Faulty interpretation

theage.com.au
IT IS because the Catholic Church opposes embryonic stem cell research that xenotransplantation remains the only option for many researchers and sufferers of serious diseases (Letters, 12/12).

Such research offers the potential to one day be able to grow tissue to replace diseased organs, hence curing many of these diseases and significantly reducing the number of animals killed for medical research.

We can only hope that eventually religious organisations will stop using their interpretations of ancient texts to hold back new forms of scientific research. In the meantime, the suffering of human and animals continues unabated.

Why does the Pope need security? Aren't the prayers of the faithful enough?

While I'm glad nothing happened to the Pope on a personal level, logically, they should get rid of security and let faith handle it. It would be like putting his money where his mouth is. If God wants a Pope, he'll provide one, right?

LAtimes.com
Father Federico Lombardi, the pope's spokesman, said it's not realistic to think the Vatican can ensure 100% security for the pontiff because he is regularly surrounded by tens of thousands of people for his weekly audiences, services, papal greetings and other events.

"It seems that they intervened at the earliest possible moment in a situation in which 'zero risk' cannot be achieved," he said of Vatican security officials. They will nonetheless review the episode and "try to learn from experience," Lombardi said.

Animal Sacrifices are Atonement, but Christianity uses a Human Sacrifice Instead

Local 5 News

The sacrifices of the Bible were offered not only to atone for sins but also as free will offerings to celebrate some joyous event, and as holiday offerings for the three biblical pilgrim festivals of Passover, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles). Each of these three holidays was called, in Hebrew, a hag. The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca called the Haj takes it name from this word.
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Some theologians consider such animal sacrifices spiritually primitive and in general, I, along with every single animal, agree with them. Although animal sacrifice is arguably the oldest religious ritual on earth, it's based upon a very dubious belief--that the death of an animal can correct your own moral failings.
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The rabbis introduced a daring change in Jewish worship - replacing every sacrifice with a prayer from a newly created prayer book. The prayer times were the same times as the sacrifice times, but no blood was spilled.
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This change was made necessary by historical events but had enormous impact on Judaism and the newly emerging religion of Christianity. Surrogate atonement through animal sacrifice was basically abandoned in favor of the direct and ethically superior command of confession and personal apology to anyone you had hurt. Sins were human acts that needed to be fixed by human actions, inspired, of course, by God's commands to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Contributed by Gandolf

Dysrationalia: Why smart people do dumb things

Globe and Mail

Give this problem a shot before you keep reading, but don't feel badly if you get it wrong.
Bob is in a bar, looking at Susan. But she is looking at Pablo. Bob is married. Pablo is not.
Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? The answer could be (a) yes, (b) no or (c) cannot be determined.

Roughly 80 per cent of people choose (c), but it is not the correct answer, says Keith Stanovich, a professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto.
He studies why smart people do stupid things - or, in more scientific terms, how intelligence is distinct from rationality. His work offers insight into important cognitive abilities that are not measured by IQ tests. It also suggests that deficits in real-world reasoning can be corrected, whether in adults or in children.

He says most people get the Bob-Susan-Pablo problem wrong because they tend to be "cognitive misers" - they put as little mental effort as possible into solving a problem. In this case, they quickly jump to the conclusion that they don't have enough information rather than making the effort to see if they do.

How We Support Our False Beliefs

ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2009)
The findings may illuminate reasons why some people form false beliefs about the pros and cons of health-care reform or regarding President Obama's citizenship, for example.

The study, "There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification" calls such unsubstantiated beliefs "a serious challenge to democratic theory and practice" and considers how and why it was maintained by so many voters for so long in the absence of supporting evidence.

Co-author Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, says, "Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as 'motivated reasoning,' which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

"In fact," he says, "for the most part people completely ignore contrary information".

Brain Cell Mechanism For Decision Making Also Underlies Judgment About Certainty

ScienceDaily.com
The results of this study, according to the authors, advance the understanding of brain cell mechanisms that underlie decision making by coupling for the first time the mechanisms that lead to decision formation and the establishment of a degree of confidence in that decision.

