The Book of Abraham takes a massive hit from scholarship

“Except for those willfully blind,” writes Professor Ritner of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, “the case is closed.” (read full article here).

Finally, a highly credible scholar of Egyptology wrote a book about the Book of Abraham and the papyri: The Joseph Smith Papyri: A Complete Edition. He even provides the various translations to Egyptian writings on top of his own original ones!

Before you form an unsolicited opinion of him, just check out the first link you find when you Google his name--Robert Ritner. In fact, here's the summary you'll read:

Robert K. Ritner is currently Professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and was from 1991-1996 the first Marilyn M. Simpson Assistant Professor of Egyptology at Yale University. Dr. Ritner specializes in Roman, Hellenistic, Late and Third Intermediate Period (Libyan and Nubian) Egypt and is the author of the book The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, and over 100 publications on Egyptian religion, magic, medicine, language and literature, as well as social and political history. He has lectured extensively on each of these topics throughout the United States, Europe and Egypt. In association with The Field Museum of Chicago, Dr. Ritner was the academic advisor to two recent British Museum exhibits “Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth,” and “Eternal Egypt,” and he has served as consultant and lecturer for the travelling Cairo Museum exhibit “Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt.”

This book might just throw it in the bag for one of the most damning bits of evidence against Mormonism.

Someone should buy it for $80.

Gut feelings, the basal ganglia, and Daniel Goleman's latest Emotional Intelligence research

Guess what the Mormons got right?

Well, half right (disclaimer: not sure on the other half). In Daniel Goleman's latest book, "The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights", he said something so interesting that I decided to come out of my cave (i.e., living a really social life) and write a blog post:

Lower in the brain, below the limbic areas, lies a neural network called the basal ganglia. This is a very primitive part of the brain, but it does something extraordinarily important for navigating the modern world.

as we go through every situation in life, the basal ganglia extracts decision rules: when I did that, that worked well; when I said this, it bombed, and so on. Our accumulated life wisdom is stored in this primitive circuitry. However, when we face a decision, it's our verbal cortex that generates our thoughts about it. But to more fully access our life experiences on the matter at hand, we need to access further inputs from that subcortical circuitry [where our basal ganglia lies]. While the basal ganglia may have some connection to the verbal areas, it turns out to have very rich connections to our gastrointestinal tract--the gut. So in making [a] decision, a gut sense of it being right or wrong is important information, too."

Turns out, all of our decisions have an emotional component to them. Earlier in his book, he mentions a study done in which a highly successful and intelligent lawyer had to undergo brain surgery to get a tumor removed. This surgery marked a turning point in his life: he went on to lose his career, his marriage, and move in with a family member. However, he was just as intelligent as he once was.

Turns out, during the surgery, a certain part of the connective tissue in the brain was cut in order to reach the tumor. He can't attach feelings to decisions, so he was unable to determine simple things such as what time would be best to make the next appointment for his study.

CHRIST!! Why is our decision making and personality so tied into our biology? One more point for free will being an illusion :/

Anyways, I encourage you to download the ebook or print version of this book. Great stuff, as you can tell.

Dr. Michael Coe – An Outsider’s View of Book of Mormon Archaeology

Dr. Michael Coe – An Outsider’s View of Book of Mormon Archaeology (from Mormon Stories podcast).

I swear, Blogger's almost turning into my personal Reddit favorites.

Anyways, for those unfamiliar with Dr. Coe, here's a great description taken from the link i just gave you:

Dr. Michael Coe is the Charles J. MacCurdy professor emeritus of Anthropology at Yale University and curator emeritus of the Division of Anthropology at the school’s Peabody Museum of Natural History. He is an expert on the Maya, who inhabited the same part of Mexico and Central American where Mormon scholars say the events of the Book of Mormon took place.

A post for my records

iamanexmormon video.

Social pressures and false memories and Mormon miracles

From the lovely world of r/cogsci comes a link to ScienceDaily titled How Social Pressure Can Affect What We Remember: Scientists Track Brain Activity as False Memories Are Formed.

Turns out, social pressures can affect what we remember--to the point where a false memory becomes King.

The study went something like this:
1) volunteers watch a documentary
2) they return 3 days later to fill out a memory test and were told to rate their confidence in their memories
3) later, they were taken back to the lab to fill out the test while being scanned by an fMRI machine
3.1) While taking the test, they were given a "lifeline" in which they were given the supposed answers of their fellow viewers, alongside social-media-esque pics
3.2) the participants ended up answering incorrectly 70% of the time, even though they had previously answered correctly and with high confidence
4) to test whether this was due to social demands or no, they took the participants back to the lab
4.1) they were told to take the memory test yet again
4.2) they were also told that the answers they'd received from the "lifeline" were randomly generated by a computer

The grand finale: nearly half of the participants retained their false beliefs.

But just look at the fMRI results, summarized by the researchers:

An analysis of the fMRI data showed differences in brain activity between the persistent false memories and the temporary errors of social compliance. The most outstanding feature of the false memories was a strong co-activation and connectivity between two brain areas: the hippocampus and the amygdala. The hippocampus is known to play a role in long-term memory formation, while the amygdala, sometimes known as the emotion center of the brain, plays a role in social interaction. The scientists think that the amygdala may act as a gateway connecting the social and memory processing parts of our brain; its "stamp" may be needed for some types of memories, giving them approval to be uploaded to the memory banks. Thus social reinforcement could act on the amygdala to persuade our brains to replace a strong memory with a false one.

Does anyone else see the implications?

Want to revisit the evolution of a Mormon miracle?

Oh my god, the antichrist (and Michelle Bachman's church)

It's not like an anti-Mormon, an anti-American, or "hostile towards" anything in that sense.

Anti, in the Greek, I just learned, can also mean "opposite, counterpart".

And that definition of the prefix, according to this article, is what Luther had in mind when he declared the Pope to be the "anti-Christ".

The church Michelle Bachman was a part of, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, holds this stance too.


Now, I'm probably more surprised at this definition because it's been over a year since I've cared to read what the Bible said about the anti-Christ (somewhere in... Thessalonians?).

Still, having lived in the Bible Belt where Obama usually upholds this title, I always thought it was something more menacing. Maybe it still is under that definition. I don't know.

It'd be interesting to hear the full history of that term though.

Hello, Wikipedia

Live and Let Live: hypocrisy?

"Live and let live" was the general idea behind a recent post on r/atheism from a believer.

I mostly agree with this idea. But a comment from an atheist really appealed to why this idea is disagreeable:
"Live and let oppress I think you mean. Or live and let rape. Or live and let mutilate. Or live and let lie about aids. If you were just living, I'd be fucking fine with that."

Sure, he cites some of the more extreme examples of where "live and let live" go wrong. But here's the general issue: the believer from this post cited "live and let live" when his religion doesn't follow that same line of thought.

And obviously, Mormonism falls under this issue.

I'm not going to turn into some raging critic and share with every Mormon the history of their church, but if they ever brought the idea of "just letting people live" in some casual conversation about whatever, I'd have something to remind them of.