Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Study finds that belief in religious fundamentalism partly due to a brain impairment. Tell me something I didn't know.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness. 

Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge. On the other hand, religious beliefs are not usually updated in response to new evidence or scientific explanations, and are therefore strongly associated with conservatism. They are fixed and rigid, which helps promote predictability and coherence to the rules of society among individuals within the group. 

Religious fundamentalism refers to an ideology that emphasizes traditional religious texts and rituals and discourages progressive thinking about religion and social issues. Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview.

Once again this is one of the those things which seems so blatantly obvious, and which we are supposed to be too polite to say out loud.

If you literally believed in leprechauns, unicorns, or zombies people would legitimately be concerned about your mental health, but if you wrap it in a religious shroud then suddenly your insistence that magical beings are all around us looking out for our well being is taken as a testament to your deep faith.

Remember how Joy Behar was forced to publicly apologize for suggesting that Mike Pence was mentally ill for saying that Jesus Christ talked to him?

Well obviously she was right.

23 comments:

  1. Stephen Hawking died.

    He was an atheist.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-makes-it-clear-there-is-no-god/

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-death-dies-atheist-god-brief-history-time-quotes-explained-a8254846.html

    ""I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail," he said. "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

    But he said that there was no need for there to be life after death to make people behave well while they were alive. "We should seek the greatest value of our action," he said, when asked how we should live."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:30 AM

      https://wonkette.com/631137/stephen-hawking-has-left-the-universe

      infinity

      Delete
    2. Anonymous9:40 AM

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZolfKgW5Is

      "Muito lindo mesmo=)
      Celine Dion e Beegees talento."

      'Bee Gees - Immortality'

      "We don't say goodbye"
      "Journey through Eternity"

      Delete
  2. Anonymous2:56 AM

    No better illustrated than with the death of Stephen Hawking yesterday. Brilliant mind vs. nut job, it all depends on who’s eulogizing him.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey wait a minute. I literally believe in zombies! That's what this whole article was about wasn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous3:59 AM

    When I texted my Baptist stepmom this morning that Hawking had died, she coldly texted back that the man is in hell now.

    She included some Jesusy biblical crap about non-believers. So there you have it; 'true christian's' official word on where Hawking has ended up.

    As for me, I believe that with Hawking dead and Trump still alive, humanity's collective IQ just took a steep nosedive.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous6:58 AM

      Billy Graham finally croaked. So there's THAT.

      Delete
  5. Anonymous3:59 AM

    Hyper-religosity is a very well known hallmark of schizophrenia/psychosis.
    With mental illness as so many other things, there is clearly a wide spectrum, including many individuals who are functional enough that we don't (or don't always) recognize mental illness for what it is.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous4:05 AM

    I was disappointed that Joy bowed to pressure to apologize. She has the right to express her opinion. I don't know if she was threatened with dismissal unless she apologized but she should have defended her remarks as being her own personal views on the subject.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous6:01 AM

    Imagination, creativity, worship. Its all good. But? From the beginning of mankind man has used religion to enslave his fellow man. Putting the fear of "god" in you. There is nothing wrong with worshipping something, someone, or someplace. It is harmful when predators hide in a church, get tax exempt status and use it to con willing souls. It is harmful when it is used in politics.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous7:11 AM

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/white-men-stockpile-guns-theyre-scared-black-people-feel-inadequate-science-says/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:23 AM

      https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/three-illinois-men-charged-minnesota-mosque-bombing

      Wp!

      Delete
    2. Anonymous8:58 AM

      http://www.imdb.com/list/ls003011994/

      Fear >"The wonderful Sidney Poitier made his fim debut auspiciously in the 1950 Joe Mankiewicz drama, No Way Out. At 23 years old, Mr. Poitier showed acting brillliance beyond his years. This brilliance continued over a 50 year film career. Sid Poitier has always had a quiet dignity and elegance and his performances have been consistently excellent. This list was a labor of joy and is meant as a tribute to the great Sidney Poitier.
      Here are 32 of his very best!" BLM!

      Delete
  9. Anonymous7:42 AM

    https://www.politicususa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/bd180312-1.jpg

    "In the West Wing, constant staff churn become the new normal." KkkHAO$!