"Our findings suggest that when the brain embraces truth, it does so in a graded way so that even a binary [yes/no, true/false, left/right] choice leaves in its wake a quantity that represents a degree of belief. The neural mechanism of decision making doesn't flip into a fixed point, but instead approximates a probability distribution."

Collective Religious Rituals, Not Religious Devotion, Spur Support For Suicide Attacks

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2009) — In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologists Jeremy Ginges and Ian Hansen from the New School for Social Research along with psychologist Ara Norenzayan from the University of British Columbia conducted a series of experiments investigating the relationship between religion and support for acts of parochial altruism, including suicide attacks.

...This study indicates that religious devotion does not cause support for suicide attacks or other forms of parochial altruism. However, the findings suggest that regularly attending religious services may make individuals more prone to supporting acts of parochial altruism (suicide attacks). The researchers theorize that collective religious rituals and services create a sense of community among participants and enhance positive attitudes towards parochially altruistic acts such as suicide attacks. Although, the researchers note, the greater sense of community, developed via religious services, may have many positive consequences. They observe, "Only in particular geopolitical contexts is the parochial altruism associated with such commitments translated into something like suicide attacks."

Brain Differences Found Between Believers In God And Non-Believers

Belief reduces the ability to self-correct. What good is believing in a God that wants you to be moral when belief in a God disrupts the mechanism needed to know when to change behavior?

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers.

Their findings show religious belief has a calming effect on its devotees, which makes them less likely to feel anxious about making errors or facing the unknown. But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a "double-edged sword" which is at times necessary and helpful.

"Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you're paralyzed with fear," he says. "However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we're making mistakes. If you don't experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don't make the same mistakes again and again?"

Believers' Inferences About God's Beliefs Are Uniquely Egocentric

ScienceDaily.com
The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God's standards. "The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing," they conclude. "This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God's beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing."

But the research in no way denies the possibility that God's presumed beliefs also may provide guidance in situations where people are uncertain of their own beliefs, the co-authors noted.

Rare dementias rob personality, then life

CNN.COM
Life was good for Kenny Sparks. ... At 49 he had it all. But then he began to change....Kenny has a condition known as frontotemporal dementia, or FTD.
"Many patients will lose their inhibitions; they'll act totally inappropriately, leaving their families to wonder what is wrong," said Dr. Murray Grossman, a neurologist with the University of Pennsylvania. "Some patients will have no problem spending the family fortune, taking all their money and putting it into scams, get-rich-quick schemes, or going off and buying an expensive car or boat the family doesn't need. The patients lose their reasoning."
"What's particularly frustrating for family members is, the patients don't seem to have much insight into the difficulties they are having or causing for others," Grossman said.

FTD affects approximately 250,000 Americans -- about 10 percent to 20 percent of all dementia cases -- and misdiagnosis is common, according to the Association for Frontotemporal Dementias.

...When Kenny's children visit, it can be hard for them to see him slip away.

"When he has his bad days and he lashes out it makes it hurt more, and that's when you have to blame the disease," said daughter Alexandra.

Son Graham agreed. "You've got to understand your dad is actually gone, and it's the disease."

Cheryl looks at it differently.

"Our doctor says if we don't take this on with a sense of humor our family will be destroyed," she said. "In so many ways we've been blessed. So we've got to keep going with a good heart."

"There is no one hardest part," Cheryl said. "Well, for me, knowing that the man I thought I was going to grow old with -- I'm not, I guess."

Cheryl stopped, and with tears in her eyes, realized, "Yes, that's the hardest part."

Craving Hinders Comprehension Without You Realizing It

So we must only have a percentage of Free Will based on our physical resources..... 

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009)

A new University of Pittsburgh study reveals that craving a cigarettewhile performing a cognitive task not only increases the chances of aperson's mind wandering, but also makes that person less likely tonotice when his or her mind has wandered.

