Today at The Mindful Hack

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 26, 2008

Intelligent Design}

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North America undergoing religious revolution? No way. Atheism is not growing significantly.

Anti-depressant are definitely NOT the death of the soul, as Tom Wolfe thought

Templeton Foundation offers L2 million pounds to find a non-spiritual source of belief in God

Comments

bFast, It is a well known fact that teenagers emit pheromones that cause their parents to be stupid. It usually begins with the onset of adolescence and subsides in the early twenties, whereupon the parents not only regain their intelligence, but often surpass their previous state. (This latter condition quite often coincides with when the child moves out and begins to strive to become something more than marginally self-sufficient). It is not uncommon for this phenomena to present at earlier ages (as in your case) but usually these are only temporary precursors to the more extended onset at eleven or twelve. It tends to last longer in boys.Jack Golightly_{February 27, 2008
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One possibility is that humans immediately see agency in our surroundings; my dog was sleeping and a heap of snow fell down, making a loud sound and waking my dog. He looked around, Who's there? Who's there? Maybe it's a dangerous cougar or lion!, he most likely thought (or something similar on those lines). His first idea at waking to a noise was that there was agency. Even the aethist Charles Darwin said,
The tendency in savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences, is perhaps illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it. As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned to himself in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent, and that no stranger had a right to be on his territory.
The EVILutionists claim that we see agency in non-agents due to an evolutionary benefit: you're more likely to survive if you're extra-cautious when you're not sure if that rock is just a rock or a hungry bear. And from this the Darwinists argue that humans experience the same phenomenon, giving agency to non-agents. No one can honestly believe something so absurd! It's clear that just as when we see design we infer a designer, that when we see agency we infer an agent: God!chuckhumphry_{February 27, 2008
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Hi, Denyse. The SSRI fad was like the Vioxx fad and the statin fad. The relevance to the Darwin/ID debate is that the entire medical establishment, which takes itself and its science very seriously, was taken in by wishful thinking. They wanted these drugs to be miracle drugs, and they managed to convince themselves that they were, in spite of the fact that the hard evidence in all three cases suggested otherwise. Now there is some cleaning up to do. I wonder how long it's going to take our clinical greybeards to notice the SSRI link to the campus killings and other cases of mass murder. If you know someone taking an SSRI, you know that Tom Wolfe was partly right: it changes their personality. SSRIs seem to turn off the probity governor in the brain. Prolonged use leads to unckecked impulsiveness which can be self-destructive. In extremis, the link between SSRIs and suicidal and homicidal ideation is well-known and has been well-known for some time. Hence the black box warnings. These drugs should not be handed out like candy. When are we going to wake up and realize that happiness requires a little effort?allanius_{February 27, 2008
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He compared believers to three-year-olds who “assume that other people know almost everything there is to be known”
I have a three year old and a five year old. Neither of them figure I, their father, knows much at all. I guess my kids are just wierd.bFast_{February 26, 2008
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Templeton Foundation offers L2 million pounds to find a non-spiritual source of belief in God.
Justin Barrett, a psychologist... He compared believers to three-year-olds who "assume that other people know almost everything there is to be known". Dr Barrett, who is a Christian, is the editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture and author of the book Why Would Anyone Believe in God? He said that the childish tendency to believe in the omniscience of others was pared down by experience as people grew up. But this tendency, necessary to allow human beings to socialise and cooperate with each other in a productive way, continued when it came to belief in God.
What a bunch of transparent hogwash. My experience represents the antithesis of this guy's thesis. I was raised an atheist, surrounded by academic intellectual atheists. It is true that, as a child, I assumed that these people knew everything, but as I grew older I realized that they didn't, and that the hard evidence for design and purpose in the universe and life was overwhelming. Belief in God for me is a rational conclusion, despite my upbringing. I became a skeptic of the "skeptics." In addition, I discovered that there is a great intellectual, philosophical, and theological heritage within the Judeo-Christian tradition, which seems to accurately describe the human condition (and that includes mine) as I observe it. But wait, there's more! I've seen people's lives totally transformed for the better, including mine. When stuff works, that's an indicator. Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Because it makes sense, on many different levels. But wait, there's even more! Denyse: (2) they believe in God because there is a Mind behind the universe and their minds eventually contact that Mind. I am confident that this is what happened in my case, not just intellectually but in other ways, and there is much more to my story. But that will have to wait for another day and another place.GilDodgen_{February 26, 2008
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