Over 15 years ago, Ros and I were in the heartbreaking process of wrapping up our work at a church we were employed by and had poured our souls into. As we helplessly witnessed the Synod barely even attempting to mask its systematic efforts to destroy the community of healing we had built,
Read moreEarlier today, I walked two separate clients through the exact same material: An understanding of 8 key barriers to escaping from addiction and how those barriers actually represent a very clear roadmap out of addiction and into healing.
Read moreRead moreTradition: It can make life rich (big ethnic holiday feasts) and sometimes limited (seemingly arbitrary social taboos about clothing), but where does it stem from?
New research out of Karolinska Institutet’s Emotion Lab in Sweden attempts to answer that question, by creating a psychological model behind the notion of tradition. It turns out that humans have a tendency to be quite sheep-like: the researchers found that it likely comes from a threat of punishment – as well as people’s willingness to copy others.
Read moreYou don’t need to be a churchgoer to pray. That’s one of the findings of a sweeping new poll on faith from the Angus Reid Institute, conducted in partnership with Dr. Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge. The recent survey of 3,041 Canadians showed that even as our affiliation with organized religion continues to decline we still believe – just in our own, often deeply personal, ways. Here’s a snapshot of how faith shapes our behaviour and our views of one another today.
Read moreEverybody asks during and after our wars, and the continuing terrorist attacks all over the globe, “What’s gone wrong?” What has gone wrong is that too many people, including high school kids and heads of state, are obeying the Code of Hammurabi, a King of Babylonia who lived nearly four thousand years ago. And you can find his code echoed in the Old Testament, too. Are you ready for this?
“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
A categorical imperative for all who live in obedience to the Code of Hammurabi, which includes heroes of every cowboy show and gangster show you ever saw, is this: Every injury, real or imagined, shall be avenged.
Read moreReligious beliefs are remarkably various. But sometimes it can seem that there is only one way to be an atheist: asserting, on the basis of reasoned argument, that belief in God is irrational. The ageing “new atheists”-Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, for example-pit reason against faith, the science against superstition, and declare for reason and science.
It pictures the universe as a natural system, a system not guided by intelligent design and not traversed by spirits; a universe that can be explained by science because it consists of material objects operating according to physical laws.
Read morePerhaps the greatest mystery of the tunnels was to be found deep in the lower levels, where temperatures reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit and the air was so choked with noxious, sulphurous fumes as to be nearly un-breathable. It was here in these hellish conditions that Paget and company found a sharp bend at the end of a particularly steep passage that seemed somehow designed to prevent anyone who approached from seeing what was to be found at the end until they turned the corner. When Paget and Jones rounded that sharp bend, they were confronted with an underground stream of boiling water that they would later call The River Styx.
Read morePeople who are overconfident in their own abilities are considered more talented by others than they really are, a new study finds.
These overconfident individuals are probably more likely to get promoted, to become the leaders of organizations and even nations.
On the other hand, people who are not so confident in their abilities are judged as less competent than they actually are.
Read moreThe scandal around Phillips is just the latest in a long line of ugly shocks to the far Christian right that threatens to destabilize and possibly capsize the community. As The Wire reported in early March, Bill Gothard, the leader of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, resigned his position in the wake of a series of accusations of alleged sexual abuse from dozens of women in the organization.
