Overwhelmed by fear: beware the “low road” of emotion

It is because we tout ourselves as the smartest animal on the planet we are oh-so-vulnerable.  As one can read in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

Human cognition is an unwieldy and fallible bag of mental tricks. Anyone who has seriously studied human cognition knows this. As Leda Cosmides and John Toby wrote

“The mind consists of a set of adaptations, designed to solve the long standing adaptive problems humans encountered as hunter-gatherers.”

Many people think, however, that they know how they think; they have faith that conscious common sense is always accurate and on target.  Common sense fails consider Freud’s rock solid finding: conscious awareness is only the tip of the cognitive iceberg. 

Common sense seduces us with powerful illusions, illusions that look like “uncontestable facts” to those of us who believe we can merely sit around and think in order to figure out how we think. Although common sense has led us well us for eons, it often leads to errors.  The Sun does not circle the Earth.  Our ears do not operate like microphones and our eyes do not work like cameras. “I” am not really a little person who seems to dwell in my head.  Science has shown that what the “thing” that constitutes me is a complicated and often self-contradictory bag of skills and strategies.  For many good examples of how we are often misled by the same heuristics on which we usually depend, see the …

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An atheist living in an evangelical world? How novel.

Morgan Spurlock, filmmaker and creator of the successful fast food critical documentary Super Size Me, has a groundbreaking program running on the cable network FX called 30 Days. The premise of the show goes like this: every episode details the journey of one person, either Spurlock or another willing participant,…

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God returns to set the record straight

For centuries, of course, people had been praying for God to return to Earth.  He came back all right, but it was so very different than most people expected.  It happened on October 3, 2009.  I remember it like it was yesterday . . .

It had been quite cloudy that day, but the clouds parted to reveal a huge marquee announcing that God would appear within five minutes.  During this short wait, pastel patterns swirled across the skies while Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” played lushly from the heavens. Then, God’s image began to appear on thousands of monitors that appeared in the sky.  Everyone on the Earth was about see this spectacle simultaneously.

As you might expect with seven billion people, it took awhile to get everyone calmed down.  The preachers were especially excited; most of them were wearing big smug smiles as they strutted about.  “This is it!” many of them barked.

God cleared his throat and everyone waited, for what seemed to be an eternity, for His first words. 

“Hello,” He boomed. 

Many of you have referred to me by the name “God” or “Allah” or “The Force.”  I don’t really have any sort of body and thus I’ve never had any sort of sex organ.  Nonetheless, I’m presenting myself to you in the shape of an old man.  I thought this might make this presentation easier for many of you.

The preachers stopped strutting so much, and started to look perplexed.

“You’re probably wondering …

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Causes And Canards

I saw a phrase today that made me think--The Darwinist Cause. Now, I'm sure I've seen it or heard it before, but it's one of those taglines opponents to certain worldviews use to instigate absurd debates (which turn out not to be debates but drubbing sessions wherein they hope to…

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Christians should be . . . well . . . Christian

The following is from Bill Moyer's interview with Rev. Joseph C. Hough on October 24th, 2003. Rev. Hough, is President of the Faculty and a Professor of Social Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary: HOUGH: . . . anybody who claims in the name of God they're gonna run over…

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