Find Meaning Through Science! Lesson #3

“What kind of a life do you want?”

The third lesson is a video available on youtube. My first issue isn't that it's 38 minutes, its the “Lets take a minute to think about what the meaning of life is”....and then waiting for an actual minute. I can hit pause on this and do the same thing. Making me wait for it when I am the only person paying attention....I came up with an answer (I'm not sharing, too bad) right away.
Then there was a testimonial half way through.
Then there was a group discussion.
And after all that the prompting to build community by commenting on someones post regarding the lesson.
And again there is a quiz, which I can take as many times as I want.

Machine: Maybe I'm too jaded, but I really didn't get much out of this that I haven't read for myself. At least for the first ten to fifteen minutes. I felt there was too much emphasis on religion, as though it were the standard that had to be met. If this is science based, shouldn't irreligious groups have greater emphasis? Other societies were brought up, slightly. Also, the video didn't have annotations, or links to the sources cited, which meant I had to go back through and watch again just to get the right Sartre quote, or others. But the links at the bottom of the video all lead back to the Intentional Insights website.
I'll keep working on this, and do the tasks.
This time, however, I didn't read the quiz past the opening the sentence “The science suggests....” I let Doppelganger take the test....

Doppelganger:
Most of the video felt like it was loaded with rhetoric, or anecdotal evidence, and after a while I had the feeling that this was some kind of stepping stone activity. That by providing people with this science based system, they could step from religion into a happy atheism. I don't have a problem with people deciding if they believe, or if they absolutely do not believe, but I felt like this was a reverse sham. As though the creator of this course said “Hey, lets figure out how evangelists draw people into the church, and do the same thing but draw people away from the church, but make it seem like we aren't biased.”
It's brilliant, really. It also makes me want to start my own cult. I'm also wondering if the price I “donated” for the course was calculated so that it wouldn't be cost prohibitive, but would make me stick to it so I wouldn't waste that $5.
At the 16:25 time mark they had had testimonials on how effective the course was, and how it was all evidence based. I don't accept this when I watch infomercials, let alone a workshop.
Machine may frown on this statement, but most of the people taking this course were physically unattractive, or old. And I think that is a telling sign; what stage in your life are you going to need meaning the most? The beginning when all possibility is ahead of you, or the end when death is near?
There is another quiz at the end of the lesson, and once again I am reminded at how I can only provide the right answers to move on.
I became suspicious when I saw each sentence started with “The science suggests...”. I chose true without even reading it, because I knew that's the answer they wanted.
Got 100%.