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.

When "it comes down to it," one would like one's philosophy to be true.  I don't think, then, that one can really say one chooses one's philosophy.  Rather one looks for the truth and then is obliged to go with whatever one finds, whether one likes it or not.

I often get, when describing some teaching or another, an "I don't like that."  My unspoken thought is, "So what? Whether you like it is not relevant, and thinking your likes and dislikes are at all to the point is just arrogance and foolishness."

There was a time in my life when I was impressed by my experiences of deja vu and worked with it to try to outline my most recent past life.  The results were indeterminate and nothing more than frustrating, to the extent that my initial conviction that I was onto something soured.  I don't know and I have to leave it at that, although I must admit I got quite a few clues nothing ever led to anything concrete.

I am pretty sure the center of memory is the physical brain, as we see it destroyed with brain-destroying diseases, and so we have to think the same thing happens when our brain decays at death.  To say we carry some sort of memory to another life, then, would require we posit a second, separate, center of memory that survives our death -- a bit much.  It is plain enough very few if any have access to such memories.

Still, the way our mind seems to be an ongoing process of some sort of unknown phenomena wave providing sentience and sensation and so on would suggest that it is independent of brain and would indeed persist, but at quite a loss when it is stripped of life's memories.  This is similar but not quite the same as traditional Buddhist thought, and quite the same if you take out the superstitious wishful thinking of those who want to turn rebirth into a means for personal immortality, which it ain't.

The younger sister of my life partner died yesterday after an extended battle against cancer after being in a coma for a few days.  She was a warm exciting person but being at a considerable distance from where she lived with her husband (their children were grown and married) I cannot say she was at all close to me.

I have now heard several stories of a clearly mystical or supernatural sort, but not identifiable with Christianity (as I would have expected since they were a strongly Christian family) but instead of a generic sort (temperature changes, restlessness, some sort of glow in a vision/dream, and so on -- the details don't interest me).

I certainly do not reject these reports, even though I'm normally of a skeptical frame of mind.  They are credible to me knowing the individuals and from the fact that it does not seem to be some pious effort to convert others to their beliefs.  Saying that someone has no reason to invent a story is of course not enough -- people invent stories all the time whether or not they have reason (and often the stories go beyond the telling so it is not possible to even question motives).  Thus there is no basis for using this as evidence or any sort of proof of anything.

Still, I really don't think they were fabricated nor imagined out of emotional responses.  It doesn't fit, but I would not rule such an interpretation out either.

The implication is some sort of after-life and efforts by the deceased, immediately after death, to send a signal.  That of course would be a lot to swallow too.  I think most people, including myself, have experienced "feelings" or something more tangible, on learning of someone's death.  I did with the death of my father.  Memories are unreliable and one is never sure whether the feelings preceded the arrival of the news, although that is my memory and that is what is said to be the case here.  Even if the feeling did precede the news, with the knowledge that the person is near death it doesn't mean much.

One need not believe in God or angels or spirits or anything in particular to nevertheless think that there is much more to the phenomenon of mind than electrochemical neurochemistry, especially given the mechanical interpretation usually applied to physical phenomena.  Consciousness and sentience and the experiential rather than mechanical way we exist, and of course things like the conviction most of us have that at least some of the time we are capable of will, leads to the thought that in some way or another something -- maybe not the person but something -- does persist.

Still, skepticism is essential: otherwise we end up with no end of nonsense, some of it dangerous nonsense.  I guess I have to just say not only do I not know but I can see no way of knowing.

What we appear to lose when our brains are damaged seems to have to do mainly with memory -- retrieving and storing them.  The personality seems to remain but of course cannot function well without the ability to remember things, or confusion and partial memories.  Eventually, when even short-term memory is lost,. even the personality seems to go, but it is hard to really make that assertion, and even then the elements of sentient existence -- experience of "qualia" -- the ability, for instance, to discern faces and colors and other sensations, to feel pain and hunger, and all the rest -- seems to remain.

