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I don’t have any religion, and never will but if for some reason I would have to have one I guess I will be buddist, Buddishm is a doctrine, not a dogma, not a magic revelation provided from a supernatural being…

Just compare these two phrases:

“He who is not with Me is against Me”
-Jesus Christ

“When I speak to you, do not accept what I say in blind faith out of respect for me.
You must examine all that I say, think hard and long, and put it to the test,
just as a goldsmith examines gold by cutting and heating it to know whether it is genuine gold.
If you have doubts, test it out. If you find it is right, accept and follow it.
If you find that it is flawed then examine why and think it through.
Only when you know how it is flawed can you say so, and only when you know how it is right can you follow it.”
- The Buddha

The buddhism even has some kind scientific method applied. While the rests mean only intolerance.

Lets imagine that the mythical place called Heaven exists…
Now imagine that any of those religious fundamentalists had the truth (pick any religion)…
Now if they had the thruth the heaven will be populated only by the hardcore members of such religion…

Would you really like to go to that heaven?

Last night I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there was a phrase I found very interesting and very truth:

You’ll see little man, plenty of times you be alone. You different like us, it’s gonna be that way. But I tell you a little secret I find out. We know we alone. Fat people, skinny people, tall people, white people… they just as alone as us… but they scared shitless.

Ngunda Oti

Recent situations like the hijack of an airplane in Mexico city and the killed people in the Balderas subway station and remembering tragedies like the past on New York, Madrid and London, as well as many historic episodes like crusades, witch hunt, inquisition, many wars, etc… remind me a phrase I first heard in the the documentary The root of all evil? (the foundation of The God Delusion):

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate

The first time I read about the Golden Rule (ethic of resiprocity) was in a filosofy book back when I was maybe 8 years old.
I don’t remember the name of the big book, but this rule is one of my more clear memmories about it.

This rule appears on nearly every culture and religion. Althought there are ancient documents in many cultures like Egyptians, Greek, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, Islam, etc the most famous version in western cultures is the younger one, taken from the bible in words of Jesus Christ:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

In general is really a very good advise, that can lead to peace, but there are certain situations where it creates a conflict, specially when the taste of what we want is not the same taste of the other people wants.

The most famous of this cases is a masochistic: he likes to be treated with pain (for whatever reasons he may have), if he treats you the way he would like you to treat him, would you like it?

Let’s imagine a not so distant scene:
A Christian would like to be taught about gospels and Christianity if he were not converted, so if he finds a non-converted he would try to convert him… but what makes him think that such person wants to be converted… This specific example is historically proven to lead to war.

And there is were the so-called platinum rule comes to add a correction

The golden rule is a good standard which is further improved by doing unto others, wherever possible, as they want to be done by.

Do unto others as they would want done unto them

I like the Platinum Rule way much better.

I just found the lyrics of this song very interesting (and the show is fun too):

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait…
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!

“Since the dawn of man” is really not that long,
As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song.
A fraction of a second and the elements were made.
The bipeds stood up straight,
The dinosaurs all met their fate,
They tried to leap but they were late
And they all died (they froze their asses off)
The oceans and pangea
See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya
Set in motion by the same big bang!

It all started with the big BANG!

It’s expanding ever outward but one day
It will cause the stars to go the other way,
Collapsing ever inward, we won’t be here, it wont be hurt
Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang!

Australopithecus would really have been sick of us
Debating out while here they’re catching deer (we’re catching viruses)
Religion or astronomy, Encarta, Deuteronomy
It all started with the big bang!

Music and mythology, Einstein and astrology
It all started with the big bang!
It all started with the big BANG!

The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered.

It’s very interesting to see how the placebo effect, not only in medicine, can affect the people’s worldview, when they see or feel the improvements -not only in health- produced by themselves but as a result of using a placebo (that of course they belive is real).

For example, let’s say that some guy says that rubbing hands against a tree heals some disease, then some naive ill persons com to rub their hands to that tree, let’s say that first person does not feels an improvement, he simply thinks, it didn’t work. But the second person feels some improvements (that can also be explained by statistics), then he thinks, Oohh, rubbing hands against that tree really works… then he starts to believe that such thing was the one and only cause of being healing….

Now, he spreads his story -being convinced about it- and everytime he has a disease, he goes into the rubbing thing…

The problems comes when their mind begins to believe that they need such thing to be good: they can become placebo addicts.

Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by any kind of organization: it is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from.

Dogmas can exist in any area, whenever the answer to why? is just because. That’s a dogma.

My way of life: Wonder everything, live without dogmas.

Worldview is a concept that refers to a wide world perception. It refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it.

Spanish: Cosmovisión.

German:Weltanschauung (the original term)

I have a small daughter so -many times- I watch TV shows for kids, there is one that I specially enjoy: Sid the Science Kid.

It’s about a kindergarten kid named Sid, who has that sane curiosity  that makes him qualify as an “inquisitive youngster”: he wants to know everything about everything.

Every chapter is a quest to solve a question that is itching his mind, questions like: why does water freezes? why is everything changing?  how to make a perfect pancake? etc. He finds the answer to the questions with the help of his friends, teacher and fathers, by using the scientific method in a way that a kindergarten kid would do it. Nice.

I saw a picture of myself in Sid, It has made me remember some moments back when I was a kid, and some even of today!

I think that curiosity, and trying to find the answers by doing research and using the scientific method -not only what others tell you- is the only path to find the truth, whatever it is.