Dr Paul Allen

English: Stamp of Moldova; Mircea Eliade (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In 1832, when The Beagle docked in Southern Australia on the way to the Galapagos Islands , Charles Darwin witnessed naked Aboriginals dancing themselves into delirium all night long. You can now see this scene at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada desert, attended by sixty thousand hi-tech moderns, including Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. But Darwin, a notable father of Secular Humanism, was shocked, finding the native display “a most rude, barbarous scene.” Once ever so secularly humanist, moderns now find orgiastic sexuality and occult spirituality quite acceptable. Who or what produced this massive change in Western culture ? Many influential sources can be named: Darwin, spiritualized by Teilhard de Chardin ; the goddess worship of radical feminism; the occultism of theosophist Madame Blavatsky ; the political radicalism of Gramsci, Marcuse and Saul Alins

Image via Wikipedia With the passing of 2011, many of us wave goodbye to a season marked by persistent questions about public institutions and a general belief that, surely, things can only get better.   But what challenges can we expect to face as a society in 2012? Here are my predictive picks for the 12 biggest social shifts we might expect to see in 2012.  Hyper-Tech & Refuseniks : We will see a growing role for professional ethicists in corporate and government strategic planning, as new developments in medicine, bio-tech , genetics and other sectors stretch traditional ethics paradigms to the limit. Well organised groups of 'technology refuseniks' will emerge, calling for slowing of change in technological research and development...  De-Gadgetisation & the Neo-Frugals : 2012 will see a drive to recalibrate our reliance on digital communications . New psychological terms will be introduced to describe fresh symptoms of psychological or social disorder derived fro

Image via Wikipedia "Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?" ( Job 12:9 )   The book of Job is one of the oldest books in the world, yet it contains numerous references to natural systems and phenomena, some involving facts of science not discovered by scientists until recent centuries, yet recorded in Job almost 4,000 years ago .   A good example is in  26:7 . "He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." While ancient mythologies may imagine the earth to be carried on the shoulders of Atlas or on the back of a giant turtle, Job correctly noted that it is suspended in space. The force of "gravity" is still not understood, and it is quite reasonable to believe that God Himself holds it in the assigned place in His creation.   There is a reference to the rotation of the earth in  38:14 . "It is turned as clay to the seal." This speaks of the smooth turning of the glob

The structure of our brains is responsible for our tendency to imagine rosy futures for ourselves in which things work out much better for us than others, reports a recent Time  cover story .  Author, neuroscientist  Tali Sharot , says this means we are “hardwired for hope.” But what resemblance does this optimistic bias have to the hope of the gospel? Studies consistently find that people tend to believe their futures will be better than the present and that they will fare better in the future than others will, a fundamentally egotistical tendency psychology has termed the “ optimistic bias .”  Recent imaging studies in cognitive neuroscience reveal that optimistic bias arises through the interaction of structures in the brain that monitor and regulate emotion with structures responsible for remembering the past and imagining the future. Optimism is effectively hardwired into how our brains work, making our optimistic beliefs remarkably robust when confronted with contrary evide

Image via Wikipedia Human language is precious. It sets us off from the animals. It makes our most sophisticated scientific discoveries and our deepest emotions sharable. Above all, God chose to reveal Himself to us through human language in the Bible .  In the fullness of time, He spoke to us by His Son ( Heb. 1:1–2 ), and that Son spoke human language. In like manner, He sent His Spirit to lead His apostles into all truth so that they could tell the story of the Son in human language. Without this story in human language, we would not know the Son. Therefore, human language is immeasurably precious. But it is also imperfect for capturing the fullness of God. In 1 Corinthians 13 , there are four comparisons between this present time and the age to come after Christ  returns. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the parti

Image via Wikipedia Derek Sivers  makes a compelling case  against  going public with your goals in  his short talk  at the 2010 Ted Conference. (The talk is only a little over three minutes long.) His basic premise is this: telling someone your goals makes them less likely to happen. Why is this true? According to him, it is because you get the psychological satisfaction of accomplishing the goal without having to actually do the work. In other words,  talking becomes a substitute for  doing . This goes against conventional goal-setting wisdom. However, Sivers cites the work of several psychologists, including Kurt Lewin , Wera Mahler, and  Peter Gollwitzer . He then describes a fascinating study that Dr. Gollwitzer conducted in 2009. In four separate tests, 163 people wrote down a personal goal. Half of them announced their commitment to their goal; half of them didn’t. Then they were given 45-minutes to work toward their goal but told that they could stop at any time. Those who ha

Image via Wikipedia Derek Sivers  makes a compelling case  against  going public with your goals in  his short talk  at the 2010 Ted Conference. (The talk is only a little over three minutes long.) His basic premise is this: telling someone your goals makes them less likely to happen. Why is this true? According to him, it is because you get the psychological satisfaction of accomplishing the goal without having to actually do the work. In other words,  talking becomes a substitute for  doing . This goes against conventional goal-setting wisdom. However, Sivers cites the work of several psychologists, including Kurt Lewin , Wera Mahler, and  Peter Gollwitzer . He then describes a fascinating study that Dr. Gollwitzer conducted in 2009. In four separate tests, 163 people wrote down a personal goal. Half of them announced their commitment to their goal; half of them didn’t. Then they were given 45-minutes to work toward their goal but told that they could stop at any time. Those who ha