This post is part of Patheos's book club for T.M. Luhrmann's When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. I recieved a review copy free of charge. In T.M. Luhrmann's ethnographic study of charismatic evangelical Christians, When God Talks Back, communing with God is a strenuous practice. Cultivating a personal, two-way relationship is a choice for these Christians, and the sheer level of effort they put into changing their minds trips a lot of … [Read more...]
Irrational with Respect to What?
April 19, 2012 By 40 Comments
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman draws on a lot of empirical studies where subjects make clearly irrational decisions. A choice throws an exception in an otherwise functional heuristic, and the subject takes an action that doesn't promote his or her stated goal. But one of the studies Kahneman cites doesn't seem to fit into this model. In the experiment, subjects placed a hand into painfully cold water and had to keep it there for 60 seconds. After a break, they put their … [Read more...]
Quasi-Transhumanist Charismatic Christians
April 18, 2012 By 13 Comments
This post is part of Patheos's book club for T.M. Luhrmann's When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. I recieved a review copy free of charge. This was a fascinating book to read right on the heels of Thinking Fast and Slow, because both books seemed to be mostly about changing our intuitions and heuristics. Luhrmann is embedded in a charismatic sect of Christianity. No snake-handling, but plenty of two-way dialogue with Jesus and what Luhrmann … [Read more...]
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