Calvin and Hobbes on History

 “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”  

- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

But does great sadness not precipitate a deep pessimism, apathy, or profound hope?  

What is Bread?

"A Sufi was accused of apostasy by four learned scholars. He told the judge that he would accept the death penalty if his accusers could satisfactorily answer one question. The question was: 'What is bread?' The first scholar said: 'Bread is a combination of flour and water, shaped and baked in various ways, according to cultural traditions and personal preference.' The second said: 'Bread is the staff of life.' The third said: 'Bread is the gift of God.' The fourth said: 'Bread is a mystery.' The Sufi turned to the judge. 'My accusers cannot agree on what bread is. How can they know whether I am an apostate?' He was released."

-Charles Lindholm, 'What is Bread?' The Anthropology of Belief, in Ethos Vol. 40, 3, 341-357

Two Dogmas of Empiricism

"In “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951), Quine focuses on the notion of meaning. In keeping with his small-ontology philosophy (and an affection for behaviorism), he doesn’t like the division that thinkers since Kant had made between claims whose truth or falsity is a matter of the state of the world (“all bachelors are tidy”), and those made true (or not) by virtue of the meanings of words (“all bachelors are unmarried”); this is also known as the analytic/synthetic distinction. Quine thinks defining “analytic” is problematic: we can try to define it in terms of synonymy (words with the same meaning), but end up in a circle. Instead, Quine thinks that supposedly analytic claims really can be (rationally) changed in light of experience, and conversely that any claim can be held even in the face of counter-evidence. This is because our beliefs are a web, with some of them closer to the data of particular experiences and some of them (like the laws of logic, basic laws of science, and our definitions) closer to the center of that web.

The second “dogma” has to do with the behaviorist attempt to define meaning in terms of behavior, i.e. we can tell what a word means by how it is used, like what perceptual experiences it goes with. Despite his behaviorist suspicion of terms like “meaning” (which connotes some entity that he doesn’t want in his ontology, while “significance,” he thinks does not), he doesn’t think that this kind of reduction works, even in principle."

from the 'partially examined life': 
http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/10/17/topic-for-66-quine-on-language-logic-and-science/

Mind and Morality

Philosophy bites talks to Liane Young about 'Mind and Morality'

http://philosophybites.com/2012/10/liane-young-on-mind-and-morality.html

*Hearing Voices

Hearing Voices in Accra and Chennai from Constance Cummings on Vimeo.

Her arguments and position are summarized here at Neuroanthropology.

Luhrmann contrasts the phenomena of 'hearing voices' in Santa Monica and Chicago of the U.S., Chennai in India and Accra in Ghana. Most have been diagnosed or considered to be under the messy auspice of schizophrenia. More specifically she looks at the different kinds of voices that are heard: positive, negative, playful and so forth and who the voices are identified with: demons, gods, ancestors, family members etc. She points towards the influence of culture on the way these voices are interpreted, framed, looked at from the medical profession, and in turn how these hallucinations are dealt with as normative or abnormal psychology. She explains further here and here


The following is a reading of an excerpt from renown neurologist Oliver Sack's coming book 'Hallucinations'. Here the excerpt talks about the categorical assumption of hearing voices and schizophrenia. This is a false presumption and hearing voices is actually a normal phenomenon and happens quite often across cultures and periods of history. Voices may be negative but what often goes without critical attention are the positive voices that help us in times of hardship. Not the voices that we recognize as our own internal dialogues of self but something experienced as distinctly external. There is a good connection here with Oliver Sacks and Tanya Luhrmann.

http://www.npr.org/2012/10/24/163271304/exclusive-first-read-hallucinations-by-oliver-sacks





With respect to religious experience, Tanya Luhrmann's new book 'When God Talks Back' discusses cultural training and the interactions some evangelical christians have with god in some hallucinatory capacity. An article about such visions discussing Luhrmann's work is here
NPR also did a segment on her new book here

Here Luhrmann talks much more about the training and practices of the imagination for prayer. This does not mean that they perceive this as their imagination but as something that is real and represented to them as a distinct experience of god.

