Gingrich vows to ban embryonic...
Karen Tumulty - The Washington Post
Gingrich vows to ban embryonic stem-cell research, questions in vitro practices
Santorum and the Health Insurance...
Ed Brayton - Dispatches from the...
Santorum and the Health Insurance Mandate
Martin Luther King and the Republican...
Herb Silverman - The Huffington Post
Martin Luther King and
the Republican Race For Righteousness
"No single reason dominated the break-up between church and young adults. Instead, a variety of reasons emerged. Overall, the research uncovered six significant themes why nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15.
Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective.
Reason #2 – Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.
Reason #3 – Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
Reason #4 – Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
Reason #5 – They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
Reason #6 – The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt."
Barna.org, September 28, 2011
By STEVEN LOVE - RD.NET
Added: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:36:55 UTC
Their application last year and this year were rejected. This year they were given a run around before the rejection.
Sean Faircloth is scheduled to speak to a group at Notre Dame @7pm on Thursday Feb 16, at DeBartolo Hall, Room 126, South Bend Indiana.
1) We applied last year and got rejected. We applied again this year and just recently got our second rejection letter a couple weeks ago. Two of my fellow classmates and I were the ones who put together the club proposal, wrote up our constitution, etc., but on our unofficial club email list (which we use to send emails about meetings we hold once every other week or every two weeks) currently has 50 people on it - not that they all show up for all of the meetings, but they have all at least expressed enough interest in our group to wish to be on our email list. The rejection letter this year essentially said the same thing as last year, focusing on the fact that we had failed to get the approval of Campus Ministry, despite the fact that we did in fact get the approval of the Philosophy Department, as the University insisted that Campus Ministry, rather than the Philo Department, was the "appropriately impacted department..."
2) There is a Muslim Student Association group active on campus. (http://campusministry.nd.edu/ecumenical-interfaith/muslim-resources/ ) University officials never addressed anything about this. The only official contact we've been blessed with by the powers that be has been through our two blunt rejection letters.
3) The Observer wrote one article about us which was very controversial in online forums (from the Observer's website to Reddit to other various blogs and sites which re-posted it). Also, I interviewed with the Religious News Service, and an article they wrote about our club, as well as similar ones as Dayton, Duquesne, etc., was picked up by USA Today and the Washington Post. Below are links to some of these mentioned.
By - - BBC NEWS
Added: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:02:21 UTC
A Devon town council acted unlawfully by allowing prayers to be said before meetings, the High Court has ruled.
Action was brought against Bideford Town Council by the National Secular Society (NSS) after atheist councillor Clive Bone complained.
Mr Justice Ouseley ruled the prayers were not lawful under section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972.
However, he said prayers could be said as long as councillors were not formally summoned to attend.
The judgement was being seen as a test case which could affect local councils across England and Wales.
Mr Justice Ouseley ruled the prayers as practised by Bideford Town Council had been unlawful because there was no statutory power permitting them to continue.
The NSS, which said prayers had no place in "a secular environment concerned with civic business", argued the "inappropriate" ritual breached articles 9 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect an individual's right to freedom of conscience and not to face discrimination.
'No power' However, the case was not won on human rights grounds, but on a point of statutory construction of local government legislation.
Mr Justice Ouseley said: "A local authority has no power under section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972, or otherwise, to hold prayers as part of a formal local authority meeting, or to summon councillors to such a meeting at which prayers are on the agenda."
He told the court: "There is no specific power to say prayers or to have any period of quiet reflection as part of the business of the council."
Referring to Bideford, he said: "The council has on two occasions by a majority voted to retain public prayers at its full meetings.
"But that does not give it power to do what it has no power to do."
The judge acknowledged the case raised issues of general public importance and gave the council permission to appeal.
By REUTERS STAFF - REUTERS
Added: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:21:12 UTC
RDFRS UK will be making two announcements next week which will be very relevant in the context of this article. Watch this space!
(Dark clouds gather over Southwark Cathedral in London, January 26, 2012. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly)
They are recited at the beginning of Britain’s parliamentary sessions and many school assemblies, but Christian leaders fear prayers could be driven from public life after a court ruled that a council had acted unlawfully by allowing them at meetings.
