Rabbi Mitelman and Tania Lombrozo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, discuss how our brains latch onto and reject facts, and what that has to do with belief.
The psychological need for understanding the world is joined by two other needs that underlie conspiracism—feeling safe, and belonging to social groups that affirm or encourage self-respect.
There is a unique danger of data wonkishness: putting so much stock in scientific abstractions that reality itself becomes invisible.
Some truths are true because they are the stories that shape our perspective on the world. Torah is the inspiration for, and the vessel that holds, this Truth.
CNN anchor Dana Bash spoke at Congregation Shir Hadash, in the heart of Silicon Valley, about how her Judaism influenced her journalistic work, as well as how the advent of social media has changed how we talk to one another.
It is ok for people to have disagreements – on politics, on faith, on religion, on leadership. But we need to understand how to be in dialogue with one another.
A conversation between Joshua Holo and Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman on Truths, Untruths and the Problem of Perspective.
As a scientist, it takes years of training and failing, and occasionally succeeding, to become comfortable with knowing that some day you might be proven wrong. How different that looks through the lens of faith!
We need to keep rethinking what we believe about God based on new ideas and new experiences.
On one level, evidence is what scientists use to discover truth. But there’s another profession that uses evidence, too: lawyers. And they each use evidence in different ways.
