Psychology
Brief Review of What Works: Gender Equality by Design
What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris BohnetMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I read a lot of books and journal articles about bias and inequality. It's pretty common for those sources to offer a lot of recommendations for overcoming bias that sound like...
Is the Enneagram Legitimate for Spiritual Growth?
This article is the paper I read at the Evangelical Theological Society annual conference in 2021. It's pretty long but is organized with lots of headings. If you want shorter content, here's an article I wrote on the accuracy of the enneagram and another...
Psychological Apologetics Resources
Psychological apologetics is a unique field that focuses on using and applying psychological sciences (which really includes all social and cognitive sciences) for apologetics. Very few people do work that could be considered psychological apologetics, especially if...
One Last Lesson from Ravi
Until recently, Ravi Zacharias was a hero of the Christian faith. If you happen to be in the dark about him, he was the world's most well-known apologist, but recent investigations have revealed that he engaged in unknown numbers of immoral and illegal sexual sins...
List of Biases for Apologetics
(...and everything else, too) In one of the apologetics presentations I give, I ask the audience to shout out as many logical fallacies as they can in 15 seconds and they usually list about seven. I then ask them to shout out all the psychological biases that they can...
Five Views on Psychology and Christianity
Psychology and Christianity: Five Views When I tell people that I work in the field of psychology, they almost always ask how I can still be a Christian in that field or they wonder whether I really am a Christian. Many psychologists are opposed to religion,...
Engineering Psychology for Apologetics
Apologists tend to think like engineers in the sense that we're very analytical and logical, which also means that we often misunderstand people who don't think this way. Nearly every apologist goes through a phase where we think, if I just show people the evidence,...
The Coddling of the Righteous Mind
I've been meaning to read Jonathan Haidt's books, The Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind for quite a while. In fact, I considered applying to work with him for my PhD because his research is so relevant for apologetics. Alas, I...
The apologist’s super-secret weapon
You have to meet people where they areor they'll never get to where you are. Part I of this article discussed paraphrasing as a secret weapon that anyone can use in apologetics or evangelism. All you have to do is repeat what the other person said in your own words....
The apologist’s secret weapon
I'm currently reading the new edition of Tactics, which is a must-read if you want to learn how to have better conversations with unbelievers. The books Relational Apologetics and Influence: Science and Practice (non-Christian book) are also great for evangelism and...
What you don’t know about biological sex
Sexuality, biological sex, and gender are the hot topics of the day, and unfortunately, nearly everyone has an over-simplified view of each topic. For this article, I'm only going to focus on biological sex, and for 99% of people reading this, my guess is that there's...
Review: When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World
When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World by Leon FestingerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars In 1954, a group of social psychologists heard about a small cult group who believed aliens were...
Do We Need a Christian Psychology?
Recently I've been bombarded with various notions a Christain psychology. This can mean a variety of different things, but I am using the term very broadly to refer to Christian specific practices or approaches to psychology. This seems like an obvious approach to...
Is Sleep Deprivation a Sin?
I only got about five hours of sleep last night and six the night before. I need a shade over eight to maintain peak cognitive functioning. Have I sinned? I suspect that most people are inclined to say no without careful consideration, but once we think about it, the...
Virtue Apologetics
A recent article in Psychology Today has been making the rounds on my social media. The article discusses a peer-reviewed paper from 2015 that showed that Christian children are less generous than non-religious children. The original paper was touted as...
Talking to Strangers Review
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know by Malcolm GladwellMy rating: 5 of 5 stars I wanted to read this book because Malcolm Gladwell is such a great conversationalist and writer that I was sure what he had to say about...
12 Rules for Life Book Review
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. PetersonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars Jordan Peterson came to fame rather suddenly a few years ago because of a political controversy, but he's more than just a pop-sensation. He's a legitimate clinical...
Branch Davidian Compound Visit
Today was my wife's birthday, and while it may sound odd, I took her to the Branch Davidian Compound where David Koresh and several of his followers died in a standoff with the authorities in 1993. The site is interesting to my wife because her primary interest in...
Memory, the Gospels, and Darth Vader
Memory, the Gospels, and Darth Vader The image on the right is a picture of a puzzle that my wife and I tried to put together about a year ago. We were about halfway done and decided to give up because it was taking too long and...
Should Christians Get Therapy?
The role of therapy is by far the most controversial topic for Christians in regards to the field of psychology. There are mounds of books devoted to the integration of therapy into Christian theology and the different views on it. Thankfully, I think there's a way to...
Review: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert by John M. GottmanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars The author, John Gottman, is well known for his scientific research on marriages. Because of this, I have cited...
A man’s thoughts on makeup
Yes, I am a man and I am writing about makeup, which primarily concerns women, but I am also a father of three young girls. While this article is directed mostly towards women, it is not just for women. It's also for husbands, fathers, and the men who (directly or...