Although Britain has increasingly become a secular society, it is still a mostly Christian nation, and the Church of England is the established or state church, with the monarch as its supreme governor. But an atheist ex-councillor, backed by the National Secular Society (NSS), on Friday won a High Court judicial review in London, effectively nibbling away at the Church’s influence. It is the latest legal defeat for Christians in the High Court, and came on the same day a religious couple lost their appeal against turning away a gay couple from their Bed and Breakfast guesthouse.
“I’ve no doubt at all that the agenda of the National Secular Society is inch-by-inch to drive religion out of the public sphere,” the Church of England’s Bishop of Exeter, Michael Langrish, told BBC television. “If they get their way it will have enormous implications for things such as prayers in parliament, the Remembrance Day, the Jubilee celebrations (marking the 60-year reign of Queen Elizabeth) and even the singing of the national anthem.”
Government minister Eric Pickles entered the fray by describing the council ruling as “surprising and disappointing”.
“We are a Christian country, with an established Church in England, governed by the Queen,” he said in a statement. “Christianity plays an important part in the culture, heritage and fabric of our nation. The right to worship is a fundamental and hard-fought British liberty.”
By - - EXPRESS.CO.UK
Added: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:56:46 UTC
The Archbishop of Canterbury and atheist Professor Richard Dawkins are set to go head to head to discuss man's greatest question.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and atheist Professor Richard Dawkins are set to go head to head to discuss man's greatest question.
The leader of the Church of England, Dr Rowan Williams, will meet Britain's most famous non-believer to take on the complex subject of "The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin".
The pair - who seem unlikely to find much common ground - will be joined by philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny at the event at Oxford University.
The discussion, which organisers expect to be "invigorating and enlivening", is fully booked but will be streamed live online on February 23.
The two men have exchanged views on evolution and the existence of God before. In a programme broadcast on Channel 4 in 2010, Prof Dawkins asked Dr Rowan Williams if he would see God as having any role in the evolutionary process.
Read more
Alzheimer's brain plaques 'rapidly...
James Gallagher - BBC Health
"This is an unprecedented finding. Previously, the best existing treatment for Alzheimer's disease in mice required several months to reduce plaque in the brain."
Gene therapy 'gave me sight back'
Helen Briggs - BBC News - Health
Three US citizens who lost their sight in childhood have reported a dramatic improvement in vision after having gene therapy in both eyes.
Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting...
Victoria Gill - BBC Nature
Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting flies at bay
America and Eurasia 'to meet at north...
Neil Bowdler - BBC News Science &...
America and Eurasia will crash into each other over the North Pole in 50-200 million years time, according to scientists at Yale University.
Rare Martian meteorite given to science
Anna-Marie Lever, Jonathan Amos - BBC...
"It is as if it has just been blasted off Mars. It is effectively a pristine sample of Mars."
The faithful must learn to respect...
Lawrence Krauss - The Guardian
Tensions between religion and science will persist unless believers recognise that skepticism is a hallmark of science.
Outward displays of belief in God have become a proxy for trustworthiness in the US. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY - BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
Added: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:00:22 UTC
St. John Chrysostom once said, "The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops."
Here's proof that he was right.
In an interview this week with Connecticut Magazine, Cardinal Edward Egan, withdrew his 2002 apology for the Church's handling of the sex-abuse scandal, which was once read in all New York parishes.
A decade after that letter, the former archbishop of New York, and former bishop of Bridgeport, now describes the handling of the priest-abuse crisis under his watch as “incredibly good.” He said of the letter, "I never should have said that,” and added, “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”
“I never had one of these sex abuse cases.” he said, before adding pompously, “If you have another bishop in the United States who has the record I have, I’d be happy to know who he is.” He also claimed that the Church had no obligation to report abuse to the civil authorities.
These are lies, strutting around with pride.
The Church is required to report abuse, according to laws on the books since the 1970s.
Bishop Egan ran a diocese that was notoriously dangerous for children. Contrary to his claim, during his twelve-year enthronement at Bridgeport, Egan repeatedly failed to investigate priests where there were obvious signs of abuse, according to The Hartford Courant. His diocese had to settle the cases and awarded victims some $12-15 million in damages.
