{"id":4419,"date":"2010-08-01T12:46:38","date_gmt":"2010-08-01T12:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4419"},"modified":"2010-08-01T12:46:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T12:46:38","slug":"miscellany-august-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/miscellany-august-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Miscellany, August 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Following objections from Roman Catholic and other churches, official panel backtracks from assertion that New Zealand is &#8220;secular state&#8221; [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/news\/article.cfm?c_id=1&amp;objectid=10658644\">NZ Herald<\/a>]\n<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Preachers who are not believers,&#8221; paper by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.epjournal.net\/filestore\/EP08122150.pdf\">Evolutionary Psychology<\/a>, PDF, via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2010\/07\/preachers-who-are-not-believers.html\">Alex Tabarrok<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Australia: &#8220;Followers sue religious group after doomsday fails to occur as promised&#8221; [<a href=\"http:\/\/overlawyered.com\/2010\/07\/followers-sue-religious-group-after-doomsday-fails-to-occur-as-promised\/\">Overlawyered<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>A WorldNetDaily writer named Chrissy Satterfield <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnd.com\/index.php?pageId=175413\">applauds vandalizing    atheist billboards<\/a>, and boy, does Ken at Popehat ever <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popehat.com\/2010\/07\/09\/taggers-for-jesus-fight-the-scourge-of-atheist-expression\/\">have her number<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Tyler Cowen outlines his &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2010\/06\/should-we-distrust-the-dogmatic.html\">portfolio model of dogmatism<\/a>&#8220;:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>most people have an internal psychological need to fulfill a &#8220;quota of     dogmatism.&#8221;\u00a0 If you&#8217;re very dogmatic in one area, you may be less     dogmatic in others.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve also met people &#8212; I won&#8217;t name names &#8212; who     are extremely dogmatic on ethical issues but quite open-minded on     empirics.\u00a0 The ethical dogmatism frees them up to follow the evidence on  the empirics, as they don&#8217;t feel their overall beliefs are  threatened    by the empirical results.<\/p>\n<p>Some people, if they feel they must always follow the evidence, respond by skewing their interpretation of that evidence.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lesson here.\u00a0 If you wish to be a more open-minded thinker,     adhere to some extreme and perhaps unreasonable fandoms, the more   firmly believed the better and the more obscure the area the better.\u00a0 This will help fulfill your dogmatism quota, yet without much skewing your more important beliefs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form&#8221;: Chris Hitchens on the Ten Commandments [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/culture\/features\/2010\/04\/hitchens-201004\">Vanity Fair<\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following objections from Roman Catholic and other churches, official panel backtracks from assertion that New Zealand is &#8220;secular state&#8221; [NZ Herald] &#8220;Preachers who are not believers,&#8221; paper by Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola [Evolutionary Psychology, PDF, via Alex Tabarrok] Australia: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/miscellany-august-1\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4419"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4422,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4419\/revisions\/4422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}