We talked about Atheist Universe by David Mills
Chapters 5-7 (page 105-170)
A few notes from the meeting:
- Anything that can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Christopher Hitchens
- We talked about the shared symbology of the Fertile Crescent civilizations and how other cultures farther away do not share that symbology, such as Nordic, Asian or Australian cultures. Shared contact = shared symbology.
- This is an interesting idea: Does enslavement/oppression of a people encourage and promote religiosity? Do oppressed and enslaved people have less desire/need for reality? Is it less important to them? Are they forced to be more ignorant and without hope? Have any studies been done on this?
- Does stress link to religiosity? I wrote about a study that showed that it does: Superstitious? It Could Be Your Lack of Control: This new study shows that when you lack control, you are more prone to see patterns in random images, or to see conspiracies and be superstitious.
- Now, if you combine the study about superstition (which also deals with such things as seeing the virgin mary in bird poop) with this one: Church: No Brain Activity Required, it really is amazing how much the religious experience is a product of our senses and our brain.
We talked about a lot more than that, but I’m not a great note taker so I didn’t get it all down. Next month we’ll finish the rest of this book. If you want to come join us, comment with book suggestions for what we’ll read next. Please give us an idea of why you think your suggestions would be good choices for us to read.
