My last post described the notion that belief in God may be a byproduct of our over-active theory-of-mind capacity. “The God Experiments” describes another intriguing—and possibly complementary–theory advanced by Andrew Newberg, a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania. He speculates that ecstatic religious and mystical visions have piggybacked on the neural processes that underpin orgasms. […]
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I’d like to elaborate on one of the theories of religion discussed in “The God Experiments.” The anthropologist Stewart Guthrie proposes that religious experiences—and particularly those involving visions or intuitions of a personal God–may stem from our innate tendency toward anthropomorphism, “the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things or events.” Guthrie called his book […]
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When should journalists covering the science-religion debate disclose their personal beliefs? This issue arose when Discover was editing my article “The God Experiments.” As a compulsive blabbermouth, I favor disclosure–especially if I describe the beliefs of those I’m writing about, which I did in “Experiments.” So in the original draft, I described myself as […]
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Re some readers’ defense of The Bell Curve, the worst of the worst science books, see two posts from my old Stevens blog “The Scientific Curmudgeon”: "The Bell Curve Revisited" and “The Flynn Effect and Genetic Determinism”. From the latter:
Flynn found that scores on virtually every kind of IQ test–administered not only to soldiers but […]
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Seth Shostak, senior astronomer of the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) Institute, recently interviewed me on the Institute’s weekly science show. Go to the website of the SETI Institute and scroll down to “The End of Science: A New Beginning,” broadcast on November 1, or just hit this button to hear the show. […]
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Beyond Belief
November 24th, 2006 by John Horgan
The science-religion debate flames on. Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, Sam Harris, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, V.S. Ramachandran, Terry Sejnowski and a bunch of other world-class truth-seekers met at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, earlier this month for a conference called “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival.” Edge.org has a terrific package of stuff […]
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After adding the note below in the comment section of my last post, I decided it deserved a more prominent presentation. Here it is, with an additional whack at Elegant Universe:
Ah, this is just what I’d hoped Worst Science Books would do, provoke howls of outrage and calumny from the books’ defenders. Just a few […]
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I must respond to readers’ defense of two books on my Worst Science Books list, Listening to Prozac by Peter Kramer and The Bell Curve by Murray and Herrnstein.
Re Listening to Prozac, it explores, yes, with great philosophical subtlety the implications of a drug that dispels despair and makes us "happy." Is this happy new […]
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A journalist/friend who once excelled at hatchet jobs has recently bought the whole Buddhist bag, including the principle of “right speech,” which commands us not to speak ill of others. Right speech, like the other tenets of Buddhism’s Eightfold Path, supposedly helps us cultivate the selflessness and compassion that are necessary precursors of enlightenment.
But […]
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This weekend, while the rest of you have been raking leaves or rooting for Michigan or gawking at the new Bond’s abs, I’ve been wrestling with a momentous question: What are the next 10 books that deserve sanctification within the “Stevens Greatest Science Books” list?
After exhaustive scholarship and profound […]
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