By NICK SQUIRES - THE TELEGRAPH
Added: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:12:02 UTC
Thanks to Steve Zara for the link.
The Pope has performed an exorcism, according to claims made in a new book Photo: GETTY
In a new book, Father Amorth, the exorcist for the diocese of Rome, gives a bizarre account of how he and two assistants brought a pair of "possessed" Italian men to one of the Pope's weekly audiences in St Peter's Square in May 2009.
In his book, "The Last Exorcist – My Fight Against Satan", he claimed the mere presence of the pontiff cured the men of their demonic afflictions.
Father Amorth said his two female assistants escorted the two men into St Peter's Square as the Pope was driven between crowds of faithful in the white "Popemobile" jeep.
The women managed to obtain seats for the two men in an area of seating normally reserved for the disabled.
As the Pope approached them, the men, identified only as Marco and Giovanni, began to act strangely, Father Amorth wrote.
He described how they trembled and how their teeth chattered.
When one of the assistants asked Giovanni to control himself, he said "I am not Giovanni" in a voice that was not his own, Father Amorth claimed.
As soon as the Pope stepped down from the "Popemobile' the two men flung themselves to the floor.
"They banged their heads on the ground. The Swiss Guards watched them but did nothing," the priest wrote.
"Giovanni and Marco started to wail at the same time, they were lying on the floor, howling.
"They were trembling, slobbering, working themselves into a frenzy.
"The Pope watched from a distance. He raised an arm and blessed the four of them. For the possessed it was like a furious jolt - a blow to their whole bodies - to the extent that they were thrown three metres backwards," he continued.
By JAMES GALLAGHER - BBC HEALTH
Added: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:44:15 UTC
Destructive plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients have been rapidly cleared by researchers testing a cancer drug on mice.
The US study, published in the journal Science, reported the plaques were broken down at "unprecedented" speed.
Tests also showed an improvement in some brain function.
Sections of Alzheimer's, left, and healthy brain tissue showing brain shrinkage with the condition
Specialists said the results were promising, but warned that successful drugs in mice often failed to work in people.
The exact cause of Alzheimer's remains unknown, but one of the leading theories involves the formation of clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid. These damage and kill brain cells, eventually resulting in memory problems and the inability to think clearly.
Clearing protein plaques is a major focus of Alzheimer's research and drugs are already being tested in human clinical trials.
In the body, the role of removing beta-amyloid falls to apolipoprotein E - or ApoE. However, people have different versions of the protein. Having the ApoE4 genetic variant is one of the biggest risk factors for developing the disease.
Helping hand Scientists at the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio were investigating ways of boosting levels of ApoE, which in theory should reduce levels of beta-amyloid.
They tested bexarotene, which has been approved for use to treat cancers in the skin, on mice with an illness similar to Alzheimer's.
After one dose in young mice, the levels of beta-amyloid in the brain were "rapidly lowered" within six hours and a 25% reduction was sustained for 70 hours.
In older mice with established amyloid plaques, seven days of treatment halved the number of plaques in the brain.
The study said there were improvements in brain function after treatment, in nest building, maze performance and remembering electrical shocks.
Researchers Paige Cramer said: "This is an unprecedented finding. Previously, the best existing treatment for Alzheimer's disease in mice required several months to reduce plaque in the brain."
By HELEN BRIGGS - BBC NEWS - HEALTH
Added: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:13:52 UTC
Three US citizens who lost their sight in childhood have reported a dramatic improvement in vision after having gene therapy in both eyes.
There was some improvement after the genetic fault in one eye was corrected four years ago.
Now, one woman has described her joy at seeing her children's faces, after her second eye was treated.
Tami Morehouse: 'It's just incredible to see'
The research increases hopes that gene therapy can be used in a range of eye conditions, said a UK expert.
The three have Leber's Congenital Amaurosis (LCA), a rare inherited disease caused by defects in a gene encoding a protein needed for vision.
It appears at birth or in the first months of life, leading to severely impaired vision, involuntary eye movements and poor night vision.
The disorder, which can be caused by 'mistakes' in more than 10 different genes, prevents normal function of the retina; the light-sensitive layer of cells at the back of the eye.
