Linkworthy Notes

Fairly random assortment.

Altruism: Real or Imagined? I have to admit that I went through an "Everyone's Fundamentally Selfish" phase. I got over it when it occurred to me that I wasn't fundamentally selfish. That is, I was less likely to do something if the only person it benefitted was myself.

Yes, yes! We have to think for ourselves! "This is probably the biggest hurtle that religious tolerance faces; the mentality that allows for questioning of other faiths, but not of one’s own. It is so much easier to question the beliefs of another person than to question your own." Dead right.

How NOT to win the abortion debate. Btw, if you really want to stop abortion, make birth control methods easily available and educate people about how to use them. If you're pro-life and not willing to take that step, then, as far as I'm concerned, you are a misogynist bigot who wants to enslave half of the human race. Period.

Literally? Really? Talk about the cherry-picking required even to pretend to take this stuff literally...

Christian Culture? Good article about some of the difficulties of being a non-Christian in a strongly Christian culture. The attitudes that I have observed are that self-professed Christians are all right, the other Abrahamic traditions are vageuly respected, the Buddhists get either puzzlement or outright laughter, and everyone else is seen as a pariah or a nonentity. Atheists aren't citizens; witchcraft isn't a religion; etc, etc, etc, etc.

Odd Link for me, Isn't it? But I like the sentiment, even if I would translate it a bit differently. My version is camouflaged. Highlight if you'd like to read it. "The Enlightened Life is the ordinary human life, made fully aware of all its ordinariness, and lived out in the mind of that-which-is."