Month: August 2012

Here we go again. BHA and its negative campaigning. Removal of Bishops from the Lords this time.

The second (revising / conservative) chamber needs a cultural heritage component and a constituency representation component that is separate from “popular voting”, and – being political  – reflecting human psychology separate from “scientific” fact. When the churches have crumbled into the ground and church asset dwindled away in a hundred years or two, then sure, there will no longer be church representatives in the second chamber.

Ban this, ban that – BHA fascists.
We need to get the horse before the cart here.

No time for review now, but thanks to David Morey for the link to this piece including Hillary Lawson.

Post Review: Contrary to the blurb, Giles Fraser (the theologian) is not really against the three metaphysicians, he’s just against Plato’s narrow metaphysics. Join the very large club.  Not listened to the “particle physics” section yet, but the only part of this I see differently is the idea of “ultimate map” I see “best available map” of reality – so it’s always the story of the journey, never the final destination. So many of the issues are linguistic and semantic (definitional), they’re not problems with reality or its map. Looks like the main areas of contention are the atomism / reductionism / upward-causation from “physics” being the one true story …. continuing …

A recurring theme, and target in the various naive God vs Science debates, I last mentioned it here, but it’s just not an issue for this atheist /scientist. It’s like this:

We are our minds; “our” minds are concentrated in our brains but distributed throughout “our” bodily electro-chemical systems; the content and consciousness of our minds is the sum total of our memes. Our memes live on in recorded copies, physically, including in the minds of others, even if we never create our own magum opus for posterity. We have a duty of care to the next generation for these memes, how we create, acquire and modify them, how we hold, express and communicate them. They live on when our body dies. No argument.

We (our mind) can rest when that happens, in the sense that “we” no longer have any role in how those memes are marshalled and used in the afterworld. Our minds are no longer a coherent set managed by us, but they are out there distributed in the world, living on from the state we left them in. Is that a reward,  an escape from responsibility in this life, a credit to wipe the slate clean the moral failings of our memes and deeds in this word, an excuse not to take that moral responsibility in this world?

Hell no, quite the opposite, but at death “we” can at last rest in peace, our job is done.

Just not a source of debate or argument worth any major disagreement, ‘cept maybe a few details for sure. This is good science – and consistent with the history of human psychology – start with Dennett if the idea is new to you. Co-create, onward and upward.

Which brings us to “we” as opposed to “us & them”, “me & other” …. Copernican revolution ? Pah!

[Post Note : http://rorysfindings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/secular-humanism-and-life-after-death.html ]