Several teams around the world are carrying out early trials of gene therapy in blindness, including experts at the Philadelphia Children's Hospital and the University of Philadelphia, US.
Only a handful of patients worldwide have received the treatment to boost a faulty gene underlying an inherited form of blindness.
By VICTORIA GILL - BBC NATURE
Added: Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:22:27 UTC
The team placed the sticky model horses in a fly-infested field
Why zebras evolved their characteristic black-and-white stripes has been the subject of decades of debate among scientists.
Now researchers from Hungary and Sweden claim to have solved the mystery.
The stripes, they say, came about to keep away blood-sucking flies.
They report in the Journal of Experimental Biology that this pattern of narrow stripes makes zebras "unattractive" to the flies.
They key to this effect is in how the striped patterns reflect light.
"We started off studying horses with black, brown or white coats," explained Susanne Akesson from Lund University, a member of the international research team that carried out the study.
"We found that in the black and brown horses, we get horizontally polarised light." This effect made the dark-coloured horses very attractive to flies.
It means that the light that bounces off the horse's dark coat - and travels in waves to the eyes of a hungry fly - moves along a horizontal plane, like a snake slithering along with its body flat to the floor.
Dr Akesson and her colleagues found that horseflies, or tabanids, were very attracted by these "flat" waves of light.
"From a white coat, you get unpolarised light [reflected]," she explained. Unpolarised light waves travel along any and every plane, and are much less attractive to flies. As a result, white-coated horses are much less troubled by horseflies than their dark-coloured relatives.
Having discovered the flies' preference for dark coats, the team then became interested in zebras. They wanted to know what kind of light would bounce off the striped body of a zebra, and how this would affect the biting flies that are a horse's most irritating enemy.
By LAWRENCE KRASS - THE GUARDIAN
Added: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:17:13 UTC
Outward displays of belief in God have become a proxy for trustworthiness in the US. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
Issues of personal faith can be a source of respectful debate and discussion. Since faith is often not based on evidence, however, it is hard to imagine how various deep philosophical or religious disagreements can be objectively laid to rest. As a result, skeptics like myself struggle to understand or anticipate the vehement anger that can be generated by the mere suggestion that perhaps there may be no God, or even that such a suggestion is not meant to offend.
Last week, police in Rhode Island had to be called to suppress an angry crowd at a school board meeting, and a 16-year-old atheist had to take time off school after being threatened and targeted by an online hate campaign. She was even described on the radio by a state representative as an "evil little thing". All the girl had done was to press for the removal of a banner bearing a prayer that asked "Our Heavenly Father" to grant pupils the desire "to be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers" and "to be good sports".
Equally disturbing was a paper just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, based on a study of American adults and Canadian college students, that suggested atheists are among the most distrusted groups in society – on a par with rapists. An earlier Gallup poll ranked atheists as the least popular hypothetical minority presidential candidates, and the group that people would most disapprove of their child marrying.
The researchers of the new paper concluded: "Outward displays of belief in God may be viewed as a proxy for trustworthiness … believers may consider atheist's absence of belief as a public threat to cooperation and honesty." This probably explains recent electoral successes of openly devout presidential candidates who previously demonstrated dubious ethics, while also explaining the absence of any serious candidates without known religious affiliation.
It is fascinating that lack of belief, or even mere skepticism, is met among the faithful with less respect and more distrust even than a fervent belief in a rival God. This, more than anything, leads to an inevitable and deep tension between science and religion. When such distrust enters the realm of public policy, everyone suffers.
By RON CSILLAG - THE WASHINGTON POST
Added: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:56:19 UTC
Thanks to Helga Vierich for the links
TORONTO — Muslim clerics in Canada have issued a fatwa against so-called “honor killings” a week after three members of an Afghan family in Montreal were convicted of the murders of four relatives.
The religious decree — only the third of its kind in Canada — also prohibits domestic violence and hatred of women. It was issued on Saturday (Feb. 4) on the eve of Mawlid an-Nabi, the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday.
“These crimes are major sins in Islam, punishable by the court of law and almighty Allah,” said Imam Syed Soharwardy of Calgary, representing 34 clerics affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.
