When Tibetan Buddhist monks meditate for many years, they gradually change the molecular structure of their brains. MRI scans show that they experience more activity in the left pre-frontal cortex, a part of the brain that is associated with happiness, and less activity in the right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts.
And Matthieu Ricard, the 62-year-old French interpreter for Tibet’s Dalai Lama, has happiness levels that are literally off the scale of the measuring instruments. That’s the conclusion of American neuroscientist Richard Davidson, who has spent over fifteen years testing these theories…
I am an atheist because I reject the idea that gods exist, in the same way and for the same reasons that I reject the ideas that that the earth is balanced on the back of a sea turtle, that homeopathy is more useful than a heart transplant, that Rapunzel wove her hair into a ladder or Rumpelstiltskin wove straw into gold, that stepping on a pavement crack will break my mother’s back, that a deposed Nigerian prince wants to email me several million dollars, that Uri Geller can bend spoons with his mind, that I am in danger from vampires or zombies or broken mirrors, or that I am protected by angels or leprechauns or horseshoes….
The best six countries to live a long happy life are Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, Sweden and Australia. If you live in one of these places, you can expect to have sixty or more ‘happy-years’ of life. ‘Happy-years’ are calculated by multiplying happiness levels by life expectancy.
The idea of gods is bad for society, because it spreads irrational dogma that causes good people to do bad things. This affects three practical areas of our lives: the quest for knowledge, treating people fairly, and civic society.