On a whim I purchased the Sunday New York Times...I used to subscribe to the Sunday version but couldn't justify the monthly cost so every once in a while I seek it out or it just happens to find itself in my hands...like this weekend. Anyway I had a nice 2 1/2 hour flight to Fresno and having the Times made me seem worldly...as if going to Fresno quench any possible thoughts of that! Ha! This week's magazine was great...all three main stories were must reads.
Darwin's God
"In the world of evolutionary biology, the question is not whether God exists but why we believe in him. Is belief a helpful adaptation or an evolutionary accident?"
Well there you have it. Fascinating article. As a scientist I don't truly believe in what God as become. The capitalism of God would truly sicken any omniscient being! Our country has taken a good thing a bit too far. Looking at this world, seeing how religion has polarized our world and created way too much bloodshed, how father's can get a brain tumor, I truly have a hard time believing that such a being exists. All the same when you do look at the amazing universe we live in, you sometimes have to wonder. It is a great duality, zero and infinity. Anyway these are simply my thoughts and reading this article was very thoughtful especially since I have always wondered how so many people believe and put faith in something that doesn't exist.
"Why, he wondered, was religion so pervasive, when it was something that seemed so costly from an evolutionary point of view?"
Stephen Jay Gould (I'm more of a Dawkins fan...although after reading this article I think Dawkins might be a bit too harsh in his views) put forth an interesting ideal of "spandrel" or traits that have no adaptive value of its own. Gould says, "Natural selection made the human brain big but most of our mental properties and potentials may be to spandrels - that is, nonadaptive side consequences of building a device wth such structural complexity." Our mental capacity has gotten to such a point that it begins to ultimately question our existence. Because of the sheer complexity of our being it becomes only natural for us to seek answers. Most answers are not easy so the simple believe of a greater power helps to alleviate that big nothing.
"What about Atheists...if the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not believe."
"No matter how much science can explaine it seems the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as yearning for the supernatural. The drive to satisfy that yearning, might be an inevitable and eternal part of the tragedy of human cognition."
One Very, Very Indie Band
Okay I'm really not jumping on the band wagon here. I heard about Arcade Fire about 6 months ago on the Dan Patrick show. He has a favorite pick me up song that he plays and he also mentioned the connection with U2. So I tracked them done a while ago...then boom, last Friday I had the day off, Dan plays the tune, and I go get their first album. Meanwhile last week there was in article in the New Yorker, this article, and a side note in Wired Magazine all touting their new album, Neon Bible. What to make of this? Is all this a sublimal mind f#$k luring me to finally buy the album. Is this a tipping point? This happens to me like so sort of deja vu. I buy something and then boom it goes mainstream. I won't take any credit but I do often wonder if it isn't just some marketing scam that I have fallen into.
By the way their first album, Funeral, was decent on the first listen. Need to bury it into my nano and see if anything sticks...
Campus Exposure
Interesting article about porn on high brow campuses. Something of interest to me lately as I have a friend who is dating a different generation and he informs me that taboo's aren't quite the same with younger women as it is with our generation. This article seems to confirm in some respect how sex and objectiving everything about it has become so mainstream that I don't think we really realize it anymore. It doesn't bother me but I imagine young people growing up in this ever present over sexual generation it must be overwhelming. Or perhaps I am just old. Does it seem to matter? I'm happily married but I often hear stories of couples in our social circle having all kinds of interesting propositions. No sex and swinger parites just to name a few. Has this always been present, an underlying current of society or because how mainstream sex has become it just doesn't matter anymore? Are we just looking for something new? (note: my Carrie Bradshaw impression is now over...)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment