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The heroic and flawed search for certainty…
Whose the smartest atheist of all?
Reblogged from The Trouble With Science: Jenny: "If I'm going to learn about atheism who should I read?" Peter: " Why waste your time, they're just as biased as the religious extremists." Professor Wiggle: " Dawkins and Dennett are both smart, but Chris Hithens is smarter. He remembers what other big brains forget. He remembers that […]
Posted in: Sciencing
The Believing Brain #3
February 11, 2012
Shermers basic assumption is that the brain is a believe-making machine that automatically identifies, or constructs, patterns in the flow of experience – I don’t see why religious believers or scientists should have trouble with this. The true believers ‘see’ their trusted patterns as generated by “God”, and most of the scientists see their trusted […]
Posted in: Sciencing
The Believing Brain #2
February 9, 2012
Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain is worth a read. He makes the point that the brain is a ‘believing machine’, and acknowledges that many or most of our truths are constructions of the believing brain that may have little or no relationship to ‘reality’. He notes that our brains are the most complex and sophisticated […]
Posted in: Sciencing
The believing brain
February 5, 2012
In a new book, The Believing Brain, Micheal Shermer says: “We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual […]
Posted in: Sciencing
Choosing futures #5
February 2, 2012
We ended the last post with a bit of folklore (where there’s a will there’s a way) And yet the previous posts seemed to discount the power of will or “will power” or resolutions – for example New Years Resolutions. Instead we proposed that when the iron is hot (when you’re hurting enough) throw an […]
Posted in: Sciencing
Choosing your futures #4
January 30, 2012
So far we’ve talked about throwing an anchor into the future – an anchor strong enough to hold firm as you pull yourself forward on the anchor line against strong currents going in other directions. But maybe some currents are flowing in the direction you want to go. - Certainly that’s the case for those […]
Posted in: Sciencing
Choosing Your Future #3
January 25, 2012
Wbat if you get stuck in a contract you can’t keep? What we’ve been proposing is throwing an anchor into the future, an anchor heavy enoughenabling to pull yourself forward against the tide. But what if the anchor is so heavy you find yourself sinking… going under? It can happen! So you need to build […]
Posted in: Sciencing
March 14, 2013
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