Daily Archives: July 12, 2015

In Defense of Immortality by Carol Zaleski – First Things

Posted: July 12, 2015 at 2:40 pm

In 1904, less than six years before his death, William James made a revealing statement in response to a questionnaire circulated by his former student James Pratt. To the question, Do you believe in personal immortality? James answered, Never keenly, but more strongly as I grow older. If so, why? Because I am just getting fit to live.

Not a ringing endorsement perhaps, but James was sure of one thing: that the common arguments against immortality need not deter us. In his 1898 Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality, James set out with his usual relish to kick over the obstacles to belief. Chief among those obstacles was a general climate of learned doubt.

Our situation today is not so different. Although social surveys indicate that roughly 80 percent of Americans believe in life after death, it is a belief cherished against the grain of perceived official skepticism; and among academically trained religious thinkers, one finds a greater measure of skepticism than in the population at large. For many, immortality is not a matter for reasoned debate, but is simply ruled out of play, along with guardian angels and statues that weep. It is taken for granted, as if it were a premise accepted by all reasonable people, that no one seriously believes in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, in the life of the soul, the resurrection of the body, or the personality of God as the concrete realities they were once imagined to be.

One thinks especially of Rudolf Bultmann, who made it a cornerstone of his New Testament hermeneutics that the three-story structure of the cosmos (Heaven above, Earth in the middle, Hell below) is over, finished; it cannot be repristinated. Similarly, Jrgen Moltmann began his 1967 Ingersoll Lecture by observing that the old ways of thinking about the future life have dried up like fish in a drained pond.

More than any particular objections, this assumption that the traditional mythos can no longer speak to us weighs heavily against belief in immortality. The burden of proof shifts from the skeptic to the believer, and the believer finds that not only his reasons but also his motives are under suspicion. Belief in immortality begins to look shabby and self-serving, like something we fall back on in weak moments but rise above when we are at our best.

The specific objections to immortality are secondary, and can be briefly stated. Belief in immortality is criticized on moral grounds as self-aggrandizing, on psychological grounds as self-deceiving, and on philosophical grounds as dualistic. Concern for the soul is faulted for making us disregard the body, neglect our responsibilities to the Earth, and deny our kinship with other life forms. We share 90 percent of our genes with mice. Even the lowliest bacterium is our cousin. Why do we persist in imagining that there is some fifth essence in us that sets us apart?

To the first objection, we can say that there is no correlation between narcissism and belief in personal immortality. We feel the need for immortality most acutely when we are made sensible of the inexhaustible value of another person or the tragedy of a life cut short. None of the developed traditions about immortality fosters self-absorption. What are our images of eternal life if not ways of picturing a wider sphere of existence, a more generous personal life, less closed in upon ourselves, less fearful and grasping, more real in every respect? It is by contrast to the real person we hope to be in Heaven that we realize how self-absorbed we are most of the time here below.

As for dualism, much has been said of the violence it does to our unity as psycho-physical creatures, but this is questionable. Multiplicity and disunity are as strong a feature of our existence as psychosomatic unity. We are legion, as the demons say. It is a marvel that all our different parts work together. At best, we are a symphony; but the second violins have quarreled with the wind section, and as we age these quarrels increase. Why should it surprise us if at death the soul separates from the body? Separating is the order of our lives as we tend toward death. If a mans jowls can sink down while his brow stays up, why cant his soul rise up when his body sinks down? All of our flesh is being pulled downward by the gravity of the grave; every day our skin is sloughing off cell by cell; at each stage of life we slough off the skin of a previous stage; and at death we lose what was left of those skins. Perhaps that will be the chance to emerge as the person one was meant to be.

Against the charge that soul-talk is superfluous, there is the common witness of humanity that some language of this sort is necessary to capture the full range of human experience. Long after the human genome is completely mapped, and the neurophysiology of awareness and cognition thoroughly understood, we will still stand in awe before the mystery of consciousness and selfhood. We may be made in the image and likeness of a mouse, genetically speaking, but our kinship with the mouse is a kinship with life that is perishing. There remains an irreducible quality to our experience which tells us that we are not perishing with it, that we are also made in the image and likeness of Another, whose code is transcendent.

But if dualism troubles youas it sometimes troubles methere are non-dualistic ways of thinking about life after death. If you have studied classical Buddhist literature, you know that one need not be committed to a substantial soul in order to affirm the reality of persons, their identity over time, or their capacity for transcendence. Consciousness may be understood as an emergent phenomenon which, upon coming forth from its neural matrix, has the capacity to generate ever more complex structures of awareness, including an autobiographical sense of self. It can then be left to God to decide whether the self that emerges shall endure after its neural basis is destroyed. And once God is in the picture, the emergence of consciousness begins to look foreordained, as in the words to Jeremiah: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you (Jeremiah 1:5).

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Transhumanist Party – Google Sites

Posted: at 2:40 pm

Welcome to the website of Transhumanist Party (Global); A place where you can get news and information about the Transhumanist Party movement worldwide. If you are looking for links and information about the various national-level Transhumanist Party groups, please see the links on your left.

The Transhumanist Party (Global) or TPG is an organisation founded by Amon Twyman and Zoltan Istvan, dedicated to supporting Transhumanist Parties around the world and encouraging effective cooperation between them. TPG does not hold any dominion over the national-level Transhumanist Parties, which manage their own affairs, but only exists to help them do so in a spirit of effective cooperation with the rest of the movement.

