The Nature of Reality: Sean Carroll 

vs Alan Wallace

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Robert Sapolsky on why we behave the way we do

"A common argument against free will is that human behavior is not freely chosen, but rather determined by a number of factors. So what are those factors, anyway? There’s no one better equipped to answer this question than Robert Sapolsky, a leading psychoneurobiologist who has studied human behavior from a variety of angles. In this conversation we follow the path Sapolsky sets out in his bestselling book Behave, where he examines the influences on our behavior from a variety of timescales, from the very short (signals from the amygdala) to the quite ancient (genetic factors tracing back tens of thousands of years and more). It’s a dizzying tour that helps us understand the complexity of human action."

 Já agora

1) A vida é o valor supremo? "Life may not be a vital spark, but it has been defined by one Nobel laureate as 'nothing but a free electron looking for a place to rest'. And life does have purpose, according to one geochemist: 'The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide'".

 

2) A vida humana é sagrada? Apenas porque foi "uma dádiva de deus" que "criou o homem à sua imagem e semelhança" - e quem ousa liquidar a "imagem e semelhança de deus"?...

3) A vida humana é sagrada? O que justifica, então, a existência de forças armadas cujo modus operandi intrínseco, passa pela eliminação (ou ameaça de eliminação) de vidas humanas?

4) Porque haveria Portugal de legalizar a eutanásia quando, em tantos países mais "desenvolvidos" e "civilizados" ela é ilegal? Exactamente pelos mesmos motivos que conduziram Barjona de Freitas a ser pioneiro na abolição da pena de morte.

5) O que junta a beatagem social-fascista e a Vaticano S.A. na condenação da eutanásia? O mesmo culto do sofrimento e do martírio tão bem ilustrado pelo obsceno exemplo da degradação em público do Kinky Wojtyla.

Sean Carroll responde  (da única forma possível: cientificamente) à pergunta (religiosa) de Henrique Raposo: "We don't know"

"The 'Big Bang' is our label for the moment in time when the universe had infinite density. There was probably no such actual time, since quantum mechanics must have been important then. The label is a placeholder for what we don’t yet understand"

"Despite all that we don’t know, I remain optimistic that we are actually making progress here. I’m pretty hopeful that within my lifetime we’ll have settled on a leading theory for what happened at the very beginning of the universe" (Preposterous Universe)

"Life may not be a vital spark, but it has been defined by one Nobel laureate as 'nothing but a free electron looking for a place to rest'. And life does have purpose, according to one geochemist: 'The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide'"