Blood does not cleanse. Blood stains!

citizen.com

On 11/27, we were blessed with another sermon from Bishop Paul Blake, PRECIOUS BLOOD. It took me back to the days of my early teenagerdumb when the cruci-fiction of the Bible god, Jesus, began to gross me out. I felt somewhat ashamed and weak because everyone else seemed to enjoy it so much.

As the Bishop put it, "The concept of the shed Blood of Christ offered in substitutionary sacrifice for guilty and condemned sinners is profoundly offensive to the modern mind." Yes, I admit it, the alleged brutal, barbaric, and bloody murder of an innocent man/god to somehow pay for my sins is not only offensive, but stupid and certainly unjust. Even if I was a sinner, (there is no such thing as sin) killing an innocent being for my sin takes us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when animal sacrifice and human sacrifice were socially acceptable.

Syntax in Our Primate Cousins

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009) — A study carried out in Ivory Coast has shown that monkeys of a certain forest-dwelling species called Campbell's monkeys emit six types of alert calls. The primates combine these calls into long vocal sequences which allow them to convey messages about social cohesion or various dangers, including predation.

This study shows the capacity of this monkey species for very complex vocal communication, both in the range of transmitted messages and in the techniques used to encode these messages.
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In this new study, the ethologists explain some of the rules that govern the semantic combinations of calls. For example, Campbell's monkeys can add a particular type of call to an existing sequence in order to make the message more precise or to alter it. They can also combine sequences relaying different messages in order to convey a third message.

Bacteria Provide New Insights Into Human Decision Making

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2009) — Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.
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Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to model decision making by humans, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.
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This has applications to human society because many people encounter similar dilemmas during their own lives. For example, should people ignore side effects and vaccinate against a new potentially lethal virus or should they not vaccinate and take the risk of being infected with the possible consequences?

St. Pauls Disease, aka Epilepsy

St. Pauls Disease from © German Epilepsymuseum Kork - Museum for epilepsy and the history of epilepsy.

In old Ireland, epilepsy was known as 'Saint Paul'sdisease'. The name points to the centuries-old assumption that theapostle suffered from epilepsy.

To support this view, people usually point to Saint Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, reported in the Acts of the Apostlesin the New Testament (Acts 9, 3-9), in which Paul, or Saul as he wasknown before his conversion to Christianity, is reported to have a fitsimilar to an epileptic seizure: '...suddenly a light from the skyflashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying tohim: ''Saul, Saul! Why do you persecute me?''...Saul got up from theground and opened his eyes, but he could not see a thing... For threedays he was not able to see, and during that time he did not eat ordrink anything.'

Click "Read more >>" for access.

Epilepsy Newfoundland and Labrador

In old Ireland, epilepsy was known as "St.Paul's Disease". The apostle discreetly mentioned his epilepsy onseveral occasions. In the 2nd. letter to Corinthians (2, 7) he says"...to keep me from being puffed up with pride...I was given a painfulphysical ailment...to beat me and keep me from being proud." He againmentioned his ailment in Galatians 4, 13-14.

Epilepsy Motif in Religious Art

Kunstgalleri, The epilepsy motif in religious art

"Introduction:

In all epochs of the history of the human race, poverty, misfortune, illness and suffering are frequently connected with higher powers, divine entities, personal deities or 'spirits'. This also applies, last but not least, to epilepsy, for whose frequently dramatic symptoms mankind has been just as unable to find a natural explanation as it has been unable to find its cause over hundreds and thousands of years.

The various names alone which have been given to this illness in medical terminology and in the vernacular in the various historical epochs are an indication of this supposed relationship between epilepsy and the supernatural: hiëra nosos (Greek) or morbus sacer (Latin): the holy illness; morbus divinus the divine, morbus deificus that created by God, morbus coelestis the heavenly illness; or morbus astralis the star and morbus lunaticus the moon illness."

