Morgantown Atheists » book

Book Club Meeting: Aug 15: The GOD Part of the Brain

Neece — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:19:43 +0000

We are meeting at the Blue Moose at 5pm on August 15 for the Freethinkers Morgantown Book Club.

We are reading The GOD Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper. We’ll read the whole book for this meeting.

Please leave suggestions below for future books so that we don’t have to decide at the meeting without being able to look books up.

We are going to head over to our Rail Trail to do our first cleanup directly after this meeting (probably around 7pm-ish, as a very rough guess).

See Here for details and to leave a comment to let us know you’re coming along.

Book Club July 18: God Hates You, finishing up

Neece — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:31:25 +0000

We met at 5pm at the Blue Moose on Sunday, July 18 for the Freethinker’s Morgantown Book Club.

~Update: We finished God Hates You, Hate Him Back and picked our next book: The GOD Part of the Brain

We are finishing up with God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman, from Acts to Revelations, pages 230 to the end.

Feel free to bring your bible for cross references. We’ll follow the same format where we go through the chapters and talk about what we found interesting, using the book as a jumping off point for discussion.

Bring in book suggestions. It might be nice to read something different for a summer change. (Neece wants to read something science-y, but of course, bring in your ideas!)

Book Club Meeting March 20: God Virus Part 2 and Spring Equinox

Neece — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:43:22 +0000

EDIT! We met March 20 at 2pm at Joe and David’s Farm to celebrate the Spring Equinox with a Potluck dinner. We also finished up The God Virus.

Update: We had a fantastic time! We socialized, celebrated, decided, talked, shared, ate, drank, ate more, and talked some more. Thanks so much to Joe and David for being such gracious hosts to their beautiful home and farm! Want to see some pictures I took of our Nature Walk?

NOTE: This is INSTEAD OF meeting March 21. We are now meeting the day before. Any questions, email Neece.

I forgot to bring up the subject of our Secular Service in our regular meeting! So we’ll spend a few minutes when we get together for this meeting, gathering ideas and then getting a tally on which service we’re all most interested in. So bring your ideas or comment here with suggestions if you can’t make the meeting.

We had so much discussion for The God Virus that we only go through chapter 5. So we’re going to finish the book next month, chapter 6 to the end.

The book we are reading is The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray

We still need someone to take chapter 11, and chapter 10 is also available, if someone wants it.

6. The Myth of Unchanging Morality: Daniel
7. Jesus My Personal Savior: The Roots of American Evangelism: Gerald
8. Intelligence, Personality and the God Virus: Neece
9. Understanding and Living With The God Virus: Neece
10. The Journey: Living a Virus-Free Life: Brent
11. The God Virus and Science: Gerald
12. The Future of an Illusion: Daniel

Directions to Wilks/Smith home from Morgantown via I-79:

North on I-79 from Morgantown, cross the border into PA and take the Mount Morris Exit, #1. Turn right at the bottom of the ramp. You will stay on this road for 3.6 miles (bearing right at church/cemetery) and it will dead end at a stop sign. Turn left on Taylortown Road and go 2.2 miles. There will be a sharp bend in the road but you will go straight ahead onto Big Foot Road (not marked). Go about a city block and take the first driveway on right (you will see a red barn as you turn in).

House phone number: 724-324-2712
cell phone: 724-998-2520

Address:
126 Bigfoot Rd.
Dilliner, PA 15327

Do not trust a GPS – sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t in this area.

Links and Other Bits

Neece — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:10:40 +0000

Over the past several weeks I’ve accumulated links and information from several of our members. If you have information you want to share with us, just email it to Neece or leave a comment below. I’ll do a regular roundup of links and information in the future. If it’s about science, critical thinking, books or other media, or religion and atheism, share it with us whenever you come across it.

You may have noticed the tab under the banner that says Library. That lists all the books and media we each recommend. Feel free to contribute to it. In that list you’ll find that Tim recommended a book called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. Brent found an interview on Groks Science Radio Show with the author.

