In 1902, Rudyard Kipling published his wonderfully imaginative Just So Stories. What child does not thrill to learn “How the Camel Got His Hump” or “How the Leopard Got His Spots“? When I was six years old, my grandmother read “How the Whale Got His Throat” to me and I swallowed it hook, line, and [...]
Tags:adaptationist·desire·empiricism·epigenetic·evolutionary psychology·imagination·Jaak Panksepp·Jonah·Jules Panksepp·Just So Stories·modules·myth·neuroscience·Panglossian·Rudyard Kipling·science·seven deadly sins·Seven Sins·spandrels·speculation·storytelling·tales·whale·wish fulfillment
In a splendidly illustrated and nicely argued open access article appearing in the journal Neurosurgery, Ian Suk and Rafael Tamargo contend that Michelangelo included a portion of the human brain on God’s neck in his Sistine Chapel fresco, “Separation of Light from Darkness,” which was painted in 1511. I have used another of those frescos [...]
Tags:anatomy·brain·Creation of Adam·excommunication·fresco·God·god concept·heresy·Ian Suk·imagination·Ludwig Feuerbach·Michelangelo·neurobiology·Neurosurgery·projection·Rafael Tamargo·Separation of Light from Darkness·Sistine Chapel·supernatural thinking·The Essence of Christianity
Today’s title riffs on the seventh installment of William Saletan’s Slate series on the memory researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. In several places in the article, one could simply replace words or phrases and the result would be an accurate description of the ways in which religious cultural inputs create imaginary worlds for believers of most [...]
Tags:cultural inputs·cultural patterning·Elizabeth Loftus·imagination·implantation·indoctrination·memories·memory·sin·suggestion·taboo·Ur-God·William Saletan
In the fourth installment in his series on memory and the work of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Slate’s William Saletan discusses “repressed memories” that have given rise to all sorts of injustice in courtrooms across America. The title of today’s article is “The Recipe: A Cookbook for Memories of Sexual Abuse,” and includes this revelatory excerpt:
Loftus [...]
Tags:confabulation·Elizabeth Loftus·filtered experience·identity·imagination·immersion·indoctrination·inference·memories·memory·recipe for religion·spiritual cookbook·spiritual experiences·suggestion·William Saletan
Though I have had my disagreements with William Saletan in the past — we have briefly debated whether “race” is a biologically valid classification (it isn’t) — I want to be the first to congratulate him on a series of articles (“The Memory Doctor”) he is running over at Slate. The subject is memory and [...]
Tags:cognition·confabulation·Elizabeth Loftus·fabrications·imagination·memories·memory·past lives·reincarnation·suggestibility·William Saletan
