having faith if not in the context of a religious umbrella? When I was fifteen I left the church. I'd been educated in a Lutheran school and received a healthy indocrination in that faith. After entering public high school, I found myself growing less and less involved or interested. There was in this no profound personal insight or revelation. It was adolescent laziness. I'd never been a consistent Sunday church-goer, and although there had been a year or two when I actually practiced Testifying, born out of a powerful belief in Christianity, other factors managed to draw my interest away.

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Computer souls

[A kitchen table conversation between a parent and a child]

Daddy, if my computer burned up in a fire, would it still compute? No, Mary. Programs don't simply run by themselves. They depend upon extremely complicated hardware and software. If your computer burns up in a fire, there would be no hardware and no software with which to run your favorite programs. But I've used my computer for a long time. I've grown emotionally attached to it. It makes me sad that it won't actually compute if it were to be destroyed. Doesn't my computer have a soul that continues running my programs somewhere else after my computer burns up on Earth? I'm sorry, Mary. There is no computer heaven and there is no computer soul. There is no evidence of either of these. But we can't prove that it won't keep computing after it burns up in a fire, right? No. Sorry, Mary. Without hardware and software, no computing will happen. The ashes of your burned up computer would lack any systematic structure. They certainly lack the complex organization required to run programs. It is impossible for any computation to occur without the hardware and the software intact. Your claim that a computer would keep computing even though it is completely destroyed is an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary proof. We have no such proof whatever. But Lisa Jenkins says that burned up computers do keep computing. She says that you only need to have faith and that no one can disprove that burned up computers live on in a parallel world. She says destroyed computers keep working, but not in a physical way. She goes to a special building on Sunday where thousands of people all believe that computers keep computing even after they are completely destroyed. No, Mary. The same thing happens to computers as happens to your own body. As you know, when your body dies, your entire body rots, including your brain. As you know, when your brain is rotted, you don't have any more thoughts because there is no intact functional neural structure anymore, and therefore no basis for any continuing thoughts. Oh, daddy! It's not the same! Yes, I know that when my body dies, it will be impossible for me to think anymore. My computer is different, though. I just can't believe that my amazing computer would stop computing just because it gets completely destroyed! Don't try to compare my beautiful computer to a human brain! It's not a matter of what you want to believe, my child. It's a matter of what actually happens in the real world. You can continue using your computer for now and loving the way it works, but it would be unhealthy to believe that it would keep computing even if it was destroyed. As a parent, it's my job to level with you regarding difficult topics like this. I'm so sorry.

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Traditional “Christian” marriage is outlawed by the Bible

"Christian" marriage is outlawed by the Bible. I'm not exaggerating. You'll find all of the stunning details, along with citations to the Bible, at Dwindling in Unbelief. How does the Bible outlaw traditional "Christian" marriages? Here are some of the Bible rules listed:

  • The Bible says that Christians should not marry.
  • But if a Christian man decides to get married (which he shouldn't), he can have more than one wife.
  • And if he doesn't like one of his wives (like if she's unclean or ugly or something), he can divorce her.
  • If a Christian man gets married and then discovers on his wedding night that his new wife is not a virgin, then he and the other Christian men must stone her to death.
  • Christians shouldn't have sex (even if they are married, which they shouldn't be).
  • Christian parents must beat their children (which they shouldn't have, since they shouldn't get married or have sex).
  • Good Christians must hate their families. (If they abandon them for Jesus, he'll give them a big reward.)
This list list only includes the first seven rules. Go to Dwindling in Unbelief for the details and the pinpoint citations. Don't just trust me on these rules. Go read the Bible. These rules are all there, clearly stated. Conclusion: We need to march to America's heartland and start picketing traditional Christian marriage because it is clear that traditional Christian marriage contravenes the clear teachings of the Bible.

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