Daniel has three stories to share:

The first is from RadioLab. Here’s the description from the page:

Parasites: What’s gotten into you? In this hour we explore nature’s moochers – the good, the bad, and the hideous. We have stories of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life?
Carl Zimmer plays defense lawyer, trying to exonerate parasites for their wrongs, while Jad and Robert argue in defense of the victims. Our producer Lulu Miller comes in to moderate a lightning round of: “Parasites: are they evil, or are they awesome?” The parasites in question are the zombie wasp, the nematode, and the lovey-dovey blood fluke.

From NPR he sends a story about throwing out the Primordial Soup theory:

Is the “primordial soup” theory — the idea that life emerged from a prebiotic broth — past its expiration date?
Biochemist Nick Lane thinks so. The University College London writer and his colleagues argue that the 81-year-old notion just doesn’t hold water.
Lane tells NPR’s Guy Raz there’s another possible explanation for the emergence of life. But before we get to that, why toss out the soup theory?
Lane says the idea of a primordial soup goes back to 1929, and great biologists like J.B.S. Haldane.

And he shares another story from NPR about “mystical” baboons:

I’m not saying something magical happened. I can’t. Because I’m not a baboon.
And neither is Barbara Smuts, though she spent years in the field in East Africa studying baboons.
What Smuts saw one day in Africa while watching a troop of some 30 baboons is one of the more mysterious baboon tales ever. Her account was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies a few years ago, and when I told the story to my co-host Jad Abumrad, on NPR and WNYC’s Radiolab, he was leery. He couldn’t explain what the baboons did, but when I proposed an explanation, he found it ridiculous.

The next two are from me (Neece):

How about an iron-plated snail? This little hydrothermal-vent-living creature was discovered in 1999. Scientists at MIT have been studying it. Here is the paper that they published. They write, “the shell is “unlike any other known natural or synthetic engineered armor.” It’s amazing

Life isn’t easy for the “scaly-foot gastropod”. This humble snail lives in hydrothermal vent fields two miles deep in the Indian ocean, and is surrounded by vicious predators. For example, there’s the “cone snail”, which stabs at its victims with a harpoon-style tooth as a precursor to injecting them with paralyzing venom. Then there’s the Brachyuran crab, which has been known to squeeze its prey for three days in an attempt to kill it. Yowsa.

Ah, but the scaly-foot gastropod has its own tricks. To fight back, it long ago evolved a particularly cool defense structure: It takes the grains of iron sulfide floating in the water around it and incorporates it into the outer layer of its shell. It it thus an “iron-plated snail”.

The other day Brent and I shared podcasts and radio shows with you. Well, I just found a new one! From Skepchick.org comes a new podcast called Curiosity Aroused. There’s one episode up now which is about calorie restriction for long life. It’s very interesting.

February Book Club Meeting

Neece — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 02:30:50 +0000

We met February 21 at 5pm at the Blue Moose.

~Update: We had so much discussion, both about the book and off-topic, that we only got through chapter 5. So we’ll finish the book at our next meeting.

The book we are reading (in its entirety) is The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray

We’ll each take a chapter or two to share with everyone. There are 12 in all. Leave a comment below or email Neece with which chapters you’d like to cover:

1. Religion is a Virus: Joe
2. How Religions Survive and Dominate: Joe
3. American Civil Religion: Gerald
4. God Loves You – The Guilt that Binds: David
5. Sex and the God Virus: Brent
6. The Myth of Unchanging Morality: Daniel
7. Jesus My Personal Savior: The Roots of American Evangelism: Gerald
8. Intelligence, Personality and the God Virus: Neece
9. Understanding and Living With The God Virus: Neece
10. The Journey: Living a Virus-Free Life: Neece
11. The God Virus and Science
12. The Future of an Illusion: Daniel

Here are some reviews:

