ATHEISM: “Should Schools Teach Atheism?” / Ricky Gervais ☮
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Category Archives: Reason
CRITICAL THINKING: “Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot” / The Thinking Atheist / Seth Andrews ☮
Seth Andrews gave this speech June 3, 2017 in Toronto at the Imagine 7 conference. It’s a humorous (and perhaps therapeutic) romp through Seth’s religious past…and the often bizarre words and attitudes that reflected his Christian faith.
PSYCHOLOGY – ANALYTICAL: “New Study Reveals Which People Fear Death the Least” / big think ☮
Socrates warned against fearing death. He thought it irrational—the fear of death causes you to believe you’re wiser than you actually are. “No body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils,” he concluded. His real aim may have been the religious who expressed faith in an afterlife with utmost certainty, a trend still going strong today.
No mere mortal knows what occurs after death, yet that hasn’t stopped many from speculating. Though Socrates expressed unkind words toward the religious, turns out those who strongly believe in religion fear death less than the less religiously inclined—until you get to atheism, that is. A new study published in Religion, Brain & Behavior discovered a U-shaped curve toward contemplating death, with the most religious and atheists enjoying the least fear of mortality.
PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM: “Papering Over Poverty” / Jonathan Pie ☮
Is austerity putting lives in danger?
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: “Ask an Atheist: Why Doesn’t FFRF Go After Islam?” / Freedom From Religion Foundation / Annie Laurie Gaylor, Dan Barker, and Andrew L. Seidel ☮
FFRF is frequently asked why we don’t ever ‘go after’ Islam, despite the fact that FFRF does take issue with the government promoting or favoring any religion, including Islam.
CANNABIS: “Jeff Sessions Trying to Crack Down on Medical Marijuana” / Secular Talk / Kyle Kulinski ☮
WESTERN PHILOSOPHY – ETHICS: “Cornel West: The Difference Between Justice and Revenge” ☮
Institutions—governmental, religious, financial, even revolution itself—have a way of turning stale and sour. “Thank God for the history of the heretics and the blasphemers. That’s my crowd,” says Dr. Cornell West. Quoting from some of history and literature’s greatest thinkers and doers, West presents a poetic lecture on the role of hope in America’s past and its future, and how to make your voice matter. This video was filmed at the Los Angeles Hope Festival, a collaboration between Big Think and Hope & Optimism, a three-year initiative which supported interdisciplinary academic research into significant questions that remain under-explored. For more from Dr. Cornell West, head to http://www.cornelwest.com.
REPUBLICAN THIEVERY: “Republicans are Trying to Take Health Care Away from 23 Million People in Secret, and This Senator is Furious” ☮
PROGRESSIVE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM: “Why Are Republican Senators Hiding Their New Healthcare Bill?” / Thom Hartmann Program / Thom Hartmann ☮
Thom covers current stories you’re not likely to hear on corporate owned media. Republican senators writing their healthcare bill in secret, democratic candidates getting death threats, and more.
HISTORY OF IDEAS: “Wabi-sabi” / The School of Life / Alain de Botton ☮
At the heart of Japanese philosophy and wisdom lies a concept called ‘wabi-sabi’; a term which denotes a commitment to the everyday, the melancholic, the somewhat broken and the imperfect. It’s a term we need a lot more of in our lives.
Always Question Authority 