The range of religious experience is quite broad and can begin with what Luhrmann talks about in prayer and interactive with god as presented in her study to Dostoevsky epileptic seizures, drug experiences with LSD, to cases of stigmata, visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as near death experiences. But these experiences seem rare and Luhrmann, with her study of this evangelical community, brings a kind of everyday religious experience into the range of religious experience, which is interesting.

Death and Society

    *Bone ring made during the civil war in the U.S.

The article linked below, 'The Dead Have Something To Tell You', sketches a few eras of societies in the past and their relationship to the dead. The article notes the reverence of tombs and mummies, the building of churches over the tombs of martyrs, venerating body parts of the dead, keeping bones and preserving organs as memorabilia of the deceased, and turning bones into jewelry. There are historical and cultural variance in the way society approaches and treats the dead. It would be taboo today to remove the finger of a loved one and turn it into jewelry, or embalm the heart of a loved one. The author ends on a note that being reminded of the deaths of loved ones can add meaning to our lives.

"When Galileo was exhumed in 1737 in Florence, Italy, for transfer to a more lavish tomb, several fingers, a tooth and a vertebra were plucked from his skeleton to be kept as relics. When Descartes was exhumed in Sweden in 1666 for reburial in France, a guard stole his skull, and the French ambassador pocketed his right index finger. During the French Revolution, a conservator reported that he’d carved some of Descartes’ bones into rings, which he distributed to “friends of the good philosophy.”"  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/the-dead-have-something-to-tell-you.html?_r=1&ref=opinion%3Fref%3Dglobal-home

Pro-life and Rape

“I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God, and even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
-Richard Mourdock, (R) Indiana

The graph and the video I brought from the website: Sociological Images (here), they provide some good commentary.

Emotion and Time

 *Apologies, but I couldn't find a better poster that stated the relativity of a second and an hour: putting your hand on a hot pan can seem like an hour and spending an hour with a beautiful woman can seem like a second.  


"Researchers say they have found a way to lessen these emotion-driven time distortions. Having a sense of control over events reduces the influence of emotions on time perception, the researchers report. This is true even for highly reactive emotional individuals and even if one's sense of control is an illusion."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121024133450.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News%29

An eye for an eye - vendettas originate within group

"It thus seems that vendettas may have a social function. They regulate how conflict is coped with, and can prevent unjust or excessive punishment. Vendettas can occur in the animal kingdom as well. Japanese macaques do not take revenge directly against an individual who has punished them, but instead against its relatives. They thereby diminish the danger of fresh revenge."

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121024101650.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Mind+%26+Brain+News%29

Politics of disgust

Interesting: disgust is linked with political and moral conservatism, i.e. if you have a high sensitivity to disgust then you are more likely to be politically and morally conservative.

*Politics and Geography

Steven Pinker provides some commentary on the predictability of certain geographical areas and political affiliations. When we look at a map of the U.S. during election time, there are a majority of states that are predictably red or blue, republican or democrat.

Scholars have stated that these political differences are the differences in conceptions of human nature. What we are concerned about, what kind of people we are, what kind of things we wish to see in government, certain policies and certain visions of the relationship between human nature and society; different visions of human nature.

He comes to the suggestion that, at least in America, the people are divided based on how government has "tamed" them. He states: "If this history is right, the American political divide may have arisen not so much from different conceptions of human nature as from differences in how best to tame it."

This makes me wonder if this can be applied to religion and those who figure themselves as religious within a particular tradition. In other words, has religion, in its many diversities, configured us in how we view human nature by and large by the way religion has "tamed" us. Thereby configuring our conceptions of how we believe society ought and should be. Or perhaps it is even the way government has managed human nature that has dictated in a way how religion manages the people. This now becomes a concern about how social structures influence the way we think human nature and government is as well as should and ought to be. 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/why-are-states-so-red-and-blue/

"For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well. The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues; and those who proceed but very slowly can make much greater progress, if they always follow the right path, than those who hurry and stray from it." 
- Rene Descartes, Part I of 'Discourse on the Method'


"For with our declining standards of behaviour, few people are willing to say everything that they believe; and besides, many people do not know what they believe, since believing something and knowing that one believes it are different acts of thinking, and the one often occurs without the other.  "
-Rene Descartes, Part III of 'Discourse on the Method'

 

Calvin and Hobbes on Inspiration

Calvin and Hobbes: What if...

