Hasta La Gadget!

Atheists and Christians share many of the core universal values that are at the heart of a just, civil society, a new study suggests.

There were no major differences between Christians and those who do not believe in God in their moral attitudes toward compassion for those who are suffering and ensuring justice and fairness for all, researchers said.

Surprised? You would not be alone.

When atheists and Christians were asked to judge one another, members of the two groups fell back on many of the negative stereotypes that fuel the culture wars in the U.S., the research indicated.

Atheists typically described Christians more negatively than Christians described atheists, but both groups often claimed the moral high ground.

“In sum, atheists and Christians in the United States appear to be quite unfamiliar with one another’s foundational moral concerns,” researchers Ain Simpson and Kimberly Rios of Ohio University reported in The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.

But the developing body of research in the field portends a more hopeful future in which the atheist-Christian dialogue is not dominated by hard-liners such as Richard Dawkins. The best-selling author of “The God Delusion” has said that “faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.”

Once a common ground on moral values of caring and compassion has been established, Simpson said, “You’re much less likely to be prejudiced.”

Pervasive stereotypes

Simpson and Rios conducted two studies to determine how Christians and those who do not believe in God perceive their own moral values relative to one another.

The first study recruited 204 U.S. adults online – 113 Christians and 91 participants who said they did not believe in God. They completed a moral foundations survey three times. First they shared their own views and then they predicted how a typical atheist and a typical Christian would respond.

When offering their personal perspectives, religious participants scored slightly higher than atheists on values such as the relevance of caring for the disadvantaged and showing compassion for those who are suffering.

But there was no difference on values of fairness and reciprocity, including treating people the same and having justice be the most important requirement for a society.

“Our findings indicate that atheists have a strong moral sense of compassion and fairness similar in degree to that of Christians,” Simpson and Rios said.

But that was not the way participants saw it when asked to rate those who were different from them.

Christians said the typical Christian was much more concerned with being caring and compassionate, while atheists said the typical atheist was significantly more likely to value issues of justice and fairness.

The stereotypes continued in a second study of 120 Christians and 130 people who did not believe in God.

Participants were asked to write their impressions of the moral values of the group other than their own.

“Atheists more frequently discussed Christians negatively than positively. Christians, however, showed more balance between positive and negative discussions of atheists,” the researchers reported.

Still, Christians were particularly harsh in remarks about atheists and authority, with one respondent calling them “lawless and destructive.”

Discovering common ground

Given that both atheists and individuals with a strong faith often suffer from negative stereotyping, it might seem that they would have reason to empathize with one another.

After all, it is not always easy to be an atheist or an evangelical Christian.

Evangelicals consistently fall toward the lower end in national surveys measuring overall warmth of feeling. The bias appears at its worst among academic elites.

Yet few groups are viewed less favorably than atheists. Atheists ranked at the bottom of the feeling thermometer in the 2014 Chapman Survey of American Fears, below groups such as Muslims, immigrants and even survivalists.

Just how pervasive is anti-atheist prejudice? A new study from Britain, a far more secular nation than the U.S., provides some answers.

The study of 100 participants recruited from Nottingham Trent University found that both religious and non-religious participants were more likely to identify a man who left the scene of an accident and later removed the money from a wallet he found as an atheist.

“Anti-atheist prejudice is not confined either to dominantly religious countries or to religious individuals but rather appears to be a robust judgment about atheists,” university researchers reported in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.

What can be done?

Make more people aware of the key moral values members of minority groups share with others, research indicates.

In separate studies of samples of U.S. Christians, participants who perceived atheists as kind and caring were more favorable and trusting toward atheists, more likely to perceive atheists as moral and less likely to “perceive atheists as categorically distinct from believers,” Simpson and Rios found.

In contrast, perceived atheist endorsement of other values such as fairness, loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity scarcely moved the needle on prejudice.

Focusing on the compassion of atheists might best serve the goal of reducing prejudice, the researchers state in an upcoming article in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

“In search of a poster child,” Simpson and Rios state, “atheists might be better off with a warm and fuzzy John Lennon than an indignant Richard Dawkins.”

