By Neece
This was our final meeting on Atheist Universe:
We had a small turnout for the book club meeting, but the discussion was lively and interesting. We went off topic a bit to discuss all kinds of ideas and concepts.
One recurring theme of the evening was the definition/meaning of different words. I’ll list them here:
- Consciousness: subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind. Consciousness is the subject of much research in philosophy of mind, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Issues of practical concern include how the presence of consciousness can be assessed in severely ill or comatose people; whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how it can be measured; at what point in fetal development consciousness begins; and whether computers can achieve a conscious state.
- Self-awareness: consciousness of one’s self. It is related to but not identical
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By Neece
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
…
By Neece
We talked about Atheist Universe by David Mills
Chapters 1-4 (to page 104)
We had 7 people at the Book Club meeting. I think those of us who had the book and read it have found it interesting. We got off topic quite a bit but still talked about the first 4 chapters, picking our favorite bits and sharing them. Then the rest of us expounded on those thoughts.
Feel free to comment with more details and further the discussion! Stay tuned for the next book club meeting and accompanying post. 
Sunday, June 28 at 5:08pm
At the Blue Moose (corner of Spruce and Walnut)
Gerald mentioned a study at the meeting. Here is a link to it: Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies
Basically the study shows that the more religious democratic…
By blally
REMINDER: BOOK CLUB MEETING AT 5:08 THIS SUNDAY
“ATHEIST UNIVERSE” – DAVID MILLS (1st of 3)
(chapters 1-4: to page 140)
ALSO:
MIRACLES ON SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
AND!!!
AT THE UU FELLOWSHIP THIS SUNDAY:
“The Problem of Suffering in the Bible”
10:45 AM
429 Warrick St.
Morgantown
For more information contact:
Sue Amos 304-288-5044 or
Duane Nichols 304-216-5535
ALSO: Here is a picture I shot this week of what appears to me (I’m not an immunologist) to be a macrophage (big-eater) chowing down on an apoptotic cell (a cell that’s self destructed). Macrophages are part of our immune system and are responsible for digesting other cells that are harmful or have just become toxic junk. Now, THAT’S a eucharistic miracle!
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