This is part two of a series. Part one is here. Part three is here. Part four is here. Part five is here. Last post, I talked about the great benefits that have come from religion, but also about how many of the great religions’ cosmological claims have been proven false. In this post, I’ll talk about the problem with adopting a literal approach to religions’ claims. Much of what our ancestors believed about cosmology is plainly contradicted by what…
This is part one of a series. Part two is here. Part three is here. Part four is here. Part five is here. Over the tens of thousands of years of human existence, human cultures have developed much knowledge about creating and maintaining good relationships and building communities. In the development of human society over the last 100,000 years, humans moved from simple hunter-gatherer tribes to societies of increasing complexity and size. The large and complex societies of the last…
A friend of mine shared the following video on Facebook, as if it were by itself a damning attack on religious belief: I think that the research summarized in the video is fascinating, but the video’s creator commits a huge logical fallacy that really undermines its conclusion. The psychology experiments described in the video explain quite well about group dynamics and how we form opinions, but they tell us nothing about how we should react to the majority opinion of…
The following is from the book Revelations by Jacques Vallee. The book, which was published in 1992, is about UFOs (it debunks many of the strange conspiracy theories held by UFO enthusiasts and discusses some of the more notable UFO hoaxes). In one section, Vallee discusses the Ummo UFO phenomenon in Europe, which lasted for decades and involved people all over Europe and elsewhere receiving letters from unknown authors claiming to be aliens from the planet Ummo.1 To illustrate how…
Note: This is part 5 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats). Conclusion Recent history has led to radical changes in how we…
Note: This is part 4 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats). 6) Feelings Feelings are also important parts of knowing truth and in…
Note: This is part 3 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 4, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats). This is this post in this series on truth, we continue…
Note: This is part 2 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 3, part 4, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats). In this second part of the series on truth, we discuss…
Note: This is part 1 of a five part series on how we can discover truth. Here are the other parts: part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5. The entire series makes up the third chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats). Our desire for truth is one of the most fundamental human…