By Joel Bowman, on July 14th, 2014% I recently had two online exchanges with “True Believers.” In my case, both were Christian “literalists” whose “true belief” was in Biblical inerrancy, believing that the Christian Bible is literally the “Word of God” and therefore contains no errors. The belief in inerrancy is more complex than the phrase implies, as there are so many different versions of the ancient texts. My concern is with inerrancy in general rather than which particular form it takes.
Christians aren’t the only ones who have an inerrancy faction. Muslims have one, too. Sunnis and Shia are currently in the news for their . . . → Read More: True Believers
By Joel Bowman, on June 9th, 2014% An old story whose origins are unknown to Google is about a relatively newlywed couple who wanted to divide chores evenly having weekly arguments about whose turn it was to mow the lawn. Other household tasks weren’t a problem. The husband had his responsibilities, the wife had hers, and each was comfortable with the assigned tasks with the exception of lawn mowing. They had agreed to take turns but had trouble tracking whose turn it was from week to week. After months of arguing about whose turn it was to mow the lawn, the wife blurted out, “In my family, . . . → Read More: In My Family…
By Joel Bowman, on April 13th, 2014% Those of you who have been regular readers of this blog know that we’ve recently been through a winter of discontent and spent some time south of the border. Now that spring has arrived in Michigan I thought it was time to give my blog a facelift with new header images, a new title, and new overarching theme: Embracing Reality. The theme is a result of my having been influenced by a saying from Byron Katie’s book, Loving What Is, in which she says that When you argue with reality, you lose—but only 100 percent of the time. If you’ve . . . → Read More: New Directions
By Joel Bowman, on March 2nd, 2014% My midwinter break this year consisted of a trip to see my son and his family in Aguascalientes, Mexico. My time in Mexico provided some welcome relief from what has become one of Michigan’s most brutal winters in a long time. (See The Winter of Our Discontent). My flights down and back were an adventure because of the weather. On the way down, the plane for my flight needed to be de-iced three times, so we were late leaving. As a result, Several of us missed connecting flights. Fortunately, later planes were available. On the way back, the problems were . . . → Read More: South of the Border
By Joel Bowman, on January 26th, 2014% I owe the title of this blog entry to William Shakespeare, who put those words in the mouth of King Richard III. Richard’s words were a metaphor for difficult times under the previous king rather than commentary on a polar vortex of the sort we’ve been experiencing in much of the U.S. this winter. For many in the States, this has been the coldest winter with the most ice and snow that we’ve had for several years.
Meanwhile, Melbourne, Australia, has been so hot that those playing tennis in the Australian Open have been wilting in the heat, . . . → Read More: The Winter of Our Discontent
By Joel Bowman, on November 30th, 2013% In my continuing quest for improved hearing, I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Jenny Rymer, an ND (Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine) in Jackson, Michigan, which is about an hour east of my home. My co-author, Debra Basham, and I had met Jenny previously at meetings of the International College of Integrative Medicine, and at a recent meeting in Columbus, Ohio, I asked her whether she might be able to do anything that would help improve my hearing. She said that she had a number of things she could do, so not long after I returned to Kalamazoo, I scheduled an . . . → Read More: Hearing and Health
By Joel Bowman, on October 13th, 2013% The meetings of the International College of Integrative Medicine always provide new and interesting information about advances in holistic health care. Regular readers of this blog will remember my previous posting about my Adventures in Mesotherapy, when I sought a way to improve my hearing. Although I had not expected another opportunity to improve my hearing acuity at the October 2013 ICIM meeting in Columbus, Ohio (“INNOVATION: Meeting Today’s Medical Challenges”), that’s what happened.
Debra and I were attending the ICIM meeting to conduct two sessions on meditation and hypnosis. In addition to our own presentations, we also do . . . → Read More: Adventures in Pulsed Power at ICIM
By Joel Bowman, on October 5th, 2013% According to a top Saudi cleric, driving damages women’s ovaries. Does the fact (reality) that some people believe that make it true, if only for them? What—exactly—is the relationship between reality and what we believe? You may know people who believe that their beliefs accurately reflect reality. If you’ve been reading this blog for very long, you know that one of my recurrent themes is the need for an evidence procedure that allows individuals to base their beliefs on reality to the degree that it’s possible.
It was, for example, perfectly logical for our ancient ancestors to believe that . . . → Read More: The Reality of Beliefs
By Joel Bowman, on September 27th, 2013% In my spare time, I follow political discussions as best I can, primarily because politics influence all of us in ways both large and small, including the taxes we pay and the way our collective dollars are spent. The past several years have provided a wonderful opportunity for noticing how linguistic framing influences the way we think about the decisions politicians are making about how our money is to be spent. The best way to know what’s really going on in politics is by understanding the rhetorical concept of framing.
The word frame applies to discourse in basically the . . . → Read More: Language Matters
By Joel Bowman, on September 15th, 2013% Some of you have noticed that it has been a long time since my last post. It isn’t so much that I had nothing to say as it is that I was overwhelmed by how much needed saying. A lot has been going on, and even areas where not much has been happening (the U.S. Congress), the inaction is fraught with meaning.
Where a lot has been going on—forest fires in the U.S., flooding in the U.S., wars and rumors of wars in the Middle East, and changes related to global climate change—it is hard for me to know . . . → Read More: Sticking to Our Guns
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