INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 634 Amsterdam, December 24th, 2016 ATOMIC SPIRITUALITY - Tom Blake's Natural Philosophy - DAVID LANE Tom Blake changed the face of surfing and has long been lauded as one of the true pioneers and innovators in the sport. Although much has been written about him and his contributions (culminating in Gary Lynch's magisterial biography of him, Tom Blake: The Uncommon Journey of a Pioneer Waterman, published in 2001), very little work has been done on Tom Blake's Einsteinian philosophy. This is a shame, since though Blake was not formally educated (he never graduated high school due to the devastating influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 and 1919), he was an astute observer of nature and had a deep understanding of science and its implications on such perennial questions concerning ethics, God, and the goal of human life. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/lane112.html THE BIG KAHUNA'S DILEMMA - How to Live in a Darwinian Universe - PROFESSOR ANDREA DIEM, PH.D. These thoughts got me thinking about religion and why most of us, if not all, tend to believe in all sorts of nonsense that on closer inspection appears (at least to those not involved in our own personal cult) utterly bizarre or useless. Yet, if any one of these systems, regardless of how fantastical they may be, provide us with a buffer from the onslaughts of a cruel and mindless nature, then they have survival value. We evolved to believe nonsense, since such beliefs provide us with a way to avoid looking at the ultimate abyss—death and meaninglessness. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/lane112.html#adl