“There is no justification for honor killings, domestic violence and misogyny in Islam,” Soharwardy added.
See also here for an Opinion piece on the Fatwa.
By JERRY COYNE - WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE
Added: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:51:58 UTC
Technicianonline.com, which appears to be the student newspaper from North Carolina State University, has a new editorial called “Evolution: theory not fact” by deputy viewpoint editor Madison Murphy. It not only mischaracterizes evolution, but makes the crucial mistake of dismissing evolution as not a fact but “only a theory” (not her words, but an accurate characterization). Murphy begins with a somewhat misguided definition of evolution:
The theory of evolution can be explained simply: Complex creatures evolved from simplistic creatures over time. All creatures come from a common ancestor. Over time, mutations in genetic codes were maintained as they aided in survival. This process of mutation is called natural selection. Eventually, these mutations build up until a complex creature is the result.
Leaving aside the hilarious misuse of the word “simplistic,” this paragraph gets natural selection wrong in several ways: mutations aren’t “maintained”, but increase in frequency; the currency of selection is reproduction, not survival alone; and selection is not just a “process of mutation”, but a process that involves the selective disposition of mutations via a deterministic process of gene sorting.
She then appears to favor teaching alternative creationist views, a deeply misguided notion, but in the process also conflates those views:
There are opposing theories to evolution, however, and they are also some of the most controversial theories to ever be discussed in science, politics, religion and education. These opposing theories are creationism and intelligent design. Some people lump these two together, but they are slightly different.
The theory of intelligent design states that the creation of a complex being could not have happened randomly or by chance. There had to have been a higher power that created this complexity. However, according to intelligent design, this “designer” could have been anyone.
The theory of creationism, on the other hand, states the designer was God. The extremes of creationism vary as well. Some people believe in what is strictly stated in the Bible in Genesis without any room for other possibilities. Others, such as Catholics, believe evolution could have occurred the way Darwin describes, but by the power of God. This belief also says evolution cannot account for the creation of the human soul.
Lost Charles Darwin fossils...
- - BBC News - Science & Environment
A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet.
Will a new HMS Beagle set sail in 2013?
Peter McGrath - The Guardian
The HMS Beagle Project is seeking a port in the UK where a modern replica of the ship that carried Darwin on his famous voyage will be built.
Darwin censored by the Turkish...
Tom Chivers - The Telegraph
Mmm... hot hot Darwin porn, as banned by
the Turkish government
Darwin publishes On the Origin of...
- - OUPblog (Oxford University Press)
Robert H. Frank - Los Angeles Times
"Sleep researchers say they have established that many of the visions of angels and other religious encounters described in the Bible were likely "the products of spontaneous lucid dreams."
In a sleep study by the Out-Of-Body Experience Research Center in Los Angeles, 30 volunteers were instructed to perform a series of mental steps upon waking up or becoming lucid during the night that might lead them to have out-of-body experiences culminating in perceived encounters with an angel. Half of them succeeded, the researchers said.
[...]
Raduga, whose organization is partly funded by sales of his "practical guide" books on lucid dreaming, designed the experiment to test his theory that many reports of miraculous encounters are actually instances of people experiencing this vibrant, lifelike dream state. If he could coach people to dream a realistic religious encounter, he said, that could prove that many historical accounts of such encounters — such as Elijah's vision in the Bible — are really just products of people's imaginations."
Livescience.com, 21 December 2011
By PRESI MANDARI - JAKARTA GLOBE
Added: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:58:33 UTC
Change.org petition
Atheist Alliance Legal Support Fund
A defiant declaration of atheism by an Indonesian civil servant has inflamed passions in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, pitting non-believers and believers against each other.
The trouble began when civil servant Alexander Aan posted a message on the Facebook page of Atheist Minang, a group of Indonesians with godless beliefs. It read: “God doesn’t exist.”
The post so enraged residents in Aan’s hometown of Pulau Punjung in West Sumatra province that an angry mob of dozens stormed his office and beat up the 30-year-old.
To add insult to injury, police then arrested him and now want to press blasphemy charges that could see him locked up for five years.
