More than fifty years have passed since my youth, and it comes to mind that this means almost everyone I then knew then as an adult or as my superior is now almost certainly dead.  That is of course a chilling thought, and I guess a sad one, but it is also a little liberating: I can write honestly of those days.  Of course that I can write honestly doesn't mean I necessarily will -- I have to watch myself closely here since I have my share of false memories, mainly places where I have distorted events to protect others and aggrandize myself, or at least make my self not look quite so bad.

I wasn't in Harvard more than six months before I fully realized I was never going to graduate.  This was because of their foreign language requirement -- an armchair rule made by bureaucratic types who thought such a rule was a "good" thing for encouraging the students to study languages.  What it did to me, as happens often enough with rules, was close the door to me, since I wasn't in French more than half a year and I knew I would never pass the requirement.

I think this is an example of the Chinese saying of, "Pass a law, make a criminal," although in this case of course not a law and not a criminal, just a rule and a failure.

Of course I am not free of blame here, but I can remember spending hours studying the lesson (mainly vocabulary lists) and then having the graduate student over the class humiliate me with the accusation I hadn't even cracked a book.  So I read several books on how to remember things and tried, but didn't succeed.  I am intelligent and remember things well, but there are cracks and the biggest one is remembering things like vocabulary words or numbers or people's names.  (Later in my career I use to keep a list of my clients organized by who they worked for -- which I had no trouble remembering -- so that by the time they got from the receptionist's desk to my desk I could have looked up their name).

One other example: even today after years and years I still am never quite sure of my Social Security number, and make sure to have it at hand whenever I call a bank or broker or someone who is likely to ask for it.

Anyway I realized I would not graduate.  Of course at the time I did not see this as the disaster it in fact would turn out to be, as I thought nevertheless I would get a Harvard education in other ways, as I would not have any trouble staying there the full four years.  And, I had another card available -- "the Truth."

When I was younger my mom had come for a short time under the influence of Jehovah's Witnesses.  I think my dad's natural skepticism had influenced her away, along with her own rational intelligence, but I was unlucky enough to have been caught when I was indoctrinable (younger).   I had learned one thing -- they were, "the Truth."  I believed this.  I was not rational but beliefs rarely are, or at least don't need to be.  Beliefs are things you believe without conscious awareness -- they are just there -- furniture your mind sits on and uses and assumes without analysis or even notice.

So shortly after arrival at Cambridge I found the local congregation and began attending meetings and going to Bible studies and so on.

Since I then thought that the end of the world (Armageddon) was soon to come, the degree from Harvard did not seem so valuable.  It seemed to me I could learn what Harvard had to offer in things like history and so on and dispense with worrying about the credential that would be of no meaning in the New World that was to come.

Juvenile (sophomoric) stupidity and youthful indoctrination.  Sheesh!

It can and obviously is argued that things like the Golden Rule come from logical selfish thinking such as tit for tat or karma (what you do tends to come back on you) and so on.  I don't however notice that the proponents of things like the Golden Rule usually offer such reasoning as the reason we should follow them.  Instead they are offered as axioms of goodness, not something in our personal interest, and we do them out of a desire to do what is good.  Besides, often enough it is to our selfish advantage to not follow the Golden Rule, and even in society's rational advantage (such as punishing criminals, even though we would not want to be punished).

We also see examples of human kindness and generosity that goes way beyond anything that could earn reward for us -- saving beached whales, at great inconvenience and expense, or people dying (maybe or maybe not foolishly) for causes they perceive as greater than they, such as country or God.

It is in the modern "materialist" frame of mind to try to explain everything with some sort of selective advantage, including this amazingly widespread Golden Rule type of thinking, in spite of all the cultural differences from which such thinking derives.  The thing is the thinking does not come from ordinary people but from what we would call religious geniuses or saints or prophets or things like that, and then gets adopted by their followers because of its inherent rationality and appeal.  It took Jesus to introduce it into Abrahamic thinking, Buddha into Indian thinking, and so on.  (I rush to aver that similar thoughts can be found in the OT or in Hindu teaching -- again from limited sources).  Most of us are not born with the Golden Rule, we are born more selfish but with a desire to get praised.  We learn if we are able.

So I have trouble saying this is an evolved instinct.  It is I think instead a rational proposition derived by religious geniuses from their meditation or prayer or just reasoning that gets adopted quite widely because of its power, and biology is not involved.

Any religious doctrine can get in the way of doing good -- even the "law of love" or the Golden Rule.  There are times when war and prosecution and discrimination and lies and corruption are better than the opposite.  We need to be objective and realistic here and not sit on our moral high road justifying what we do and tut-tut-ing others.

