The people who challenged my atheism most weren't priests, but homeless addicts and prostitutes
The people who challenged my atheism most weren’t priests, but homeless addicts and prostitutes
I eventually left my Wall Street job and started working with and photographing homeless addicts in the South Bronx. When I first walked into the Bronx I assumed I would find the same cynicism I had towards faith. If anyone seemed the perfect candidate for atheism it was the addicts who see daily how unfair, unjust, and evil the world can be.
None of them are. Rather they are some of the strongest believers I have met, steeped in a combination of Bible, superstition, and folklore.
An interesting perspective.
How to compose a successful critical commentary
How to compose a successful critical commentary
1. Attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly and fairly that your target says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
3. Mention anything you have learned from your target.
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.
Taken from Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett.
Humans can't be empathetic and logical at the same time
A new study published in NeuroImage found that separate neural pathways are used alternately for empathetic and analytic problem solving. The study compares it to a see-saw. When you’re busy empathizing, the neural network for analysis is repressed, and this switches according to the task at hand.
Cool finding and, as Colleen Park writes in Popular Science, this might explain why the cold CEO fires people emotionlessly because he’s thinking analytically—for profit.