Darrel Ray has made a marvelous contribution to our understanding of ourselves. The description of religion as a cultural virus is not new, Darrel is the first to put the virus on a slide and pull out the microscope. The God Virus goes beyond analogy, offering a fascinating and detailed look at the wiggling, maddening virus itself how it moves, how it survives, and how and why it continues to thrive. –Dale McGowan, Author/editor, Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, Harvard Humanist of the Year (2008)

For those hungering for more after reading the books written by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett, Dr. Darrel Ray’s The God Virus is a logical and thought-provoking follow-up. By extending the metaphor of religion as a virus, the reader gets a better understanding of the incredible power religion can have on anyone’s way of thinking (Dr. Ray shows that even your IQ is negatively affected!). Lest anyone think this is just a putdown of religion, it also gives excellent advice on how to live life without a God, from marriage to raising children. It’s a book that non-believers will enjoy and religious readers can only dare to read. –Hemant Mehta author of I Sold My Soul On Ebay (Waterbrook Press, 2007)

Your book is a convenient handbook on how real life Atheists can stay sane while others are freaking out with religious madness and blaming it on those that challenge the true believer’s faith based system. You are most welcome to publicize my endorsement. –Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director American Atheists, Inc.

Darrel Ray has made a marvelous contribution to our understanding of ourselves. The description of religion as a cultural virus is not new, Darrel is the first to put the virus on a slide and pull out the microscope. The God Virus goes beyond analogy, offering a fascinating and detailed look at the wiggling, maddening virus itself how it moves, how it survives, and how and why it continues to thrive. Dale McGowan, Author/editor, Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, Harvard Humanist of the Year (2008) –Dale McGowan, Author/editor, Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, Harvard Humanist of the Year (2008)

And a description:

What makes religion so powerful? How does it weave its way into our political system? Why do people believe and follow obvious religious charlatans? What makes people profess deep faith even as they act in ways that betray that faith? What makes people blind to the irrationalities of their religion yet clearly see those of others? If these questions interest you, this book will give you the tools to understand religion and its power in you, your family and your culture. For thousands of years, religion has woven its way through societies and people as if it were part and parcel to that society or person. In large measure it was left unexplained and unchallenged, it simply existed. Those who attempted to challenge and expose religion were often persecuted, excommunicated, shunned, or even executed. It could be fatal to explain that which the church, priest or imam said was unexplainable. Before the germ, viral and parasite theory of disease, physicians had no tools to understand disease and its propagation. Priests told people disease was a result of sin, Satan, evil spirits, etc. With the discovery of microbial actors, scientists gained new tools to study how it spreads. They could study infection strategies, immunity, epidemiology and much more. Suddenly the terrible diseases of the past were understandable. The plagues of Europe, yellow fever, small pox, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, etc. were now removed from the divine and placed squarely in the natural world. This book owes a great deal to Richard Dawkins concept of viruses of the mind, but it seeks to go a step further to personalize the concept of religion as a virus and show how these revolutionary ideas work in everyday life. The paradigm can explain the fundamentalism of your Uncle Ned, the sexual behavior of a fallen mega church minister, the child rearing practices of a Pentecostal neighbor, why 19 men flew planes into the World Trade Center or what motivates a woman to blow herself up in the crowded markets of Baghdad. Learn how religion influences sexuality for its own purposes, how and why it protects pedofile priests and wayward ministers and how it uses survivor guilt to propagate and influence and how it might influence a person’s IQ.

The next 2 books after this one will be:

March: God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman
April: Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe by Greg Epstein

A Wild Ride With Robert Sapolsky

Neece — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:51:44 +0000

Brent sent me a link to a page on the web. It’s a conversation with Robert Sapolsky, a quiet, funny, apparently brilliant professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and of neurology at Stanford’s School of Medicine. Professor Sapolsky has written several books such as:

The link Brent sent me was called TOXO and he suggested it to me, to share with you, because we’re reading The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture, by Daniel W Ray. Now the video on that page was Robert Sapolsky talking about a most interesting parasite called Toxoplasma. This is what pregnant women need to worry about, and why they avoid cats and cat feces. It can wreak havoc on their unborn baby’s nervous system.

