What Is Your Worldview? Flowchart

On StumbleUpon the other day I came across what i found to be a remarkable flowchart about not so much religion, belief, or faith, but as the creator called it, "worldview." For a closer view, click this link.

A New Ten Commandments

I've never been what you'd call religious, but if I had to define myself spiritually, I would say that I believe in being a good human being. While that might sound both cliche and broad, I found a great resource that serves as my ten commandments. They focus around good morals and human responsibility. Tell me what you think!

TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR A GLOBAL HUMANISM

1- Proclaim the natural dignity and inherent worth of all human beings.

2- Respect the life and property of others.

3- Practice tolerance and open-mindedness towards the choices and life styles of others.

4- Share with those who are less fortunate and mutually assist those who are in need of help.

5- Use neither lies, nor spiritual doctrine, nor temporal power to dominate and exploit others.

6- Rely on reason, logic and science to understand the Universe and to solve life's problems.

7- Conserve and improve the Earth's natural environment—land, soil, water, air and space—as humankind's common heritage.

8- Resolve differences and conflicts cooperatively without resorting to violence or to wars.

9- Organize public affairs according to individual freedom and responsibility, through political and economic democracy.

10- Develop one's intelligence and talents through education and effort.

Desiderata

This wonderful poem was sent to me by a friend. It has some sound advice. Enjoy. (Thank you to this site for supplying the poem.)

-- written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s --
Not "Found in Old St. Paul's Church"! -- see below

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. 

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism. 

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here. 

And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul. 

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Happy New Year 2011

Thank you to nyt.com for this photo.

Artist Harwinder Singh Gill displays a special new year message he carved into the tips of coloured pencils in Amritsar, India

Quote to Live By #2

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, 

with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. 

Hal Borland

Exploring Thought: Buddhism

A great amount of my personal exploration of the world has been exploring Buddhism.  As I began to doubt, I felt more pulled towards Buddhism. This post is not supposed to be an overview of Buddhism but acts like a scrapbook of sorts of concepts that I like.
One of the foundations of Buddhist thought comes with the Eightfold Path, which lists eight practices. You'll see that each beings with the word "right," which is the closest translation from the original Sanskrit. In actuality, the word denotes a completion, an idealness, and a perfection.

A humorous kitteh enjoys his Buddhist lifestyle.

1. Right view
2. Right intention
3. Right speech
4. Right action
5. Right livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right concentration

[Please pardon the formatting for the rest of the post; there is a glitch in it somewhere.] I won't go into detail of each aspect, but I'll describe an example. Let's use Right Intention. "Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement." Read more here. 
The nature of these practices is to have a good moral code, which is often a basis for different religions. I like how Buddhism is so often broken down into lists; this one gives an overarching set of not laws so much as how we should look at the world and go about our lives.  
The reason I don't consider myself a Buddhist is because I can't wrap my head around yet another Buddhist list: the Four Noble Truths.
1. Life is full of suffering.
2. The cause of suffering is attachment to materials, people, and ideas.
3. Suffering can end when we detach ourselves and reach the peace that is Nirvana.
4. We must follow the Eightfold Path.

They basically state that life is full of suffering and that the cause of suffering is that we  can't let go of so many things: the people we love, the ideas and perceptions about the world, our material goods. Because of this, Buddhism seems to denounce having close relationships with people in order to reduce suffering, not because love isn't a good thing but because we will eventually suffer when we lose that person or when that person loses us. We have to let go of these things and reach an inner peace called Nirvana, and we can begin that process by following the Eightfold Path.  I can't grasp this whole idea of detachment. I would so much rather give my entire being in love to others and suffer over detaching myself and avoiding suffering. "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," right? Read more here. 
But there are so many other interesting aspects in Buddhist thought that I love.
For example, this list is called The Four Immeasurables:
The four immeasurables
May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. 
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. 
May all beings rejoice in the well-being of others. 
May all beings live in peace, free from greed and hatred.
Each of the four verses corresponds to a mental state: loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and peace (or equanimity).
Kalama Sutta
The people of Kalama asked the Buddha who to believe out of all the ascetics, sages, venerables, and holy ones who, like himself, passed through their town. They complained that they were confused by the many contradictions they discovered in what they heard. The Kalama Sutta is the Buddha's reply.

–	Do not believe anything on mere hearsay.
–	Do not believe in traditions merely because they are old and have been handed down for many generations and in many places.
–	Do not believe anything on account of rumors or because people talk a a great deal about it.
–	Do not believe anything because you are shown the written testimony of some ancient sage.
–	Do not believe in what you have fancied, thinking that, because it is extraordinary, it must have been inspired by a god or other wonderful being.
–	Do not believe anything merely because presumption is in its favor, or because the custom of many years inclines you to take it as true.
–	Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and priests.
–	But, whatever, after thorough investigation and reflection, you find to agree with reason and experience, as conducive to the good and benefit of one and all and of the world at large, accept only that as true, and shape your life in accordance with it.

The same text, said the Buddha, must be applied to his own teachings.

–	Do not accept any doctrine from reverence, but first try it as gold is tried by fire.

This is basically the Buddhists' way of saying, "do not accept something just because it is taught." Challenge your teacher's ideas. Develop your own (seems like a contradiction with being free from suffering, but that's not the point).
And what about the Seven Blunders of the World? It's basically a seven-fold parenting guide. Teach this to your kids.
Seven Blunders of the World
  
1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle
from this site. 
One Buddhist master put pretty much everything else simply:
The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.
From this site.

