CMrace's Channel

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The 7 Caring Habits of Loving People 32

by CMrace 3 weeks ago

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How to Communicate Effectively This series uses choice theory to understand why people do the smart... and sometimes not so smart things they do.

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Snickers Videos Videos of my dog being cute and doing random stuff. I love my dog maybe you will too.

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How To Do Stuff How to do stuff

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Morality: It's Relative, Objectively Speaking In this series I will make a case for relative morality. I will portray how both cultural and evolutionary morality explain our "moral sense" better than Objective Moralities with fewer assumptions. Morality uses evolutionary algorithms to grow and change as out world changes. This is not a religious debate! A God could just as easily create relative morality. Relative morality explains the lack of moral consensus better than objective moralities and is not dependent on a supernatural being. I will show how the "is" and "oughts" of morality are really a backwards way of looking at things that really came into being through a free floating rationale.

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About The Freethought Channel

This is my personal channel for sharing Philosophy, Morality, Meaning, Psychology, Skepticism... and the occasional personal vid.

I love being challenged and sharing my point of view. I'd love to hear yours.

I am a POLITE skeptic (atheist) who believes the stupid intimidation, yelling, and calling theistic beliefs "dumb" serves no purpose but to alienate the possibly open-minded.

Many find amusement in berating beliefs they think are silly. I can understand finding a little humor in it, but lets get serious here. If my and/or your beliefs are so great, then people should WANT to at least listen to what we have to say. RIGHT?

So why don't they?

It's easy to talk smack about ancient holy books and point out contradictions.

If you're an atheist and lack belief at some point you have to ask yourself "What DO I believe in?"; "Have I shared my joy and love for that or have my actions been cold and negative with others of differing beliefs?"; "Have I insulted others and isn't it vain for me to need to feel like "I showed them" though verbal intimidation?

After reading that last paragraph many people try to rationalize and make excuses for unreasonable ad homonym attacks.

...but we all know insults are logically invalid.

We should think about what makes our beliefs so great that someone might actually consider them? It's worth thinking about.

Start a dialog not a debate!

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learn4you.org

Created by

CMrace

Latest Activity

Jan 15, 2012

Date Joined

Dec 27, 2006

About this user

I am a Unitarian Universalist and freethinking skeptic.

I think that science and knowledge are beautiful and that we should stand in awe be humbled by its findings. We should revere the truth and evidence. Committing oneself to honest and open inquiry and being willing to change one's mind when new evidence arises are some of the most noble traits a person can have. I think it is beautiful to believe in something that keeps growing and changing as we learn more about the amazing universe around us. What a great thing it is to be able to study the universe like no animal can!

To open one's mind to science is to "recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically enriched guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So we're all connected, to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically. That's kind of cool. That makes me smile!; and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It's not that we are better than the universe, we're part of the universe, we're in the universe and the universe is in us."
- Dr. Neil Degrass Tyson.

That's what I am about: Learning, knowledge, growing, thinking, reasoning and following the truth even if it leads you where you didn't expect; even if it leads you where you didn't want to go. We must uncover the truths about our universe to grow as a people.
The world is beautiful. I study learn about all manner of things. I am saddened when people block this beauty from their lives.

Some people don't like science because they think it hurts religion. I wondered why this was so. Why would someone close their minds to the greatest gift of all: Freethinking. I studied it and here are my honest thoughts about where religion comes from. It starts with how the human brain learned to survive long ago.

The human brain is an amazing thing. It survived by assuming agency. In other words, we tend to think things are alive that aren't. That's a pretty good survival trick when everything wants to eat or kill you. People who saw a strange stick and said "IT'S A SNAKE!" may have a fearful disposition, but guess what? They survived because sometimes it actually is a snake.
Fast forward to the beginning of recorded history and we see people attaching agents to all sorts of things like floods, famine, war, lightning, fire, death, and so on. What's behind all those things? Agent(s) called God(s) that are invisible. Better to appease them for survival than take a chance on getting struck down by them right?

Religious people say to me: "Wager that God is real, just to be safe, you have nothing to lose. Why not believe?" But I think I could lose the greatest thing of all. The ability to learn and freely. If I was religious I would have to believe things even if there was no evidence. I think that is sad because we should follow the truth even if it leads us where we don't want to go.

Another ingenious trick that our brains learned was to look for patterns in nature to exploit. Very helpful in hunting migrating animals, finding berries in season and so on. If you thought berries grew at random you would be at a disadvantage and natural selection would do its thing.

Fast forward to today and we have brains that see patterns that don't exist and have difficulty accepting random phenomena. People who gamble think they are on a lucky streak or that their luck is about to change because they are 'seeing' patterns they are trying to exploit. People think it's impossible to have a long lucky streak by chance, but that's what chance is! Some phenomena is behind it they figure.

Religious people say to me: "I just don't think that all this happened by chance. It's too complex. I think they are looking at patterns that don't really exist. It's awe inspiring that all this arose out of a few puddles of goo. How cool is that? Everything you see in this complex world was once a simple and humble puddle. It means we are all connected?

I think non-tribal religion started when we domesticated animals. During the domestication 'craze' some people 'domesticated' people by hijacking the brain's natural inclinations. I think religion was originally used by people for the purpose of helping them. Mandates like don't eat pork and no homosexuality were important at the time because survival and propagation was a bit of an obsession with ancient people.

I think we should be careful about closing our minds and becoming too religious. It could be dangerous if some close-minded extremist to set a nuke off in a city! We should think about that.

I enjoy life for what it is. We are connected to everything on this planet, and part of a universe so vast it defies imagination. The spirit of life is inside ourselves. That makes me smile :)

Age

Hometown

Wisconsin Rapids, WI

Country

United States

Occupation

Teacher / Programmer

Companies

Self employed LLC

Schools

I know how to teach, use math, and apply psychology to learning. If it means something to you, I have a teaching certification and degree.

Interests

Psychology, astronomy, science, math, teaching, religious texts and expecially the Nag Hammadi and other Non-canonized Bible texts.

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