I recently dug out three interesting quotes of George Washington, our first president: A historical revision on a unique scale has been imposed on us by the Creator. Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on the memory of the crowd. I go the way that Providence…
I have to admit, when I read grumpypilgrim’s post that the evidence supporting Christianity is on par with the evidence supporting alien abduction, I got nervous. It sounded so very harsh. I couldn’t help thinking of the many sincerely Christians who would be insulted by such a comparison. I’m well aware that many Christians (including many of the people who regularly visit this site) are incredibly generous people who give much more back to this world than they take. I truly admire their good works. It is not my purpose (and I’m sure it’s not grumpypilgrim’s purpose) to insult them. I’ve tried to make this clear as part of other posts.
On the other hand, grumpypilgrim’s post reminded me of some of the many questions Daniel Dennett raised in his recent book, Breaking the Spell (2006). On page 210, for example, Dennett cited Richard Dawkins (from A Devil’s Chaplain):
We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
I have often criticized believers who are so absolutely certain of their own beliefs, all of which are based upon a personal “feeling” and apocryphal writings, that they take political steps to disparage the beliefs and doubts of all other people. Jimmy Carter has termed such people “fundamentalists,”:
…A fundamentalist believes, say, in religious circles, that I am close to God. Everything that I believe is absolutely right. Anyone who disagrees with me, in any case,
I just finished reading Michael Shermer's book, "Why People Believe Weird Things." It's very long-winded -- the book could easily be 1/10th its size and still make the same points -- but it did make me realize one thing. The book discusses alien abduction as an example of a weird…
Why do we laugh? Introspection and common sense tell us that we laugh because someone said or did something funny. This is usually incorrect, however. In Laughter (2000), Robert Provine reported the results of his carefully conducted experiments, showing that in social situations, between 80 and 90% of laughing is not a response to jokes or other formal attempts at humor. Rather, most laughing is in response to innocuous statements such as “I’ll see you guys later.” “I should do that, but I’m too lazy” or “I told you so!”
Provine has found that laughing serves a function similar to small talk: it facilitates or maintains social bonds. “Laughing plays a . . . nonlinguistic role in social bonding solidifying friendships and pulling people into the fold. You can define ‘friends’ and ‘group members’ as those with whom you laugh.” In The Human Story, Robin Dunbar cites studies finding that laughing is correlated with the release of endorphins and that this release of hormones facilitates bonding.
Unless we’re at a comedy club, then, laughing usually serves a function much different than common sense and introspection suggest. The research of Provine and Dunbar is but one of many examples where conventional wisdom and introspection fail to explain human behavior. Where one truly wants to understand human cognition, one must turn to the scientific method.
We need to keep this caveat in mind because common sense seduces us with powerful illusions, illusions that look like uncontestable “facts” to those of us who …
Part I: What's really in the Bible? Although I have regularly picked up my King James Bible, I haven't had the stamina to plow all the way through. Kudos to the authors of the "Skeptic's Annotated Bible." We know they really made it to the end because they left proof…