For the last two Sundays, I attended Sky Church. The meetings involve confronting primal fear, and staring it down. This is done on the basis of a desire to fly, an intellectual understanding of the tiny risks you are in fact facing if you choose to do so. Then, while either staring down your demons,…
The following is a lightly edited version of the note I sent to a physicist/neuroscientist with whom I participate on a science and religion e-mail list. I have immense respect for this fellow. However, we have been politely disagreeing with regard to the strategies that are most likely to be helpful to people who want…
This meditation is inspired by an article from the NY Times a friend recently sent me that was written by an intellectual, “born again Catholicâ€, who eloquently described the paradoxical nature of her re-acceptance of her childhood faith. I have cut and pasted the article at the end of this piece. It is worth reading.…
Helen Fisher’s latest book, “Why Him? Why Her?” is yet another excellent, informative canada cialis online read. I bought it for my late adolescent – twenty-something children, but have thoroughly enjoyed reading it myself. This note’s purpose is to briefly describe one issue related to Mormon mate choice that jumped out at me as I…
The statement “All religious beliefs should be respected!” or the question “To what extent, and how, should I respect religious beliefs other people have?” come up often enough in my correspondence that I have finally decided to record a relatively succinct response that I can send instead of dictating more or less the same thing…
Today’s Globe and Mail has an interesting article with regard to the recent upsurge in church attendance. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servle… No news here really. Religious belief and behavior are to large extent a response to perceived danger. That is not to say that this is all religion is. It is a complex social phenomenon that performs many…
The recent psychological literature has noted a striking increase in depression rates at more or less the same time as the psychological community has turned its eye, and pen, toward what makes people happy.[1] It seems, to an extent, that the more aware we become of our potential for happiness, the more depressed we are.…
So, what if the non-Mormon academic community agree with these wordprint studies in more or less the same fashion they did the Mormon related DNA research? Here are a few of the strained arguments in support of the Mormon position that I expect to see trotted out before the Book of Mormon is eventually acknowledged…
While contemplating life the day after an historic US election, I decided to jot a bit about basic, ironic, differences between political liberals and conservatives, and how small group dynamics (in particular, religious group dynamics) play into this. For background, I highly recommend Jon Haidt’s TED talk athttp://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jo…. Haidt is one of our most consistently…
There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the probability of changing one’s foundational beliefs declines as age advances. There are at least two reasons for this. First, the older we get the less plastic our neural connections become. The second reason, however, is far more compelling from my perspective. Larry Iannaccone explains this…