Religious Experience Found in Multiple Categories of Neurologic Disorder

Professionals.epilepsy.com

Other changes highlighted in the literature include increased religious beliefs and a heightened concern for morality. Religious and moral themes tend to predominate when patients display hypergraphia, an increase in the volume of written material the person produces and a preoccupation with details within the content. The association of these behaviors to epilepsy, including TLE, is controversial.

Since the publication of such reports, a number of authors have questioned the linking of these personality changes with TLE. Indeed, various authors have indicated that such changes are not specific to patients with epilepsy but are also identified in other neurologic disorders. Furthermore, a recent review pointed out that patients with frontal lobe epilepsy are more likely to present these personality changes than those with temporal lobe epilepsy.

Yay, I'm under attack by Faith Based Thinkers! I'm somebody now!

Link to Faith Based thinking commenter
"you really need to add comment moderation to your blasphemy…"

"Please don't throw me in that briar patch!"
I'm going to feature you over in the sidebar. I'm even going to give a label for quick reference.
Please feel free to try your best to bring the blog down. You only make my case for me and drive my ranking up!
You silly person, you'll probably be the only one commenting.
*:O)
GOATS ON FIRE! YEE HAH!
And away we go!
thank you, thank you, thank you!

Fraud and Religion

The tragedy at the "Sweatbox" resort highlights several problems with Religion.
'Sweatbox' victims were attending 'Spiritual Warrior' program, CNN, October 10, 2009 -- Updated 2202 GMT (0602 HKT)

"The use of sweat lodges for spiritual and physical cleansing is a part of several Native American tribes' cultures."

Since terms such as "spirit" are not defined, they are ambiguous. They can mean anything. Since they can mean anything, then there is no definition. When there is no definition, there is nothing to compare it to. Since there is nothing to comapare it to, the definition can change as needed to suit whatever purpose its being used for. There is no way to measure it.
So in the case of "spirit cleansing" some simple common sense questions come to mind.

• How does one know it works?
• If it doesn't work, what went wrong?
• What is the "spirit"
• Where does it reside?
• How can I cross-check any of these answers?

Now lets change the word "spirit" in "spiritual cleansing" with "carpet" and see how it plays out.
Acutally when you change "spirit" with "carpet" it makes more sense. All those questions can be answered unambiguously.

Tax Fraud

"The resort is on 70 secluded valley acres 20 minutes from Sedona, surrounded by thousands of acres of national forest, according to the Web site. It has Internal Revenue Service nonprofit status as a religious organization, its Web site says."

Why should religions get immunity from taxes? What is the justification? Can the justification be cross checked, for example, can we check if God exists?

If we can't check if God exists, then we can't tell which God is the real one. Since we can't tell which God is the real one, then we know that at least some of them are perpetrating tax fraud, maybe intentionally.

Third person dies in Arizona 'sweatbox' case, CNN, October 18, 2009 -- Updated 2132 GMT (0532 HKT)

People believe what they are told by friends, authorities and sometimes traditions

There were up to 65 visitors, ages 30 to 60, at the resort attending the "Spiritual Warrior" program by self-help expert James Arthur Ray, according to authorities.

People, by nature or by conditioning, believe authorities and tradition. Since that is the case, it is easy to see how so many people are easily defrauded.

Publicity, perceived authority and a trusted person

Ray is widely known for programs that claim to teach individuals how to create wealth from all aspects of their lives -- financially, mentally, physically and spiritually. He has appeared on various national programs, including CNN's "Larry King Live."

But, in my opinion, individuals like Oprah, and Larry King, before they put these kinds of things on display, thereby adding an element of credibility to them, have an obligation to cross-check and verify them. But they need definitive and measurable standards to do that don't they?

Until people get over the tendency to believe what they see and hear without cross-checking it, even casually, there will be casualties from fraud, mortal and financial.

Nonpartisan Media Discussing Failed Arguments For God

Over at The Fallacy Files, the article The Arguments That Failed discusses the Boston Review Article God; Philosophers Weigh In by Alex Byrne. Both demonstrate the problems with Anselm's "Ontological" Argument, The Design Argument and The "Fine-Tuning" Argument.