Radio Lab Podcast: Vanishing Words
May 31st, 2010 | 
Author: Today I listened to a Radio Lab podcast from WNYC in New York. Quickly becoming one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. The episode that I listened to today is called Vanishing Words and can be listened to here. The gist of this very interesting episode was that a guy is using computer linguistic analysis to study Agatha Christie’s novels. Upon doing this he discovered that over time, Christie’s vocabulary decreased by a significant amount as she got older. There had been some people who thought that she may have suffered from some kind of dementia but it was not clear. This study seemed to lend support to that theory. They also discussed another study where they were able to predict with 85% accuracy whether a person would develop dementia when they got older by looking at their vocabulary and writing style when they were young. Although certainly not conclusive it was very interesting.
So why I am bring this up today? Well, other than the fact that Radio Lab is simply a cool show to listen to that always makes you think, this made me think about something else that I thought was interesting. In keeping in line with my developing skepticism of the Bible and other “authoritative” religious books of the past, it seems that studies like this should give us pause. Often, when trying to figure out who wrote what book in the bible there is a linguistic analysis that is done on the vocabulary of the writings to compare with this persons other attributed writings. There are conclusions that are arrived at about two different people who wrote Isaiah, five possible people who wrote the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible) as well as different theories on Paul’s letters in the new testament. Given some of the ideas discussed in this podcast, it seems reasonable to conclude that the change in vocabulary with some of these different books may be the result of changing mental faculties over the years. Maybe Moses or Isaiah or Paul simply had some form of dementia and this is what made some of their ideas hard to square with other of their ideas. Maybe this is why there seems to be evidence of multiple authors of various biblical books. This of course would only make our job that much harder when it comes to trying to understand ancient authors, but it is definitely something to consider.
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Conversation with a Christian Friend #2
Below is a conversation that I had with a friend of mine recently who is a Christian. This is similar to another post that I have here in that I do not think that this person is a particularly good representative of the the best intellectual arguments. This person finds the basis for their whole reason for believing to be belief (faith) itself. On the other hand, even some of the best Christian apologists like William Lane Craig have said on numerous occasions that his primary reason for believing is the internal testimony of the holy spirit and faith.
The reason that I am posting this conversation here is simply to show what one of my main objections to the faith actually is and to use this conversation to illustrate this. This was not an email so what I put here is not an exact word for word recounting of the conversation but I believe that it is pretty close. I am going to refer to this person as Paul.
The God Helmet
A helmet designed to stimulate various parts of the brain which create near death and religious experiences. Pretty interesting…
Christianity and Pseudoscience
Luke over at Common Sense Atheism interviewed Chris Hallquist, author of UFOs, Ghosts, and a Rising God: Debunking the Resurrection of Jesus. The interview can be found here. In this interview they discussed the following:
* the claim that there wasn’t enough time between Jesus’ death and the writing of the gospels for legends to develop
* the claim that if the empty tomb story had been fabricated, the fabricators would not have said that women discovered the tomb
* do prophecies point to Jesus as the Jewish Messiah?
* the nature of Christian apologetics
For Good Reason: Mistakes Were Made
Excellent Podcast episode of For Good Reason. Cognitive Dissonance is extremely interesting and scary at the same time. We are all so prone to only accepting and believing things that agree with what we already believe and listening to this really makes you consider your reasons for what you believe.
You can listen to this episode here
Is Hell Even Taught in the Bible?
The doctrine of Hell in modern Christianity causes much consternation both with those who are not believers as well as with believers themselves. If you believe in a God that is loving and who cares for humans as if they are his children, it is difficult to fathom how he could send those people to an eternal torture chamber for simply not believing. It is also difficult to stomach the thought of loved ones who have died being tortured for all eternity. I remember as a believer that this caused me much anguish at various times when i was confronted with the death of someone that I knew who was not a “professing Christian”.
On the side of those who are not believers, the tension of a loving god and a fiery Hell is often given as a reason for unbelief. It makes the Christian God out to be a vindictive, unforgiving task master which is a huge turn off to many people. That is at least what the perception is.
How Vast Is the Cosmos?
I came across this site some time ago and just stumbled on it again as I was going through my bookmarks. What a great program. The site is called Closer to Truch and is a collection of very well made videos that are made for TV and cover topics on God, Cosmos and Consciousness. This particular program is about 30 minutes long and covers the vastness of the universe.
The host of the show paints himself as a seeker of truth who is humbled by the sheer size of the universe. I identify greatly with him in many of his shows on this site. I love nature and the more I learn, the more interested I am to learn more about it through science. I am humbled myself at not just the size of the universe itself but also the enormity of the amount of knowledge that there is to be discovered about it and just how small I am in relationship to it all. I look back over my adult life and see how much I have learned over the years and see that I am really no closer to having a “full knowledge” of the world then I was 20 years ago. With Socrates, I can say, Read the rest of this entry »
To Be or Not To Be… Skeptical
This is taken from James Mcgrath’s Blog and I thought it was interesting:
If we adopt a skeptical approach, we are less likely to believe things that are false, but will also probably not believe many things that are true but for which evidence is lacking. If we take a credulous approach, by believing everything, we may be certain that we have believed everything that is true, but we will inevitably believe many things that are false as well.
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