Interesting Thought About The Brain

Lately I've been reading a few books about raising kids, specifically about the father's role. One of the many common themes in them is that you must teach your kids not only by verbal instruction and correction, but also by example. They all stress that even if we are not active in any of those three, we are still teaching. Our children watch us intently and learn from everything we do and don't do, whether we intend to teach or not. This kind of behavior by children is recognized all over the psychological community. Kids do because we do, even though they may not have a deeper reason.

Happy Thanksgiving!- A Week Early

Thanksgiving is another holiday (see my previous post about Halloween) that I see has lost a lot of its meaning in American society. I remember being taught that Thanksgiving was a time to stop and thank God for everything that he has bestowed upon us (be it material goods, health, understanding or anything- even suffering).

It seems quite difficult to do such a thing when America has abandoned belief in a personal God who affects our lives or has abandoned belief in God completely. I would hope that I would be able to see people at least showing gratitude to each other for something, but I don't even see that anymore. Instead, I see people calling it "Turkey Day", almost in an effort to remove the idea of being thankful to anyone for anything- which is a direct logical conclusion of America's narcissistic materialism ("its all about me").

Thoughts on Evolution and Genetics

I noticed something the other day. I was doing some research about some basic genetic theory (how genes are passed and expressed), and I see something that looks to be an issue for the evolutionary (macroevolutionary) paradigm. Please read last week's post "Is Evolution Repeatable?".

Book Review: "The Illustrated World's Religions"

The Illustrated World's Religions: A Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions
By Houston Smith.

This book was given to me by a friend a couple months ago. I had other books ready to read, but I decided to put this one ahead of the others because I had heard that Houston Smith was the "go to" guy about the world's religions. A few different versions of this book have been published; this one is the illustrated one. It includes a lot of art inspired by the different religions and contains many photos of adherents "in action".

Is Evolution Repeatable?

Most people do not really  think to ask this question about Evolution. However, it has become quite the important question in determining the validity of the paradigm. In this post when I refer to "evolution" I am referring to "macroevolution" (see my post "How Did It All Happen? Part 4- Evolution? Really?"). If I am talking about microevolution (see same post above), I will make the distinction.

As I discussed in the previously cited post, random mutation does happen, and natural selection does operate on those mutations. This observation has been extrapolated into the theory of Evolution. According to the paradigm life began as a single-cell organism, and through the process noted we arrive at the state of life today (complex, mega-multicellular organisms).