The “rational” decision : the next step in faith practice (for someone who has a utilitaristic view towards faith)

A wonderfull presentation Robert Bellah : Is There a Common American Culture?

The Shoes of the Fisherman

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2 documentaries made by Richard Dawkins and Jeremy Taylor

The Blind Watchmaker : A plausible response to the classical teleological argument made by the ID supporters. The classical teleological argument runs like this :

“How could nature alone develop very specialised and complicated devices, without the intervention of an inteligent designer?”

Richard Dawkins has a book with the same title.

Nice guys finish first :  A good explanation/defense of the selfish gene explanation paradigm in evolutionary biology. The main aim of this is to show that (aparent) cooperative behaviour – which we usually call altruistic – can be reduced to gene level individualism. The gene survival paradigm (in evolutionary biology) denies the truth of the group survival paradigm.

See Richard Dawkins – “The Selfish Gene” for a more detailed picture of this.

China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate

Chinese government imposed a law that obliges any new Dalai Lama’s to be government recognised. At first this looks hilarious because it’s like you would impose a government regulation over miracles or revelations. But, in the end it’s nothing more than another mechanism by which the Chinese government regulates any aspect of chinese people lifes.

And (it seems) they have very litle choice for opposition. Maybe China is a good place to do business, but certainly it’s a bad place to live.