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Apatheism (/ˌæpəˈθiːɪzəm/ a portmanteau of apathy and theism/atheism), also known as pragmatic atheism or practical atheism, is acting with apathy, disregard, or lack of interest towards belief or disbelief in a deity. An apatheist is someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or…
“Given a time gap of forty thousand hours, the strategic value of any traditional tactics of war or terror is insignificant, and they can recover from them. To effectively contain a civilization’s development and disarm it across such a long span of time, there is only one way: kill its science.” The science consul…
Recent research also has shown that children raised without religion tend to remain irreligious as they grow older — and are perhaps more accepting. Secular adults are more likely to understand and accept the science concerning global warming, and to support women's equality and gay rights. One telling fact from the…
In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In…
My own ongoing research among secular Americans — as well as that of a handful of other social scientists who have only recently turned their gaze on secular culture — confirms that nonreligious family life is replete with its own sustaining moral values and enriching ethical precepts. Chief among those: rational…
I believe that the 21st century will be dominated by the question as to whether humanity should or should not build artilects, i.e. machines of godlike intelligence, trillions of trillions of times above the human level. I see humanity splitting into two major political groups, which in time will become increasingly…
...over a century ago, Nietzsche wrote, in Also Sprach Zarathustra, that the ultimate purpose of humankind was to create a being transcending human abilities, an ubermensch. While ubermensch is often translated into English as “super man”, it is actually much closer to the concept of H . The ubermensch was a person…
I predict that humanity will split into three major philosophical, ideological, political groups, which I label as follows. –The Cosmists (based on the word “cosmos”) will be in favor of building these godlike machines (the artilects), who would be immortal, think a million times faster than humans, have unlimited…
"On the contrary. That was the time to begin all-out prevention of war. I played them one against the other. I helped each in turn. I offered them science, trade, education, scientific medicine. I made Terminus of more value to them as a flourishing world than as a military prize. It worked for thirty years." "Yes…
The scientific worker is brought up with the moral values of his neighbours. He is perhaps fortunate if he does not realize that it is his destiny to turn good into evil. An alteration in the scale of human power will render actions bad which were formerly good. Our increased knowledge of hygiene has transformed…
The diversity of science also finds a parallel in the diversity of religion. Once, when I was a child, walking with my mother through the English cathedral town of Winchester, I asked her: "Why are there so many different churches?" My mother gave me a wise answer: "Because God likes it that way. If he had wanted us…
Though much has been written foolishly about the antagonism of science and religion, there is indeed no such antagonism. What all these world religions declare by inspiration and insight, history as it grows clearer and science as its range extends display, as a reasonable and demonstrable fact, that men form one…
Another phrase which occurs frequently in the propaganda of Christian fundamentalists is "scientific humanism." Scientific humanism is supposed to be a philosophy standing in opposition to Christian faith. Fundamentalists like to pretend that we have only two alternatives, either scientific humanism or their version…
When I talk about religion, I speak for myself alone. Any statement which attempted to express a consensus of scientists about religious and philosophical questions would miss the main point. There is no consensus among us. The voice of science is a Babel of diverse languages and cultures. That is to me the joy and…
Critical philosophy – Kantianism and neo-Kantianism – is also a school and not a solution. The Critique of Pure Reason can be said to deal with science or philosophy only within the narrow limits of an artificial, particularised experience (confined to laboratory or academic study). Similarly, the Critique of…
The Truth was the presumptuous name of the religion, the faith that lay behind the Shrievalty, the Cessoria, in a sense behind the Mercatoria itself. It arose from the belief that what appeared to be real life must in fact - according to some piously invoked statistical certitudes - be a simulation being run within…
Most prayers in this room begin with a request to bow your heads. I would like to ask you not to bow your heads. I would like to ask that you take a moment to look around the room at all of the men and women here, in this moment, sharing together this extraordinary experience of being alive and of dedicating ourselves…
―People say ‗[CBN] want[s] to turn America into a church,‘‖ Regent employee Ben Johnston protested. ―We don‘t. My God, we want separation of church and state‖ (Johnston interview, March 30, 2006). Woven into Johnston‘s protest, however, is a defensiveness based on public perception of CBN as threatening the neutrality…
Science, with its naturalistic approach to understanding the empirical world, has become the dominant standard against which alternative systems of knowledge production must argue. Over the course of the twentieth century, some denominations have reconciled particular truths of Christianity and science. However…
These two seemingly opposite religious organizations, the conservative, evangelical Christian Broadcasting Network and the liberal, new age Association for Research and Enlightenment, in fact share a similar social positioning in that their core philosophies are religious or metaphysical in nature but their…