HGrimston

Here is an article based on a study, which shows a causal relationship, stating that higher analytical reasoning equates lower religious belief. What does the psychology community on this forum think? Offer any thoughts, opinions, related research. I suggest taking a look at the original study if you have access to journals. http://neurosciencenews.com/analytic-thinking-decrease-religious-belief-psychology-study/

Thank you for catching the sarcasm. I actually tend to think that the system you just described is, in a word, desirable.

Sounds an awful lot like "death panels" to me

I'm not so sure I can believe in a love "that looks on tempests and is never shaken." What is the difference between that kind of love that "bears it out even to the edge of doom" and an obsession? Is that psychologically healthy?

So you like to quote the bible? I imagine your definition for love is, "God is love," am I right? That's a great way to describe it. Infatuation is definitely not love, and a lot of people could learn something from this song.

I get the feeling that this particular phenomenon might be currently in play: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum I cannot agree that a person who has average physical health has equal or lower quality of life than a person who is completely paralyzed. That just seems silly. Ok, based on this, some people want to die and others don't. Why shouldn't we offer the choice to that one person who does?

The difference is quality of life. I know that we are all aware that military is just another word for state sanctioned killing. So why not form legislation around the medical industry that allows state sanctioned killing of a far more humane kind?

I would imagine that if staring at the ceiling is all one has to look forward in life, there will never come a time when they will be emotionally stable. Why force someone to maintain existence if they don't want to spend another 10 or 20 years without the ability to even move or speak? As to iNow's question, legislation on the issue would change current insurance practices. In my opinion, if someone is deemed to have a euthanasia-worthy illness, they should still receive life insurance benefits.

This does make sense to me, but then again, most people have never experienced something as seemly horrific as locked in syndrome. Perhaps the masses need a lesson in empathy and perspective taking. You do make a good point. One person's rights end where another person's begin.. and so a doctor probably shouldn't be forced to do this. However, there are obviously M.D.s out there who are willing to help a person find an end to their suffering through euthanasia. Maybe a new branch of medicine should be developed devoted entirely on the ethical practice of euthanasia for those willing to do it.

Well, I personally don't think the christian idealization of God is true anyway. But if we are going to discuss the christian God, we cannot just throw out his rules for himself. Further, the physics which describe how no information is ever lost in the universe could be described as the universe having a sort of omniscient quality. "As a budded off universe evolves, whether a sterile formless void or teeming with intelligent life, no information is ever lost in its quantum evolution, not even down a black hole or across a cosmic horizon, and every quantum event splits the universe and preserves all possible outcomes. The ensemble of universes is thus omniscient of all its contents." --From: http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_487.html

In my cognitive psychology course, we are currently talking about conceptual knowledge. For any concept, especially an abstract concept like love, there are going to be fuzzy boundaries around its definition. That being said, are you trying to find the consistent element of love and use it as your definition? In all cases, love is going to be context dependent - love between parent and child, love between pet and owner, love between romantic partners, love of a really great painting or song, etc. Rollo May did a pretty good job outlining some different kinds of love [ http://www.nickroy.com/2008/09/mays-forms-of-love/ ]. The only consistent factor I can see within all types of love, even in tough love which involves forcing another person to do something they don't want to do for their own good, is a strong positive regard. When someone uses the word love, that is the only part not dependent on context that they are communicating. Try not to think about it spiritually - that will get you nowhere. All emotions come from chemical/biological processes, and there is nothing special about true love. It might be particularly strong positive regard, even when compared to other loves, but that can be all it really is.

It seems to me that this argument against the timeless nature of God is only applicable to christian literalists. Further, if God doesn't exist outside of time, how is it possible for God to be omniscient? After all, if God is limited to a linear progression of time, God clearly cannot know all things. Further, you you understand the Lorentzian model of time, and also believe in the christian God, you must believe that God created the entirety of time from its beginning to its end. If God created time, and will exist after time, it can easily be said that God exists outside of time. To say otherwise is to also doubt that God is the creator, which breaks the entire premise of the Abrahamic religions. Another way to think about it would be to say that the purpose of testing humans is to build faith in the human. To do so, the human must believe that he himself had a conscious choice in the matter and that God didn't know what would happen. Perhaps God explained the situation in that way for the benefit of Abraham and is son.

Why is it that the acceptance of death sounds like mental illness? Death is something we all experience, and based on literature concerning the psychology of loss, it is far more healthy to come to terms with the inevitable losing of our lives. The desire to be euthanized at a point when one becomes only a hindrance and can no longer enjoy their own life is a thing only possible in the strongest, most rational of minds. Is it not more mentally sound to be able to accept the fact that lingering only means more pain? It seems to me to be insane to try and fight the inevitable.

If anyone here actually has empirical evidence of "sensing people watching you", I would love to see it. I have seen research that says the idea is a load of crap, but never the other way around. That being said, non-conscious perception is not going to be based in some mystical hoodoo spiritualism. Here is an article that talks about how animals can non-consciously sense emotions - its called the endocrine system. Exocrine, as in pheromones, travel through the air and tell us things about others around us. http://www.nature.co...bs/nrn2889.html Furthermore, don't most credible psychologists use attention to discuss our "sense of consciousness" these days?

I haven't looked at a great deal of research concerning the neuroscience of creativity.. but I do know that creativity is difficult to operationally define. Our brains can change and manipulate information to a degree, which is apparent from studies on problem solving, and the type of information being manipulated changes what regions and systems of the brain are involved. In any case, I would conclude that it is a fascinating line of research, and there is plenty of room for growth.

When you undergo arousal, or any kind of stressor in general, your body is releasing glucocorticoids. One of the reactions to glucocorticoids is iris dilation, because this lets your eye receive more light, and thus you see more, and can react to the situation at hand. It doesn't matter if it's a dangerous situation or not - your body reacts to glucocorticoids by preparing for a stressful event, and glucocorticoids get released when you become emotionally aroused or stressed.

I am sure that each individual has their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to performing different types of tasks, but the most important factor in learning and memory in general seems to be the elaborateness and depth of processing a person utilizes to remember the target information, as well as the various contexts the information is applied to, and how much it is recalled. This is an article that discusses depth of processing and how it affects memory: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/104/3/268/ And here is one that discusses the failings of memory in general. Understanding memory's weaknesses can help you understand how to overcome them to achieve optimal learning: http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.182