I am always carrying books around in the hope of reading them. It's as if I believe that if I continually carry piles of books from my church, to my car, to my home and then back to church again, the information from all those books will somehow just sink into my aching arms.
Real life can be difficult enough, being too realistic will only make you depressed. The best way to deal with reality, in my experience, is to bring as much magic to it as possible!
Although most of us will return to normal, we will mourn for the injured and the fallen. But selfishly we will also mourn our former selves. We are no longer the people who went blithely to Boylston yesterday.
The sense that certain things were "meant to be" or even that "everything happens for a reason" is encouraged by the intuitive assumption that a mind is guiding all the events in our lives.
A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Your answer to this question will help me guess whether you believe in God.
By Erin Morgenstern Author extraordinaire Erin Morgenstern -- the genius behind The Night Circus -- shows us those brief, unexpected times that ele...
One of the wonders of our age is the persistence of "birthers" and other true believers who insist that Barack Obama is an Islamist terrorist mole bent on destroying America, but this flight from reality isn't only a problem on the right.
Some psychic practitioners on eBay offer supernatural medical consultations and healing services, while others offer love potions and spells. But it appears that all of this will soon be a thing of the past.
In general, if you're nice to people, good things come your way, but if you're jagoff, look out. These expectations make sense in social situations, where people can retaliate or return favors, and where reputation matters. But we expect the universe to play by the same rules -- to manifest karma.
Every day, my Twitter feed and my Facebook ticker are littered with pithy soundbites that purport to unlock the secret of personal fulfillment -- and I find myself wincing. When a soundbite is presented without context, it might sound profound, but it is often meaningless or misconstrued.
What do we think of people in persistent vegetative states, who can breathe but can't think? Mentally, they are dead, but since we're very aware of the body still lying there, we can't as easily imagine them as active characters in our lives.
New research suggests that inducing fear of death at least makes atheists a little less entrenched in their beliefs.
In the 1990s Trent Reznor purchased the house where Charles Manson's "family" had murdered Sharon Tate. The house felt "sad," he's said. Last October a paper was published suggesting that we all have a tendency to believe that emotions leave a trace in the physical environment.
Given that isolation increases stress and cortisol production, and that petting dogs reduces blood pressure, the researchers suggest that touching a teddy bear might make you not just happier and nicer but healthier too.
Whether you think you do or not, you believe in magic. I don't mean the magic of love or romance. I mean stuff that, as far as scientific consensus is concerned, is not possible, and is a little spooky, and would get you burned at the stake if you claimed mastery of in another era.
The choice to give money to charity becomes a personal one. We use those donations to help protect ourselves from thought that dangerous things could happen to us.
It became clearer to me that how we relate to our "beliefs" may be more important than the belief or knowledge itself.
Every human being on the planet comes through the womb of a mother. To force a mother to choose between keeping her offspring or losing acceptance by the culture is to force her to split in half and as a result, to collapse.
Many Americans are maxing out on their unemployment benefits amid cries from Republicans that they're lazy bums who should get a job. Sure, there's on...
The American paradox is that everyone wants small government and high services, low taxes, and a balanced budget. The genius of the Republicans is that they've convinced a huge swath of America that all of this is actually possible.
Blind faith in science and belief that the market will solve all our problems derive from a core magical belief: what is good for capitalism is good for America.
The vast majority of conservatives, like most Americans, are not rich. So why should they be so devoted to the interests of a class they don't belong to? "Aspirational Delusion Syndrome."
You are wired to find meaning in the world, a predisposition that leaves you with less control over your beliefs than you may think. Even if you're a ...
In the fantastical world of fundamentalist religiopolitics, it is acceptable for Glenn Beck to call Obama a racist, but not acceptable to question the racial motives behind the frighteningly ignorant attacks on Obama.
I'd really like to lose 15, but I might lose 5. Either way, I need to feel good in my own skin and accept the fact that I'm not going to get any cuter.