*Legalisation of Assisted Dying

 
The other night, I went to a lecture by Prof. Raymond Tallis on the 'Legalisation of Assisted Dying.'
 
He made the following distinctions, which I lifted from the dignity in dying website
(here: http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/about-us/our-policy-assisted-dying.html ).



Assisted dying (legalised and regulated in the US States of Oregon and Washington) only applies to terminally ill, mentally competent adults and requires the dying patient, after meeting strict legal safeguards, to self administer life-ending medication

Assisted suicide (permitted in Switzerland) allows assistance to die to chronically ill and disabled people who are not dying.

Voluntary euthanasia (permitted in the Netherlands and Belgium) allows a doctor to administer the medication directly to the patient.

Euthanasia is a term often used to describe life ending medication being administered by a third party, perhaps without the consent of the patient. 

He succinctly stated that he was for the legalisation of assisted dying as opposed to the other forms noted above. In his arguments he cited the inconsistent application of the 'autonomy principle' which is the right for persons to choose and manage their own autonomy. And the inconsistency of the 'sanctity of life' argument, how it becomes applicable in some cases but not in others.

The issue of end-of-life care has been a topic of debate in legislation within the UK. He cited examples from the states of Oregon and Washington as case studies and exemplars of the effects of enacting policies for assisted dying. He also mentions the policies in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. I remember when I was attending my program at the University of Amsterdam they discussed quite thoroughly the policy of voluntary euthanasia.

Now I myself have no problems with these concepts, and would advocate that just as there is a right to life there is a right to death. Suicide is a critical existential question that any person should ask themselves and it becomes a good evaluator on one's position or outlook on life. Hume and may existentialists have written extensively on suicide as have some sociologists, most notably, Durkheim. Apart from the connotations of suicide, end-of-life care is an important dimension of the health care system. There is something reassuring about knowing when one is going to die and there is reassurance that one can live out the end of one's days in comfort and minimal suffering. It becomes a time to organize and tie up loose ends in one's life, meet the people one would like to meet and go about the end of one's life in the fashion one would like to go about it. One may make peace with some or take a victim's stance of nobody cares about me anyway or any other attitude about the end of one's life. Given the array of approaches health care is a system for the well-being and alleviation of some suffering for the people. Provide care for ailments and address issues that pertain to health.

The dynamics of health is interesting and even more intriguing when ethics come into play. My concern with assisted dying, assisted suicide, voluntary euthanasia, and euthanasia in general is the structures, resources, and policies that come into play. If a young adult wanted to commit suicide I believe the resources for that individual to talk to somebody prior to committing any regrettable actions is necessary. Resources should be available for individuals who would like to talk to a counselor or therapist. It would be a shame if many of the young adults who may later grow up to major contributors to society had committed suicide at a young age because he/she didn't know any better. Heart ache and failure can be quite devastating. But as in many things in life, things tend to get better as life goes on. And at times it doesn't always either. Nonetheless there should be resources available to provide a bigger scope of life for those who do consider the path of ending one's life. My other concern is the policies and structures that will implement these practices. And like I said, I have no particular problem with any of the proposed concepts and practices but rather potential problems with how the practice is implemented and the ramifications for insurance policies and whether there are incentives for the practitioners. There can be cases where doctors abuse the trust they have with their patients and deliberately convince their patients towards death. There may be financial benefits for doctors who conduct these practices. So my concern is not in the practice itself but the possible manipulation of patients by institutions and doctors who have major influences in the decision and understandings of health of these patients. If such policies are implemented I think there should be precautions of financial incentives for doctors and institutions who do conduct this practice as well as precautions against doctors who might enjoy the power trip of convincing somebody to end their own life. Cautionary measures should be taken for the development of malicious intent or financial gain over the interests of the patients.

