Inculcating a belief is like charging a battery

Inculcating a belief is like charging a battery. The battery is thenceforward disposed to give a spark or shock, when suitably approached, as long as the charge lasts; similarly the believer is disposed to respond in characteristic ways, when suitably approached, as long as the belief lasts. The belief, like the charge, may last long or briefly. Some beliefs, like the one about Hannibal, we shall probably retain while we live. Some, like our belief in the dependability of our neighborhood cob...

 Scientific Laws Mean That God has No Freedom

he one remaining area that reHgion can now lay claim to is the origin of the universe, but even here science is making progress and should soon provide a definitive answer to how the universe began. I published a book that asked if God created the universe, and that caused something of a stir. People got upset that a scientist should have anything to say on the matter of religion. I have no desire to tell anyone what to believe, but for me asking if God exists is a valid question for science...

 Logic as Magical Thinking

These battles over definition are not taking place in the same universe as the one in which men throw around these terms online. But for the Logic Guys, the purpose of using these words — the sacred, magic words like “logic,” “objectivity,” “reason,” “rationality,” “fact” — is not to invoke the actual concepts themselves. It’s more a kind of incantation, whereby declaring your argument the single “logical” and “rational” one magically makes it so — and by e...

 The Dojo Extends Beyond its Walls

If the translation of Do predicates the meaning of one's Truth, what we call home for the purpose of such training is Dojo. Jo (translated as the place, or the Hall) is the center of total focus, where all venerable learning is to take place through myriads of human struggles and energetic interactions. It is therefore stated cogently that the place called "Dojo" must be designated as the place of being enlightened by all things. It is the place where one's purest form of existence must be fo...

 How the Internet's Consensus of Information Undermines Au...

Heretofore, the technological advance that most altered the course of modern history was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, which allowed the search for empirical knowledge to supplant liturgical doctrine, and the Age of Reason to gradually supersede the Age of Religion. Individual insight and scientific knowledge replaced faith as the principal criterion of human consciousness. Information was stored and systematized in expanding libraries. The Age of Reason originated ...

 Four Mertonian norms

The four Mertonian norms (often abbreviated as the CUDOS-norms) can be summarised as: communalism: all scientists should have common ownership of scientific goods (intellectual property), to promote collective collaboration; secrecy is the opposite of this norm. universalism: scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/personal attributes of its participants disinterestedness: scientific institutions act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for t...

 Our Modern Worldview and Morality is Shaped by Science

To begin with, the findings of science imply that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures—their theories of the genesis of the world, life, humans, and societies—are factually mistaken. We know, but our ancestors did not, that humans belong to a single species of African primate that developed agriculture, government, and writing late in its history. We know that our species is a tiny twig of a genealogical tree that embraces all living things and that e...

 How the Civil War Changed Southern Evangelicalism

There is still today a Southern Baptist Church. More than a century and a half after the Civil War, and decades after the Methodists and Presbyterians reunited with their Yankee neighbors, America’s most powerful evangelical denomination remains defined, right down to the name over the door, by an 1845 split over slavery. Southern denominations faced enormous social and political pressure from plantation owners. Public expressions of dissent on the subject of slavery in the South were not ...

 Principles of Adult Behavior by John Perry Barlow

Be patient. No matter what. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you. Expand your sense of the possible. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change. Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself. Tolerate ambiguity. Laugh at yourself frequently. Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right. Never forget that,...

 The Case Against Reading Too Broadly

The real problem with telling young writers to fan out across genres and forms is that it doesn’t help them find a voice. If anything, it’s antivoice. Learning the craft of writing isn’t about hopping texts like hyperlinks. It’s about devotion and obsession. It’s about lingering too long in some beloved book’s language, about steeping yourself in someone else’s style until your consciousness changes colour. It’s Tolkien phases and Plath crushes. It’s going embarrassingly, un...