The Beginning of...well, Everything

I first have to establish a disclaimer. I don't know what I am religiously. I don't even know if I like the concept of religion. In any case, I go by the rule that 

"I respect faith, but it's doubt that gets you an education." (Wilson Mizner) 

But I think we can agree that we all wonder about where all of this came from and why we're here. This is a topic that StumbleUpon has found that I'm fascinated in. It likes to show me things like this:

which it so interesting. As I've observed religion over the last few years, I've found that a lot of the purpose of it is to create explanations. Why are we here? What is our purpose? What should our moral code be? Humans take on this very self-centered perception when it comes how we got here. But I side with science when it comes to "the beginning."

Below is an argument between a theist (T) and an atheist (A) with much thanks from this site.

T: Where did the universe come from?
A: Why did it have to come from anything?
T: Everything has to come from something.
A: Then, you tell me. Where did the universe came from?
T: The universe came from God.
A: Where did God come from?
T: God did not have to come from anything. He always was.
A: Then everything does not have to come from something after all. Perhaps the universe always was.

T: Philosopher William Lane Craig has argued that the universe had a beginning, therefore it must have had a cause. That cause is God.
A: Quantum events can happen without cause. Perhaps our universe was a quantum event in a larger universe that always was.
T: You have no evidence for this.
A: You have no evidence against it. Current physics and cosmology allow for such a scenario.

T: How could this happen? Where did the matter and energy of the universe come from?
A: Matter was created from energy in the early universe. Observations indicate that the positive energy of matter is exactly balanced by negative gravitational potential energy. Thus, the total energy of the universe is zero and no energy (or very little--just the amount allowed by quantum mechanics) was required to produce the universe.

T: Where did the order of the universe come from?
A: It could have been produced spontaneously by natural processes of a type that are now beginning to be understood in physics. One such process is called "spontaneous symmetry breaking." It's like the formation of a snowflake.

T: Still, the second law of thermodynamics says that disorder, or entropy, must increase with time. It must have started out more orderly than it is now, as created by God.
A: An expanding universe allows increasing room for order to form. The universe could have started as a tiny black hole with maximum entropy, produced by a quantum fluctuation, and then exploded in the big bang.
T: You can't prove that. No one was there to see it.
A: You can't disprove it. Such a scenario is allowed by current scientific knowledge.

T: Many prominent scientists don't think the big bang happened. What does that do to your scenario?
A: The data from cosmological observations, which has improved enormously in just the last few years, has left no doubt among current working cosmologists that the big bang happened. The remaining holdouts are a few older astronomers who are gradually dying out. They are like some nineteenth century chemists and physicists who refused to accept the atomic theory to their dying days. Furthermore, the big bang is used by theists such as Craig and Hugh Ross to support their theologies. It does not, but I caution atheists not to argue against theism by saying the big bang did not occur. It very definitely did.

T: But isn't the universe fine tuned for life? Isn't it true that the slightest change of any one of a number of physics constants would make life impossible? Is this not evidence for a universe intelligently designed for life?
A: The universe is not fine tuned for life. Life is fine tuned for the universe. If we had a universe with different constants, we might have a different kind of life.
T : Doesn't life require carbon, which would not exist without a delicate balance of nuclear parameters?
A: Our kind of life, yes. We do not know about other kinds of life.
T: You can't prove that life is possible without carbon.
A: I do not have the burden of proof here. You are making the claim that only one kind of life is possible, carbon-based life. You have to prove that. I am simply saying that we do not know and so cannot say the universe is designed for life as we know it. It could have been an accident. Nothing in current science says that is impossible,

T: So, even if everything that happens is natural, as you claim, where did the laws of nature come from?
A: The laws of nature are misnamed. They are not necessarily rules that govern the universe, that sit out there in some kind of Platonic reality. They could just as well simply be human inventions, descriptions we have made of observations.
T: Then they are subjective. We can all make our own laws.
A: Not quite. We can make up different laws if we want, but they are not scientific unless they agree with observations. The laws of physics can be written in many different ways, but they agree so well with the data that we are confident they describe aspects of reality.
T: Well, then where did those aspects of reality come from, if not from God?
A: Why did they have to come from anything? But, that's how we started this discussion.

T: Still, you have to explain why there is something rather than nothing.
A: Define nothing.
T: Nothing. No thing. No matter, no energy, no space, no time, no laws of physics.
A: No God?
T: God is a separate entity who created matter, energy, space, time and the laws of physics from nothing.
A: I won't ask you again who created God. Rather, why was it necessary for the universe to have come from nothing?
T: It had to come from something.
A: But you just said it came from nothing!

Fascinating, right? I especially am interested in the concept that our lives are fine-tuned to the universe, not the other way around. This dawned on me after reading a DearBlankPleaseBlank about global warming which went something like this: 


Dear humans facing global warming,
      I'll be fine. You guys are screwed, though.
                 Love, the earth.


It's true. The earth happens to be at the right parameters for life right now. We're the ones throwing it out of balance, and if that continues, we won't be able to live anymore. But though I am quite the eco chick who runs around saying "save the Earth!", I realize that that's kind of a self-centered way to put it. We're not saving the earth. We're saving the way that Earth is now for the sake of our being able to live. Of course we're also trying to protect other life and the like, but the Earth could live without us. Heck, it might be better off without us. 


From the beginning of the world to global warming...that's what Paradigm Carnival is about.