Just look at our intense national confidence! Ergo, we are doing well as a nation! Not so fast, scientists have warned. There is actually an inverse relationship between one's own incompetence and one's awareness of one's incompetence. In a 2003 article entitled "Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence," psychologists…
At first, I scoffed at this ABC News headline: “Has Noah’s Ark Been Found? Christian Archaeology Team Believes It’s Found Biblical Remains?”
According to this recent story,
Texas archaeologists believe they may have located the remains of Noah’s Ark in Iran’s Elburz mountain range. “I can’t imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark,” said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration (B.A.S.E) Institute, a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts.
The Bible also describes the Ark’s dimensions as being 300 cubits by 50 cubits — about the size of a small aircraft carrier. The B.A.S.E. Institute’s discovery is similar in size and scale.
The story indicates that the B.A.S.E. Institute’s samples “are being examined at labs in Texas and Florida.” The story doesn’t mention whether the sample will be analyzed using secular methods or Bible methods. Choice of methodology might matter, though. According to the official website of BASE, here is the methodology used by BASE:
The BASE Institute employs a methodology that seeks to apply the best practices of many disciplines, while giving absolute priority to the Bible itself. While we do not discount the opinions of scholars, we do not place undue emphasis on them.
Here are the highlights of the BASE “methodology:
…
- We recognize the weakness of a “Premise + Proof” methodology.
- We recognize the strength of a “Possibilities + Problems” methodology.
- We recognize that the Bible is fully inspired (superintended by God) in its autographs (original
I’ve previously written that dollars are fungible (See “The Curse of Fungible Dollars”). In that article I pointed out that dollars are completely interchangeable. I noted that there is actually only one kind of dollar and that dollars don’t come pre-labeled as “Christmas ornament dollars,” “pedicure dollars,” “Xbox dollars” or “charitable cause dollars.” I further suggested that we work hard to brainwash ourselves that non-fungible dollars exist and that we are free to spend any dollar we haven’t chosen to label a “charity dollar” on anything at all, conscience free. To see the absurdity of that mindset, try to imagine a charity refusing your donation because the money you offered came out of your “vacation” fund.
Many Americans would consider my fungible dollars article to be a curse because it has the effect of moralizing every dollar we spend. That every dollar is potentially a dollar we could (and possibly should) spend to help desperate human beings thus becomes a toxic thought that we prevent ourselves from considering. It causes too much cognitive dissonance. . If you doubt the toxicity of such a thought, imagine speaking freely of the fungibility of dollars at a Las Vegas casino or at any other entertainment mecca where those “entertainment” dollars flow freely. The mere mention that all dollars are fungible will trigger the rapid and painful collapse of elaborate mental worlds constructed by everyone within hearing range.
With the same dollars we spend to buy tickets to concerts or sports events, …
Another Fourth of July is upon us and my thoughts turn to patriotism. In the past I've waxed and waned in my attitude toward this so-called civic virtue. It seems to me there are two kinds. The first, and most legitimate, is the sentiment of attachment to place and people…
In a book called Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner’s Guide (2005), Robin Dunbar, Louise Barrett and John Lycett addressed this issue. The book drew on additional research that can be found in Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, by Robin Dunbar (1997).
We don’t have limited numbers of friends and acquaintances merely because we choose to have such limited numbers. Rather, as explained in these two works, physiological limitations constrain human social choices. We are limited in the number of acquaintances we can have because we are physiologically limited. This is another example that those who claim to explain human animals without the benefit of careful science do so at their own risk.
Human societies are complex social environments. Archaeologists have determined that pre-modern humans lived in small-scale hunter gatherer societies “characterized by very small, relatively unstable groups, often dispersed across a very large area.” Only after agriculture was developed (10,000 years ago) did large permanent settlements become possible Living in groups gives members huge advantages such as reduced predation risk (we benefit from the “many eyes” advantage and large groups of individuals deter most predators).
Group living comes with costs, too. We have conflicts over limited resources, such as food and mates. Group living stresses immune systems too. The menstrual cycles of female primates are disrupted. In order to obtain necessary food, humans need to travel further each day. Associating with large groups of people also has a huge mental cost. In order to live safely within large groups, …