For example I'm stopped for a minor traffic violation.  Came from being impatient and serves me right, but rather than go through all the paper work and disruption of my life that following the rules would entail, as well as causing the cop involved a lot of paper work and interfering with his continuing with his real job, we agree on a small bribe.  If I think I am innocent I will decline such a thing and I will get due process, but even then I may prefer otherwise.  In the meantime the cop gets a little more income (lord knows they aren't payed enough here) and society gets the benefit of traffic enforcement at lower cost.

For another example, I would far rather lie through my teeth than tell someone unable to handle the truth -- let us say they are going to die.  Most of us would rather know the truth, but there are exceptions and these are not hard to spot.  The classic problem posed by Socrates of whether we are obliged to return a weapon to someone who loaned it to us, the person having subsequently become deranged, comes to mind.

The thing is religion is really -- really -- irrelevant in all these matters.  Doing what is right is not a religious impulse, and determining right and not being mislead by our culture and our religion and our "conscience," but, instead, reasoning out what is right on the basis of doing the most good and the least harm (compassion and justice) as a practical matter is what we need.

Because we think something is right or wrong or because we like the consequences or don't like the consequences of something, does not make it right or wrong.  Our views are prejudiced by our beliefs, our culture, our personality, our interests and the powerful human ability to rationalize what we want into what is right.

Right and wrong exist separately from these things and must be inferred rationally from fundamental principles, not from what we feel.

For example, speaking up in defense of "truth."  If something is true then it seems anything we say or do to defend and spread the truth is right.  Hence we see pious fraud on these boards, no end of rationalizing the use of propaganda on these boards (of course if we are doing it in favor of the truth then it is not propaganda in our eyes but instead using powerful tools to try to overcome "irrational" views of others (it's seen as proper to use irrational methods to fight irrationality).

The thing is, we get a charge out of someone's being roasted on the stick of ridicule and mockery (and we compound the sin by calling it "irony.")  This pleasure to us justifies it and makes it right.  Of course this is absurd and indeed pushes evil.

The thing to remember is that our "truth" is not necessarily another's, and if we would find real truth we must use evidence and reason, not "irony" and other forms of unreasoned argument.  I don't know if roasting someone with irony ever works to change their mind -- I think it more likely to harden their view -- but even if it did succeed doing so would be unethical.

I think it may be some need to see that mockery is a form of propaganda, not of reasoned argument.

I watched a preacher on TV awhile ago mocking evolutionary theory -- basically walking around in an "ape"-like posture and making grunting noises and asking the audience if they thought claims of an ape ancestry for humanity made any sense, to which the believing (and one assumes selected) audience noisily laughed and shouted no.

I could readily identify at least three propaganda techniques going on -- bandwagon (the creation of an atmosphere of unanimity of opinion), plain folks (appeals to "common sense" and personal opinion as opposed to deferral to the views of the trained and wise), and "card stacking" (misrepresenting or even outright lying about the view being attacked -- evolution does not claim we are descended from apes but that we are apes).

That ridicule does not involve reasoning and contemplative thought but instead appeals to a semi-sadistic glee people get out of discomfiture of those they don't agree with is pretty obvious.  As such it should have no part in serious discussion and whenever it is detected the perpetrator. whether one likes what is going on or not, should be discredited.

I have a friend, in fact one of my best of friends, who is an extremely active Caodaist (a local Vietnamese syncretic religion dating from the beginning of the twentieth century stemming from French spiritualism but containing dollops of pretty much every religion around).

He said to me once, at some point you just have to decide whether to believe or not to believe, I have decided to believe and you have decided to not believe.

I see this as a cop-out.  He was raised in this religious system and indoctrinated with it as a child, and so all his instincts cause him to want to believe, and when he believes he is rewarded with feelings of peace and joy and when he doubts he is punished by feelings of guilt and fear and hopelessness.  Our instincts work that way to get us to do what natural selection has wired into us to do, and natural selection has wired us to follow the norms and beliefs of our culture.  In a more primitive environment this is important in the survival of the group.

I think it takes a pretty strong will to override these emotions for intellectual reasons (intellectual honesty and rigor), and not too many people have what it takes, and even those who do usually are burdened most of their lives with residual emotional battles that end up with the person hating the religion of their culture.