If you’re reading The God Virus, which talks about parasites and viruses as an analogy for religion, I highly recommend watching this video. If you aren’t going to read the book I still recommend the video. The transcript is underneath it too, which will make it even more accessible for you. But the video is longer than the transcript. So take 25 minutes and enjoy it. Here’s another link to the video. I’m telling you, it’s fascinating. As I mentioned, the video is longer than the transcript. He goes into telemeres and molecular age, which I heard a study about recently confirming what he is explaining.

What he’s talking about touches on evolution, common ancestors, parasites and how they go about getting where they need to be, motorcyclists and speed freaks, and schizophrenics, as well as the government’s interest in this parasite. A wild ride indeed!

Of course, as a skeptic, I thought I’d just look around a bit and see who this Sapolsky guy is, since I’d never heard of him. I found his books (linked to above), his Wikipedia page, and a very cool speech he gave to Stanford students about to graduate. It’s about the uniqueness of humans. Here is the Stanford speech:

TED likes him too. Here’s his bio page .

“If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you’re in big trouble.” Robert Sapolsky

I guess it’s no surprise that he’s an “unbudgeable atheist“. Did I mention he was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant? But if you watch the videos, you’ll find that he’s fairly easy to understand, so he’s able to teach what he knows, which is awesome.

Oh, and the connection between toxoplasma and schizophrenia? Science Daily has a few studies that I could find:

Feel free to share anything interesting you might know about the toxoplasma parasite or Robert Sapolsky in the comments or at the meeting for The God Virus Book Club Meeting February 21st.

A Thought Experiment With Your Religious Friends

Neece — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 06:24:41 +0000

We are reading The God Virus for the book club in February. On page 18, Darrel W. Ray describes an experiment. I think I’ve heard of it before, but I thought I’d share it with you because it shows how religion attacks the critical thinking skills of the mind. As Mr. Ray says, it leaves the skill intact for other religions but disables critical thinking about one’s own religion. It really is like a virus of the mind.

Here’s the experiment as explained in the book:

You have a serious conversation with a deeply christian friend. Your friend is intelligent, well educated and knowledgeable. You agree to record the session. The topic is islam. During the session, you discuss that mohammed was a self-appointed prophet and that he claimed he talked to allah and the angels. He wrote a book that he claimed was infallible, and he flew from Jerusalem to heaven on a horse.

During the conversation, you agree that mohammed was probably delusional to think he could talk to god. You agree that the koran was clearly written by mohammed and not allah. It is ludicrous for him to claim that he is the last prophet and that all others are false. Neither you nor your friend can believe that he flew to heaven, let alone on a horse. It all sounds too crazy, and you both agree it is difficult to see how someone could believe such a religion. At the end of the conversation, you say that muslims did not choose their religion; they were born into it. Anyone who was exposed to both christianity and islam would see that christianity is the true religion.

Over the next few days, you transcribe the recording onto paper. Then you change all references to mohammed and make them jesus. Now the document reads something like this:

During the conversation, you both agree that jesus was probably delusional to think he could talk to jehovah. The bible was clearly written by men and not jehovah. You both agree it is ludicrous for jesus to claim that he is the last prophet and that all later ones are false. Neither of you can believe that he rose from the dead, nor flew to heaven. It all sounds too crazy, and it is difficult to see how someone could believe such a religion. At the end of the conversation, you both agree that christians did not choose their religion; they were born into it. Anyone who was exposed to both christianity and islam would see that islam is the true religion.

Now, tell your friend, “I made a transcript of our conversation about islam and would like to go over it with you.” As you read it, watch her reaction. How does she respond to each statement? How soon does she get defensive? How quickly does she start making elaborate arguments that have no more factual basis than the first conversation? If you persist in this line of parallel reasoning, how long before she gets angry or breaks off the conversation? Could this conversation damage your friendship?

