Culture

In “The Believing Brain: Why Science Is the Only Way Out of Belief-Dependent Realism” Scientific American (July 5, 2011), Michael Shermer informs us, dependency on belief and its host of psychological biases is why, in science, we have built-in self-correcting machinery. Strict double-blind controls are required, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know the conditions during data collection. Collaboration with colleagues is vital. Results are vetted at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals. Research is replicated in other laboratories. Disconfirming evidence and contradictory interpretations of data are included in the analysis. If you don’t seek data and arguments against your theory, someone else will, usually with great glee and in a public forum. This is why skepticism is a Read More ›

In “How we die matters” Danny Eisen, (The Ottawa Citizen, September 10, 2011) recounts, “My cousin fought his killers as his plane headed for the World Trade Center.” Like virtually everyone else who knew Danny [Lewin], I wondered if more had happened in the last minutes of that flight. The question would be answered later by American authorities. They informed our family that Danny had been stabbed and critically wounded while physically confronting Mohamed Atta and his colleagues. Seated in their midst in business class, Danny fought, alone and unarmed, to prevent the hijacking. Alone? While Danny did not succeed in preventing the tragedy on Flight 11, his impact on 9/11 would be profound. As the co-founder of Akamai Technologies, Read More ›

In “Charles Manson, Please Save Marriage & Family Therapy”, family therapist David Schnarch pleads for a reconsideration of “mind-mapping”, Applied neuroscience is a hot topic among mental health professionals, and there are two different views of mind-mapping in ascendance: One is based on attachment theory, which proposes that mind-mapping develops by parents giving children accurate feedback about who their child is, and parents having a coherent mind and allowing their children to map them. According to this view, people don’t develop mind-mapping ability if this is not valued in their families growing up, or if parents’ minds are not coherent, or if parents’ give children a distorted picture of their own minds. As a result, such children do not develop Read More ›

In a recent Fox News poll, 45 percent of voters accept the Biblical account of creation as the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth, while 21 percent say the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientists is correct. Another 27 percent say both explanations are true. Belief in creationism, however, fails to explain Republican presidential primary preferences. Frontrunner Rick Perry is the top choice for GOP primary voters who believe in creationism as well as those who believe in evolution. That’s probably because the upcoming US election will likely turn on beliefs about the economy rather than origins. There’s been an increase in the number of people who believe Darwin, from 1999 through 2011: Read More ›

You know, the “sinner in the hands of an angry god?” (Darwinism) Here: Most of Reiss’ analysis is very helpful and good common sense. Adopting his approach will enhance the educational experience of all pupils. However, there is one major area where I would like to see a further development of the analysis: this is to provide a more thorough analysis of science using a worldview perspective. What should we make of Reiss when he writes: “The scientific worldview is materialistic in the sense that it is neither idealistic nor admits of non-physical explanations” (p.403)? Some of us do not find this summary one that we would use in our scientific work. In fact, the prohibition of non-physical explanations should Read More ›