Belief in Scripture and Belief in Alien Abductions – A Response to grumpypilgrim

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,

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What Christianity and alien abduction have in common

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…

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Laughing at Not Funny Things and the Limits of Introspection

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 …

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Support Stem Cell Research to Save Lives

I can’t believe that it’s actually necessary to argue that we should allow medical research that might give numerous people a fighting change to survive horrible diseases.  But here we are.  We live in an age where many things have been turned upside down. 

I wrote the following letter on November 27, 2005 after attending Catholic Mass at a church in my neighborhood.  I attended because I had heard that priests throughout Missouri had been instructed by their superiors to preach against a proposed Missouri Constitutional Amendment that would allow stem cell research to continue

Washington University in St. Louis is a major medical research center that conducts stem cell research.  The Missouri legislature has regularly threatened to prohibit stem cell research in Missouri, giving rise to a proposed Amendment that is being promoted by  The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures.

http://www.missouricures.com/

MCLC describes the amendment as follows: 

Should Missouri patients have access to medical cures that are available to other Americans?
That’s the key issue that led a coalition of patient and medical groups to develop the Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, a voter referendum measure proposed for the November 2006 statewide ballot.

Stem cells could provide cures for diseases and injuries that afflict hundreds of thousands of Missouri children and adults and millions of other Americans – including diabetes, Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease, ALS, sickle cell disease and spinal cord injury.

Unfortunately, some politicians in Jefferson City are trying to pass state laws that would ban

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