Some other things that become problematic is definitional and how to define the parameters of the terms. One is the term "terminally ill" and the other is "mental competence." At what age does "mental competence" occur and when is it no longer "mental competence." This also goes for "terminally ill." All life must eventually come to an end. So what does the terms "terminally ill" include and exclude? Of course there are some answers that are obvious but there are also others that are progressively debilitating. Some are physically oriented and others are mentally oriented. Where does Parkinson's, Schizophrenia, depression, autism, or PTSD weigh in within the parameters of these terms? 

*just a thought, I wonder if part of the reluctance for endorsing assisted dying is in the people's underlying sense of hope that there will be a cure or that the loved one will get better. In this way, personal hope becomes a deterrent in the alleviation of suffering. There was also a question raised that I think becomes quite relevant not from a medical perspective but rather a social perspective. And that is the issue of social connections and kinship relations. If a loving wife or husband did not wish his/her spouse to die, even when it is his/her wish to end one's life earlier than the natural course of some terminal illness, what does the patient do?

*Update: The New York Times produced an article on 'Four Myths about Doctor Assisted Suicide'
(here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/four-myths-about-doctor-assisted-suicide/)

*"Weird Beliefs"

There is an article on Alternet.org about "weird beliefs"

What makes this so interesting is that the term belief portrays these things as if they are firmly embodied into the minds of those who are religious. Something that was motivated in history or something that has become myth or an explanatory feature has come to be equated as 'beliefs' that are internally held with some degree of conviction. However, this can be questioned. Do they really believe these things as "truth" and that these are the facts of the superplausibility theory they hold. That is, their understanding of "the way things really are" underlying the appearance of things.

The website lists the following:

1.      The foreskin of [a holy one] may lie safeguarded in reliquaries made of gold and crystal and inlayed with gems--or it may have ascended into the heavens all by itself. (2)

2.      A race of giants once roamed the earth, the result of women and demi-gods interbreeding. (1, 6). They lived at the same time as fire breathing dragons. (1)

3.      Evil spirits can take control of pigs. (1)

4.      A talking donkey scolded a prophet. (1, 3)

5.      A righteous man can control his wife’s access to eternal paradise. (6)

6.      Brown skin is a punishment for disobeying God. (6)

7.      A prophet once traveled between two cities on a miniature flying horse with the face of a woman and the tail of a peacock. (4)

8.      [The Holy One] forbids a cat or dog receiving a blood transfusion and forbids blood meal being used as garden fertilizer. (7)

9.      Sacred underwear protects believers from spiritual contamination and, according to some adherents, from fire and speeding bullets (6)

10.  When certain rites are performed beforehand, bread turns into human flesh after it is chewed and swallowed. (2)

11.  Invisible supernatural beings reveal themselves in mundane objects like oozing paint or cooking food. (2)

12.  In the end times, [the Holy One’s] chosen people will be gathered together in Jackson County, Missouri. (6)

13.  Believers can drink poison or get bit by snakes without being harmed. (1)

14.  Sprinkling water on a newborn, if done correctly, can keep the baby from eons of suffering should he or she die prematurely. (2)

15.  Waving a chicken over your head can take away your sins. (3)

16.  [A holy one] climbed a mountain and could see the whole earth from the mountain peak. (1, 2)

17.  Putting a dirty milk glass and a plate from a roast beef sandwich in the same dishwasher can contaminate your soul. (3)

18.  There will be an afterlife in which exactly 144,000 people get to live eternally in Paradise. (8)

19.  Each human being contains many alien spirits that were trapped in volcanos by hydrogen bombs. (5)

20.  [A supernatural being] cares tremendously what you do with your penis. 1,2,3,4,6,7,8.


Key:  1-Evangelical or “Bible Believing” Christianity, 2-Catholic Christianity, 3-Judaism, 4-Islam, 5-Scientology, 6-Mormonism 7-Christian Science 8-Jehovah’s Witness

http://www.alternet.org/belief/20-weirdest-religious-beliefs?paging=off


Now within this list, there are a few things about Mormonism and one of the references is this blog:
http://awaypoint.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/the-same-god-twelve-beliefs-mormons-might-not-want-you-to-know-about/

But as one who has many Mormon friends, I am sure they would contend that there is a distinction between what has been told as belief and myth around the ideas of Mormonism and what it is that they actually believe. The citation of history and the progression of ideas in the church have changed and so have the people. Many will say that the Church is not what all Mormons believe and that because the Church is composed of fallible persons the Church is fallible as well. There becomes a distinction between Church and gospel as well as distinctions of gospel v. people and people v. Church.

