http://bridgingschisms.org investigating other people's beliefs Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:16:58 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Cryonics is the preservation of living humans or animals by extreme cooling with the aim of restoring them to a normal animate state at a later date. It is commonly confused (by me, at least) with cryogenics, which is simply the science of making things very cold. I mention this as ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/12/cryonics-life-saving-surgery-wishful-thinking/ If you visit the website of any pseudo-scientific practitioner one thing almost always displayed is a list of testimonials - effusive endorsements from previous clients. For example, here's an extract from the website of Cynde Van Vleet, a Tellington T Touch practitioner from California: My experience with Cynde and her TTouch ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/12/testimonials-and-research/ Michael Shermer's skeptical book, Why People Believe Weird Things has been around since the late nineties. I should probably have read and reviewed it sooner; so much of the content is relevant to what I write about here. I've had the book a while now, but a few weeks ago ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/12/review-why-people-believe-weird-things/ the chaplain tagged me recently with the Six Things Meme. These are the rules: 1. Link to the person who tagged you. 2. Post the rules on your blog. 3. Write six random, arbitrary things about yourself. 4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them. 5. Let each person know ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/11/six-things-meme/ While considering the beliefs of eccentrics like Garvan in his post "Right Not To Think", yunshui recently questioned whether it would be morally right in every case to change the minds of those who believe falsehoods. Most, like Garvan, have entwined religion so inextricably into their psyche that no amount of ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/11/truth-vs-comfort/ I am rather late in covering this, so by now I imagine everyone is familiar with the Atheist Bus Campaign, which has probably generated more publicity than the eventual bus adverts ever could. It started when Ariane Sherine (pictured) wrote an piece in the Guardian's Comment is Free section complaining ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/11/probably-an-atheist-bus/ I did. Palmistry (also known as Chiromancy) is the reading of people's hands to discover their fortune and personality type.  This is not limited the lines on the palm, but the shape of the hand and its proportions including length of fingers, natural lumps or "mounts" on the palm and the ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/10/hands-up-anyone-believe-in-palmistry/ I was tagged recently by Lynet, so I thought I'd share a few details of my beliefs and how they've changed. Can you remember the day that you officially became an atheist? No, it was a gradual progression. I became bored and frustrated with the lack of answers from the church youth ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/10/an-atheist-meme/ Almost every philosopher and belief-pundit has had a crack at the question of whether humans have free will. It is a pretty wide-spread belief, among both theists and atheists alike. There's a huge quantity of dense text on the subject spanning several centuries. This post however, will be accessible and ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/10/what-on-earth-is-free-will/ I noticed recently that a friend's online profile showed "Ignostic" to describe his religious beliefs. I hadn't heard of this before, so I asked him about it. Joe responded that he'd not done much reading into the subject, but it seemed to sum up his objections to religion. Put simply, my ... http://bridgingschisms.org/2008/10/ignostic-igtheists-or-weak-atheists/