The reason I’m not a neurobiologist but a cognitive psychologist is that I think looking at brain tissue is often the wrong level of analysis. You have to look at a higher level of organization.
Violence and religion have often gone together, but it’s not a perfect correlation, and it doesn’t have to be a permanent connection, because religions themselves change.
The strongest argument against totalitarianism may be a recognition of a universal human nature; that all humans have innate desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The doctrine of the blank slate… is a totalitarian’s dream.
The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn’t all that high.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child’s peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Like the early days of the Internet, the dawn of personal genomics promises benefits and pitfalls that no one can foresee.
Consciousness surely does not depend on language. Babies, many animals, and patients robbed of speech by brain damage are not insensate robots; they have reactions like ours that indicate that someone’s home.
I think that if you were to probe a lot of people’s religious opinions, they would not be as religious as the numbers would suggest.
