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Doug Mann

Born: Ponca City, Oklahoma, 1959

Degrees:

  • Ph.D., Experimental Psychology, Ohio University, 1997
  • M.S., Experimental Psychology, Ohio University, 1994
  • M.S., Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University–Bloomington, 1983
  • B.S., Telecommunications, Oral Roberts University, 1981

Institutional Affiliations:

  • Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Assistant Professor of Social Medicine (1998-2013)
  • Ohio University, Associate Provost for Information Technology (1999-2003)
  • Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, Coordinator of Instructional Development (1983 -1998)
  • Oral Roberts University, Educational Television Producer/Director (1981-1982)

Representative Publications:

  • Mann, D. (2019). "A Humanistic Alternative to the Failed and Misleading Concept of 'Objective Morality.'" Free Inquiry, 39(4), 30-35.
  • Mann, D. (2019). "The Science of the Evolution of Morality." Free Inquiry, 39(2), 16-23.
  • Hojat M., Bianco J. A., Mann D., Massello D., Calabrese L. H. (2015). "Overlap between Empathy, Teamwork and Integrative Approach to Patient Care." Medical Teacher, 37(8), 755-758.
  • Mann, D. D., & Eland, D. C. (2005). "Self-Efficacy in Mastery Learning to Apply a Therapeutic Psychomotor Skill." Perceptual and Motor Skills, 100, 77-84.
  • Mann, D., Goodrum, K., DeWine, M., & McVicker, J. (1993). "A Curriculum Database with Boolean Natural-Language Searching in Hypercard. : In M. E. Frisse (Ed.) Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (pp. 779-780). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Personal: Doug Mann is a retired medical school faculty member with a Ph.D. in experimental psychology. Doug's research interests include confidence in medical diagnosis, the psychology of medical education, empathy in the doctor-patient relationship and, post-retirement, the evolution of human morality.


Published on the Secular Web


Modern Library

Plantinga’s Selective Theism: The Circular Reasoning at the Heart of Where the Conflict Really Lies

For more than 30 years, Alvin Plantinga has argued that the guiding hand of the Christian God was necessary for evolution by natural selection to produce reliable human cognitive faculties that produce a majority of true beliefs. This paper focuses on two of the many problems with Plantinga's argument. First, Plantinga's explication of what it means for "our cognitive faculties" and "beliefs" to be "reliable" is woefully inadequate in scientific terms. Second, even if we give Plantinga's shaky cognitive science the benefit of the doubt, my analysis of Plantinga's selective theism reveals that his argument is circular. I discuss a mainstream version of Christian theism that leads to a conclusion about the expected reliability of our cognitive faculties under theism that is the opposite of Plantinga's, undermining his claim of a "deep concord" between theism and science.