What is a Bright?
Religion of Oprah Article (sample below)
...and how about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possibilianism
Lofton has a talent for turning pop culture into examples of religious studies theory. She called Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” a theme song for Halloween and an example of American tradition in the online magazine, Religion Dispatches. She wrote about George Carlin’s anti-religious humor and John Travolta’s Scientology to point out places where religion and media meet. And she is always taking note of how, and where, religion operates. “As a scholar of a religion, I think it’s one of our jobs to be cued into how people manage pain, and the idea of evil, or whether or not we live in a just world,” Lofton said. That’s where the Oprah Show comes in. From her perspective as a scholar, Oprah––the magazine, the Book Club and all the products of Oprah Winfrey’s multimedia production company, Harpo––is bursting with indications of where Americans look for answers to life’s trials. Lofton argues that Oprah Winfrey acts as an authoritative guide, someone with a script for living a good life, without condemnation or perceived dogma. Lofton says, “This is a religion for those who don’t want to be religious, but want to feel revelation.”
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
God's Approval Rating Survey Results
God's Approval Rating: 52%
Almighty gets high marks for creation, but loses points on natural disasters
By Mark Russell, Newser Staff
Posted Jul 22, 2011 11:16 AM CDT
COMMENTS (94) 
(Newser) – Forget presidential and congressional approval polls. The left-leaning Public Policy Polling has finally asked the big question: "If God exists, do you approve or disapprove of its performance?" Some 52% approve of the job God is doing; 9% disapprove; and 40% are unsure, reports the Atlantic Wire. By comparison, John Boehner and both congressional Republicans and Democrats all got 33% approval ratings—with Rupert Murdoch getting a dismal 12%. Obama's approval rating was not measured.
God scored top marks for creating the universe, with 71% giving that job the thumbs up; 56% approve of God's "handling of animals." Perhaps surprisingly, 50% approved of the way God handles natural disasters.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Recommend: "In Praise of Vagueness" and "Why Does Beauty Exist?"
What I like about this speculation is that it begins to explain why the feeling of beauty is useful. The aesthetic emotion might have begun as a cognitive signal telling us to keep on looking, because there is a pattern here that we can figure out it. In other words, it’s a sort of a metacognitive hunch, a response to complexity that isn’t incomprehensible. Although we can’t quite decipher this sensation – and it doesn’t matter if the sensation is a painting or a symphony – the beauty keeps us from looking away, tickling those dopaminergic neurons and dorsal hairs. Like curiosity, beauty is a motivational force, an emotional reaction not to the perfect or the complete, but to the imperfect and incomplete. We know just enough to know that we want to know more; there is something here, we just don’t what. That’s why we call it beautiful.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/frontal-cortex/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/frontal-cortex/
Monday, July 18, 2011
Media Habits - Thought Interupting Invasion is Underway?
"We invest in the swapping of trivialities,” he said, “precious time that we could use for serious reflection. I want to believe that when we stumble upon black holes of silence on the net, that depends at least in part on someone reacting against the tyranny of hyperconnection.
“There must be brave and smart souls who came to realize that thinking is more important than communicating,” he continued. “I see them in my mind’s eye a brave minority, sitting in silence, pondering and planning — the way it used to be.”
Another monk’s assistant wrote back after 50 hours to say that his boss was busy at a United Nations conference. Finally, some 75 hours after being contacted — and after his e-mail to me had bounced back to him— the Rev. Master Jisho Perry, a monk at the Shasta Abbey in Mount Shasta, Calif., counseled me, “Patience is the ability to end our expectations.”
He added that the computer industry’s perennial promise of faster and faster service is a “delusion.”
Delineating a difference between immediate, visceral reacting to stimuli, and calm, reflective responding to same, he encouraged me to be “still enough to respond rather than react.”
I’m trying to be still. I’m trying not to wiggle. When I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production at the Park Avenue Armory the other night, I took solace. No piece of mail that does not reach me will ever prove as dire as the one that didn’t reach Romeo."
“There must be brave and smart souls who came to realize that thinking is more important than communicating,” he continued. “I see them in my mind’s eye a brave minority, sitting in silence, pondering and planning — the way it used to be.”
Another monk’s assistant wrote back after 50 hours to say that his boss was busy at a United Nations conference. Finally, some 75 hours after being contacted — and after his e-mail to me had bounced back to him— the Rev. Master Jisho Perry, a monk at the Shasta Abbey in Mount Shasta, Calif., counseled me, “Patience is the ability to end our expectations.”
He added that the computer industry’s perennial promise of faster and faster service is a “delusion.”
Delineating a difference between immediate, visceral reacting to stimuli, and calm, reflective responding to same, he encouraged me to be “still enough to respond rather than react.”
I’m trying to be still. I’m trying not to wiggle. When I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production at the Park Avenue Armory the other night, I took solace. No piece of mail that does not reach me will ever prove as dire as the one that didn’t reach Romeo."
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Drugs Are a Gateway?
Read the article, a liberal view of drugs and humankind:
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/
"The mere existence of psychedelics would seem to establish the material basis of mental and spiritual life beyond any doubt—for the introduction of these substances into the brain is the obvious cause of any numinous apocalypse that follows. It is possible, however, if not actually plausible, to seize this datum from the other end and argue, and Aldous Huxley did in his classic essay, The Doors of Perception, that the primary function of the brain could be eliminative: its purpose could be to prevent some vast, transpersonal dimension of mind from flooding consciousness, thereby allowing apes like ourselves to make their way in the world without being dazzled at every step by visionary phenomena irrelevant to their survival. Huxley thought that if the brain were a kind of “reducing valve” for “Mind at Large,” this would explain the efficacy of psychedelics: They could simply be a material means of opening the tap"
"The power of psychedelics, however, is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime. As is often the case, William James said it about as well as words permit[6] : "
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/
"The mere existence of psychedelics would seem to establish the material basis of mental and spiritual life beyond any doubt—for the introduction of these substances into the brain is the obvious cause of any numinous apocalypse that follows. It is possible, however, if not actually plausible, to seize this datum from the other end and argue, and Aldous Huxley did in his classic essay, The Doors of Perception, that the primary function of the brain could be eliminative: its purpose could be to prevent some vast, transpersonal dimension of mind from flooding consciousness, thereby allowing apes like ourselves to make their way in the world without being dazzled at every step by visionary phenomena irrelevant to their survival. Huxley thought that if the brain were a kind of “reducing valve” for “Mind at Large,” this would explain the efficacy of psychedelics: They could simply be a material means of opening the tap"
"The power of psychedelics, however, is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime. As is often the case, William James said it about as well as words permit[6] : "
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Hope and Faith Transfered from Religion to Rational Support of Environmental Sustainability
For some individuals and societies, the role of religion seems increasingly to be filled by environmentalism. It has become “the religion of choice for urban atheists,” according to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer (and climate change skeptic). In a widely quoted 2003 speech, Crichton outlined the ways that environmentalism “remaps” Judeo-Christian beliefs:
There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.The New Atlantis article - http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/environmentalism-as-religion
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