In seven previous posts, I have discussed with the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, the problems with forming one’s identity based on one’s beliefs (or non-beliefs), how atheists should respond to the possibly religious dimensions of Alcoholics Anonymous, the ethics of advising people to lie about [...]
In three previous posts, the Friendly Atheist’s advice columnist Richard Wade and I have discussed the origins of his “Ask Richard” column, the nature of family conflicts over atheism, and whether atheists should replace religious identities with self-consciously atheistic ones. Along the way, Richard compared religion to heroin. In what follows I take that as an opening [...]
This video, from ABC’s show What Would You Do?, features an incredible gesture of altruistic human love which made me quite teary to watch. And it’s by someone inspired by Jesus. If only this was the sum of what following Jesus meant to people: Your Thoughts?
In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs: It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there [...]
Drew Dyck has written a book called Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith. . .and How to Bring Them Back. I want to focus on just a few passages from his interesting five page article from last fall in last November’s Christianity Today. Unlike many Christians who, despite living in a culture [...]
Robin Hanson explores the causes and nature of our double-mindedness that makes us talk a good game about long term goals and make grand long term commitments only to default to short term preferences in practice: All animals need different ways to reason about things up close vs. far away. And because humans are especially [...]
bewarethelizards42 explains why it’s gay-okay: And her follow up replying to homophobic comments: Your Thoughts?
Stanley Milgram was the psychologist who performed the famous obedience experiments which involved getting normal people to go through with administering (what they thought were) extraordinarily painful shocks to other people out of deference to calm but firm orders from an authority figure. Now Mind Hacks points our attention to The Tenth Level a fascinating bit [...]
Cultural variation is amazing: Your Thoughts?
In a recent comments section, Gregory Wahl argued to me that religion is so deeply rooted in psychological needs, specifically the longing for immortality, that there is an inherent limitation to the ability of all my philosophical arguments to dissuade the faithful. As this line of reasoning goes, they do not believe for intellectual reasons [...]
…Richard Wade of Friendly Atheist, whose ”Ask Richard” column turns one fantastic year old today. It is a column by a retired therapist who gives atheists advice about atheistic parenting, the effects of one’s religious past on one’s present life and the way to go forward constructively in the future as an atheist, and, probably most [...]
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study this February revealed that less than one fifth of all American adults under 30 report regular church attendance. But they still also overwhelmingly claim belief in God. Tom Rees thinks that despite their beliefs, their abandonment of the pews may indicate that a multi-generational secularization [...]
Time ticks off some observed ways in which people have been shown to be susceptible to irrational subconscious influences: Studies have found that upon entering an office, people behave more competitively when they see a sharp leather briefcase on the desk, they talk more softly when there is a picture of a library on the [...]
Nicolai Sennels spent several years working with criminal Muslims in Copenhagen (where as of March 2009 “70% of the prison population in the Copenhagen youth prison consists of young man of Muslim heritage.”) He writes the following about the different ways that Westerners and Muslims view the locus of control: There is another strong difference between the [...]
Last fall, Wired reported on a study published last fall (“Neuroanatomical Variability of Religiosity.” By Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron K. Barbey, Michael Su, Frank Krueger, Jordan Grafman. Public Library of Science ONE, Vol. 4 No. 9, September 28, 2009) which finds religious people have extra activity in the neurological brain regions indispensable for social intelligence: Brain scans [...]
Earlier today, I drew attention to Greta Christina’s article formulating some ideas she picked up from Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. If you have already read either or both of those posts, you can just skip the next two paragraphs meant to catch up new readers. The Goldstein/Greta Christina argument built off of Jonathan Haidt’s theory of [...]
In recent years, Jonathan Haidt has been influentially arguing that there are five essential modules in the mind from which human moral concerns originate. He has made this claim in several places, most prominently among philosophers in his contribution to Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity (from Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s groundbreaking [...]
A study of 1,000 men and women ages 18-23, “Nonmarital Romantic Relationships and Mental Health in Early Adulthood” by Robin Simon and Anne Barrett, finds that young men benefit more from a romantic relationship going well and suffer worse from the strain of a bad one, whereas young women benefit more from simply being in [...]
Some interesting insights, but visually a blast to watch: <object width=”640″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/A3oIiH7BLmg&hl=en_US&fs=1&”></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/A3oIiH7BLmg&hl=en_US&fs=1&” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”640″ height=”385″></embed></object> Your Thoughts?
Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos (author of Parenting in Planned Lesbian Families (UvA Proefschriften) have the authored the first longitudinal study to track the outcomes of children created through artificial insemination through their teenage years. The results? The authors found that children raised by lesbian mothers — whether the mother was partnered or single — [...]
Earlier today, I made a post comparing the different routes which atheists and those with Asperger’s syndrome take to their naturalistic explanations of causes of events that more religiously inclined people tend to chalk up to supernatural agency. Whereas religious people would attribute an illness or finding their true love to the purposeful forces, like God’s [...]
In order to respond to certain misunderstandings based on this post’s original, provocative title (Do Atheists Just Have Asperger’s?) I have re-edited it and retitled it. There is now a new opening paragraph and extra concluding paragraphs. It is often suggested that the difference between theists and atheists might simply stem from differences in their naturally given [...]
Am I just getting older or are teens really becoming a whole lot less distinguishable from children? The wisdom of a teen werewolf: I don’t believe any one is just human. Everyone’s got something else mixed in with them, just they’ve got to actually look inside themselves to see what it is. Thanks to Brandy [...]
Roger Friedland finds an interesting correlation between the two kinds of belief and examines its possible causes and implications: We found that belief in God has no impact on young people’s sex lives. College virgins are no more likely to believe in God than non-virgins. Even those who took a virginity pledge are not sexually [...]
By now, surely you know who George Rekers is—he was founding member of the Family Research Council and former officer for the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), who lost that last job when he rented a boy through a website called “Rentboy.com” to “carry his luggage” (and give him nude massages). [...]