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Atheist Memes We Need To Throw In the Trash

Isn’t magical thinking adorable? The development of modern scientific inquiry took place in a certain historical and cultural context. I keep saying that it’s not like we discovered the scientific met... read more

Epigenetics does not mean that thinking makes it so

If this isn’t magical thinking, I don’t know what is. First of all, it’s a straw man to claim that genes are destiny. Genes affect probabilities, but it’s been known for many decades that other factor... read more

How to treat conservative delusion?

Perhaps the only difference is that this way of thinking is chosen, whereas full insanity appears to be more involuntary. Along with this pattern, is an aversion to comparing different abstract groupi... read more

Is It Time to Start Dismissing 'Economics Deniers'?

On Monday, the paper's David Leonhardt praised Seattle's tax on sugary soft drinks, asserting that such taxes "work as intended ... people in those places are ... drinking less soda." Yet supporters o... read more

Climate change isn't just a Leftist cause

While Klein rejects the notion that the free market can usher in a new paradigm of renewable energy, I believe that the role of any thinking Liberal should be to explore how best to use government pol... read more

Did Steve Jobs’ flirtation with alternative medicine kill him? (update)

Certainly, it shows that even someone as brilliant as Steve Jobs can be prone to denial, and, yes, even magical thinking, as this ABC News report points out: How could Jobs have made such a decision? ... read more

Spectrum Argument for Abortion, Revisited

Wetness is an emergent property—we see it only when enough water molecules get together. Similarly, thinking and consciousness are emergent properties of the brain. A single neuron doesn’t think slowe... read more

A reader asks about "Lost Christianities"

It’s partly in response to incipient Gnostic thinking that John bangs away at “the Word became ... Others regarded Jesus’ name as a magical incantation. Still others denied he was ever a human being ( ... read more

Once Again, Get the Hell Out!

Into this dismal void steps a crucial and accessible text by David Wildman and Phyllis Bennis titled Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer. As up-to-date as a printed text could possibly be, this ... read more

Why the Right Shifted on Immigration

When he announced his presidential candidacy in 1979, he called for closer ties with Mexico and Canada: "It is time we stopped thinking of our nearest neighbors as foreigners." As president, he said p... read more

Friends in high places

This sounds less like a reasonable empirical discovery or logical argument, and more like wishful thinking. It is the fantasy of a scared or covetous child. Put another way, the most obvious reason fo... read more