Selling Hope

I saw a commercial on TV today.  Some guy (I didn't get his name, and it's not really important) was selling a book that he claimed contained his secret to overcoming any addition.   You see things like this all the time.  Someone has a cure-all for whatever might ail you.

I'm not going to talk about the details of this guy's supposed cure.  I'm not going to analyze the efficacy of him claims.  I want to look at the idea of selling hope;  why it is a sign of selfishness and perhaps even sociopathic. 

There are plenty of reasons why dubious claims are harmful, just browse the what's the harm website for a plethora of details.   There are many examples there of people who have died because the chose to follow programs that promised a cure for a medical condition.  These stories are sad and unnecessarily so.

What what I can't help but wonder about guys like the one I've mentioned here is, if they truly have cure or treatment that is revolutionary and that does what they say it does, then why do they always insist on charging for it?  Sure, I know people have to make a living, but I can tell you that if I came up with a treatment that could cure and help a lot of people, I'd want to help as many as I could.  

To have a treatment, a real cure, for a disease like MS or cancer, or a treatment that will get people off their addiction and keep them off, would be an amazing thing.  The ethical, the moral, thing to do would be to share this with the medical community, to allow others to test it and perfect it, so that it can benefit everyone.

Sure, get compensated.  After all, you worked for it.  You discovered it.  Drug companies would pay millions for something like this.  But to horde it, to sell it only to those who could afford your asking price, it the ultimate in selfishness and immorality.

The Omaha Coalition of Reason Billboard

The Omaha Coalition of Reason  has put up this billboard on 72 St., one of the busiest in Omaha.  Surprisingly, I hadn't heard of the organization before.  The have a pretty good list of member groups, only one of which I was anyway involved in (I went to two meetings), Omaha Atheists.  

It's good to learn that there are other secular groups here in town.  My wife and I will have to go to some of the activities of these groups and support them in anyway we can.  Sure, it is great to blog about secular issues and discuss them on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, but nothing beat good ol' fashioned face to face interaction.

You should check in your area and see what secular groups are there.  Get involved, even if it's just to donate a little of your time or money.  

A Born Again Atheist? It’s More Accurate Than The Christian Kind.

I saw a picture of this button on DeviantArt.  I liked it, but it got me thinking.

Born again Christians use the term "Born Again" to denote their belief that when they accept Jesus as their personal savior they are "born again" in spirit.  This phrase and concept is taken from  John 3:1-36,

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ...

To say, as the button above does, that an atheist is born again once they reject theism is not quite the same thing.  It is really more of a reversion.  

In Islam, converting to Islam is said to be actually reverting because of the Islamic believe that everyone is born a believer in the one true god, but later is lead astray.  Of course, this makes the erroneous (in my view) assumption that there is one true god.  

An atheist is someone who does not believe in any god/gods,  or any supernatural begins like angels, devils, demons, jinns, etc. So to say that you are a "born again" atheist is about as true statement as you can get since none of us are born with a belief in anything, never mind a god or gods.  These beliefs are usually learned or taught to us.  

That's not to say that, left to our own devices we wouldn't create a god or gods on our own to explain the world around us.  This is human psychology and is where religions come from in the first place.  We have evolved to see agency (a specific animated cause) in everything around us, perhaps from the survival need to see a predator instead of just a bunch of leaves or grass in the bushes.  Sure, we could assume that it is just a random pattern, but if it were a lion, we'd be lunchmeat.  Those of our ancestors who assumed that something living was there survived to reproduce and pass on this evolutionary trait.  

This need to see agency in the things around us also gave rise to giving agency to things unseen as well.  When trying to answer what is basically the meaning of life (which we all know is 42, of course), we naturally assigned agency to explain that as well.  A rain god must cause the rain.  A wind god must cause the wind.  Ditto for all of the other things in nature.  

Eventually, logic dictated that the gods must all be ruled by a god of superior power, just as we were ruled by a chieftain or king.  As time went on, logic again told us that our entire universe must have come from somewhere and that there had to be something even greater than the existing gods.  A creator god was born and eventually, this creator god not only ruled over the other gods, but completely did away for the need for them.  Everything could be explained as the actions of this one, all powerful god.

As time went by, our inquiry into the workings nature took on the form of ideas followed by testing.  This lead to the scientific method which then lead to amazingly accurate explanations and predictions of the workings of the universe.  The forces that controlled nature could now be explained without the need for god or gods.  This didn't preclude the actual existence of them, but eliminated the need for them to explain the things that they had always been needed for.

Once we saw that we could explain nature without having to resort to "god did it", many of use came to the belief that since there is no need for a god, there probably isn't a god at all.  

The need to explain the world we live in is universal.  The need to see agency is deeply ingrained in our brains.  This need has driven how we explain our world and has shaped the explanations that all the varied cultures have come up with, leading to all the different gods that have ever been postulated to exist.  But the agency we are wired to see doesn't actually exist.  It was evolved to protect us, not to explain anything.

While we are born with this need, we are not born with a belief of any kind.  Beliefs are shaped by those around us, by social settings.  Most of us accept those beliefs because they are reinforced by our inclination to see agency in non-animate things.  Even as children, we try to use reason and logic to make sense of the world around us, but reason is often trumped by socially enforced beliefs.  It is extremely difficult to shakes these beliefs, but when we let reason and logic guide us, we can finally let go of these beliefs and are "born again" into the state in which we were first born, a state of not knowing.  Then our minds are clear, pure, and ready to find the real answers to the meaning of life.

Deepak Chopra Wisdom - Just a Jumble of Words

Deepak Chopra is a promoter of new age spiritualism.  His books, CDs, and DVDs sell millions.  He is a sought after speaker.  The thing is, most of what he has to say is bullshit.  Its all a mish-mash of new--agey mumbo jumbo.  

A great example of how his pronouncements that sound so profound are really just a steaming pile of nonsense can be found on a website that uses random words culled from Deepak's Twitter feed to create phrases that sound like something Chopra would say, except that they are thrown together randomly.  

Of course, this doesn't prove that Deepak Chopra is full of shit, but it does show that it doesn't take much to sound deeply philosophical and spiritual like Chopra.

Go give it a try.  You know you want to.