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Apr 21, 2014 · Affinity bias is the common tendency to believe, or agree with, the ideas of people you like or admire, and to discount or disagree with those you dislike.
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- Which Hair Color Induces The Strongest Physical Attraction
- The Best Explanation
- Before Science
- Bible Times
- The Greeks
- Myth and Magic
- Astrology
- Modern Religion
- Cosmology
- Power
- The Mechanical Universe
For most of human history God was the best explanation for the existence and nature of the physical universe. But during the last few centuries, scientists have developed solutions that are much more logical, more consistent, and better supported by evidence. Atheists say that these explain the world so much better than the existence of God.They al...
In olden times - and still today in some traditional societies - natural phenomena that people didn't understand, such as the weather, sunrise and sunset, and so on, were seen as the work of gods or spirits.
The Old Testament portrays the world as something controlled by God. Where we would see the weather as obeying meteorological principles, people in those days saw it as demonstrating God at work. And it was the same with all the other natural phenomena, they just showed God doing things.
The Greek philosopher Thales moved things on by suggesting that the gods were actually an essential part of things, rather than external puppeteers pulling strings to make the world work.
But there was more to these ancient explanations than gods doing things in or to the world. People saw the whole universe in a religiously structured way; they had no other way to see it at that time. For the ancients, God provided the power that made the universe work, and God provided the structure within which the universe worked and human being...
Ideas like that survive in modern astrology. Many people believe that their lives are in some way influenced by the movements of heavenly bodies. And the heavenly bodies concerned have names taken from mythology and religion.
And you'll find similar ideas in most popular religious thinking. Many people still believe, or want to believe, in the idea of God as puppeteer. They believe that God is able to do things in the world: he can divide the waters of the Red Sea to save the Israelites from Pharaoh, he can respond to prayer by healing an illness or getting someone thro...
Cosmology is the study of the origin and nature of the universe. Nowadays it's a branch of astronomy and physics, but in pre-scientific times it was a religious subject, organising the universe in terms of almost military ranks of beings. God was at the top, and human beings came pretty much at the bottom. In some cosmologies there was also an inve...
These religious cosmologies were rigid; each being had its place worked out for it in the structure that God had provided, and that was where it stayed. Looking at the universe like this provided great support for the hierarchical power structures of earthly nations and tribes: Everyone in a nation or tribe had their place, and the power came from ...
The idea that God steered everything in the universe as he saw fit was demolished by the discovery that there were natural laws obeyed by objects in the universe. Galileo, for example, discovered that the universe followed laws that could be written down mathematically. This suggested that there was logic and engineering throughout creation. The un...
And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means ...
Oct 26, 2016 · “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a law of propaganda often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels. Among psychologists something like this known as the "illusion of truth"...
The people around us have a stronger influence on our decisions and actions than we realize. Here’s what research reveals about our networks’ gravitational force.
. Shakespeare’s plays include Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest. During Shakespeare’s time, people had a variety of different beliefs and superstitions. Although most people were...
The Benefits of Belief. Religion and Psychology. Why People Believe. Religious beliefs reflect our unique cognitive ability to detect agency and intention in others and, by extension, in the...
