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 with self-consciousness.
• Intelligence: an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence. In some cases, intelligence may include traits such as creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom. However there is no agreement on which traits define the phenomenon of intelligence agreed upon by a majority across the various concerned disciplines.
• Evidence: in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either a) presumed to be true, or b) were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion’s truth. Evidence is the currency by which one fulfills the burden of proof. An important distinction in the field of evidence is that between circumstantial evidence and direct evidence, or evidence that suggests truth as opposed to evidence that directly proves truth. Many have seen this line to be less-than-clear and significant arguments have arisen over the difference.
• Atheism: In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Although some atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism, rationalism, and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere.
• Positive Atheism: one that promotes positive values. Positive atheism entails such things as being morally upright, showing an understanding that religious people have reasons to believe, not proselytizing or lecturing others about atheism, and defending oneself with truthfulness instead of aiming to ‘win’ any confrontations with outspoken critics.
• Agnosticism: the philosophical view that the truth value of certain claims — particularly metaphysical claims regarding theology, afterlife or the existence of deities, spiritual beings, or even ultimate reality — is unknown or, depending on the form of agnosticism, inherently impossible to prove or disprove and hence unknowable. It is not a religious declaration in itself and the terms are not mutually exclusive.
• Belief: the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true. Beliefs are the assumptions we make about ourselves, about others in the world and about how we expect things to be. Beliefs are also how we think things really are.
• Faith: the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing. The word “faith” can refer to a religion itself or to religion in general. As with “trust”, faith involves a concept of future events or outcomes, and is used conversely for a belief “not resting on logical proof or material evidence.” Informal usage of the word “faith” can be quite broad, and may be used in place of “trust” or “belief.”
• Knowledge: (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Philosophical debates in general start with Plato’s formulation of knowledge as “justified true belief”. There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories.

We have an idea that after we finish with a book, our next meeting after that will be a casual get together before we start the next book. How do you feel about that? Or would you rather get right into reading something new? Leave a comment and let us know what you prefer.

At our recent regular meeting we all agreed that Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language by Robert J. Gula will be the next book on the list. This should be great for helping us to think and converse more logically.

It was great to see you there!

Related posts

• Reminder: Events This Weekend (0)
• Book Club June 28: Atheist Universe (2)
• Book Club July 26: Atheist Universe 2 (0)
• Book Club September 27: Nonsense 1 (2)
• Book Club November 15: Nonsense 3 (4)

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.

Related posts

• Book Club June 28: Atheist Universe (2)
• Reminder: Events This Weekend (0)
• Book Club Aug 23: Atheist Universe 3rd and Final (7)
• Teaming Up, Doing Good (0)
• Book Club September 27: Nonsense 1 (2)

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 societies are not as healthy as less religious ones. (My attempt to paraphrase. Read the intro for a more accurate explanation, but the whole paper is at that link.)

Related posts

• Book Club July 26: Atheist Universe 2 (0)
• Reminder: Events This Weekend (0)
• Book Club Aug 23: Atheist Universe 3rd and Final (7)
• A Wild Ride With Robert Sapolsky (1)
• Teaming Up, Doing Good (0)

(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!

Related posts

• Book Club September 27: Nonsense 1 (2)
• Book Club November 15: Nonsense 3 (4)
• Book Club June 28: Atheist Universe (2)
• Book Club July 26: Atheist Universe 2 (0)
• Book Club Aug 23: Atheist Universe 3rd and Final (7)