Now I see examples of people willing to commit atrocities in the name of their beliefs, and die for them (the notion that a loving God would never expect such a thing from its followers is not rational) and struggle with cognitive dissonances out the kazoo all their lives, just to get the "high" of joy and peace every now and then from succumbing to the instinct.  What a terrible trick evolution has played on us -- in many ways -- this belief trap is just one of them.

I just don't understand how it is society allows invasions of privacy such as telemarketing.  It must be a matter of commercial interests being put above the interests of the public.  I have a similar view of billboards -- no matter where they are they are an unavoidable and ugly intrusion, and sometimes they are outrageous in spoiling the view.  If we had choice in whether to see them or not it would be acceptable (such as a mute on the TV) but when they impose themselves they should not be allowed.

I just finished a book on the beginnings of WWI where the Austrians accused the Serbian government of being directly behind and plotting the assassination of Ferdinand and the Serbians accuse the Austrians of doing it themselves in order to have an excuse to invade Serbia.  Neither assertion was remotely likely, if even sane.

Then the French and Russians accuse the Austrians of plotting to conquer and absorb Serbia, using the assassination as an excuse to invade Serbia whereas the Austrians feel they have to do something and have every right to take actions to protect their southern border, but they just want to send a strong message to Serbia and have no intention of trying to occupy the country, but can't let them off scott free since Serbian behavior shows them delighted at the brutal murder.  They don't know what to do but then the Russians mobilize and Austria decides Russia is using Austria's actions as an excuse to invade and occupy Austria.

I could go on and on about how the British, French, Germans, Italians and of course the ever-suspicious Turks all decide they have to get in the first blow because obviously all their enemies are determined to have a war, so best have the war now rather than latter, even when historical study shows none of the wanted it and a few, including Kaiser Wilhelm, were terrified in private.

Conspiracy theories, in short, are mentally lazy and harmful and almost always, if not always, wrong.

It sometimes hits me that so many prefer ancient superstitions and religions to modern science, considering the track records of the two.

Capitalism might work reasonably well if everyone had the same income, since in such a world output would be distributed based on willingness to pay -- and those wanting and needing the most would have a priority.  As it is though the wealthy get most of everything and the poor often do completely without.

Therefore capitalist societies need income leveling mechanisms -- charities, graduated taxation, income redistribution schemes, and so on.  The problem is in democratic societies the vote is too often bought in various ways so that the wealthy over time dominate more and more.

In the "old days" (nineteenth century) Marxist thinkers thought this process must inevitably lead to a collapse and revolution.  I think what has saved capitalism has been that it can suffer mini-collapses with a partial reorganization, mitigated by technological progress, to stave off any day of reckoning.

I'm not unhappy, and in fact am quite happy, with the "Communist" (actually socialist -- Communism is seen as a remote goal -- perhaps in the indefinite future not unlike Christ's Second Coming) system in Vietnam.  At first things went badly because the authorities took their Mao too seriously, but when instead they tried a more Leninist, less Stalinist and certainly freer approach, readily allowing if not encouraging foreign investment and private small enterprises, the economy and everyone's standard of living have done wonderfully.  That does not mean socialism as the underlying foundation of the economy has been abandoned.

I think Vietnam thereby avoids a lot of the problems of capitalism and yet gains the incentives and competitive pressure (even the state enterprises almost always are set up either to compete with each other as well as with private and semi-private ventures).  The system isn't perfect (in particular the corruption that state enterprise seems to sometimes encourage) but these are specific offenses that jails are built for, and the legal and monopolistic practices of free enterprises can be dealt with quickly on a case by case basis without all the lawyers -- private enterprise is by sufferance rather than a legal right.

The key in my opinion is flexibility and avoidance of rigid ideological notions -- whatever works on a case by case basis, but not allowed to happen as it happens (unrestricted market forces) but through constant study by planners and academics.

Yes, we cherish memories.  That has an acutely bittersweet aspect to it though.  I also have the benefit of having shrines to my parents where I can sit and talk to them and even do the "worship" rituals (leave flowers and other things, light joss sticks).  The culture here expects that so it is no problem, unlike in the States where one has to go to the tomb and even there is limited by considerations of face as to what one does.  I don't know if they are aware of this, but it is possible and that is helpful.

One is not happy because the world goes as we want it to go.  The world is perverse, sometimes doing what we want but more often in the end not.  One is happy when one decides to be happy, sometimes with a little professional guidance or teaching about how to do it and sometimes with a little chemical help, under medical guidance.  Some people show themselves resilient and happy in the worst conceivable conditions, so although external events have some immediate impact, it is what we are or teach ourselves to be that matters in the end.

