religion

Brigham Young: Racist Prophet of the Mormons – Part 3

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In January of 1852, Brigham Young encouraged the Utah territorial legislature to pass a law that prohibitted sex between white people and black people, and publically declared that black people (or people with a black grandparent or great grandparent) “Cannot hold the priesthood”: ======================================= Mormon Anti-Miscegenation in Utah Law Brigham Young addressed the Utah territorial … Brigham Young: Racist Prophet of the Mormons – Part 3

Brigham Young: Racist Prophet of the Mormons – Part 1

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Brigham Young was a racist white man who initiated racial discrimination into the official policies and practices of the Mormon church (more specifically: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest denomination of the Latter Day Saint movement). One key racist policy of the Mormons was to exclude blacks from “the priesthood”. In … Brigham Young: Racist Prophet of the Mormons – Part 1

Arrogant Atheists?

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This is more than two months old, but I still think this is interesting. What’s interesting to me is that, according to these survey results, there is a certain symmetry between, on the one hand, theistic stereotypes about atheists, and, on the other hand, atheistic stereotypes about theists.   Dominant Theistic View Dominant Atheistic View … Arrogant Atheists?

Preliminary Thoughts about Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell, Part 2

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Re-reading Theism and Explanation by Gregory Dawes suggested another potential logical problem with Stephen Meyer’s argument in The Signature in the Cell.  Remember that Meyer explicitly provides the logical form of his argument. Premise One: Despite a thorough search, no material causes have been discovered that demonstrate the power to produce large amounts of specified information. Premise Two: … Preliminary Thoughts about Stephen Meyer’s <I>Signature in the Cell</I>, Part 2

Preliminary Thoughts about Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell

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I’ve been reading Stephen C. Meyer’s massive book, Signature in the Cell. For those who are unfamiliar with the book, it is a sophisticated defense of the intelligent design (ID) hypothesis. Meyer argues that intelligent design is the best explanation for the origin of biological, functionally specified information. In other words, Meyers is not arguing … Preliminary Thoughts about Stephen Meyer’s <I>Signature in the Cell</I>

Religious Belief Systems of Persons with High Functioning Autism

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Abstract: The cognitive science of religion is a new field which explains religious belief as emerging from normal cognitive processes such as inferring others’ mental states, agency detection and imposing patterns on noise. This paper investigates the proposal that individual differences in belief will reflect cognitive processing styles, with high functioning autism being an extreme … Religious Belief Systems of Persons with High Functioning Autism