Content on Belief
Existential Comfort For Nonbelievers
There have been times where I have deeply wished to be convinced, or simply take for granted, that there is more than meets the eye.
The Visual Versus the Verbal
Similar to the Dall-E prompts, we can choose our words, but once ideas are out in the world, the things we see and hear are outside of our control.
Let’s Talk About God: A Conversation with Rabbi Richard Agler
How and when does God come up in our minds?
“The Mysterious” Versus “The Unknown”
For those of us who pray, do we need to know how and why God answers?
The ‘Mystery’ of Believing Without a Causal Story
Why do we sometimes believe things that we don’t fully understand?
Centering the Soul: A Conversation With Dr. Lisa Miller
How do we define spirituality in an age where it means so many things to so many different people? What is keeping us from being our most aware, fullest selves? And how can we pass this knowledge on to our children, in the face of massive uncertainty? Dr. Lisa Miller, professor at Teachers’ College, Columbia University, has investigated these topics with empirical rigor in her New York Times-bestselling book, The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health…
Order Amidst Chaos: How Judaism and Psychology Respond to Trauma
Jewish tradition is about confronting rather than denying negative events, not to be morbid, but as a way to reconcile with one’s past in order to move forward.
Quantum Physics and Faith, Who Knew?
The rules that I believe God wrote to govern the universe are all about probabilities, which means that in theory, or perhaps, better, hypothetically, nothing is impossible, that everything has at least a scintilla of possibility.
How Civic Religion Creates Civic Reality
We do understand that saying words doesn’t automatically make them true. But we also understand that at certain times — such as at inaugurations — words do have power.
Why America Is Ripe for Election Conspiracy Theorizing
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.
Corona and Keter, Disease and Divinity
Rather than seeing God as decreeing disease, we’re better off recognizing how human beings affect the cosmos and, in turn, the divine.
The Worth of an Angry God
How did supernatural beliefs allow societies to bond and spread?