tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18510075092199051292011-07-07T17:45:02.451-04:00Musings about sacred and profane thingsAaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.comBlogger161100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-70020908645366849912010-02-14T02:42:00.004-05:002010-02-18T11:47:58.148-05:00

"I can't say for certain whether the main postulates of the Christian faith are true. Even though many people try prove them true using logic or empirical evidence, I find such 'proofs' to be severely inadequate and unconvincing. I recognize that my 'personal experience' is insufficient to 'prove' them true to anyone, and that such experience is not at all unique to my faith tradition. In all

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-61631644433945808752009-12-01T00:29:00.005-05:002010-01-05T11:55:56.902-05:00

I've neglected my aspirations to contribute to my own blog for the past several months...left hanging the promise of posts regarding the US health care reform debate. At the time, I was all set to write some posts about the state of the health care debate in the US, then came Roan...and graduate course work...but mostly Roan. Needless to say, a lot has happened in the landscape of the healthcare

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-78881177911018883192009-08-07T01:38:00.008-04:002009-08-14T12:32:30.439-04:00

The topic of health care reform has become the political discussion in the US this summer, with President Obama originally hoping to pass health care reform legislation this summer, and now pushing to have something done to improve the state of US health care by the end of the year. This is a topic that interests me greatly, for a variety of professional and personal reasons. During my career

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-21012342136363499772009-05-15T12:08:00.014-04:002009-08-12T01:21:57.251-04:00

Blink is Malcolm Gladwell's second book, but the first that I've read. As a book for popular audiences, it provides an enjoyable look into the psychology of intuitive judgments. Using examples ranging from experts intuitions about a 'fake' 6th century BC Kouros statue, to judgments about the suitability of dating partners, to snap judgments we make about political candidates, to procedural

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-19736617381408850302009-01-30T21:10:00.003-05:002009-06-18T01:35:46.070-04:00

As education reporter for the York Daily record in 2005, Lauri Lebo reported on the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District 'Intelligent Design' (ID) trial in Dover, PA. The Devil in Dover is her personal account of the events that unfolded in this small American town. While the story of this trial and the judge's ruling against the inclusion of ID as part of the high school science curriculum

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-56216687504303611502009-01-30T17:21:00.002-05:002009-01-30T18:22:25.284-05:00

I recently encountered a (science) news story with the headline that 'Spirituality, Not Religion, Makes Kids Happy' and, needless to say, it piqued my curiousity. The news article goes on to describe research conducted at University of British Columbia by researchers Mark Holder, Ben Coleman, and Judi Wallace in which elements of the overarching concept of spirituality were related to happiness

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-55871908167145864352009-01-24T18:36:00.004-05:002009-06-18T00:34:38.651-04:00

The traditional view of human rationality known as unbounded rationality asserts that we possess the capacity to think and behave in a manner that is, after weighing the costs and benefits associated with a decision, concordent with the lowest cost-benefit differential [1]. Thus, when faced with decisions involving our finances, choices between products or brands, and even how to comport

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-66299408826568886592009-01-14T16:36:00.016-05:002009-08-12T01:47:20.496-04:00

Ken Miller is a biologist who I became interested in when, by chance, I flipped the channel to C-Span to find him in a debate about the scientific viability of Intelligent Design (ID). His opponent in that debate was Paul A. Nelson of the Discovery Institute which promotes various arguments against Darwinian evolution, the debate can be heard here. I caught this debate right around the time of

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-26334786043963747402008-12-05T14:48:00.016-05:002009-08-12T01:48:46.106-04:00

Social psychologist Jon Haidt studies the moral judgments and intuitions of people in a variety of cultural contexts. He's identified 5 domains of moral judgment that each of us are sensitive to, albeit in varying degrees.He's observed some interesting patterns regarding how well members of different groups (i.e., religious, cultural, political) emphasize each of these domains. This video is a

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-6772488394503206032008-12-03T14:44:00.002-05:002009-01-16T17:54:16.632-05:00

In The Truth War John MacArthur purports to make the case against a 'new' movement within Evangelical Christianity that he sees as a threat to his version of orthodoxy or 'The Truth'. MacArthur, pastor of a southern California megachurch, believes that modern Evangelical Christianity is being led astray by a group of authors, theologians, and popular commentators who he views as a challenge to

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-57218453280531659692008-12-03T14:28:00.002-05:002009-06-18T01:34:08.203-04:00

I became familiar with Kevin Padian as a scientist through the NOVA special Judgment Day about the Dover, PA trial over the proposed inclusion of Intelligent Design as part of the high school biology curriculum. In that case, Padian provided testimony regarding the evidence in support of Evolution, particularly the 'transitional fossils' ostensibly marking speciation over long periods of time. In

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-50545998868413098222008-08-25T13:27:00.016-04:002009-01-16T17:55:38.813-05:00

An evolutionary concept that hasn't received much attention over the years is that of Group Selection, which is the idea that natural selection favors certain variations that lead to differential rates of survival and reproduction between groups. This differntial success rate results in adaptations that benefit the group rather than just the individual. More simply put; a group that possesses a

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-42825390512574527202008-08-17T18:45:00.022-04:002009-08-12T02:07:30.227-04:00

Karl Giberson is an and a physics professor at an Evangelical Christian university (Eastern Nazarene College), he also accepts Darwin's theory of evolution as the best scientific description for how life on Earth came to be the way it is. While many Evangelical Christians see acceptance of evolution to be in conflict with the Christian faith, many others such as Giberson are capable of

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-87652903438201404772008-08-12T22:24:00.012-04:002009-01-16T17:57:08.132-05:00

This is another book that I listened to on CD as I drove back to KC from Ontario the other day; These are some of my thoughts in response to the book.Ever since Darwin first published his theory of evolution in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection there has been ongoing controversy surrounding the theory and it's implications. It's important to note that this controversy does

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-50167154163409619452008-08-08T15:30:00.017-04:002009-06-18T01:35:18.508-04:00

In the car the other day, as I was driving up to Ontario from KC, I decided I'd take the opportunity to 'read' a book on CD that I was unlikely to get around to ever actually reading. I went with the much hyped What Happened by Scott McClellan, George Bush's press secretary from 2003 to 2006. While I won't presume to add much to the large number of reviews out there, I'll simply post some of my

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1851007509219905129.post-27291710386189084472008-08-03T01:13:00.002-04:002008-08-03T13:24:41.944-04:00

So I decided to start a blog. This is all in the hope that I would record some of my thoughts in writing. My plan is to post thoughts I have about things that interest me including science, religion, psychology, and current events, to name a few. My hope is to also write posts about books as I finish reading them, just to keep a record of what I thought at the time of reading. I always have about

Aaron Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08853000688370008491noreply@blogger.com0