Muslim extremists have called for Aan to be beheaded but fellow atheists have rallied round, and urged him to stand by his convictions despite the pressure.
“Dear Alex, stick to your beliefs. This country has no right to restrict your faith,” Fahd Singa Diwirja wrote on the same Facebook page, where Aan is one of the administrators.
“You’re facing narrow-minded people, but this is the true Indonesia, a fertile ground for the spread of fundamentalism,” Diwirja added, advising Aan to escape persecution by seeking asylum in a European country.
Aan has also gained the support of the US-based International Atheist Alliance.
The group, together with Atheist Minang, has written to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, calling on him to ensure that the blasphemy allegations are dropped.
“This is a law that has been used to promote mob violence and intimidation against those who do not agree with ... vigilante groups,” said the letter, copies of which were also sent to the United Nations and Human Rights Watch.
Aan’s proclamation has been removed from the page, but the Facebook group has doubled to 2,000 since the controversy made local news reports.
Most of the postings, however, are diatribes against Aan and his supporters.
“These atheists should be beheaded, that’s what they deserve,” wrote a man who identified himself as Putra Tama, a Muslim from neighboring Jambi province.
Other posts challenged atheists from the group to dare show themselves, instead of hiding behind the anonymity of social media.
“If you think your arguments are true, why don’t you just have a face-to-face meeting with us, people who still believe in God? You’re just a group of cowards,” taunted a post by another Muslim.
Although Indonesia’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, it only recognizes six faiths: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Confucianism.
Perceived blasphemy against any one of these religions carries a maximum five-year jail term.
"Some religions insist on the sexual abstinence before marriage. Isn’t it ironic that the journal Reproductive Health reports a correlation showing that the more religious the state, the higher the rates of teenage pregnancy?
Salon.com, Bernard Starr, Jan 8, 2012
"Conclusions
With data aggregated at the state level, conservative religious beliefs strongly predict U.S. teen birth rates, in a relationship that does not appear to be the result of confounding by income or abortion rates. One possible explanation for this relationship is that teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use contraception. "
Religiosity and teen birth rate in the United States, Joseph M. Strayhorn and Jillian C. Strayhorn
"In a recent study, Jordan LaBouff (University of Maine) worked with colleagues at Baylor College to discover whether attitudes to different groups are affected by subliminal Christian priming.
[...]
So what effect does religious priming have on ordinary people? To test this, LaBouff stopped people at random outside a church in the Netherlands (and, to check if the effect was culturally specific, a few people outside Westminster Abbey in London). He asked them a series of questions, including asking them to rate their attitudes to different groups on a 1-10 scale.
He also stopped some other people in a location that contained only civic buildings (in England, the location chosen was the Houses of Parliament).
[...]
But, as you can see from the graph, attitudes towards every single group were more hostile when people were asked outside a church. All the differences are statistically significant (except the difference in attitudes towards Christians)."
Epiphenom.fieldofscience.com, Tom Rees, Saturday, February 04
"It's pretty much taken as an assumption these days that human beings are 'natural-born believers'. Ask a cognitive scientist who specializes in religion, and they will tell you that our brains are predisposed to all sorts of supernatural concepts.
[...]
And when independent researchers outside the core groups test the hypothesis, they often get results that don't fit the story. That's the case with a new study by Jacqui Woolley, a psychologist at the University of Texas.
She and her colleagues read some short tales to a bunch of kids (67 in total) aged 8, 10 or 12, and also 22 adults. All the stories illustrated a 'difficult to explain' event.
[...]
So they read these stories and then asked the listener how the event could be explained. The surprising thing was that the kids hardly ever offered up supernatural explanations.
[...]
Adults, on the other hand, readily offered up supernatural explanations. There was a clear trend, too, as you can see in the graph - the older the child, the more likely they were to explain these strange happenings by recourse to the supernatural
Epiphenom.fieldofscience.com, Tom Rees, October 04, 2011
"Sarah Finocchario-Kessler, at the University of Kansas, used data from one such drug trial to see what the effect of religious beliefs (and other psychological factors) was on medication taking.
She found that people who put themselves in God's hands really were less likely to take their medicine.
