AUSTIN, Texas â Reliance on supernatural explanations for major life events, such as death and illness, often increases rather than declines with age, according to a new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin. The study, published in the June issue of Child Development, offers new insight into developmental learning. âAs children assimilate…
Category: Religion & Philosophy
Study links mind-body dualism to unhealthy behaviors
First, a philosophical review for those who need it: as a philosophical term the word “dualism” refers to the belief in a fundamental split between the mind and the body, and more broadly between the mind and the physical world. It is classically associated with Descartes, who in the seventeenth century proposed that reality consists…
Angelic dread: Cinematic representations of terrible angels
Last December, in one of those minor seasonal news-cycle events that the sober and/or cynical among us have come to greet with a yawn, various mainstream media outlets reported that, according to a new poll (or, more accurately, yet another new poll), a majority of Americans believe in angels. “Angels don’t just sing at Christmastime,’…
Cosmic awe: The religious experience in (and of) space
A very nice read about religious experience as associated with space travel, enhanced by quotations from an international roster of astronauts. For many people, space represents its own religion, a spiritual experience on its own, secular terms, with no help from the divine or ancient rituals. But for those who believe and travel into space,…
Can dark matter, the multiverse model, and the observer effect help to explain UFOs and paranormal entities?
Here’s some fascinating, cogent, incisive, and subtle speculation/theorizing (marred in places by a mild stylistic clumsiness) from Kathy Kasten, whose accompanying bio describes her as “an experienced writer/researcher who delved extensively into the UFO phenomenon and related subject matter” and whose “resume includes acting as staff liaison on the Human Subjects Protection Committee while employed at the…
The myth of an ending: Apocalypse as a spiritual path
An online friend named Karl, who runs the antinatalist blog Say No to Life, responded to yesterday’s post about the apocalyptic direction the weather has been taking (“Heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, superstorms: The future is here“) by giving me a word of caution: “Matt, it sounds like youâre urging on the Apocalypse with all your…
Is the spiritual counterculture doomed?
I would love to gainsay the point made by Nicholas Fuller in a recent essay at Evolutionary Landscapes. Sites like Reality Sandwich, and movements like Evolver, and the entire subcultural milieu that they represent, not to mention the general worldview they inhabit and promulgate, are near and dear to me. But damn it, Fuller is…
The future of The Teeming Brain
If you can believe it, I have now been writing this blog for six years. Today is The Teeming Brain’s birthday. I launched it on June 13, 2006, and was surprised and gratified to see a sizable audience come together rather rapidly. In the launch post I said, among other things: The expression âteeming brainâ…
Our religious transvaluation of money: From cosmic evil to “doing God’s work”
The cover feature for the current issue of Boston Review, titled “How Markets Crowd Out Morals,” takes the form of a hugely stimulating forum on the thesis put forth by Harvard government professor Michael Sandel in his new book What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (which I’ve referenced here previously). Sandel argues…
Mesmerizing: An excerpt from Antero Alli’s experimental film ‘The Greater Circulation’
Here’s a profoundly haunting and mesmerizing excerpt from The Greater Circulation, the 2005 film directed by legendary underground filmmaker Antero Alli — who is also, of course, the author of Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman’s Guide to Reality Selection, which presents a thoroughly heady exploration of Timothy Leary’s and Robert Anton Wilson’s eight-circuit model of…