A cat trapped inside a human body
We have women born in a man’s body, and men born in a woman’s body. Now there is a case in which supposedly a cat was born in a human body. After the jump, read the article and watch the video of the young woman meowing, hissing at dogs, and grooming herself. Notice the neoplatonic [Read More…]
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Faith’n’Family – LCMS Youth Ministry Symposium
Rev. Dr. John Oberdeck presents on the adolescent brain at the 2016 LCMS Youth Ministry Symposium.
The psychology (and benefits) of gratitude
The field of psychology has usually concentrated on trying to understand aberrations and psychological problems. But now a strain is concentrating on “positive psychology,” seeking to understand mental well-being. A key aspect is gratitude. People who have an attitude of thankfulness show a whole range of other positive traits, not only psychologically but physicially! From [Read More…]
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The psychology (and benefits) of gratitude
The field of psychology has usually concentrated on trying to understand aberrations and psychological problems. But now a strain is concentrating on “positive psychology,” seeking to understand mental well-being. A key aspect is gratitude. People who have an attitude of thankfulness show a whole range of other positive traits, not only psychologically but physicially! From [Read More…]
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The 1st use of the Law and the new commenting system
We theology nerds talk quite a bit about the Second Use of the Law (the theological use, the “mirror,” which convicts us of sin and drives us to the Gospel), and we argue about the Third Use of the Law (the didactic use, the “guide,” which shows Christians how to live). We don’t usually say [Read More…]
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Euthansia for the depressed
Belgium, having legalized euthanasia, keeps extending it to more and more people: to terminally ill children too young to request it; and now to physically healthy folks who suffer from depression. Doctors have recently approved euthanasia for a he…
Will marriage wreck the gay identity?
The New York Times reports that some gays are worrying that legalized marriage and their new social acceptance will mean a loss for gay identity and gay culture. Some telling quotes in the article: “The thing I miss is the specialness of being ga…
Recovering Friendship
The decline in the size of families–from 3.5 to 2 children in 50 years–has also meant fewer cousins, fewer children in neighborhoods, and fewer relationships in general. That means, according to Ted C. Fishman, that we need to recover fri…
If transgender, why not transracial?
We are told that personal identity is different from physical being, that some individuals feel like women, even though they have a male body. But we should treat them according to the way they “self-identify,” rather than according to th…
Transgenderism vs. Feminism
The arguments for transgenderism contradict the arguments for feminism. So claims Joseph Backholm, who concludes that the real issue is “declaring independence from a fixed reality.” From Joseph Backholm, The Self-Defeating Logic of Transgenderism: The argument in support of transgenderism is that sex and gender are different. While proponents are forced to acknowledge that DNA determines [Read More…]
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How to be happy?
Happiness is not all it’s cracked up to be. And happiness is not the test of faith or a sign of being right with God. Having said that, it’s interesting that the Mayo Clinic has completed a big study of human happiness. See some details after the jump. From Researchers Say They’ve Cracked The Code [Read More…]
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Psychology studies too reliant on college students
The field of experimental psychology operates mostly in research universities. So their test subjects tend to be 20-something-undergraduates volunteering for research projects to get extra credit. That is not the world’s most representative population. (I volunteered for some of those experiments myself, and I remember how seriously I took them, which was not very.) A [Read More…]
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The “Transabled”: people who want to be disabled
Transgendered individuals feel that they were born in the wrong body. There are also people who feel uncomfortable with their fully functioning bodies and feel that they should be disabled. They sometimes stage accidents to cut off their own legs or blind themselves. Some use leg braces and wheel chairs even though they don’t need [Read More…]
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Between first sleep and second sleep
About two years ago, we posted First Sleep, Second Sleep, which became the 12th most-read post on this blog, with people to this day clicking on it. It had to do with what historians have discovered about sleep patterns in the days before artificial lighting, from ancient and Biblical days through the 17th century. People [Read More…]
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The World Beyond Your Head
Matthew Crawford, a philosopher who has found wisdom in being a motorcycle mechanic, is the author of an excellent book on vocation entitled Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. He now has another book that shows how the Enlightenment has given us a very distorted view of the self, one [Read More…]
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A masculinity crisis from porn & gaming
A leading psychologist is saying that pornography and video games are crippling young men in their ability to have relate to women and to the real world outside themselves. Philip Zombardo goes so far as to say that excessive use of porn and gaming is actually rewiring the male brain, as these new means of [Read More…]
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A scholarly study of anti-Christian bigotry
Sociologist George Yancey has conducted a study of people who are bigoted against Christianity. He has found that conservative Christians share at least one thing with atheists: both are hated by large numbers of people. (Half of the public hate atheists, but a third hate conservative Christians.) Prof. Yancey has found that “Christianophobia” is [Read More…]
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Family, country, God–in that order
The Barna pollsters have released a study of what factors tie into Americans’ self-identity. The biggest factor by far is “family.” Then comes “country.” Then comes religion. Other elements, such as career and ethnicity, play a lesser but still significant role. The mix is different according to different demographics. After the jump, an excerpt and [Read More…]
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Male abortions & the end of “women’s issues”?
Feminism and gender politics in general may be coming apart, since gender identity is being parsed into ever-smaller mutually offended units. To so much as speak of “women’s issues” is now considered in some of these circles to be oppressive to transexuals, an act of “cissexism,” defined as “transphobia.” To the point that some pro-abortion [Read More…]
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Raising little narcissists
A study purports to show how certain parenting styles can turn children into narcissists. But it distinguishes between narcissism, which is bad, and “self-esteem,” which is good. From The Parenting Style That Turns Kids Into Narcissists – Bloomberg Business: Researchers at the University of Amsterdam took a more methodical approach to determine what kind of [Read More…]
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From justifying God to justifying existence
More (see my last post on the subject) from Living by Faith by Oswald Bayer. . . Not only are we always judging, condemning/justifying ourselves and each other, we also judge, condemn/justify God. Bayer has some interesting reflections on “theodicy,” the question of how or why God allows evil, drawing on sources that I wasn’t [Read More…]
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Justifying ourselves
I am reading a book that is blowing me away: Living by Faith by Oswald Bayer, the contemporary German theologian who is sort of the Lutheran answer to radical orthodoxy. Instead of reading it all, then writing a formal review, I am so excited by this book that I thought I would write posts about [Read More…]
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How pastors and other leaders deal with inner chaos
There are lots of books about leadership, particularly leadership in churches. The book that won the Award of Merit (2nd place) in the category of Christianity & Culture in the Christianity Today Book Awards, goes much deeper than most. Mark Sayers, in Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm, shows how leaders–that [Read More…]
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Why artificial intelligence won’t conquer humanity
Some smart people, from Bill Gates to Stephen Hawkings, have been raising the alarm that computers might get so intelligent that they could conquer the human race. But artificial intelligence specialist David W. Buchanan explains why this isn’t something we need to worry about, saying the alarmists are committing the “consciousness fallacy,” confusing intelligence with [Read More…]
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The Eight Human Truths of Impulse
Candy sales have been soaring ever since marketers started putting their wares by checkout counters. Such “impulse buying” increases the longer customers have to wait in line to get to the cash register. Now, though, self-service checkout, online retailing, and other technological developments mean that consumers are spending less time in checkout lines, which manifests [Read More…]
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