To be precise, people who used a passive religious deferral coping style (e.g. "I don’t try much of anything; simply expect God to take control") were less likely to take their medicine as often as they were supposed to. On the other hand, collaborative religious coping "I work together with God as partners" or self-directing religious coping (e.g., "I make decisions about what to do without God’s help" had no effect on whether people took their medicines.
The biggest effect was with those people who scored high on the "God as locus of health control" measure - that means people who agreed with statements like "Whether or not my HIV disease improves is up to God." "
Epiphenom.fieldofscience.com, Tom Rees, March 02, 2011
"First of all, let's look at the correlation with a straightforward measure of whether women can be leaders, which was assessed by asking the level of agreement with two questions: “On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do” and “On the whole, men make better business executives than women do.”
Overall, there's a fairly good correlation. But there is an exception, and that's Asian countries. There are only a few Asian countries in the sample, so it's hard to draw sweeping conclusions. But they are all very sexist, whether their citizens are religious (Thailand, Taiwan) or non-religious (China, Hong Kong, Japan)
So I took these countries out of the analysis - in fact, what's shown in the graphic is only those countries with a predominantly Western, Christian culture (i.e. North and South America, Europe, and Australia).
In these Westernised countries there's a strong, linear relationship between religion and sexism.
In fact, if you narrow the sample a bit more to look only at European countries the fit is even cleaner (I haven't shown this, but it's a remarkably straight line)."
Epiphenom.fieldofscience.com, Tom Rees, November 11, 2011
By OMER KAMAL BIN FAROOQ - THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE (PAKISTAN)
Added: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:03:27 UTC
A Pakistani undergraduate class was shown a Richard Dawkins documentary in a sociology course. DESIGN: SIDRAH MOIZ
Growing up in a society that discouraged asking too many questions, I often wondered what it is about modern western education that the conservative right is so scared of.
Reading the news and following politics on television and online has helped me understand how our policy makers think and what issues matter to our general public.
If you have done the same, you will know that every effort to modernise our educational system and make it more culturally and religiously neutral has met with stern resistance from political, religious and other factions of the society. But one day, while sitting in class, I finally had an epiphany of sorts.
What happened was unbelievable.
A Pakistani undergraduate class was shown a Richard Dawkins documentary in a sociology course. Now, for some of you who don’t know Richard Dawkins, he is a prominent atheist scholar and an active opponent to organised religion. Although his book is available at a few book stores, showing it to students as part of their learning process has to be an unprecedented incident in our academic history.
To put things in perspective, I’d like to just point out that we live in a country where a female minister, Zille Huma Usman, was killed because a lunatic thought the idea of women ruling is not prescribed by Allah; a country where Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti were killed for speaking against the blasphemy law, January 4 is celebrated as “Mumtaz Qadri day” and Ahmadi students are shunned out of school for their beliefs.
So, showing a Richard Dawkins documentary which ascribes religion as the root cause of all evil is simply overwhelming. Now, whether one agrees with what Mr Dawkins believes (or rather disbelieves) is an entirely different debate. But for a Pakistani teacher to be able to show his class something this controversial is a gigantic step in itself.
We all have different views on religion and most don’t agree with Dawkins. But what’s worth noticing is not that students were shown something that was sacrilegious, it is something else. It is not about Dawkins at all.
This is about the freedom and tolerance that our society and educational system has lost or rather, never had. It’s about people being empowered to ask questions about centuries old religious and cultural dogmas and to challenge the relevance of medieval practices in the 21st century.
This is where that documentary comes in. It allows us to think out of the comfortable narrative that has been concocted for us by the state and its right-wing allies. Watching it allows us to digest opinions wildly diverse from ours and still give them their due consideration and appreciation. This is what made me happy.
By JEFFREY MERVIS - SCIENCE
Added: Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:22:25 UTC
Legislators in Indiana appear to have fallen short of their goal of injecting creationism into U.S. public schools, at least for this year. However, they did deploy a few new tactics in the never-ending assault on evolutionary theory by religious fundamentalists.
On Tuesday the Indiana Senate approved a bill, S.B. 89, that would have allowed schools to teach "various theories on the origins of life." It didn't specify whether the instruction should occur in a science class or in another setting, but its sponsors made clear that they saw it as a way to challenge prevailing views on scientific evolution. The bill, which passed 28 to 22, drew widespread media coverage and triggered condemnations from scientific organizations in the state and across the country.
