Proposed Amended Ten Commandments

I hereby propose a new version of the Ten Commandments.   

1    Choose and follow a version of the golden rule.  Note in your heart that golden rules have appeared in the writings of many cultures, including Jewish, Buddhist, Confucian and Ancient Egyptian.
 
2.   Never publicly advocate that one’s own version of a supernatural God is truer than the Gods of others; always apply the same degree of skepticism one uses regarding the Gods and sacred writings of others to one’s own God(s) and sacred writings.  Don’t build expensive or ostentatious worship places in honor of your God. Never scare any child with stories of great suffering in order to cause that child to believe in the existence of any particular supernatural being.   Thou shalt not blasphemy the unfolding mysteries of the universe by claiming to know the thoughts or plans of any God.  Thou shalt always approach the mysteries of life with humility, awe and unbridled curiosity.
 
3.  Do not honor any God who you believe prohibits you from honoring any other God or who, in your opinion, threatens to eternally torture any person or animal for any reason.  Constantly remind yourself that you have a serious obligation to take good care of all of the children of the world, not just your own children. Regularly breathe deeply and remember to keep a sense of humor, especially when considering spirituality, sex and death. Whenever you speak of God, don’t get that look like you’re about to be smacked with a …

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The importance of pop quizzes

You’ve just noticed several people carrying signs that say “Down with Ice Cream.”   You approach them to ask what is so bad about ice cream.  After listening to them for a few minutes, it becomes clear to you that there is a misunderstanding.  To them, the phrase “ice cream” actually means kicking dogs.  They are against kicking dogs. 

“Oh, you mean that you’re against kicking dogs?” you ask.

“Down with ice cream!” they nod.

It’s impossible to have a meaningful conversation without a common understanding of the words being used.  “Evolution” is a good example.   When I hear someone speaking disparagingly about evolution I can trigger the following exchange:

Q:  What’s so bad about evolution?

A: It’s just a theory (#1) that says that everything here is just an accident (#2) and that people came from monkeys (#3).

Zero for three, every time.  In short, most people who “oppose” evolution are against something other than the scientific theory of evolution.  Further, most anti-evolutionists I’ve encountered don’t know what scientists say about evolution and don’t care [Good places to learn what scientists think would be here and here.]

The irony is that most people who oppose evolution are not opposed to any of the major facts upon which evolution is based (e.g., that random mutations occur, that some of these mutations make organisms more likely to survive long enough to bear offspring, or that a parent’s traits tend to be passed on to its children).  In fact, opponents don’t usually …

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Be Conscious of Your Unconscious to Set you Free

A lot of people are beating up on old Sigmund Freud these days.  More than a century ago, however, Freud hit a particular ball out of the park and it’s still sailing:  he concluded that many important thought processes are unconscious. 

In Philosophy in the Flesh (1999), Mark Johnson and George Lakoff listed some of the many important unconscious mental activities:

  • Accessing memories relevant to what is being said.
  • Comprehending a stream of sound as being language, dividing it into distinctive phonetic features.
  • Picking out words and giving them meanings appropriate to context.
  • Making semantic and pragmatic sense of the sentences as a whole.
  • Framing what is said in terms relevant to the discussion.
  • Making inferences relevant to what is being said.
  • Constructing mental images where relevant.
  • Filling in gaps in the discourse.
  • Noticing and interpreting a speaker’s body language.

In short, most of what is going on in our heads is unconscious. Lakoff and Johnson concluded that “unconscious thought is at least 95 percent of all thought and that our unconscious conceptual systems function like a “hidden hand” that “shapes how we automatically and unconsciously comprehend what we experience.  It constitutes our unreflective common sense.”

Nietzsche expressed this same idea in Thus Spake Zarathustra: 

“It is by invisible hands that we are bent and tortured worst.”

Freud and Nietzsche have been proven absolutely correct on this point.  That consciousness is only the “tip of the iceberg” has been conclusively proven by hundreds of experiments outlined in numerous …

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On Asking a Very Smart God to Change His Ways

Why Pray?  Perhaps my previous post sounded a bit harsh.  Why “mock” those who call upon their Creator for a bit of help in a time of need? Skeptics have obvious reasons for doubting the power of prayer, but it seems to me that Believers should have even stronger reasons…

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Is One’s Choice of Religion Really a Choice?

Many of us don’t consciously choose some of the most important aspects of our lives.  This includes the choice of religion.  Many people claim that we don't really choose the religion we end up following.  After all, many of us end up adopting the religion of our parents. Is there…

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