Heavens on Earth with skeptical Dr. Michael Shermer

Dr. Michael Shermer’s new book Heavens on Earth:

Amazon Canada

I recently sat down with Dr. Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic Magazine, Scientific American columnist, and author of the new book Heavens on Earth. We talked about Deepak Chopra; the place of consciousness in the world; the neuroscience, evolutionary biology and metaphysics of Heaven and Hell; the pros and cons of ideas about the afterlife; the idea of “up” as the moral aim and the potential basis for that metaphor in the reality of the social hierarchy; the Kingdom of God as a psychological reality; the reality of transcendent experience; psychedelic experience; the definition of truth; Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity; trans-humanism, the singularity, life extension and the prolongation of youth; the danger of losing our humanity in technological revolution; the malleability of identity; bodily and spiritual resurrection; the nature of the persistent and transforming self; Michael’s personal transformation from areligious to evangelical to skeptic; Sam Harris; the division of the damned from the saved (or the wheat from the chaff); Ayn Rand; Jocko Willink and the utility of striving; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; the truth of fiction; postmodernism and interpretation; dragons, archetypes and intrinsic brain structure; Martin Gardner; responsibility; social ethics; the nature of belief; the collapse of free will into determinism as the future shades into the present; moral accountability and the law; the aim of his new book (Heavens on Earth); a meaningful life and working to make the world a better place… and that’s about that.

- Chapters -

(0:00) Intro, Shermer’s previous writings

(2:44) Dr. Deepak Chopra, clashing ideas

(6:32) The ontological primacy of consciousness

(9:08) The Weak and Strong Consciousness Principles, Anthropic Consciousness

(9:46) Donald Hoffman, Interface Perception Theory

(11:05) Natural selection and iconic reality

(12:09) Can we remove ourselves from ourselves?

(12:47) Low resolution representation

(14:34) Metaphors, capturing hard concepts with already understood terms

(15:18) We don’t live at the quantum level

(16:39) Ivey’s Error, Brooklyn is not expanding

(17:12) Spacial and temporal reference points

(19:20) The Odyssey Problem, the afterlife for Atheists

(21:17) The belief in heaven, and heaven as an aim

(23:10) The Moral Arc, incremental improvements

(24:14) The kingdom is within

(25:04) When the psychological expands to the social realm

(27:13) Transcendental experiences and psilocybin

(27:58) Near death experiences, false presumption of truth

(30:00) Fundamental reality, intimations of altered realities

(31:35) The focus on thereafter, comparative afterlives

(32:58) Dangers of conceptualization

(34:04) Shermer’s message to the cryonics and trans-humanists

(34:57) Transcendent Man, obsession over immortality

(35:46) To stave off age, or to live life well

(37:45) If we were to adjust to immortality, are “we” still human?

(38:45) The resurrection of the body and the realness of our identity

(41:00) If you were uploaded to a computer… is that upload you or a copy?

(44:00) Discounting hormonal importance and impact

(45:43) From christianity to skepticism

(50:51) A good skeptic is a pursuant of truth, not a debunker of belief

(52:09) A good goal: making the world a more rational place

(52:50) Ayn Rand, why tens of millions love her books

(54:24) Good literature shows conflict within, versus between

(56:32) Dragons are meta-predators, an amalgam of predatory forces

(59:41) Personal truths and what we cannot argue

(1:02:30) Action versus speech

(1:03:54) At the end of your philosophical argument, ask yourself: what is the point of the point you are making?

(1:04:41) Free will and the necessary assumption that it exists

(1:07:18) Ballistic movement, a visual example of a deterministic world

(1:08:50) How the law has evolved around these concepts

(1:09:50) What Shermer hopes to accomplish with his book “Heavens on Earth”

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