In a way, to discuss beliefs in this manner is quite misleading and distinctions need to be made between what is stated as belief, represented as such, the historical changes, and the current status of tenets that believers of various religious traditions actually hold onto such that it warrants their own intentions to label themselves as a member of a particular religious group.

Millenialism and Marijuana

From the Public Religion Research Institute

Military Suicide

"Since 2001, the suicide rate among members of our military has increased dramatically. This increase occurred despite improving behavioral health conditions for American forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.1 The public response to this alarming and paradoxical trend largely has been to blame the usual suspects when bad things happen in our military: stress, the strain of intense operations and repetitive deployments, and the hardships of military life. Proposals to address the problem of suicide have also trod familiar ground: more money, more programs, more chaplains, expansion of mental health resources, more research on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), new training modules, increased awareness, and better screening and treatment for those we think are at risk. Nevertheless, suicides continue to occur at unusually high rates in the military. We will argue that our current understanding of this problem is incomplete, and that, as a nation, our approach to suicide in the military needs to be reframed."

The actual pdf to the published paper in the Summer 2011 issue of Parameters:
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/parameters/Articles/2011summer/Mastroianni%20and%20Scott.pdf

The paper makes good use of Durkheim's study on suicide.

This is where I got my tip, an article on military suicide that came out this week in psychologytoday.com:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201210/weeks-top-posts-1/military-suicide-more-military-issue

history of ideas about the brain

'Brain in a vat' by Hilary Putnam from Reason, Truth, and History (1981):

"Imagine that a human being…has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist. The person's brain…has been removed from the body and placed in a vat of nutrients which keeps the brain alive. The nerve endings have been connected to a super-scientific computer which causes the person whose brain it is to have the illusion that everything is perfectly normal. There seem to be people, objects, the sky, etc.; but really, all the person…is experiencing is the result of electronic impulses travelling from the computer to the nerve endings."

In this article Carl Zimmer tracks the transition of ideas about the brain in history.

http://beinghuman.org/article/cooling-system-thinking-machine

Ocytocin and Emotion Recognition

Article from Psychology Today that talks about Oxytocin and the recognition of emotional facial expressions by those with Autism Spectrum Disorder:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201210/weeks-top-posts-1/emotion-recognition-in-autism

"For the experiment, Yamada recruited 19 men with an ASD and 19 men without any ASD as a control group. He tested the ability to recognize emotions after he gave them oxytocin and again after he gave them a placebo. Both the oxytocin and placebo were given through a nasal spray, a technique used in many oxytocin studies. Half the participants received oxytocin first, and the other half received placebo first.

...

Here's where it got interesting. Whereas the control group did not improve for difficult emotions following oxytocin dosing, the ASD group showed a marked improvement. The control group got 45 percent correct, but the ASD group now recognized around 43 percent of difficult emotions. They improved about eight points compared to placebo, and almost matched the performance of the control group.

To understand the relationship between severity of ASD and improvement on the task, Yamada calculated how much better each person did at recognizing difficult emotions following oxytocin. He found that the individuals with the most severe ASDs showed the most improvement on the RMET after taking oxytocin.

His findings suggest a possible role for oxytocin in ASDs. Lower levels may be part of the reason why individuals with ASDs tend to have more difficulty recognizing emotions. However, the role of oxytocin may depend on the severity of the disorder. "

Dan Ariely: We're All Predictably Irrational

Ariely gives a good presentation on the way things are framed, presented, and how decisions are made.

60 second adventures in religion

Old rats rejuvenated after injection of young blood

"The study showed that 18-month-old mice who had been received eight transfusions of young blood had a much easier time making it through the a watery maze than the old mice who had not received any transfusions. 

"They were 18 months old but they were acting much younger, like a four to six-month-old," said Dr. Villeda, one of the lead researchers.

