I remember watching an episode of Penn and Teller’s HBO series “Bullshit!” and reacting to something Penn Jillette said with an enthusiastic “huzzah!”
What had he said? That more people should read the Bible. Because we need more atheists.
Which made sense to me. The first time I read the whole dang thing through as an adult I was amazed by what was in it. And further amazed that people could consider it a holy book.
But I’m not your average reader. In fact, there is no such animal as an average reader. As new research suggests. In, How you read the Bible is tied to fellow worshippers’ education, Baylor researcher finds, I read:
Regardless of a person’s educational background, he or she is less likely to approach the Bible in a literal word-for-word fashion when surrounded by a greater number of church members who went to college, according to a Baylor University sociology researcher.
Oh. So blunt familiarity with the Bible may not help liberate folk. Notice that the finding was not about the individual’s education level, but that of their peers. Social environments matter.
For me this reinforces the idea that atheists and humanists need to speak up more. Why? We are members of many social groups. And a social group can influence the thinking of others, even if it is ever so subtly.
Yes, it is conventient to write-off bullying as merely a case of one bad apple messing up things for others… As if the entire social phenomenon can be entirely accounted for by the influence of one anti-social personality.
But maybe there is more to it than that — as the following quote from a scientific news-release proposes:
“People have traditionally framed bullying as social incompetence, thinking that bullies have low self-esteem or impulse problems,” said Patricia Hawley, KU associate professor of developmental psychology. “But recent research shows that bullying perpetrators can be socially competent and can win esteem from their peers.” [source]
Oh-oh. Looks like we can’t pin 100% of the blame on the bullies themselves. Damn. Don’t you hate it when things get complicated?
The following quote further argues that bullies aren’t simply warped individuals, but are fundamentally like you and me. It may be that they different strategies and opportunities for winning social status:
“It changes the rewards structure,” Hawley said. “At the end of the day, the goals of the bully are like yours and mine — they want friendship and status. They have human goals, not pathological ones.”
Hmm. So maybe if bullies were capable of winning blue ribbons for something else, their victims could rest easier.
Food for thought, certainly.
Holy smokes, Batman! And by smokes I mean “Lucky Strikes.” Check out this heading and subhead to a research finding:
Lifestyles of the old and healthy defy expectations -
Einstein researchers find centenarians just as likely as the rest of population to smoke, drink and pack on pounds. [source]
Damn. That doesn’t fit in with our mantra of “you are what you eat” and “you are what you smoke and drink, or don’t.”
By the way, the Einstein researchers aren’t necessarily brilliant. Rather they are affiliated with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University.
Okay, this was one study. And the data isn’t fantastic. But in some regards, it’s not bad either. The researchers interviewed nearly 500 Ashkenazi Jews, living independently and more than 95 years old, about their health and lifestyle. Ashkenazi Jews were chosen as the subject pool both due to their alleged longevity and their relative genetic uniformity. They then compared this to previous information gathered from roughly three thousand cohorts. In brief, this what they found:
Overall, people with exceptional longevity did not have healthier habits than the comparison group in terms of BMI, smoking, physical activity, or diet.
What? Really? Okay, so maybe those really long-lived individuals benefit from good genes. Yet lifestyle might matter more for those with so-so genes. Might.
[recycled material - first appeared here]
In a freethought essay by Valerie Tarico, Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 5.5 of 6, I came across a quote that caused me to emit a silent huzzah!
The scientific method has been called, “What we know about how not to fool ourselves.”
No, science is not one belief system among many. In fact, it may just be an antidote to belief. At least bogus belief.
What is science? Too often science is presented solely as the products of a process/enterprise. This strikes me as akin to pointing to a sack of rice and calling it agriculture.
We need more words!
There are the products of science and there is the enterprise or process of doing science.
Here is my spur-of-the-moment definition of “science.” At least the part I think needs to be emphasized.
Science is a set of thinking and information-gathering strategies developed to reduce error.
What differentiates science from non-science? The types of thinking and information-gathering processes used to come to a conclusion or form a belief.
Some fundamentalists view science with hostility, claiming it leads to atheism. There may be something to this, actually. In a sense, science is the process of subtracting the bogus to arrive at the more real (what we can more confidently know). When you apply scientific thinking to religious claims . . . they tend to fall away. In the area of supernatural belief, the atheist is one who has let fall away ideas unsupported by the best methods and technologies of thought.
The audacity! Dropping to the cutting floor another person’s cherished ideas!
Scientists aren’t arrogant or close-minded. They are confident that their cognitive tools are a prophylactic against bogus belief. And they are willing to put ideas to the test! And so they continue to advance, in part, by subtraction.
Girls and boys are different. But is it culture that does it? Or are they “naturally” different? My guess is that, generally speaking, nature slants the field of possible behavior and culture does the rest.
New research into friendship dynamics among elementary age girls and boys seems to muddle the question of gender differences more than it clarifies it. But maybe any previous, presumed clarity was premature, anyway.
A lead paragraph to the news release states:
In a Duke University study out Tuesday, researchers found that pre-teen girls may not be any better at friendships than boys, despite previous research suggesting otherwise. The findings suggest that when more serious violations of a friendship occur, girls struggle just as much and, in some ways, even more than boys. [source]
Okay, so boys and girls are similar in that they don’t like violations of friendships. The researchers did find a difference, however, in the strength of their dislike.
The girls also reported they were more bothered by the transgressions, felt more anger and sadness, and were more likely to think the offense meant their friend did not care about them or was trying to control them.
In reading the news release a second time I was left with a number of questions, including these: What type of friendships are we talking about? What type of transgressions and conflict of interests? Would the results be the same in different settings, in different cultures, and for different age groups?
As for this one study, I have no strong feeling about its significance. What I do take away from it is that we should be cautious when we nod in agreement to simplistic stereotypes about males and females.
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