Daily Quiz

1. What two personal "assets" made Hitch's particular illness especially ironic (though he insists that there's "no real irony here")?

2. What "narrative expectation" did Hitch not take away from the example of British journalist John Diamond?

3. What view of "old religion's" attitude to life did Hitch share with Montaigne?

4. What "cost of immortality" does Hitch renounce, in a passage cited from Einstein's Dreams?

5. According to Carol Blue, what was Hitch's mood in his final days?

1.85   2.89   3.90   4.93   5.103

Ten non-commandments

There's nothing on today's quiz about Grayling's Good Book, but I don't want to just drop it unceremoniously from our radars on the last regular class day either.

Some parts of GB were more compelling than others, we seem to have agreed, but I'll bet we'd have found more to love if we'd been more focused on it. The syllabus was too ambitious. Live and learn.

Anyway, I love the closing ten non-"commandments" in The Good, ch.8.11.

Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your utmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous.

And a crucial amendment at 8.12. This above all, Mr. Shakespeare?

-let us always be true to ourselves and to the best in things, so that we can always be true to one another.

Never mind, for now, what Freud would say. This is good stuff.

Deconversion Story: "Nothing" Without Christ

I found this excellent post on the Website Our Daily Train.  Also, I'm posting an excerpt from the movie Jesus Camp to illustrate the more threatening (and common) tactic of theistic conversion, which is simply this: scare the shit out of little children.  Here's the full text from the Website. 

Below is one of the most touching and powerful deconversion stories I’ve ever heard, and it shows the power Christianity can have, not only over a person’s social makeup and well-being, but over their view of themselves as human beings.
As this former believer attested, people, including children, are taught they are born bankrupt and into complete depravity and sin and cannot possibly live moral, fulfilling and happy lives without coming to love someone who they also must worship and fear. After realizing the Bible could not be trusted as a source for information, this person struggled mightily with how and when to break the news, and when he finally broke camp with the church, thereby losing most of his social support structure — How readily good Christian “friends” want little more to do with you once they realize you no longer believe as they do (other than shallow attempts to win you back to the fold) — he spent a great deal of time traveling the nation and trying to find his own identify, since his previous identity was completely wrapped up in the notion that he was “nothing” without Christ, as he put it:
If a belief can do this to you you will have almost no chance of being able to critically evaluate its truthfulness. Christianity alters your identity to ensure the survival of itself.
Here is his story:

A conversation I overheard

This past Friday I overheard a conversation on how a Christian thought atheists were atheists. He said that atheists have problems with their bodies and that's why they don't believe in God. I was just wondering what others think he meant by this. Also, my boyfriend had to stop me from saying anything to the guy.

On another note, I would like to volunteer to go on the exam day.

Final Presentation on Sam Harris

I'm not a very good public speaker, so I'll just be showing a short video of Sam Harris speaking on the incompatibility of free will and conscious experience.

Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXTEmu-jUqA


Here are some links to some other good Sam Harris videos:

Sam's Ted Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

Sam and Richard Dawkins on morality and science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeJrcVhtzYo

Sam on Free Will: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g

Sam debates Cory Booker on gun control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv4lxLXoiK4

Sam on death and the present moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums

Daily Quiz

April 24

1. What materialist proposition does Hitch confirm "it's no fun to appreciate" the full truth of?

2. Whose Last Lecture does Hitch say is an example of how not to be an "envoy from Tumortown"?

3. What functional physical loss does he compare to impotence or "amputation of part of the personality"? OR What is his advice to the aspiring writer, "above all"?

4. What cliched Nietzschean slogan did his illness cure him of?

5. Whose illness with "not the wish to die with dignity but the desire to have died"? OR What "realm" does he say "must be escaped before anything else"?

6. Good Book?

1.41   2.43   3.48,50   4.59   5.64-6

Presentation

I plan on discussing meaning and my perspective on it. I will  be using some past questions form daily quizzes and personal experiences to guide my presentation.