Sundays: 12 noon (CT) in-person and online
Presenter: Robbie Bergman Service Associate: Hyacinthe Miller Inside all of our brains is a filter that takes what we’ve learned to be important and make it stronger. So our beliefs are nurtured in such a way that we become set in our ways. Understanding this mechanism can help us coexist with people whose beliefs are … Continue reading “RAS and the biology of Belief”
Rev. Matt Alspaugh, PresenterEmilie Costello Service Associate One of the laws of nature is that as the universe tends toward disorder, that entropy, the measure of disorder, increases. But we, as living things, push back against the flow of entropy, at least while we’re alive. As one writer put it, “we’re like little eddies in … Continue reading “Eddies in an Entropic Stream”
Service Associate: Priscilla Taylor Dr. Robert Waldinger is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Lifespan Research Foundation, and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is author of ‘The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study on Happiness’. This service will feature a … Continue reading “What Makes a Good Life?”
Rev. Matt Alspaugh, SpeakerLamar Allen, Service Associate The poet William Blake wrote,To see the world in a grain of sand,and a heaven in a wildflower,hold infinity in the palm of your hand,and eternity in an hour. We’ll explore how we relate to infinity as a mathematical and philosophical concept, and some of the paradoxes that … Continue reading “Intimations on Infinity”
Ted Fahy, Presenter; Priscilla Taylor, Service Associate. We live in a world where we are told that we are either predictable commodities or victims of random events – in either case implying that we have little or no control over our own lives. We will explore how these dual characterizations are caricatures of two of … Continue reading “How Does It Feel to Be a Number?”
Pesenter: Rev. Tim Boeve with Service Associate Joan Ward Rev. Boeve’s presentation arises from the book “Think Again,” by NYT bestselling author Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, named Wharton’s top-rated professor for seven straight years. Grant argues that “Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, … Continue reading “The Value of Not Knowing.”
Presenter: Rev. Matt Alspaugh – Service Associate: Jane Castleman We live in an enigmatic world, one that deep down, doesn’t make ‘common sense’ at all. Yet the physical evidence is sound – the world is ‘quantum’ in nature. It’s hard to make sense of, hard to describe (without advanced mathematics). But we can try. Starting … Continue reading Quantum Universe – Part 2
Presenter: Rev. Matt Alspaugh – Service Associate: Jane Castleman We live in an enigmatic world, one that deep down, doesn’t make ‘common sense’ at all. Yet the physical evidence is sound – the world is ‘quantum’ in nature. It’s hard to make sense of, hard to describe (without advanced mathematics). But we can try. Starting … Continue reading Quantum Universe – Part 1
Presenter: Rev. Matt Alspaugh Service Associate: Carol Johnson A few weeks ago, I mentioned Charles Darwin’s concept of the survival of the fittest leading to the evolution of species, which has been expanded to a kind of social Darwinism, the idea that society is best organized around competition and reward, leading to the survival of … Continue reading Cooperation vs. Competition
Presenter: Sue Kelley Service Associate: Lynn Cleek Do you know what The Hand maidens Tale, The Bluest Eye and Tango Makes Three have in common? They are all banned books. Sunday, July 30th we discuss the origins of banned books, why some want them banned, what books are banned and what you can do about it. … Continue reading “Ban Guns, Not Books”
