Links With Your Coffee - Friday
- Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Yes, George Bush does recall a British wartime prime minister: Chamberlain (tip to pedantsareus)
- Comment is free: The real enemies of reason
The enlightened tradition of free inquiry and open debate is threatened and the threat is growing in seriousness. But the most significant threats come from institutions that loudly insist on their enlightened credentials. States and corporations habitually use rational means to promote irrationality in target populations. They exploit the prestige of science to marginalise their critics. They cook up marketing strategies that sound scientific but are no more than mythmaking.
- Comment is free: Praying to win
In his classic book, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, the French sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that religion and society were deeply bound up with each other. He claimed that religions are potent forces for binding people into communities focused around common values, stories and symbols. But in addition to this, Durkheim claimed that religious experience itself - the sense of getting caught up with something greater than oneself - was generated by a sense of participating in the power of the larger social group rather than by some divine force. The power behind religion is therefore the power people feel from participating in groups. For Durkheim, religion both generates society by binding people into communities, but society also generates religion by providing the emotional intensity and collective symbols that get translated into everyday religious life. Ultimately there is no God - just the power of human belonging in society.
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Whether Durkheim was right to define religion in this way is a discussion for another day. But it is easy enough to see how football could be counted as a religion in Durkheim's terms. The emotional intensity of football fandom is one in which people become bound to the stories (eg of previous triumphs) and symbols (eg the football shirt) of their club. The intensity of this attachment is such that true fans remain loyal to their club for their whole lives regardless of what other relationships may change for them, and the idea of abandoning support of one club for another is as close to an act of perversion as is possible in the world of football fandom - he got laid, we got screwed on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
- Eating Made Simple -- [ nutrition ]: Scientific American
Nevertheless, basic dietary principles are not in dispute: eat less; move more; eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and avoid too much junk food
- How Chimps Avoid Temptation -- Bhattacharjee 2007 (822): 2 -- ScienceNOW
Most children practice this mental trick: When asked to wait patiently for a promised treat--say, an hour of television--they occupy themselves with a toy or a book. Researchers have now shown that chimpanzees engage in similar self-distraction, a finding that further blurs the cognitive and behavioral boundary between humans and other primates.
- Language Log: Innumeracy Cannot Be Overestimated
- Putin & Bush Humor, Vladimir Putin -- Gym Rat? Humor & Poll ยป Mad Kane's Political Madness
- Good Math, Bad Math : Yet Another Idiotic "Proof of God"
Comments
"He claimed that religions are potent forces for binding people into communities focused around common values, stories and symbols."
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups!
Whatever pedantosaurus. Worse still is when smart people manipulate large groups of stupid people.
I find Emile Durkheim's ideas very interesting.
If you can show that groups of people bond better through a common "spirituality", then it follows that perhaps these groups are better able to survive when compared with less congealed groups. People with better religious "wiring", would be better at binding and the groups they are in would tend to be more successful.
What about anti-social people, or better yet people who have Asperger's Disorder? Are these people immune to dogma? If these people who have lack of an ability and/or difficulty with connecting themselves to others do they feel they have no need for collective belief or even no religion at all?
So I have a question. if Durkheim is right, and I have no reason to believe he is not at least partially right, then what does that make me? I dont like football or any professional sport, I dont even watch TV and cant relate to any "national" pastime. Nor am I religious or a member of any religious institution. So does that make me a culture of one? If a persons identity is formed by institutional attachments then who is a person that has no attachments at all? A non-entity?
there's a handful of psychology studies that yield correlations between religiosity and longevity, i.e., churchgoers tend to live longer. this has provided fertile ground for attribution error among the god-folk, which is both amusing and frustrating.
ultimately, being around others is good for you, especially your immune system. i'm not sure the extent to which this applies to autism/aspergers, as their brains are wired differently.
re: the SCIAM article of "Eating Made Easy," i definitely recommend Marion Nestle's book, "What to Eat." it's reminiscent of Fast Food Nation, but above and beyond muckraking, it gives great dietary advice.
"blurs the cognitive and behavioral boundary between humans and other primates."
"The First Word" by Christine Kennerly delves deeply into such subjects, and with a devastating denoument, debunking, I mean, of that Useful Idiot Trotskyite Pinko Commie Bolshevik Appeaser, Noam Chomsky (Noam? What kind of name is Noam? I am-no no-am am-I? It's not no-am-al).
Simon Kirby and Morten Christiansen of Edinburg and Cornell are the anti-heroes, seriously, it's deep, a book.
It explains why i-am e-volving (me, language, it's me talking, language, grok?). And you're not*.
"What [NOT] to Eat." Tetrapods [NOT]... "the power of large people in stupid groups."
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*I'm evolving so you don't have to.
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