"How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer

The most interesting idea that I took away from the book "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer is that when patients suffered head injuries that affected their brains, causing them to lose their emotional faculties but retaining their reasoning ones, these patients end up being unable to make any decision, no matter how trivial the subject.

Without emotional faculties, the patients ended up rationalising everything they are doing. They could not make up their minds on what clothes to wear, what food to buy etc, as their brains constantly seek to evaluate all conceivable choices that could be made, no matter how irrelevant many of the choices would have been. Apparently, humans use their emotional faculties to discard choices. After we have discarded all other alternatives leaving our sole choice, our brains will then use these same emotional faculties to "rationalise" the choice we kept, regardless of how good or bad the choice actually was. Without emotions, the human brain cannot discard even the most remotest of choices, so the person becomes embroiled in a state of "analysis-paralysis".

This was very fascinating because I was not aware of the great impact our emotions had on our rationality. Most of us probably think that the less emotional person will make the more rational decision. Apparently, this is not really the case. In fact, people with strong emotions tend to be more rational in their decision making. It is just that these more rational people tend to also have better control of their emotions. When faced with a crisis, they can usually see both sides of a subjective situation, and maintain great discipline to not yield to the first instinctive emotional response.

Sam Harris - Reconciling science and Christianity

In an exchange between Sam Harris and Philip Ball (both are atheists by the way) about whether scientists should patronise religionists, and acknowledge religion as a worldview that is as robustly supported as that of the scientific one, Harris made a very humorous description of Christianity that I just have to repeat here:

For instance, a reconciliation between science and Christianity (the explicit goal of The BioLogos Foundation) would mean squaring physics, chemistry, biology, and a basic understanding of probabilistic reasoning with a raft of patently ridiculous, Iron Age convictions.

In its most generic and well-subscribed form, Christianity amounts to the following claims:

Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and sceptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will (probably) be consigned to a fiery hell for all eternity.

http://www.reasonproject.org/archive/item/what_should_science_dosam_harris_v_philip_ball/

Great quote, Sam!

Introduction to Christianity

A very funny Dave Allen sketch about his introduction to the church:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpVjBBDMOoA

It is absurd that Christians always proclaim themselves to be morally superior to atheists just because atheists do not subscribe to the superstitious beliefs of Christianity. Christians go around proselytising to all and sundry, claiming that the godless and the non-Christians among us need help to be saved from eternal damnation. To respond to these Christian soldiers, nothing beats this quip from Dan Barker, an evangelical preacher who ultimately became an atheist:

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?

- Dan Barker (from Losing Faith in Faith)

Blogging The Bible

It took me several days to finish David Plotz's very funny blog, "The Complete Blogging The Bible":

http://www.slate.com/id/2150150

Plotz's posts summarises the stories from the Jewish Bible (i.e. the Old Testament of the Christian Bible) for modern readers. By reading his posts, you get a pretty good précis of many of the bible's stories without having to trudge through them yourselves. The bible stories are written in an archaic and tedious style that most modern readers do not have the patience with. That is the reason why many so-called Christians do not actually read the bible themselves, but are contend with what their preachers tell them every Sunday during church service - if they attend church service. But this is a problem. The preachers only tell the "good" parts of the bible to their congregation, and never the "bad' parts. It is when people start reading the bible stories for themselves that they realised that they've been hoodwinked. The merciful and benevolent god that answers all their prayers is actually nowhere to be found in many parts of the bible. Instead, one often finds an angry, jealous, vindictive god that is so cruel that you might as well believe and pray to satan, if they both exist.

I was previously uninterested in the goings-on of the religious. My philosophy of life is that if you want to believe and pray to your god, it is fine with me as long as you don't force me to believe and pray to your god too. However, 9/11 change all that. Suddenly, I saw that religion KILLS. And it is not with Islam. A more serious reading of history, such as the Christian Crusades, the Burning of Witches, the persecution of Galileo shows that Christianity was just as bad as Islam, except that the barbarism of Christianity has been tempered with the benevolence of the Enlightenment. It takes knowledge and reason in science to clear the superstition and ignorance of religion.

But the bible is a very interesting book of history and literature. It is important for both religious and non-religious folks to read it, especially in light of modern day fundamentalist Christians who seek to overturn the fruits that the Enlightenment has brought to society, and who want to bring society back to a barbaric world where rules of morality are determined in books written by misogynistic and ignorant shepherd folks from 2500 years ago. It is important that Christians read the bible in its entirety, so that they know exactly why non-Christians do not like the morals written in that holy book. It is important that non-Christians read the bible, so that they will know why it is so important that we cannot allow our society to be ruled by religious fanatics who seem to believe in fairy tales like talking snakes and virgin births.

David Plotz's series reminded me of Isaac Asimov's "Guide to the Bible" which I have also read recently. However, Asimov's tome covered both the Old and New Testaments, whereas Plotz's blog posts only covers the Old Testament (the Jewish bible). Also, Asimov covers the bible from a historical context, whereas Plotz's posts are like Cliff Notes summaries. Most people would prefer Plotz's treatment, and to his new book, the "Good Book", which is a fun and light treatment on the same subject which he compiled from the material he garnered while doing "The Complete Blogging The Bible" posts.

In the promotion of his new book, Plotz made the following blog entry, "What I learned from reading the entire bible", which is also an interesting read:

http://www.slate.com/id/2212616/pagenum/all

If you find this post interesting, you should at least glance through "The Complete Blogging The Bible". Many of the entries are informative, and very very funny.

Waraku Restaurant - Update

Desmond has forwarded the Waraku bill. I have snapped it below for posterity (notice the spelling error of the word "Dining" on the bill) :-)

So what we had were:

Annie : Dream Ramen

Desmond : Gindara Yaki (broiled black cod fish), Rice, and Mango Short Cake

Freddy : Tempura Yamakake (tempura with grated potato)

Kar Yen : Kaisen Nabe (seafood and vegetables in claypot) and Green Tea Tiramisu Short Cake

Myself : Mix Fry Wazen

The Hot Ocha is the Japanese Green Tea which we all had.

As I had mentioned in my earlier post, you can view these food items from the Waraku menu online:

http://www.waraku.com.sg/docs/menu/casual/lnk/index.html

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Corrections :

Desmond has indicated that his IT Security course is held at Nanyang Polytechnic, and not at Nanyang University.