I would say that according to some definitions, "religion" has pretty much disappeared (effectively) for more than half the world today.  Europeans take their religion lightly and most ignore the traditions, and more and more Americans (both North and South) are coming to be similar.

In much of the rest of the world the religion listed in the reference books is not really a religion, for one reason or another.  For example in much of Africa, including the Muslim and Christian parts, it is more magic than religion -- ways to get God to do what you want.  This happens in animism and Hinduism and many flavors of Buddhism and other Chinese religions, where you don't have "God," but "Heaven."  I dunno -- is it okay to call belief in spirits inhabiting a local forest glen and giving these spirits a greeting when you come into it a real "religion?"

We have instincts that lead to expression via religion, such as our submission/dominance instincts, our altruistic instincts, our ability to love and to experience awe and of course our instinct to try to survive, leading to beliefs trying to avoid the reality of death, but none of these can be said to be explicitly a religion instinct.  They are just instincts that sometimes find religious ways to come out.

One might say that there are two kinds of atheist -- those who believe there is no God and those who don't believe in God.  I suppose the first could be said to have "atheism" as a sort of religious opinion, but those who are just not convinced there is a God have it as simply an opinion based mainly on lack of good reason to think there is one.  Detailed looks at history and at physics and astronomy and the evolution of life is sufficient to show that the heavens most certainly do not declare the glory of God.

It entertains (and irritates me) no end that theists persist in insisting atheism is a religion.  If they would get over that they would be more persuasive but as it is it just convinces me they are not thinking at all clearly.  I suppose what is going on is they want to see it as some sort of choice we make in religions, but that is not the case at all -- our beliefs are either rational or based on indoctrination from childhood, and some overcome the indoctrination and some don't.

I noticed the comment above that belief in God in many cases is based on fear of death -- either for ourselves or our loved ones.  This is powerful, and I can see where it would create a strong desire to believe, even in spite of there being little evidence.

Everyone keeps telling me I don't look my age.  I use to think it was because I'm fat and so don't show wrinkles as much and I still have my hair.  Trouble is I know my age, and now that I've gone gray and they still say it I think I am being fibbed to.  (A fib is not a lie -- lies are malicious but fibs are not).

That reminds me.  I don't believe in ethics by the rule book -- the "Thou shalt not lie" stuff.  There are times when lying through your teeth is the only honorable and ethical thing to do, if it protects someone from harm.  It is usually not hard to tell when a lie is called for and when it is wrong -- is the lie selfish or not, and does it harm someone else.  Lots of lies are neutral -- they may be a little selfish but do no one else any harm. 

This is not ethical relativity or situational ethics.  If something is wrong it is wrong -- no situational or relativity about it -- but determining right and wrong requires thought and reasoning, not just the blind application of rules.

Sin is an invention of priests who need to have a lever to control us, to get us feeling guilty and fearful, and to get us feeling forgiven with their rituals.  That a god's death could provide forgiveness for sins is illogical and in fact rather dumb.

Suffering is the evil of the world, not people's bad behavior, and to the extent what we do causes suffering there is no cosmic forgiveness and only what forgiveness we can give ourselves or others give us.  One should undo the harm as much as possible and learn what lessons one can and then get on with life -- accepting whatever consequences may follow form what we do.

It can be helpful to distinguish between opinions and beliefs.  Opinions are things we learn intellectually and hold tentatively, although sometimes we are so sure they are true as to be willing to wager on them 

Beliefs, on the other hand, are things we "know" are true but never actually learned, at least in our memory.  They are obtained by being indoctrinated -- usually as children before our skeptical abilities are mature.  We are not really consciously aware of their presence -- we just assume they are true much as we assume the sofa is "there" when we sit on it without looking.

When an opinion is questioned, we ask for the evidence: when a belief is questioned we think the questioner must be nuts or perverted or lacking in some way, to question something so fundamental.

We have a strong desire (it is almost certainly an instinct evolved for group cohesion in primitive situations) to believe what the community believes and what we grew up believing.  This is powerful.  During the "rebellious" phase of young adulthood, when we are establishing our independence, aspects of the cultural environment may bring these beliefs into doubt, and even lead to their being abandoned, but not without a lot of turmoil and angst and fear and guilt.  As often as not after a few years of this sort of emotional pain the person decides "enough" and goes back to believing.  The instinct then rewards the person for doing this with joy and peace (testimonials in religious meetings show what is going on pretty well).

After this the believer is pretty much locked in and will never allow doubts again, no matter how irrational the actual belief may be shown to be.