Spiritual Atheism

This is partially in response to: "Beyond ‘New Atheism’" in the New York Times - by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

"Kitcher’s secular humanism reanimates the debate, promising much needed serious reflection on whether the divine can or should be eliminated from our moral lives."

What I see as the problem is the divine as being represented by essentially a War God - the War God of the Old Testament. In these debates, many (men, esp.) do not see that that is part of the problem. The problem which many people are rebelling against.

Christianity was liberalized by people who absorbed ideas from old texts from India and other parts of Asia (during the 1800s, 1900s). Transcendence and nature have been considered more important in Asian spirituality than it has in traditional Christianity. So we have liberal Christianity which rejects the ideas of Original Sin and the idea that life and sex are bad. Some Christians, such as those who follow the Pope, and others who take Genesis Literally are more likely to be more attached to the War God - and God as a powerful Male who rules the world.

Religion cannot improve until it leaves such ideas behind - ideas which are really about establishing and maintaining power. A War God is not compatible with the spiritual side of people. The spiritual side of people (right brain thinking - see A Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor, for instance) is about the loss of boundaries, unity with others, peace, love and understanding. And seeing ourselves as part of an amazing universe - not at odds with life - but an integrated part of life. Some gnostics thought along those lines before the Catholic Church put an end to such diversity of thought and spirituality.

Ideas about hell and even heaven are in effect more about the church maintaining power than anything. It is not until all of the power aspects of religions are dropped and life is affirmed - that religion as spirituality can be understood. So it is not a question of the divine being eliminated from our lives - but how we define divine. If life itself is understood to be divine, then there is nothing to eliminate.

"Free to Die"

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Back in 1980, just as America was making its political turn to the right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to the change with the famous TV series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode, the genial economist identified laissez-faire economics with personal choice and empowerment, an upbeat vision that would be echoed and amplified by Ronald Reagan.

But that was then. Today, “free to choose” has become “free to die.”

I’m referring, as you might guess, to what happened during Monday’s G.O.P. presidential debate. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Representative Ron Paul what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of intensive care. Mr. Paul replied, “That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks.” Mr. Blitzer pressed him again, asking whether “society should just let him die.”

And the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!”

The incident highlighted something that I don’t think most political commentators have fully absorbed: at this point, American politics is fundamentally about different moral visions.

Now, there are two things you should know about the Blitzer-Paul exchange. The first is that after the crowd weighed in, Mr. Paul basically tried to evade the question, asserting that warm-hearted doctors and charitable individuals would always make sure that people received the care they needed — or at least they would if they hadn’t been corrupted by the welfare state. Sorry, but that’s a fantasy. People who can’t afford essential medical care often fail to get it, and always have — and sometimes they die as a result.

The second is that very few of those who die from lack of medical care look like Mr. Blitzer’s hypothetical individual who could and should have bought insurance. In reality, most uninsured Americans either have low incomes and cannot afford insurance, or are rejected by insurers because they have chronic conditions.

So would people on the right be willing to let those who are uninsured through no fault of their own die from lack of care? The answer, based on recent history, is a resounding “Yeah!”

...In the past, conservatives accepted the need for a government-provided safety net on humanitarian grounds. Don’t take it from me, take it from Friedrich Hayek, the conservative intellectual hero, who specifically declared in “The Road to Serfdom” his support for “a comprehensive system of social insurance” to protect citizens against “the common hazards of life,” and singled out health in particular.

Given the agreed-upon desirability of protecting citizens against the worst, the question then became one of costs and benefits — and health care was one of those areas where even conservatives used to be willing to accept government intervention in the name of compassion, given the clear evidence that covering the uninsured would not, in fact, cost very much money. As many observers have pointed out, the Obama health care plan was largely based on past Republican plans, and is virtually identical to Mitt Romney’s health reform in Massachusetts.

Now, however, compassion is out of fashion — indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the G.O.P.’s base.

And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we’ve had for the past three generations — that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the “common hazards of life” through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid.

Are voters ready to embrace such a radical rejection of the kind of America we’ve all grown up in? I guess we’ll find out next year.

"New atlas shows extent of climate change"

From the Guardian:


In Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, Greenland has lost around 15% of its ice cover between 10th edition (1999) (left) and 13th edition (2011) (right). Photograph: Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World
If you have never heard of Uunartoq Qeqertaq, it's possibly because it's one of the world's newest islands, appearing in 2006 off the east coast of Greenland, 340 miles north of the Arctic circle when the ice retreated because of global warming. This Thursday the new land – translated from Inuit as Warming Island – was deemed permanent enough by map-makers to be included in a new edition of the most comprehensive atlas in the world.

Uunartoq Qeqertaq joins Southern Sudan and nearly 7,000 other countries and places added or changed since the last edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, reflecting political change in Africa, administrative changes in China, burgeoning cities in developing countries, climate change, and large infrastructure projects which have changed the flow of rivers, lakes and coastlines.

The world's biggest physical changes in the past few years are mostly seen nearest the poles where climate change has been most extreme. Greenland appears considerably browner round the edges, having lost around 15%, or 300,000 sq km, of its permanent ice cover. Antarctica is smaller following the break-up of the Larsen B and Wilkins ice shelves.

But the Aral Sea in central Asia, which had previously shrunk to just 25% of its size only 80 years ago, is now larger than it was only five years ago, thanks to Kazakhstan redirecting water into it. Elsewhere in Asia, islands are appearing off the mouths of the Ganges and the Yangtze rivers as the amount of silt brought down from the Himalayas and inland China changes.

Sections of the Rio Grande, Yellow, Colorado and Tigris rivers are now drying out each summer. In Mongolia, the Ongyin Gol has been redirected to allow gold mining, while the Colorado river these days does not reach the sea most years. "We are increasingly concerned that in the near future important geographical features will disappear for ever. Greenland could reach a tipping point in about 30 years," said Jethro Lennox, editor of the atlas.

"Giant crabs make Antarctic leap"

From BBC.com


Writing in the journal Proceedings B, scientists report a large, reproductive population of crabs in the Palmer Deep, a basin cut in the continental shelf.

They suggest the crabs were washed in during an upsurge of warmer water.

The crabs are voracious crushers of sea floor animals and will probably change the ecosystem profoundly if and when they spread further, researchers warn.

Related species have been found around islands off the Antarctic Peninsula and on the outer edge of the continental shelf.

But here the crabs (Neolithodes yaldwyni) are living and reproducing in abundance right on the edge of the continent itself.

Judging by the density of the crabs and their tracks, the scientists estimate there may be 1.5 million crabs in the basin.

A female crab retrieved from the area was found to be carrying mature eggs and larvae.

"Our best guess is there was an event, or maybe more than one, where warmer water flushed up across the shelf and carried some of the larvae into the basin," said project leader Craig Smith from the University of Hawaii.

It is believed that this species cannot tolerate water colder than 1.4C.

The seas here get warmer as you descend; and the crabs were only found below 850m.

The researchers calculate that they have probably been there only for 30-40 years; before that, the water would have been too cold even at the bottom of the Palmer Deep.

They cannot as yet survive on the continental shelf, which is at a depth of about 500m; but that could change.

"If you look at the rate at which the seas are warming, (the continental shelf) should be above 1.4C within a couple of decades, so the crabs are likely then to come into shallower waters," Professor Smith told BBC News.

With a legspan of up to a metre, the animals are generally top predators in the seafloor ecosystem.

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