Image of the Lennon Wall in Prague shared by Yanksox, Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0]

David Briggs writes the Ahead of the Trend column for the Association of Religion Data Archives.

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A Washington man popped half an Ambien after surgery and woke up to a nightmare that he’d sparked a plane crash alert.

The 75-year-old’s dream that he was in a plane crash turned into hallucinations that were so vivid, he dialed 911 to report an accident.

He told dispatchers that the small cargo aircraft in which he was traveling with three other people from his home city of Renton to Oregon had landed in a field with trees and that he was “pinned in,” reports SFGate. 

The others were unconscious and he couldn’t see out of the window, he added.

In reality, he was having hallucinations at home after taking the sedative.

“He was very calm during the call, but sounded scared,” 911 dispatcher Becky McCracken told KOMO News. “It sounds real. And I’ve listened to it a couple of times. I would never know it wasn’t real.”

Authorities dispatched several fire engines to the “crash” scene. But the retiree called back to say the realistic-sounding account had not happened and that he’d imagined the whole incident after taking half an Ambien. 

It’s unclear whether the man had mixed the Ambien with any other drugs after his surgery. But a sleep expert said his hallucinations could have been a side effect of regular use.

“It must have seemed like he was right in the middle of it, so it must have been almost like a real hallucination for him, and that does speak to some of the potency of Ambien,” Dr. Gandis Mazeika, from the Sound Sleep Health clinic in Seattle, told ABC News.

Ambien “can cause people to have this kind of disorientation if given inappropriately to a patient or if the dosage is too high,” Mazeikz said. But if someone wasn’t having symptoms taking it, then “this should not be a warning to stop taking it,” he added. 

The Food and Drug Administration lists Ambien, which pharmaceutical company Sanofi produces,  as inducing multiple possible side effects, including abnormal thoughts and behavior, sleep walking, memory loss and anxiety. The Huffington Post has reached out for comment from the manufacturer.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The guy next to me huffed loudly—an explosive grunt of displeasure that had me halfway between amusement and horror. We were in a meeting room at the Hilton in Newark, NJ, seated in front of a giant TV with a giant sound system, and we’d just seen footage played back on Panasonic’s UB900 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray player. Compared to the competitor, it had performed well and everyone in attendance was eager to get their hands on one for testing at home.

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Astro Gaming has unveiled a new wireless gaming headset that will work with the PS4 or the Xbox One and your PC for gaming wherever you feel like playing. The headset is called the A50 Wireless and it has a base station that supports the PS4 and PC or Xbox One and PC. The headset transmits on a 5GHz frequency … Continue reading

Just the other day we were treated to an alleged photo of the upcoming Fujifilm X-T2. The camera has yet to be officially announced but so far photos and leaked information has been steadily making its way online, and if you were after more information, you’re in luck as the folks at Digicame-info have published the entire specs of the camera and a new photo of the device.

Now right off the bat it seems that for the most part, the X-T2 looks the same as its predecessor save for the new model name on the front. It’s a bit hard to make out the dials from here, but last we checked the X-T2 would have moved around some of the functions, but nothing too drastic or major.

As for the specs, Digicame-info more or less echoes what we have heard so far, which is its 24.3MP CMOS sensor, an X Processor Pro image processing engine, and it also looks like the X-T2 will be capable of shooting 4K video at 30fps, or Full HD at 60fps. Video was one of the criticisms the X-T1 faced so hopefully this time round Fujifilm has gotten it right.

It will also sport a 3-way tilting 3-inch LCD monitor, which is in line with earlier rumors, and will also sport 325 AF points. There will also be built-in WiFi and support for the Instax Share printer. No word on price but we reckon it will most likely end up being priced the same as the X-T1 when it was first launched, or at least around that range. The X-T2 is said to be announced on the 7th of July thanks to the invites Fujifilm has sent out, so check back with us next week for the details.

Full Alleged Fujifilm X-T2 Specs & New Photo Leaked , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.