Reading Time: 4 minutes Analogies are often tenuous, stretched to the point of breaking. But they can also be useful in understanding phenomena and the world around us. Indeed, a stretched analogy is like silly putty. If you stretch it slowly, it will hold together and make sense. If you stretch it quickly, it will snap apart. That, there, […]
cognitive biases
Posted inGeneral
How a Wingnut Perceives the Loss of Dominance
Reading Time: 8 minutes Today, let’s meet the toxic Christians who consider their loss of dominance to be literally a fate worse than death.
Posted inPhilosophy
On Refusing Epistemic Interaction: Dealing with People Who Won’t Accept Facts
Reading Time: 9 minutes I recently produced a piece or two on the ontology of abstracts and the epistemic barrier. But let’s now get psychological. Go read them for the foundation. One thing that came up in conversation between two commenters is the idea of interacting with people who do not want to accept facts and data contrary to […]
Posted inPolitics, Science
Confirmation Bias: A Mindset That Prevents Growth
Reading Time: 9 minutes Hi and welcome back! The other day, I showed you an odd little essay by Amy Laura Hall, a Duke University ethics professor. In it, she twice displayed a cognitive bias called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias, if allowed to rule people unchecked, can prevent their ability to learn and grow. Today, let me show you what […]
Posted inReligion, Science
Pre-Trib Research Center: Taking Reality Over Fantasy
Reading Time: 7 minutes Yesterday, I showed you the Pre-Trib Research Center. Their three stated reasons for existing all amounted to testable claims, and all three turned out to be true only in the short term and only with adherents who took that game way too seriously. As I wrote about these guys, my mind kept returning to one central idea: how much better and easier my life’s been since I rejected my previous foundation of false beliefs and now fully embrace reality instead.
Posted inGeneral, Religion, Science
‘Atheist Overreach’ Asks If God-Belief Is Inevitable
Reading Time: 13 minutes Now we move to Smith’s third question: Is god-belief inevitable, something humans will never really escape? Today, let’s explore that question.
Posted inReligion
The Big Coincidences Build in ‘This Present Darkness’ (LSP #152, Ch. 33-34)
Reading Time: 10 minutes Hi and welcome back! Now, let’s turn our attention to the finale gaining steam in Frank Peretti’s 1986 Christian pipe dream, This Present Darkness. In this installment, all of our main and secondary characters come together at last in preparation for the confrontation to come. Also, Edith Duster makes a surprise return! Y’all, these chapters have […]
Posted inReligion
How Religion Hijacks the Weirdness of Liminal Spaces (Pre-Easter Post)
Reading Time: 10 minutes I want to dive into the way that liminal spaces affect us–and how they’ve impacted humanity’s view of religion ever since we realized what they were. Often, they’re at least partially responsible for those sometimes-spooky, mysterious experiences people have that they can’t explain: That One Weird Thing That Happened Once (TOWTTHO), which they often attribute to the supernatural. But they’re not supernatural. They’re perfectly natural. And today, I’ll show you how they work.
Posted inReligion
The Idaho Earthquake Is NOT A Sign of the Endtimes, Sorry
Reading Time: 7 minutes Just as I was wrapping up my post yesterday evening, my state experienced a very strong earthquake. Immediately, fundagelicals leapt into action by declaring it a sign of the Endtimes. Today, let me show you a little bit about what this prediction involves, why fundagelicals keep making failed predictions like it, and what’s really going on here.
Posted inReligion
How Positive Thinking Backfires
Reading Time: 8 minutes Hi and welcome back! Lately, we’ve been talking about the cult of positive thinking. That’s an ideology that insists that people must maintain a attitude of perfect positivity in order to affect reality itself with their very thoughts. And today, I’ll show you the harm this mindset produces. (Previous posts in this series: Rethinking the Power […]