You can do this experiment with other prophetic religions. For example, substitute Joseph Smith for mormonism or moses for judaism.

Have you ever tried an experiment like this? Have you ever questioned your friend’s religion? Did it damage your friendship? Or a family member? Does that person still talk to you? How far did your religious friend go to make excuses and explain away his religion in the face of reality?

Cross-posted from Heaving Dead Cats

Book Club January 17

Neece — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:00:29 +0000

We are meeting at 5pm on January 17 for the Freethinker’s Morgantown Book Club. We’ll meet at the Blue Moose, but check back to make sure.

January 17 Update:

We had a nice meeting. We talked about the book, current events, the evolution of language, and much more.

We are reading a funny fiction book for this meeting. (Read the entire book for Jan 17)

The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore

From Publishers Weekly
Hilarity abounds in Moore’s latest satirical gem. Sleepy Pine Cove, Calif., is abuzz with Christmas spirit, but Lena Marquez is fed up with her despicable ex-husband, Dale Pearson. On his way home from playing Santa Claus at the local lodge, Dale spies sneaky Lena uprooting his Monterey pines; he pulls a gun on her, she lashes out with a shovel and—oops!—kills him. Seven-year-old Josh Barker, thinking he’s just seen the murder of Santa, prays for a miracle to save Christmas. To Lena’s rescue comes Tucker Case, a slimy, reformed Casanova and DEA pilot, who gives her an alibi and sweeps her off her feet. The marijuana-cultivating town constable, Theo Crowe, suspects foul play, but Tucker intervenes with a blackmail scheme to keep the crime buried. Meanwhile, there’s a new arrival in town: the glowingly blond Archangel Raziel (last seen in Lamb) has come “dirtside” on a “miracle mission” involving Josh’s wish and reviving the town’s dearly departed. Pine Cove’s biggest challenge surfaces as comically reanimated zombies begin to rise and feast on the living, and a huge El Niño–induced storm swirls. This little slice of perverse Christmas cheer is enough to make even the most cynical Scrooge guffaw.

The next 3 books after this one will be:

February: The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray
March: God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman
April: Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe by Greg Epstein

Book Club December 13

Neece — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:01:21 +0000

We met December 13 at the Blue Moose at 5pm.

~ Update:

Everyone brought in a wide range of books. Here’s the list:

Next month’s book: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification by Julian Montague
Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity by John W. Loftus
Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe by Greg Epstein
Then Why Do I Have Toenails?: How To Be The Best Atheist You Can Be by Thom Phelps
The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture by Darrel W. Ray
Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer
God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible by CJ Werleman
The Atheist Camel Chronicles: Debate Themes & Arguments for the Non-Believer (and those who think they might be) by Dromedary Hump
The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court by Peter Irons
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
How We Believe, 2nd Edition: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God by Michael Shermer
Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny by Barrett Brown
The Wisdom of the Native Americans by Kent Nerburn
101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History by Gary Greenberg
Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment by Phil Zuckerman
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich
Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer
Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby
Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett
Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World by Stephen Oppenheimer

Please leave a comment below with your three choices, in order of first favorite. Please comment this week so that you don’t forget and we can get the list set.

This meeting will be a bit different.

Bring along some appropriate books you would like to share with the group.

To clarify, bring books you’d like to share for either a possible book for us to all read, or just books you think we might find interesting. They might be books you’ve already read that you just want to share, or something you haven’t read yet but you think we’d all like to read it together.

We’ll share our books with everyone and talk about them.

Some ideas of what to bring:

nonfiction, textbooks or even fiction
secular or religious studies
critical thinking
science

If all goes well, someone will bring along a great read that we’ll then choose for our January meeting.

Library

Neece — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:41:43 +0000

See what we recommend in books, videos, movies and podcasts:

Comment with your suggestions!
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Morgantown Atheists » book

Book Club Meeting: Aug 15: The GOD Part of the Brain

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