Blog
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Teaching Hell and Calling It Love
Most adults understand why you wouldn’t threaten a child with torture. But add ‘after you die’ and, suddenly, we’re discussing religious education. The child, meanwhile, has been given something terrifying…
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Threatening Children With Divine Separation
Humans are intensely social animals. Our dependence on one another is part of our biology, and separation from someone we are attached to can produce agonizing distress. In affective science,…
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Judgment Day Starts in Childhood
Imagine subjecting a child to the narrative of a final cosmic reckoning; an ultimate eschatological trial in which every hidden thought and transient impulse will be brought before an omniscient…
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Tree Rings of Feeling: Understanding the Layers of Your Emotions
An emotion can be ancient and at the same time unmistakably yours. You inherit the capacity to fear, seek, rage, attach, care, play, and desire. You also inherit sensitivities and…
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Mental Difficulties as a Ready-Made Identities
Before TikTok began explaining your personality to you, Tumblr had helped make being unwell into an aesthetic. In parts of its 2010s culture, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders acquired a…
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Why You Can’t Argue with Faith: A Look Inside the Believer’s Brain
Does it happen to you? You meet someone new, and they seem kind and interesting. The vibe is great, the conversation is flowing, and you just mentally categorize them as…
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The Illusion of Separating Emotion from Reason: Damasio’s Challenge to Descartes
You are having coffee with Alex. After years of false starts, they have finally acquired something solid: a stable position at a logistics firm, decent pay, health insurance, even a…
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Evolutionary Psychology of Faith: A Survival Feature or a Mind Bug?
If religion were a person, how are things between you two? Are you even on speaking terms? Are you just awkwardly tolerating each other at family gatherings, giving a polite…
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Obscure Sorrows and the Power of a Name
Some experiences enter awareness without an adequate name. You recognize their return, yet the usual words; sadness, unease, longing, frustration, fail to say exactly what is happening. The experience hovers…
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Childfree, Apparently a Cause for Concern
Tell someone you don’t want children and you may accidentally have requested a psychological assessment. Perhaps you’re afraid of responsibility. Perhaps your childhood needs investigating. Perhaps you haven’t met the…