MISSION: To facilitate cooperation between national-level Transhumanist Parties and continental TP organisations, and to enable party members worldwide to interact directly regardless of which national parties they support.

TP (Global) does not support individual membership. Instead, it is composed of continental and national-level organisations. Six continental "umbrella" organisations encompass Europe (TP-EUR), Middle East & Africa (TP-MEA), North America (TP-NAM), South America (TP-SAM), North Asia-Pacific (TP-NAP), and South Asia-Pacific (TP-SAP).

The primary, initial function of TPG is to help with the development of new national-level Transhumanist Parties. New parties start as precursor groups, dedicated to laying the groundwork for the establishment of a party, and all that is really needed for that is a single person with commitment, time, and energy. Please find some advice for would-be group creators below, and if you would like direct help in setting up or developing a new group then please contact TPG: info@transhumanistpartyglobal.org.

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2 Billion Jobs To Disappear By 2030 – Futurist Thomas Frey

Posted: at 2:40 pm

A picture of me speaking at yesterday's TEDxReset in Istanbul.

Yesterday I was honored to be one of the featured speakers at the TEDxReset Conference in Istanbul, Turkey where I predicted that over 2 billion jobs will disappear by 2030. Since my 18-minute talk was about the rapidly shifting nature of colleges and higher education, I didnt have time to explain how and why so many jobs would be going away. Because of all of the questions I received afterwards, I will do that here.

If you havent been to a TEDx event, it is hard to confer the life-changing nature of something like this. Ali Ustundag and his team pulled off a wonderful event.

The day was filled with an energizing mix of musicians, inspiration, and big thinkers. During the breaks, audience members were eager to hear more and peppered the speakers with countless questions.They were also extremely eager to hear more about the future.

When I brought up the idea of 2 billion jobs disappearing (roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet) it wasnt intended as a doom and gloom outlook. Rather, it was intended as a wakeup call, letting the world know how quickly things are about to change, and letting academia know that much of the battle ahead will be taking place at their doorstep.

Here is a brief overview of five industries - where the jobs will be going away and the jobs that will likely replace at least some of them - over the coming decades.

No one will miss the clutter and chaos of power lines.

1.) Power Industry

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Sexual Futurist.com IIlluminating the world through …

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Does Your God Need a Tax Break?

July 11, 2015

Want to see a backlash against marriage equality? Well then, just you try to get between churches and their money. It's really not about "righteousness" anymore; it's about the green. Witness the hysteria of fundamentalists who are trying to turn marriage equality into the new hot button issue. The following is from TheBlaze, a so-called news outlet spawned by right-wing religious nutter Glen Beck. Right wing news...as approved by right wingers; this is actually how they want to present themselves. From the crazies at TheBlaze: Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, a [hard right political] Christian organization...issued his disagreement with the ruling, claiming that the justices showed a rejection of a societal understanding of marriage that goes back to the dawn of civilization. Dalys concern like many others is on how the courts decision will impact religious freedom across America. We are also concerned that this decision will fan the flames of government hostility against individuals, businesses and religious organizations whose convictions prevent them from officiating at, participating in, or celebrating such unions, he said. Weve already watched this hostility operate against wedding vendors, military chaplains, and others, and anticipate that todays decision will open the...

May 28, 2015

Ever had a dark, yet unspoken, sense of something really important missing from your personal sex life? You're not alone: witness the enormous popularity of sex toys, pornography, erotica, sexy lingerie, and oh yes, "Fifty Shades of Grey." It's not that we don't love our partners, but the lubes, new positions, and battery-powered toys (fun thought they might be!) are simply a distraction for a limited period of time from a level of boredom with a soupon of fear, maybe even terror. Is this really all there is? Is this all you wanted? Is this enough to keep the interest of the other? Instead of entering the mysterious forest of enchantment, our bedrooms and our sex lives often seem more like a low-rent theme park. George Monbiot's "Feral," a movingly written continuation of his thoughts on rewilding the so-called "tamed" (more accurately, "broken") landscape around us focuses not just on the environment, but also the damage we have done in neglecting our own need for a wilder experience in our lives. In Chapter 4, "Elopement," Monbiot brings up the disturbing truth that, when given a choice, colonialists and other pioneers of civilized, industrialized cultures seem to invariably choose the native...

May 26, 2015

The Nevada State Legislature is stampeding toward family values...of a sort. In a packed hearing to review "parental notification for abortion" legislation, Republican Ira Hansen (at left with one of his more enlightened quotes) said, The No. 1 positive thing that comes out of these laws in other states is there has been a substantial decrease in the number of abortions, Hansen said. Has there been a consequent rise in the amount of domestic-violence situations and things like that? There is absolutely no evidence to support that in all of the 38 states that have these laws on the books. So, rather than this legislation being pro-family or pro-child (as in the child who is pregnant), the legislation is a covert attempt to prevent abortions. That this is a good is based on the notion that life begins at conception. That this is a falsehood is demonstrated by the lack of legislation (or picketing demonstrators) preventing fertility clinics from fertilizing eggs, storing them, and eventually quietly taking them from the freezer to the trash. We're talking hundreds of thousands of humans sitting in freezers, people! Oh, the inhumanity! SF exists to help the world learn to talk about human sexuality--in...

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