Epiphenom

Thanks all. hopefully all the redirects are in pla...

2014-11-09T22:06:43.083+00:00

Thanks all. hopefully all the redirects are in place now and the ads are not too annoying!

Enjoy the new digs!

2014-11-05T14:36:36.231+00:00

Enjoy the new digs!

Welcome to your new home

2014-11-05T09:33:12.387+00:00

Welcome to your new home

Congratulations! And welcome!

2014-11-04T17:10:10.329+00:00

Congratulations! And welcome!

Congrats, man!

2014-11-04T10:46:10.622+00:00

Congrats, man!

Sounds like you have ulterior motives. You don'...

2014-11-04T04:09:17.185+00:00

Sounds like you have ulterior motives. You don't really want an answer, do you? Anything contrary to your beliefs will be not accepted. Just "us versus them" for you, little man!

This happened to me as well i was in my room and l...

2014-10-27T03:08:30.329+00:00

This happened to me as well i was in my room and looked at my closet and a little girl in a white dress and white bonet was crying looked up at me and said i just want to sleep with my momy in a crying voice and floated through the room through the other side wall

"I'm only 13 years old and I see goats on...

2014-10-23T06:12:22.306+01:00

"I'm only 13 years old and I see goats on a regular bases". goats are everywhere.

Hi Bjørn Østman, it's a good question and one ...

2014-10-21T20:55:26.957+01:00

Hi Bjørn Østman, it's a good question and one which the authors spend some time trying to answer (the paper is open access, by the way).

In a way it's just like politics. There was a study recently which showed that people are not convinced by facts. Rather, you have to appeal to their sense of identity. If that's so, then the only way to get them to buy into religion is either to convince them that a religious identity is compatible with evolutionary beliefs, or that a religious identity is incompatible with their outlook.

Educating on the facts does make a difference and is important for other reasons. But it's not going to be the clincher.

Hi Tom. Would you care to then suggest a strategy...

2014-10-21T18:33:18.277+01:00

Hi Tom.

Would you care to then suggest a strategy?

Coincidentally, there is this thing coming up at Michigan State (which I have just left, btw): http://originsummit.com. Check it out. People at MSU are discussing how to go about it. What do you think?

YES!!! You can't wipe your ass with words.......

2014-10-19T05:51:47.729+01:00

YES!!! You can't wipe your ass with words............

The real source of inequity is the cash flow from ...

2014-10-09T05:15:35.767+01:00

The real source of inequity is the cash flow from the USA. It was the billions of dollars infused that allowed the disparity to grow to this size. Money makes money. Money leads to power, and the power corrupts everything. This once innocent people of religion and balance before the Romans, are now the opposite of what King David or the descendants of Jacob, the mountain Jews, the Canaanites, or any Rabbi ever wanted. It was the USA that created this mess.

I would continue and say that after the siege of J...

2014-10-09T05:02:35.644+01:00

I would continue and say that after the siege of Jerusalem things changed. The Roman Empire destroyed the heritage of a peaceful nation. Turning brother against brother. The saddest thing in my opinion, is that the storys of the Exodus was false. These people were Canaanites. Their world was so brutally impacted by the destruction of the Temple of Solomon, theystill have not recovered.

WRONG. Their issues are deep rooted in the Hebrew...

2014-10-09T04:55:25.466+01:00

WRONG. Their issues are deep rooted in the Hebrew bible. Their pain is curied by huge lapses in their stories. If they would pick up a pen and parchment and continue the story they started in the time of David, they might be able to reverse the damage.

I think it is about class and land. I would conte...

2014-10-09T04:50:55.366+01:00

I think it is about class and land. I would contend that the Roman Empire destroyed their world when they destroyed their Temple of Solomon. The place a permanent crater in their ethnic history. Especially since they unfortunately made the mistake of combining religion with government. If they would just agree to religious freedom and separate the religion from government, they might stand a chance to start healing the old divisions. Perhaps they can become one people again someday. They need to stop killing each other and realize this is not what Yahweh wanted for the decedents of David.

Nice study and refreshingly clear acknowledgment o...

2014-10-01T08:37:47.457+01:00

Nice study and refreshingly clear acknowledgment of stats limitations and restrained wider claims in the discussion section. Very nice!

New blogpost on the supernatural beliefs of childr...

2014-09-25T21:57:19.631+01:00

New blogpost on the supernatural beliefs of children:
http://www.centerforajustsociety.org/imagining-heaven/

Not all religions practice prayer. Evolutionists d...