The study also demonstrated that older mice who had received the blood transfusions also began to grow new synopses in their brain--connections which are essential for the retention of memory. 

[...]

Last year, the same Stanford researchers demonstrated that injecting young mice with old blood led to mental deterioration in the rodents.

This research led them to undertake this more recent experiment to see whether the reverse could be true.

Moving forward, it is unlikely that a vial of youthful blood itself will become the treatment for aging. Instead, scientists say that the new challenge is to identify what compounds inside young blood carry this rejuvenating effect--potentially allowing researchers to extract or replicate these particularly chemicals."

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/amazing-medical-discovery-transfusions-young-blood-appear-rejuvenate-elderly


Apparently, the late North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-Il has been doing this too...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/17/young-blood-reverse-effects-ageing


interesting...

Mormon Materialism

"One World Is Enough: Few philosophers describe themselves as “materialists” these days. The contemporary understanding of gravity as not a strictly material entity, for instance, have made “physicalist” a more common description. The Brigham Young University philosophy professor James Faulconer, in a short primer on Mormon metaphysics at Patheos, explains why Mormons, at least, remain materialists. Joseph Smith claimed, according to Faulconer, that “everything is material even if there is material that we presently cannot see or understand.” That “everything” includes God the Father, even if he is morally perfect, immortal, and otherwise so different from humans in degree as to be practically inscrutable. Faulconer thinks this materialism cashes out in at least two ways. First, he sees it as explaining why Utah “produces a disproportionate number of scientists,” and why his own university supports scientific inquiry so enthusiastically. Second he thinks it might account for the Mormon interest in and enthusiasm for business. Without a belief in another “spiritual” world, Mormons can view practicing business in this world as another way of faithfully practicing their religion. Indeed, Faulconer hopes that precisely because Mormons are materialists, that they inhabit the only world that exists, they may be more responsible stewards of it."

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/stone-links-nagel-agonistes/

Action Philosophers: Rene Descartes

From the graphic nonfiction, Action Philosophers

In anticipation of a seminar on Rene Descartes:

There's more to it of course and this was about all I could find online but I think this serves as a good starter/primer for his meditations. 

BBC Radio 4 has also done a session on Descartes, where Melvyn Bragg discusses 'Cogito Ergo Sum' with some guests: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010mvcp

And just for fun, here's the 'Three Minute Philosophy' version on Descartes:

Andy Thomson - Why We Believe in Gods

Dan Dennet - Good Reasons for "Believing" in God

“There is no one reality. Each of us lives in a separate universe. That's not speaking metaphorically. This is the hypothesis of the stark nature of reality suggested by recent developments in quantum physics. Reality in a dynamic universe is non-objective. Consciousness is the only reality.”
- M. R. Franks, Assoc. Prof. of Law at Southern University in Louisiana

 

 

Muslims have long been part of U.S. History

"Consider this: Anthony "The Turk" Janszoon van Salee, son of the president of the Republic of Salé in Morocco, was among the earliest and richest settlers of Manhattan island, a devout Muslim, and the ancestor of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Whitneys, Humphrey Bogart, and, according to family lore, Jacqueline Bouvier. That's right: the Lady of Camelot apparently had a mixed-race Muslim as an ancestor! One of van Salee’s first properties was a farm in lower Manhattan acquired in 1638 located on the north side of the stockade along present-day Wall Street, just blocks from the Park Place Islamic center characterized by Geller as a foreign presence on sacred American soil. A defender of minorities, van Salee became the first settler of Brooklyn. Coney Island, which abutted his property, was known as "Turk's Island” until the 19th century.

Muslims are feeling unwelcome in America today, but followers of Muhammed were living here before the arrival of English in Spanish-controlled Florida and French Louisiana, where slaves were imported from the Senegambia region of Africa, home to a large Muslim population.