The original measure had mentioned "creation science" as one idea that could be taught. But before the vote it was amended to require that teachers also discuss "theories from multiple religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology."
The next day, however, the speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives decided that the legislation, which had triggered national media coverage, had become too hot to handle. As reported by Dan Carden of the The Times of Northwest Indiana, House Speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican from Indianapolis, said at a press availability on Wednesday that "delving into an issue that the U.S. Supreme Court has, on at least one occasion, said is not compliant with the Constitution may be a side issue and someplace where we don't need to go." He was apparently referring to a 1987 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that a Louisiana state law requiring the teaching of creation science violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment by advancing religion.
By JULIAN BAGGINI - FT.COM
Added: Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:52:45 UTC
David Silverman, president of American Atheists
Point, Texas (pop. 792) is not the easiest place for a single lesbian to raise her child. But neither her sexuality nor her unwed parenthood are enough to make Renee Johnson an American conservative’s worst nightmare. As she explained to me when I met her at Rains County Library, “I’d rather have a big ‘L’ or ‘lesbian’ written across my shirt than a big ‘A’ or ‘atheist’, because people are going to handle it better.”
We had met in a private room because Johnson worried that anywhere else in the town, people might overhear us and be offended by her godlessness. No wonder she often feels alone in her non-belief. But Johnson is far from unique. As I found out when I travelled across the US last year, atheists live in isolation and secrecy all over the country. In a nation that celebrates freedom of religion like no other, freedom not to be religious at all can be as hard to exercise as the right to swim the Atlantic.
America is the well-known exception to the rule that the wealthier and better-educated a country is, the less religious its population. As a Pew Research Center report put it, when it comes to religiosity, “the US is closer to considerably less developed nations, such as India, Brazil and Lebanon than to other western nations.” But what is less discussed is what this means for the minority who are not just apathetic about their faith, but have actively rejected it.
The issue is somewhat neglected because it’s not usually perceptible on the coasts and in the larger cities, but the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking at all levels of US public life, even in cosmopolitan areas.
This week, Barack Obama was invited to speak at the 60th National Prayer Breakfast, an interfaith gathering which every president since Eisenhower has attended. In the history of Congress, on the other hand, there has only been one avowed atheist, Pete Stark, who has represented ultra-liberal Oakland in California since 1973 but only acknowledged he did not believe in a supreme being in 2007. Even he is a member of the non-doctrinal Unitarian Church, prefers to refer to himself as “non-theist” rather than atheist, and refused to be interviewed for this piece. This compares with at least six openly homosexual representatives.
As leading American public atheist Sam Harris sums it up, being a member of the godless club is “basically the worst thing you can be in terms of having a political life, incurring the judgment of strangers”. A Gallup poll last year showed that, while 9 per cent of Americans would not vote for a Jewish presidential candidate, 22 per cent wouldn’t support a Mormon and 32 per cent would not vote for a gay or lesbian candidate, 49 per cent would refuse to back an atheist for president.
Still, I found that even some New Yorkers, Bostonians and Washingtonians didn’t think there was much problem with being an atheist in their country. Until, that is, I told them a few stories. Like that of Harry Purdy, born in Manchester, the son of an American GI father he did not know. A year after the US government opened up its records, the then 46-year-old stepped off the plane at Louisville Airport, Kentucky in May 1991 and became the first of the lost GI babies to be reunited with his father. Purdy eventually took up American citizenship and moved over to live in 1993.
“It was a good thing I met him for the first time,” he told me when we met at a roadside restaurant near his home, “but this is Kentucky, this is the Bible Belt. I’m an atheist.” One by one, members of his new family turned against him because of his lack of belief. Harry doesn’t see any of his American family any more. “The last one I saw was my cousin, Ronnie. Every time he invites me over to dinner, he turns to religion. Last time I saw him, I didn’t back out, I took him full on.
“I’ve been told things like ‘I hope you have an accident, die and go to hell.’ So that’s what I’ve been up against.”
