‘Master’ Plan

I can’t get enough of Way of the Master Ministries. Way of the Master’s Biblical Evangelical movement, hosted in website, radio, and television format by former child actor Kirk Cameron and evangelist Ray Comfort, have swept internet culture recently, appearing in nearly equal footing on freethinking and faithful websites alike. Apparently, many other people get a kick out of Comfort and Cameron’s teachings, too; as of this February, Way of the Master has not only “witnessed” to tens of thousands of potential sheep, but the website’s evangelical methods have enrolled over 6,500 eager “students”.

Way of the Master’s gimmick hinges on its oddly friendly use of guilt and fear– like the fire-and-brimstone preachers of old, but nowhere near as menacing as “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The website opens with this introduction by Cameron:

“Did you know that every day 150,000 people die? People just like you and me. Every twenty-four hours, 150,000 people pass from time into eternity. Do you ever think about that? Isn’t there something within you that says, ‘I don’t want to die!’? That is your God-given will to live. And we hope you listen to it, because we make some big claims on this site…”

Ray Comfort’s personal website, Living Waters, runs a constant counter of people who have died since you have opened up his page. Comfort also reminds us that, “The vast majority of those people are entering Hell.” These warm, fuzzy Christian thoughts prove …

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Use of “fat” fashion models causes a ruckus in Australia

Here are some of the bad things that can happen to you if you are a fashion designer who dares to use non-anorexic models in your fashion show. Putting “fatties” in her show (woman who were sized 8 – 12) actually got designer MaraJoara blacklisted by Vogue Australia.  Here’s coverage…

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Sticky Superstitions

A week or two ago, Erich provided a link to a page entitled, “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?”. The site has a number of excellent videos, among them a 10-minute short that equates prayer with any other form of superstition. If not equal in terms of dogmatic obedience, prayer and superstition at least share the same degree of efficacy: absolutely none whatsoever. So why do superstitions form, and in spite of their pointlessness, stick?

For some background, let’s rewind to the 1940’s. In this decade B.F. Skinner, the psychologist who essentially founded behaviorism, conducted the most groundbreaking studies on behavioral conditioning this side of Pavlov’s salivating dogs. Even if you can’t recite his findings from rote-memory like a Psych 101 student, you know some of the terminology his studies created- positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and the concept of “behavioral conditioning” itself.

Not as well known, Skinner’s research on pigeons also suggested one way superstitious behavior comes into practice. Skinner placed some of his infamous pigeons in a cage attached to a mechanism that delivered food at a totally random interval. The birds soon began to associate their own behavior with the food delivery, and kept repeating whatever they had done at the time food entered the cage, as though this would initiate more food.

The conditioning led to a variety of bizarre bird “superstitions”. Skinner reported birds that “turned counter-clockwise about the cage”; “thrust [their heads] into one of the upper corners of the cage”; and …

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You May Have It Cockeyed If…

Science cannot disprove the existence of god. I have heard this claim made so often and by such a broad spectrum of people that I rarely really think about it. But is that the end of it? Science is concerned with materialism ( in a philosophic sense) and does best…

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Sunny past, dark future. Or something like that.

Earlier, I wrote about the rosy, sunny image of “the good old days” and the sad reality that those days just never existed. A body of psychological evidence explains in part why we cling to this fantasy: we have a tendency to blanket our old memories with simplicity and inaccuracy.

First, memory tests conducted on the elderly suggest that as we age, we become more likely to remember warm, pleasant experiences and steer clear of recalling negative stimuli. Though most of us associate old age with grouchiness and malcontentment, older people actually tend to filter their memories in favor of the enjoyable.

In a 2004 study at Stanford, professor of psychology Linda Cartensen asked young adults and elderly adults to view a variety of slides and then complete a memory exam on the scenes they had witnessed. Though young adults beat out the elderly on overall short-term memory, elderly adults demonstrated a remarkable ability to recall pleasing scenes, such as those of happy infants and puppies, and performed even better than their young counterparts in this regard.

Surprised at these results, Cartensen also monitored the moods and memories of adults aged 18 to 94, and found that older adults reported greater happiness and spent less time “wallowing in bad moods” that brought younger respondents down. In a review of Cartensen’s study, Psychology Today wrote that seniors tend to “revise history” to make the overall image of their life appear more appealing. The article continues:

“Pleasant memories are always invading [seniors’]

…
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