This fits but of course does not imply the South Central Asian (Indian subcontinent) cultural idea of rebirth -- at death memories are lost but the personality goes on, not as a tangible thing but as a process.  The cultures of this area had no problem assigning sentience to animals, but not souls, which to the cultures involved was alien (the ideas are sometimes translated "souls," or "self," but this is a distortion.

Obama is exercising "executive power" much as the Jacobite kings exercised "royal prerogative."  Goes to show that it is impossible to clearly separate executive from legislative power, and as I see the dispute in the States on this issue, it might be that Congress is the one interfering with the president's power make executive decisions.  If the Supreme Court were not today such a political institution we might hope for a clear line that all would accept: I don't think now that is possible.  In the end this is just one more example of the developing constitutional crisis in the States resulting from its having such an obsolete basis of government.

I would add that traditionally amnesties have always been an executive prerogative.

Israel is a legally constituted sovereign nation under constant attack by those who openly declare their intention to eliminate it and if necessary to annihilate the population.  That Israel takes harsh and often preemptive measures against these things is understandable and perfectly moral and legal.  While sometimes its measures may in even my opinion be counterproductive and regrettable, they should not be second-guessed by arm-chair types sitting comfortably at home and not under regular bombardment and terrorist attack.   The propaganda that distorts this ongoing reality should be simply dismissed.  The Palestinians have had many chances for peace and will not accept them.  That is their decision and they have to live with the world they have created.

Sentience and qualia

An objective (scientific) look at the biological world tells us some animals are sentient, others less so to the extent that many animals function entirely by programmed response (reflex).

What is sentience?  Well it is an intervention between an incoming sense experience and its being acted upon via the animal "experiencing" the sensation via a "qualia" and emotional associations.  A phototropic organism moves toward a light source but does not "experience" light -- it just responds that way automatically.  A sentient organism experiences the light and, if it likes it, moves toward it ("likes" -- an emotion).

This is "the great mystery" of neurology -- whence the qualia of experience and the associated emotional qualia?  It is a far better arrangement for reactions than evolved reflexes, which tend to be automatic and hence take a long time to change and are basically inflexible (an ant given a certain pheromone does a certain thing, and other organisms can take advantage and for a while fool the ants).  An emotional reaction is more flexible and permits learning without genetic evolution.

Some work has identified the evolution of certain neurochemicals and their pathways (those associated with emotions such as pleasure for reinforcing a behavior and displeasure for discouraging it) as marking the appearance of sentience in the animal world -- something which, if true, would imply that the dinosaurs, mammals and birds (and probably the "mammal like reptiles" that preceded these) were sentient but that other reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates are not, although similar pathways evolved independently have been identified in some cephalopods.

In the end we are animals, and among many things that means we inherit a bundle of instincts evolved over the ages to enhance survival of our genes into the next generation.  This is not a moral force, nor is it immoral.  It just is what it is, and sometimes it leads to great deeds and sometimes not so great.

For the most part we are not conscious of this.  The instincts work mainly through our emotions -- desires and revulsions, likes and dislikes, wishes and fears, and so on.  Learning to identify them and then step outside them is I think a modern interpretation of the Buddha's insight.

What I don't get is why Satan, supposedly no slouch in the brains department, doesn't realize his goose is cooked and ask for forgiveness.  I wonder what God would do then.  It would kinda make a mess of His plans.

The only really negative thing I have to say about my cats is that they are blood thirsty vicious little things eager to tear to shreds anything smaller than they are.  Otherwise they are charming and affectionate and clean.

To my mind an infinity of "universes" is pretty much a foregone conclusion, based on the idea that if it happened once for us given the laws of probability it has happened over and over and over and over.

The anthropic principle is not to my mind as persuasive -- inference rather than deduction -- and of course any collision between our universe and another strikes me as mis-definition -- another universe would be in its own dimensions and have no way to influence us -- in other words we are better off to define anything we might react to or collide with as part of our universe.