Influenced by the tolerance of the Enlightenment, America's founders considered Islam’s place in the new republic despite widespread fear of Barbary pirates and a sense of European rivalry with the Ottoman Empire. As befitting a student of law in a religiously diverse land, Thomas Jefferson purchased a Quran to learn about the Islamic legal code – the same Quran that was used in the swearing in of Muslim Keith Ellison to the U.S. Congress. In 1776, John Adams published "Thoughts on Government," which praised the prophet Muhammad as a "sober inquirer after truth.” Ben Franklin set up a non-sectarian meeting house in Philadelphia, declaring in his autobiography that "even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service." "

http://www.alternet.org/belief/right-wingers-would-be-shocked-learn-islam-has-been-part-american-history-its-founding?paging=off

Joel Robbins on Anthropology of Morality

'On becoming ethical subjects: freedom, constraint, and the anthropology of morality'

http://aotcpress.com/articles/ethical-subjects-freedom-constraint-anthropology-morality/

'Life Before Death'

A series of before and after death portrait photography.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath#/?picture=333325401&index=0

*Religiosity and Sex

"A pioneering study of sex between men in public restrooms identified many of the participants as religious conservatives (2). Residents of religiously conservative states also spend more on online pornography (3).
[...]
Indeed, the scientific evidence is in the opposite direction. More religious states have much higher teen birth rates and this is true even with income level and abortion rates statistically controlled (4).
[...]
Religious intolerance of teenage sexuality can have undesirable consequences for teen birth rates."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201210/weeks-top-posts/does-religion-protect-against-teen-childbearing

The studies cited in this article suggest a negative impact religion has on sexuality. Particularly a negativity related to a sense of disingenuous activity: claiming religiosity with a righteous stance about what is correct sexual behavior but going into public restrooms for sex; talking about faithfulness and loyalty to one's partner yet spending time with online pornography; talking about purity but with higher teen birth rates. All of which leads to a suggestive claim that "religious intolerance" of sexuality creates "undesirable consequences" in the youth.   

There are broader scopes of religion and other effects on persons. However, I don't think that it is particularly helpful to pick out the good and the bad and then point fingers or praise it. Nor is it helpful to pick out a certain group of persons and generalize it to the religion itself or even the entire body of persons that make-up those religions.

So "mistakes are made" and these are some of the consequences - fully acknowledging that there are positive effects - of religion, now what?

Is there a role that carves itself out for religion in society from the report of empirical data?

It is fully understandable that religion and society don't always mutually exclude each other - I have spoken to people who can't separate religion and society or religion and politics for that matter. Some lay out theological arguments that they can't be separated in terms of theological foundations for society while others simply state that their religion is their society. So what is to happen with these pockets, umbrellas, canopies, enclaves of religious social entities that still must inevitably interact with the rest of the population and country that may or may not share their religious perspective? 

Korean Buddhist Funeral Ceremony

The caption for this video notes that this was a funerary ceremony, ritual, held on September of 2007 at Beomeosa (범어사) temple in Busan (부산), Korea. The ceremony/cremation was for the passing of a head monk.

*Inequality is the result of abundance?

The sociological claim here is that inequality arises out of abundance. An axis of analysis from looking at economics with sociological implications. The concept of 'stratification' is used to pronounce this framework but I think the claim is a simplification of economic systems, policies, and the function of institutions while at the same ignoring the internal processes of morality in cognitions of kinship, loyalty, in-group/out-group dynamics that occur in persons. This isn't to say that the development of resources and the habits of hoarding or storing is not part of the equation for inequality but that it only describes one side of the story of why inequality exists. When we begin thinking about anthropological and psychological dimensions of inequality we shift the discussion of equality outside of the domains of material distribution onto social structures and psychological factors that impact the shape and range of what we label equality and then inequality.

Real-time Brain imaging

Colin Murray Parkes

 On love and loss

A great talk about love, bereavement, and foreign policy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01n1qyq/Four_Thought_Series_3_Colin_Murray_Parkes/

Stephen Stich: The Definition of Morality

This is lecture 1: 'The Definition of Morality' of a four part lecture series on Moral Psychology. I will post the other lectures as I find them. Lecture 2: The Persistence of Moral Disagreement; Lecture 3: The Evolution of Morality; and Lecture 4: Egoism vs. Altruism: Deconstructing the Debate.

Enjoy.