Category: Religion
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David Brooks Tries to Eff the Ineffable Again
A friend and I were discussing Brooks’ recent column about Anthony Kronman’s new book, “Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan.” I thought I’d share my thoughts here. Full disc: I haven’t read Kronman’s book, only Brooks’ column. Some good stuff in there. Love the focus on books and writers. (Though Brooks’ [and Kronman’s?] barely-concealed dog-whistle adulation…
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The Appalachia Map, Yet Again
Lots of desperation talk these days by Republicans hoping to win future national elections by increasing their share of the “missing” white vote, while ignoring all those brown people. (Sean Trende’s piece seem to be the epicenter at this moment.) Nate Cone drives a very effective stake through the heart of that zombie ambition here, with…
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Is This Person Liberal or Conservative? In One Question.
The OK Trends blog on the OK Cupid dating site is pretty amazing. They pull all their hundreds of millions of pieces of data and suss out amazing facts about how people are, and how they interact. Here’s a beaut re: politics and ideology (Jonathan Haidt, take note): The Best Questions For A First Date…
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Why Would We Rather Be Wrong than Perceive Ourselves as Being Wrong?
Why would we rather perceive ourselves as right than be right? Why does believing ourselves to be right feel so good? People hate being wrong. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. If we’re wrong about the world out there, we’re less likely to survive and produce grandchildren. You’d expect being wrong to feel bad,…
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Religious Knowledge of a Devout (and Morally Committed) Atheist: 100%
My results on the latest Pew survey: Here’s how you did on these 15 questions (excerpted from the larger U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey) compared with a nationally representative sample of 3,412 adults. Read the Full Report Your responses on the quiz do NOT affect the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey’s results. Take the test here. Or…
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On That New York Mosque
Michael Bloomberg: The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the…
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Delight and Abject Dismay on Richard Dawkins’ Birthday
Another of those convergences: I just joined the Richard Dawkins group on Facebook, and discovered that today is his birthday. (Happy birthday sir!) It’s a convergence because over the last week I’ve been horribly dismayed. After decades of near hero-worship on my part, I’ve discovered that he is not acting as the man I’ve always…
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Is Altruism Inevitable?
In one of those wonderful confluences, two items just came together for me. I read The Social Atom by Mark Buchanan, and my friend Steve posted a link to an Economist piece on evolution, fairness, markets, and religion. It all circulates around a central conundrum that evolutionists (including Darwin) have been worrying at since Darwin:…
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Do Moral Intuitions Change in Different Situations?
In response the Jonathan Haidt’s comment on Bryan’s post: One of my biggest questions about Haidt’s work: are people’s moral intuitions consistent across different situations? We know that behavior is often not generalized across situations. i.e. interventions in children’s homes/families have little or no effect on their behavior at school. I wonder if survey choices…
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Reason and Intuition: Is There Really Any Difference?
My sister just sent me the link to this discussion by Razib Khan on reason and intuition–timely, because it refers to Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives by Michael Specter, who I just saw (and spoke to briefly) when he spoke at University of Washington last week…
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Religious “Indoctrination”?
I am really confused by Charles Blow’s confusion in the opening paragraph of his latest column: …most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated. So kids raised unaffiliated feel…
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Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, yea unto the third and to the fourth generation
It is both triply appropriate and at least triply ironic that this quotation (it’s Exodus 34:7, KJV) should lead off the first posting to this blog. First, because it’s all my father’s fault, rest his soul. (Isn’t everything? <g>) Everything you read here started with him. All of it: with one three-word opening line. Ben…