Religious summit finds happiness in relationships and even in suffering.
Last month at Emory (my university), the Dalai Lama was the center of a conversation-a “summit,” according to the press-on happiness. Also included were a Presiding Episcopal Bishop, the Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth, and a famed Islamic scholar. None of them said anything about mood, and several denied that happiness has much to do with pleasure. Read more
Can we say anything about human beings to come? In a word, yes.
Recently after lecturing about human evolution, I had a student come up to me and ask—she apologized first, as some do, despite my mantra that there are no bad questions—if I had any thoughts about future evolution. I did, although I hesitated to offer them; the political correctness monitors are everywhere in universities today. But, casting caution to the winds,
Read more
Georgia: a fundamentalist backwater or a hotbed of evolutionary rebellion? Both.
In the past three days I somehow managed to give a lecture to medical students on medicine and anthropology, moderate a panel on evolutionary medicine, and conduct a seminar at a retreat for Emory Scholars–some of our most outstanding undergraduates–called "Religion, Science, Literature and Life."
Read more
Thank "goodness," for sure, but stop and ask yourself how the goodness might have come about.
I have to say that at the Salk Institute "Beyond Belief 2006" conference, I was most moved and impressed by the philosopher Dan Dennett's contribution. It was phoned-or I guess emailed-in, because the poor guy was flat on his back in a hospital bed recovering from a dissecting aortic aneurysm.
Read more
These fundamentalists crusade against religion, and they call others delusional
I briefly saw Richard Dawkins on BBC News this morning, talking about his favorite subject these days: The God Delusion, his book on why we must abolish religion. I didn’t listen long-I’ll explain why in a moment-
Read more