Dennis Miller and the God Question

My book, The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder, deals directly with the below issues in Chapters 12 and 13, which focus on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (link to free online version). 

I recommend that anyone interested read my book as a primer, then read Zen and the Art, which is quite a long book, well worth reading, but you have to know what you're looking for and how it all fits together.

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Below is a short audio clip of an Interview from The Dennis Miller Show. Dennis is interviewing Vince Bugliosi, author of Divinity of Doubt: The God Question (as well as Helter Skelter, and others), a book in which Bugliosi intellectualizes many tenets of Christian faith, like virgin birth, immortality of the soul, the divinity of Jesus and others.

In the interview, Bugliosi says that he is an agnostic, and that atheism is an "intellectually empty philosophy. Says Bugliosi of popular atheists like Christopher Hitchens, who he names specifically, "They simply cannot find a non-sequitur that they do not like."

But like such atheists (and religious folk from the opposite side), Bugliosi sets up these straw man intellectual arguments which do not advance the debate at all, but rather simply further obscure the basic difference between religious/spiritual people and intellectual people, which is a PHILOSOPHICAL difference concerning the nature of reality.

This sounds quite esoteric, but let's make it very, very simple:

First Three Chapters of The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder by Todd Wright

Get hooked! Then order The Self-Improvement Book Club Murder from Amazon. It's also available through any bookstore.

The Carnegie Secret

Excerpt From “The Science Of Success Achievement Course” By Rick Gettle
© 2008 all rights reserved By Rick Gettle

In his all time best selling book, Think And Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill mentions in his firstchapter that throughout the book he will be referring many times to “The Carnegie Secret.”

He said he would not tell you what that secret is, but when you are ready, it will jump off the page and into your brain. He said, When the Student is ready – the master will appear. The doors will open. The lights will turn green. The ideas will come. The money will come. The people will be there to help you.

In 1908 when Napoleon Hill was 25 years old, Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world at that time, commissioned him to spend 20 years researching success achievement. From that day on, when Napoleon Hill accepted Mr. Carnegie’s proposal, Carnegie went to work teaching him everything he knew about achieving success. The most important lesson he taught Hill was eventually called “The Carnegie Secret.” That was, in 1908, and to this day, still is, one of the most important lesson ever taught on how to achieve your Definite Major Purpose in life.

The Secret Behind Think and Grow Rich

I've been studying Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill lately. In it, Hill repeated makes reference to a principle that he purposefully has not named directly because he feels that readers would benefit more by its indirect discovery. Perhaps this video gives a clue as to the principle's identity. Can you figure out what it is?

It's interesting to hear directly, one eye witness removed, from Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men who ever lived. His ideas about success are difficult to discount.

Dramaholic

I found a thought provoking blog post called Are You a Dramaholic? by Carolyn Shannon. In the article, Carolyn draws a distinction between negative and positive drama. She writes: "For years my life was filled with negative drama thriving on the attention it brought me." After many years, says Carolyn, she became wise to her own patterns. "As I stepped onto the path of self awareness I began to realize I was a Dramaholic! I was as addicted to drama as anyone hooked on cigarettes, alcohol, sex or food."

Carolyn gives hope to all the drama addicted people out there, telling them that they don't have to give it up. They simply have to shift focus from negative drama to positive drama, "the WOW moments," as she calls them. "How often a parking spot is right there when needed; how many kind or friendly people we come into contact with each day; unexpected gifts of time, love, money or compliments; all the beautiful pictures Mother Nature keeps creating to awe us" are all excellent examples.

The Road to Emotional Maturity

On the road to emotional maturity, the real breakthrough comes when you begin to be more concerned with the fact that you are upset--depressed, angry, bitter, fill in the blank with any form of negativity--than with what you are upset about.

This new approach would mean that you've finally seen the illogic of all forms of negativity. You've finally come to realize that an inner state fraught with negativity will never have a positive impact on your environment. At that point, in other words, you have begun to focus your attention on your inner state as the key to shaping your reality.

The Universe Blesses Our Obsessions

May all yours be profitable.