Last month, Aeon Magazine published a provocative column from psychologist Robert Epstein titled, “Your brain does not process information and it is not a computer.” In the column, Epstein pushes against the dominant metaphors of recent brain research, including computing, algorithms, and memory as storage. He explains that the metaphors for brain function have changed over […]
Playing peekaboo with reality
Object permanence is a cognitive development skill that most children learn within their first year. It’s the ability to recognize that other things and people around us persist even if we stop perceiving them: there’s a world beyond us. This is also a skill that adults regularly fail to use as we navigate life, playing […]
Why Communicating Can Be So Hard
Steven Pinker is a Harvard psychologist who has spent the last few years studying language and morality. You may recognize his curly grey locks from his 2007 TED talk on the international violence rate: “The surprising decline of violence.” In a new column posted to the Chronicle of Higher Education this week—just in time to drive traffic […]
Round-up: Responses to Exodus Closure
And away he goes, precious. Gone! Gone! Gone! Smeagol is free!” Several organizations have responded to last week’s announcement that Florida-based ex-gay/sexual orientation change ministry Exodus International will close. The National Religious Leadership Roundtable includes representatives of Christian affinity and interest groups including the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, the Unity Fellowship Church, the Metropolitan Community […]
Caring for Our Mother: Sexuality and the Seventh-day Adventist Church II
In Part 1 of this series, I described the Seventh-day Adventist church’s approach to sexuality as a “spell” that dissociates members from themselves, confines them to different-sex relationships or self-suppression, and encourages them to lobby against civil laws for LGBT people in North America and internationally as well. [1] With a handful of doctrinal premises, a […]
The Magic of Shame: Sexuality and the Seventh-day Adventist Church I
The few can’t control the many by force. —José Barrera José Barrera defines magic as the ability to change reality by influencing others’ beliefs and consequent behavior. His argument is that magicians are not mere illusionists like those featured in The Prestige; they are people and groups who invoke their authority over others and use it […]