ATHEISM: “Atheist Temples”
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Category Archives: Intellectualism
INTELLECTUALISM: “Left or Right?” / David Hayward
nakedpastor.com
h/t: Planet Atheism
h/t: Friendly Atheist
ACADEMIC STUDY: Susie Madrak / “Conservatism Is Lack of Complexity In Political Brain”
Interesting studies. Whenever I argue with a conservative, I always end up saying in frustration, “But it’s not that simple!” It appears that for some people, their inability to reason out complex ideas is what makes them conservatives, and not their hatred of the human race (although there may be some overlap there)!
[…]
In the four studies conducted by Scott Eidelman, Christian S. Crandall, Jeffrey A. Goodman, and John C. Blanchar published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc, they concluded, “(P)olitical conservatism is promoted when people rely on low-effort thinking.
[…]
We think that compassion and empathy are a fundamental part of liberal values, and we note at times that it takes being in that specific situation for conservatives to grasp why, for example, liberals support universal healthcare for all. There are many studies that address that take on things, but this study is specifically addressing whether or not having low-effort thinking will produce conservative thinking initially, and they showed that it does.
INTELLECTUALISM: “Fight Evil. Read Books.”
h/t: Planet Atheism
h/t: unreasonable faith
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: Helen Keller / “Keen Sense About Society, One Hundred Years Later”
h/t: MoveOn.org
CHRISTIAN SATIRE: The Atheist Pig / “The Bigoted Boy Scouts of Amurika”
Comic credit: The Atheist Pig
h/t: The Freethinker
DOCUMENTARY TRAILER: Atheists / “We Are Not Monsters”
h/t: Planet Atheism
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE: Rick Santorum / “We will Never Have the Elite, Smart People on Our Side”
For another reason why “we will never have the elite, smart people on our side,”
click here!
LITERARY NEUROSCIENCE: Corrie Goldman / “This is your Brain on Jane Austen, and Stanford Researchers are Taking Notes”
In an innovative interdisciplinary study, neurobiological experts, radiologists and humanities scholars are working together to explore the relationship between reading, attention and distraction – by reading Jane Austen.
Surprising preliminary results reveal a dramatic and unexpected increase in blood flow to regions of the brain beyond those responsible for “executive function,” areas which would normally be associated with paying close attention to a task, such as reading, said Natalie Phillips, the literary scholar leading the project.
[…]
Pioneering in a number of respects, her research is “one of the first fMRI experiments to study how our brains respond to literature,” Phillips said, as well as the first to consider “how cognition is shaped not just by what we read, but how we read it.”
Critical reading of humanities-oriented texts is recognized for fostering analytical thought, but if such results hold across subjects, Phillips said it would suggest “it’s not only what we read – but thinking rigorously about it that’s of value, and that literary study provides a truly valuable exercise of people’s brains.”
ANTIRELIGION: The Thinking Atheist / “Farewell to Faith”
“I’m not even an atheist so much as I am an anti-theist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental agnostics affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.”
~ Christopher Hitchens
Always Question Authority 