Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous assertion that “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts” seems increasingly quaint today, at a time when one person’s self-evident truth is dismissed by another as fabrication or myth. New research provides a sobering reason why we can’t even agree on what we’re arguing about: We align our perception of reality to comfortably coexist with our moral convictions. “In the realm of moral reasoning, at least, a clean separation of opinion and fact may be difficult to achieve,” write psychologists Brittany Liu and Peter ... Read More
How to Keep the Devil From Getting More Than His Due
October 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The February 2011 issue of Currents in Biblical Research should have a calming effect on anyone who had to hide behind the sofa when watching the scary scenes in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. In “The Devil in the Details,” Derek R. Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh, discusses the different ideas about demons and Satan in ancient religious texts. The ideas range from the “original” concept of Satan as he is described in the Old Testament, as an adversarial angel who is a member of God’s divine council, to the “new” Satan of the New Testament Gospels, ... Read More
Myth of the Modern Religious War
September 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Not long ago, a church leader at the Protestant sect I belong to gave a sermon criticizing the role of religion in today's conflicts. He cited the Crusades, clashes between Catholics and Protestants, and other "religious wars" of the Middle East and throughout Asia. It made me wonder how prevalent these are, given that many of these conflicts cited either occurred a long time ago or are predominantly fought over other reasons. The political science literature on the subject is overshadowed by Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, frequently cited by the mainstream media and numerous ... Read More
Benefits of Religion Limited to Fervent Believers
February 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The benefits of belonging to a religious community don’t have to be taken on faith. Numerous studies have linked participation in a congregation with good physical and mental health, as well as higher levels of subjective well-being. But a new paper offers a rather large caveat to those findings. “While fervent believers benefit from their involvement, those with weaker beliefs are actually less happy than those who do not ascribe to any religion,” a research team led by Daniel Mochon of the Yale School of Management reports in the journal Social Indicators Research. “As ... Read More
Shouts Banish Doubts
October 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Two years ago, faith in free-market capitalism was badly shaken when the international banking system nearly collapsed. To many, a sober re-evaluation of the government’s regulatory role seemed an inevitable response. Instead, today’s political discourse is largely driven by the Tea Party movement, which is impassioned and vocal in its defense of unfettered free-market capitalism. Why have so many rallied in support of a system that recent events suggest is deeply flawed? Newly published research confirms and expands upon an insight first revealed in the 1950s: If confidence in ... Read More
Justifying What You Know Can’t Be True
November 3, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
President Obama has had a hard time dislodging misperceptions about his health care proposal — those stubborn beliefs that there are death panels and free care for illegal aliens that don't actually exist in the legislation. Recent research about the way people defend their faith in false information, though, suggests calling out the inaccuracies may not be all that effective in converting the suspicious. Sociologists at the University of North Carolina and Northwestern University examined an earlier case of deep commitment to the inaccurate: the belief, among many conservatives who voted ... Read More
