thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
Can we choose our beliefs? Can we choose anything, or are we prisoners of the electro-chemistry in our brains? How do we choose? Pondering these questions can change the way we think, and how we understand ourselves and others. I am beginning a series of posts on these questions. This post looks at free will […]
I had never heard of this book or its author until a friend bought it for me as a present. But it proved to be a really worthwhile read.
In my previous post I made the following comment: “Religious believers, overall and with many exceptions, have better health and wellbeing, are more prosocial and less antisocial than non-believers.” A reader questioned this statement, in two ways: “I see that despite my previous prompting about the silly “religion is good for your health” surveys. You […]
Are theists more moral than non-theists, or is it the other way round? Do theists and non-theists think very differently about ethics? It used to be easy to argue about these questions because everyone had a story to tell and no-one had any scientific evidence. But nowadays psychologists and others are undertaking scientific studies of […]
We human beings are aware of ourselves in ways that robots and computers are not, we can think in ways they cannot, and we firmly believe some things are truly right or wrong. Granted humans have evolved by natural selection, science finds it difficult to produce an explanation of these facts – how does a […]
This comment was made on a blog I was visiting recently: “None of us are born with any smattering of whether or not there is a god, or for that matter, even what a god is (or is not) – we have to be taught that” I was interested, for I knew of some scientific […]
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms “faith” in the dignity and worth of the human person and declares all humans are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Is this true, or is it just a legal fiction?
I am a great fan of the Science on religion blog and website. I have gained much insight and information, and not a few blog topics, from these sites. I’ve bookmarked dozens of topics, some of them a little obscure, and I think it is time to introduce you to some oddities.
We all like to think we are thoughtful, rational people. In our modern scientific world, it has become an ideal. To label someone as ‘irrational’ is a severe insult. But have we taken this ideal a little too far?
My post on Your brain, faith and disbelief generated some critical comment. The problem wasn’t so much with the main point of the post (that neuroplasticity appears to explain some of why believers and unbelievers are so polarised about God) but a side comment that there are demonstrated mental and physical health advantages in belief […]