“A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life.” Paul Bloom in the NY Times.
if a deterministic understanding of human behavior encourages antisocial behavior, how can we scientists justify communicating our deterministic research findings? In fact, there’s a rather shocking line in this Psychological Science article, one that I nearly overlooked on my first pass. Vohs and Schooler write that:
If exposure to deterministic messages increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then identifying approaches for insulating the public against this danger becomes imperative.
Perhaps you missed it on your first reading too, but the authors are making an extraordinary suggestion. They seem to be claiming that the public “can’t handle the truth,” and that we should somehow be protecting them (lying to them?) about the true causes of human social behaviors. Perhaps they’re right. Jesse Bering on the sticky science of free will in Scientific American.
“Scientists have found a surprising link between magnets and morality. A person’s moral judgments can be changed almost instantly by delivering a magnetic pulse to an area of the brain near the right ear, according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” Link to NPR story.
“At Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center in Jerusalem, doctors have long studied patients with a psychiatric disorder they call Jerusalem syndrome, a very rare condition in which tourists — on average one or two a month — become so overwhelmed with the power of the place that they dissociate from reality and believe themselves to be biblical figures.” … 1 or 2 a MONTH? Is this a self-selected group since there’s already delusion involved? Link to article at CNN.com
“Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.
I’m gay.” …Link to post where James Randi renews my faith in the notion of progress in American culture, just because he feels safe enough to make this public declaration that shouldn’t even be news.
The Patrician took a sip of his beer. ‘I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.’ Terry Pratchett at Powells.com
A new Rasmussen poll suggests that the Tea Party movement is far and away more popular than the Republican Party it seeks to influence — so much so that if it were a full-fledged political party, it would overtake the GOP on the generic Congressional ballot. Link to terrifying analysis on TPM.
The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.” [...] “Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.” [...] “Anything old coming back, I’m in favor of it,” she said. “More fervor is a good thing.” Link to article in the NY Times.
Now, ignoring the stunning hypocrisy of someone preaching the word of God and calling us all idiots, there is an obvious, gaping flaw in this commenter’s logic, well-known to skeptics for years: if you ask where the Big Bang came from, why can’t you ask the same thing of God? I like when Phil stops pandering and explains why so many of his ignorant commenters are idiots. (For non-regular readers: they’re perpetually telling him to stop talking about politics or skepticism and get back to the science. Funny, right?) Link to post.
As President Obama prepares to unveil his version of President Bush’s faith-based program and introduce a new advisory council for it, there is little indication that he will deliver on his promises to remedy its inherent constitutional problems in a timely way. Press release from Secular Coalition for America