Wendy Kaminer
Wendy Kaminer
Wendy Kamineris an American lawyer and writer. She has written several books on contemporary social issues, including A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight From Equality, about the conflict between egalitarian and protectionist feminism; I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions, about the self-help movement; and Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety...
faith reality heterosexuality
Like heterosexuality, faith in immaterial realities is popularly considered essential to individual morality.
religious atheist people
Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other.
religious religion atheism
Under the rubric of religious freedom, we respect the right to worship differently much more than the right to worship not at all.
recovery two denial
There are only two states of being in the world of codependency - recovery and denial.
real doubt affirmation
The press and the public like certainty and affirmation of popular biases. But real science thrives on the capacity for doubt.
thinking political belief
The magical thinking encouraged by any belief in the supernatural, combined with the vilification of rationality and skepticism, is more conducive to conspiracy theories than it is to productive political debate.
self-esteem believe angel
There are, however, exceptions to this reliance on feelings as evidence of truth: if, for instance, your feelings lead to disbelief instead of belief, they're apt to be dismissed as some form of denial. This is not a common problem. Usually intellectualism, not feeling reality, is blamed for disbelief. But, some angel experts suggest, there may be emotional as well as intellectual barriers to belief: unwillingness to believe in angels can reflect low self-esteem.
views forgiving atheism
Spirituality authors, who are generally forgiving of most human foibles ... take a hard line on intellectualism.... Skepticism they view with contempt, as the refuge of the unenlightened.
pseudoscience growing fascination
The dissemination of pseudoscience, including such things as the fascination with near-death experiences and the growing belief by Americans -- 34 percent of them -- in reincarnation are dangerous. They help to break down the standards of reason.
thinking ideas issues
If all issues are personalized, we lose our capacity to entertain ideas, to generalize from our own or someone else's experiences, to think abstractly. We substitute sentimentality for thought.
education people needs
Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.
cutting hands thieves
We don't cut off the hands of thieves or castrate rapists. Why must we murder murderers?
stupidity religion rewards
In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.
self expression might
what might once have been called whining is now exalted as a process of asserting selfhood; self-absorption is regarded as a form of self-expression ...