2014-09-09T05:56:51.250+01:00

Not all religions practice prayer. Evolutionists don't pray, for example, they only believe in myths.

Here's what they say: Twenty-three volunteers...

2014-09-03T21:22:58.610+01:00

Here's what they say:

Twenty-three volunteers were recruited from a parti- cipant pool constituting a representative sample of 15- to 56-year-old Finnish people (for details see Lindeman, 2011). To recruit supernatural believers and skeptics, we contacted subjects who were at the extreme ends (highest and lowest 10%) of the distri- bution of supernatural belief as measured by the Revised Paranormal Beliefs Scale (Tobacyk, 2004) in a previous study (Lindeman, 2011). Participants had no psychiatric or neurological disorders and they satisfied the MRI safety requirements.

Well that's a fair point. The few studies in c...

2014-09-03T21:19:05.997+01:00

Well that's a fair point. The few studies in children haven't really tried to separate them into groups of HAD responsiveness, and perhaps they should (based on my own kids, know there can be quite a lot of variation!). HAD is supposed to be a cognitive heuristic, so I wonder whether learning plays much role? As opposed to strengthening the ability to disregard it as a analysis.

Anyway, the interesting thing about this study is that the atheists had good agency detection - better than the believers - they just didn't activate it in response to the random patterns. Perhaps that is a learned skill, but probably not a taught one - in which case it would be wrong to say that it's not 'natural'.
All speculation, of course. Someone needs to study variation in children.

Interesting study, but it would be helpful to know...

2014-09-03T19:46:17.219+01:00

Interesting study, but it would be helpful to know what criteria were used to label someone as being a "believer" or a "skeptic." Could you clarify? I don't have access to the article.

As much as I cringe at the 'born believers'...

2014-09-03T19:19:14.307+01:00

As much as I cringe at the 'born believers' phrase, I don't think studies like this are really relevant to it. In that, advocates of that theory are generally talking about early developing biases that make religious beliefs 'intuitively' appealing, they are not generally advocating that all adults will therefore be equally susceptible and/or that enculturation has no effect on levels of scepticism or agency detection. There being individual differences in susceptibility to agency detection is thus not a blow against the thesis unless you show that there are also significant differences in early childhood.

We're subject to all sorts of cognitive biases...

2014-09-03T14:50:00.688+01:00

We're subject to all sorts of cognitive biases, and what earlier research has focused on is exploring how these might be connected with belief in supernatural agents.

What this study was more interested in is exploring differences between individuals. So cognitive biases might lead to religious belief, but not all humans are equally susceptible. So we are not all 'born believers', which is a crucial point.

I am an atheist, and a former believer, who prefer...

2014-09-03T11:31:47.161+01:00

I am an atheist, and a former believer, who prefer's board games to video games, sees ghosts and more. I definitely have a hyperactive theory of mind. These traits, more common among believers, nail me spot on. As Jayarava said, I think many atheists think theists are "blind or stupid", simply because those atheists never had these experiences. So when I started blogging, I wrote both on Atheist limited vision and Christian prescriptionism. When I left Christianity, I was surprised to find many Christians without my mystical experiences, and I was later surprised to find even more Atheists lacking them. It was then that I realized that *I* was the broken one.
We've just met in person this summer Tom, so I am sure you understand. :-)

Anyway, so the hyperagency thing is just part of the picture -- lots of Christians don't have it too. That is because, "believers" or "the religious" is a big catch word. It is a large package sold to all sorts of customers with different needs and different temperaments.

This backs up what Justin Barrett claims in his bo...

2014-09-03T10:59:43.719+01:00

This backs up what Justin Barrett claims in his book "Why Would Anyone Believe in God?" It shows a physical basis for what he calls a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device. I think the implications of this kind of study are interesting. It suggests that we atheists should be rather kinder to those who have supernatural beliefs: they're not being wilfully blind or stupid - at a fundamental level their experience of the world is different to ours. We need not accept the interpretation that they give to experience, but we cannot simply expect them not to come to the conclusions that they do.

I wonder how this MRI result fits with your earlier blog on kids needing to be taught supernatural explanations. As I understand it there's plenty of research to show that kids automatically apply theory of mind to the dead: e.g. they realise that the dead don't need to eat, but imagine they still get hungry. Compare this with the many religious rituals which are about "feeding the dead". Or just grave goods in general.