This post is by Ann F-R, and it concerns Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Righteous Mind, a book exposing how minds work — or how minds don’t work — and how irrational forces are often at work in our decisions, leading us to justify more than to think. In Scot’s Weekly Meanderings on June 16th, he posted a link to an article which stated, “the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain... Read more
This is an important article in Fortune: On Dec. 14, 2010, a tragic event rewrote the narrative of the investigation. In a remote stretch of Peck Canyon, Ariz., Mexican bandits attacked an elite U.S. Border Patrol unit and killed an agent named Brian Terry. The attackers fled, leaving behind two semiautomatic rifles. A trace of the guns’ serial numbers revealed that the weapons had been purchased 11 months earlier at a Phoenix-area gun store by a Fast and Furious suspect.... Read more
If Muslims begin to return more and more to the Al-Aqsa mosque, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem or the Noble Sanctuary for Muslims, I would think this could be huge — politically and socially — in Jerusalem. Jews call the raised ground at the eastern edge of Jerusalem’s Old City the Temple Mount, while Muslims know it as the Noble Sanctuary. Both claim sovereignty over it. Muslims have kept up an informal boycott of the walled esplanade since Israel... Read more
By Maria Popova, a summary of why George Orwell wrote: Orwell begins with some details about his less-than-idyllic childhood—complete with absentee father, school mockery and bullying, and a profound sense of loneliness—and traces how those experiences steered him towards writing, proposing that such early micro-traumas are essential for any writer’s drive. He then lays out what he believes to be the four main motives for writing, most of which extrapolate to just about any domain of creative output. I give... Read more
I just heard this announced on CNN. The “individual mandate,” the center piece of the legislation has, according to CNN, been struck down as a commerce clause. Now Wolf Blitzer is suggesting they may not be fully clear on what has been decided. Chief Justice Roberts … on part 3 … may be upheld under the taxing clause. Entire law has been upheld … Blitzer: “huge, huge victory for the President.” Read more
Death is a big issue for many people when confronted by the evidence for an old earth and evolutionary creation. I’ve received a number of e-mails from people wrestling with this issue. Paul tells us that “sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin” and “for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Clearly death is an intruder into God’s good creation. In fact, could anything be more clear? In a... Read more
Intelligent Design (ID), according to Jason Rosenhouse (Among the Creationists), is a new form of creationism and is not mainstream science. Before we get to how he draws this conclusion, a few points need to be made: First, the fundamental problem Christians and creationists have had with evolution is the notion of randomness or chance or undirected, non-teleological development of the universe and especially of humans. Darwin’s “common descent” was not the problem; the problem was “natural selection,” for that... Read more
“Fudging” is a nice word; “falsifying” is more accurate. By Ben Goldacre: Here is a news story about a psychology researcher who has been caught out manipulating his data. http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/06/rotterdam-marketing-psychol… There is one very interesting aspect to this case: the researcher regarded the dodgy manipulations he used as completely standard practice. Recently there has been a small barrarge of research documenting the high prevalence of statistics misuse in psychology and neuroscience. Briefly, I thought it might be useful to draw... Read more
Mark Vernon: A suspicion of silence took root in the second and third centuries, when bishops penned diatribes against the so-called gnostikoi, Christians who claimed that God was most fully known as unknowable, and so therefore in silence. To be branded a gnostic was to be cast out of the fold. Then, in the fourth century, came the conversion of Constantine. The church aligned itself to secular power and now what you thought was of political importance too. Thereafter, western rites... Read more
From a reader of the blog and one in the middle of the Colorado fires: I’m a regular reader of Jesus Creed and I have a favor to ask: When many of you wake up in the morning, you will probably read about the fires in Colorado. This evening the fire called the Waldo Canyon Fire grew rapidly and erratically. Many, many homes in Colorado Springs have been destroyed and I fear lives may have been lost (although we do... Read more
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