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How Religious Ideas Parasitise The Brain - Dr. Andy Thomson @ W&L Law School

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Uploaded by on Jan 2, 2009

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How Religious Ideas Parasitise The Brain - Dr. Andy Thomson @ W&L Law School.

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Dr. J. Anderson Thomson gave his lecture "Why we believe in gods" at the Washington & Lee Law School (W&L Law) in Lexington, VA on October 15, 2008.

J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D. (Andy) is a part-time staff psychiatrist. He received his B.A. from Duke University (1970), his M.D. from the University of Virginia (1974) and did his adult psychiatry training at U.Va. (1974-77). His private practice is oriented toward individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy, forensic psychiatry, and medication consultation. He is the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction at U.Va., which involves interdisciplinary intervention and research in large group ethnic and political conflict. He has publications on narcissistic personality disorder, PTSD, and the psychology of racism, and psychobiographical essays on Robert E. Lee and Lee Harvey Oswald. His current research interest is in the area of evolutionary psychology. (Source: University of Virginia)

Watch the full lecture at www.richarddawkins.net/article,3373,Why-we-believe-in-gods,J-Anderson-Thomson

Credit: http://www.richarddawkins.net/
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Top Comments

  • Sorry, but we know what islam is all about, and for all i care, i don't wanna go back a couple of hundred years in my way of thinking

  • @chadwick1037

    Actually I think religion is better than atheism because:

    1) less responsibility - God watches over everything

    2) no need for education - if one doesn't know something ultimately God did it or demons.

    3) justice will always be served - that goddam farmer working on sabbath will burn for all eternity like he deserves.

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  • Study the Gita, keep it holy Holly Hunter huntress for the holidays of a long time ago mattered when women were ladies abounding in charm, wit & class; when they menstruated freely, copiously, sans the incessant bitching that's currently treated as natural and, ergo, naturally catered to, tolerated, and evenly encouraged amongst the fattening horde.

  • @CelestialEmbodiment "This then denies atheism as a condition possible to humans with faculties intact."

    I honestly have no idea how you got to that conclusion.

  • @CelestialEmbodiment said "There are realms beyond human perception."

    That's what we have lab instruments for. There's no evidence of, or reason to believe in, anything supernatural.

  • What so-called physical Law, as labeled and defined by Man's science can't be suspended, superseded, trumped, ignored, perverted or dumped? Science ("scire": to know) is and will never be more than knowledge that can be registered by the human senses: taste, touch, see, hear and smell. This then denies atheism as a condition possible to humans with faculties intact.

  • There are realms beyond human perception. The existence of these foggy kingdoms is not reliant nor contingent upon the faith & acknowledgment of anyone. The sad fact that uneducated groups of humans deny paranormal events is immaterial in regards to how frequently they occur.

  • The metaphysical world is fantastical to humans and humanoids with 3-pound brains, as 3-pound brains aren't brains enough to measure infinity. Apes are humanoids; men are not simians. Large chunks of ancient ape parts should be fossilized en masse like the woolly mammoths and the minor & major king lizards what fill the cavernous museums of Western societies.

  • "Theology: The field of study and analysis of make believe; for the purpose of spinning reality to conform to the human imagination so the control of others can be achieved". -Scott Tebben

  • @Hudsucker94 nope. just logical

  • @jake24550 PRAYZE THA LAWD!!

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