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-moves-to-remake-his-team-with-loyalists-cable-news-stars-and-killers?ref=home

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous7:58 AM

    "Hours to Go"'The Big Eddy Club—named after the then all-white dining club to which five of the victims’ families and many of Columbus’ legal and law enforcement officials belonged—was published in 2007.'
    " the petition’s further question for the Supreme Court: “When a State provides a defendant under a death sentence the right to DNA testing of evidence that can prove that the defendant is innocent and then, in the process of testing, the State contaminates and destroys the DNA evidence, does this destruction constitute a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution so as to bar a defendant’s execution?” This, the petition says, is a unique question, which the court has “never previously confronted.” "There was much for the court to consider beside the Miller DNA test. For example—as the Supreme Court petition states—there was a set of footprints, left by the killer at one of the victim’s homes, after he climbed on to a dusty air conditioning unit to gain entrance via a window. The footprints—clear impressions made by a sneaker—were five sizes smaller than Gary’s size 14 feet. There was a bite mold made from a deep impression left in the breast of the final victim, Janet Cofer: The killer had apparently tried to bite off her nipple. The mold did not match Gary’s teeth, displaying a pattern of twists, gaps, and overcrowding that Gary—who at the time of the murders was modeling in TV commercials for a high-fashion clothing store—did not have."
    "in 1979, after he was convicted of robbing fast-food restaurants in South Carolina, the detective who was then the head of the stocking stranglings “task force” had considered him as a possible suspect—as was any black person from Columbus arrested for any kind of crime in this period." BLM!

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/dna-shows-hes-not-a-killer-georgia-wants-to-execute-him

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous8:12 AM

    Besides believing in the mythical they are hypocrites. Horrible people.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous8:39 AM

    'he wanted to show “that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.”'


    Read more at https://wonkette.com/631137/stephen-hawking-has-left-the-universe#7it4DQW9WqELqAqY.99

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous9:28 AM

    I am Native American. When the white people first came to our area we had our spiritual beliefs and then they preached christianity. That wouldn't have been so bad but then by that same token those people also sold my people booze. The whitemen gave the men booze so that they could sleep with the women.
    And after the epidemics made many children orphans, children were molested in mission houses by priest and nuns.
    It's all been one big free for all for our bodies, minds, and land.
    God is used to get things from people that are deemed savages. And right now in America, the so called Christians are still doing the work of the whoever to get things for themselves on this earth. There will be no end to that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous10:09 AM

      Believe>

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

      aka Gaia theory or the Gaia principle

      Gaian hypotheses suggest that organisms co-evolve with their environment: that is, they "influence their abiotic environment, and that environment in turn influences the biota by Darwinian process" <Truth.

      Delete
  14. Anonymous10:37 AM

    666pence =$9.18us=antichri$T

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous3:38 PM

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p0ShXsdZhU

      'Tito & Tarantula - After Dark'
      'Отлично'

      Delete
  15. Anonymous11:29 AM

    http://projects.aljazeera.com/2015/07/hate-groups/

    "Clearly, Heimbach saw his wife confronting him about the affair as her “not knowing her place” or understanding that wholesome Christian tradition dictates that he can cheat on her with her stepfather’s wife.

    This is also not the first time Heimbach has been charged with assaulting a woman. In 2016, at a rally for Donald Trump, he was caught on video shoving a black woman protesting the event, and pleaded guilty to second-degree disorderly conduct, entering an Alford plea (wherein you plead guilty while asserting your innocence, despite being caught on videotape). The woman he assaulted in that incident, Kashiya Nwanguma, and two other protestors who claim they were assaulted by Heimbach, are currently suing him in federal court. Heimbach, who is representing himself, says he was only following Trump’s orders to “get ’em out of here” and his promise to pay the legal fees of anyone who was arrested for doing so. (To our knowledge, Trump did not follow through.)


    Read more at https://wonkette.com/631150/days-of-our-nazis-white-nationalist-arrested-for-battery-kept-it-all-in-the-family#yq81zwzMbS5lGzKr.99

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous3:15 PM

    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/mike-pence-headlining-fundraiser-brothers-congressional-bid-trumps-d-c-hotel/

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-spent-dollar17000-at-trumps-panama-hotel/

    ReplyDelete

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