INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 700 Amsterdam, February 6th, 2018 108 BILLION: LIVING THE PINKERIAN THESIS - How to better contextualize life in the here and now - DAVID CHRISTOPHER LANE AND ANDREA DIEM-LANE Steven Pinker, the distinguished and widely known Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, caused an uproar in academic circles back in 2011 when he argued in his large tome (832 pages), The Better Angels of Our Nature, that the world is significantly less violent than at anytime in our history. While Pinker's thesis has received accolades from such luminaries as Peter Singer, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, and James Q. Wilson, it has also garnered its fair share of criticism, particularly from the anthropologist R. Brian Ferguson and the psychologist, Robert Epstein, who have questioned parts of his data and methodology. Pinker has now come out with a sequel entitled, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (Viking Press), which though not officially released until late February (2018) has garnered much attention and some off-the-chart reviews, with the cofounder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, calling it his “favorite book of all-time.” Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/lane135.html THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION - Do We Survive Death? - GARY STOGSDILL The perennial appeal of most religions and spiritual systems is due, in no small part, to the assurance that we do in fact survive death and that our experience may be better after death. For example, Ken Wilber writes on the Integral Life website: There is a timeless nature about the soul that becomes perfectly obvious and unmistakable: one actually begins to “taste” the immortality of the soul, to intuit that the soul is to some extent above time, above history, above life and death. In this way one becomes gradually convinced that the soul does not die with the body or the mind, that the soul has existed before and will exist again.[1] Some scientists, on the other hand, try to persuade us that death is the end and that the physical reality we perceive is all there is. I recall viewing a documentary years ago where the Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg assured us of just that and then bravely added that we need to endure the tragedy of this fact. I respect Weinberg's courage, but I think it's a misuse of science to pass judgment on matters that are outside the domain of science, which is how I view the subject of an afterlife. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/stogsdill6.html