For our last meeting of the term, we watched “A.J. Jacobs’ year of living biblically.” Jacobs is a writer for Esquire magazine, and enjoys living life as a series of experiments. One such experiment entailed him living his life according to the laws of The Bible as closely as possible. Watch the video for some entertaining anecdotes and a few lessons he learned along the way.

One key point was that everyone picks and chooses when it comes to religion — what he and many others call “cafeteria religion,” picking the good stuff and avoiding whatever turns your stomach. No matter how literally people think they take The Bible, they’re pretty much always filtering it somehow because a lot of it is just crazy in modern society.

Another of Jacobs’ takeaways was “Thou shalt not disregard the irrational” — a point that was difficult for him to admit at first as an agnostic with a scientific worldview. But he observed throughout his year that rituals, Biblical or not, give us a sense of meaning whether or not they make sense. He also came to appreciate the concept of sacredness — keeping the sabbath, having respect for rituals. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about since watching Letting Go of God; religion builds in time and space for reflection, which is something I miss. I love the art and architecture of churches, and wish there were comparable secular spaces. Sure, we have libraries and museums and whatnot…but it would be nice to have some place dedicated to nothing other than introspection and discussion and taking a break from the bustling world.

Well, that concludes our first full term of activity. Thanks to everyone who’s made it out, and if you haven’t, we hope to see you next term! If you have any ideas for events, let us know. Good luck on finals and have a great spring break!

In the spirit of Valentine’s, we watched this TED talk by Helen Fisher on the biochemical foundations of romantic love, which spurred a rousing discussion on love vs. lust, conditioning oneself to love, marriage, arranged marriage, monogamy’s biological and societal basis, and the similarity of love to cocaine.

Do freethinkers believe love is something beyond chemical reactions in the brain? Many of us were still on the fence—let us know how you feel in the comments.

Thanks if you came out to the meeting tonight. We had a pretty good turnout. At the meeting we watching Dan Dennett’s TED talk, highlighting Rick Warren’s previous TED talk, and his book Breaking the Spell. Dennett believes that everyone should be taught facts about the world’s religions, and everyone at the meeting seemed to agree that this is a laudable though logistically problematic goal. Watch his discussion, and let us know what you think.

If you missed our first meeting of the term, here’s the video we watched (just barely, thanks to all three Dragonfly networks sucking as usual). Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist discusses the crucial role of experimentation in science. Read on for some excerpts from our discussion, and an interesting follow-up video by physicist David Deutsch.

Discussion takeaways:

• This video dates itself a bit (2002), as Mullis’ closing comments related to global warming are a misinterpretation (see the comments on the video page). This in itself is a good reflection of the fact that even the brightest scientists with extensive observational evidence still may not draw the correct conclusions.
• Science is not always the noble pursuit of knowledge we are brought up to believe. It is not impervious to bias, not insulated from the real world of economic and political motivations. Even within academic circles, science is sometimes taught dogmatically, with much reverence for its methods and forefathers, with a sense of faith that some might describe as religious.
• There seems to be a higher barrier to entry to science today than in days of yore, as higher levels of math and theoretical understanding are required — there is so much that has been discovered, particularly explaining the things that we can see and deal with day-to-day, that science has largely moved into the realm of the unseen.
• Scientists are also generally a fairly elite bunch by nature. The language alone separates them and their findings from the average person. Specialized language is necessary to communicate scientific concepts, so how can we “dumb it down” to accurately enlighten the masses? The media and the internet have helped spread and even democratize information, but do we lose necessary nuance and context? Is it too easy for us to filter and zone in on only sources that agree with our preconceptions?

Apologies if I missed anyone’s insightful points here (or injected my own biases Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments! And here’s the video I mentioned about observation not necessarily being enough grounds for a good theory.