religion
razib | February 16, 2007The always fascinating Ron Gunhame parses the GSS and religion & intelligence data. He finds:
Mean vocabulary score - Whites
6.52 Doesn't believe
7.24 No way to find out
6.96 Some higher power
6.02 Believes sometimes
6.42 Believes but doubts
6.05 Knows God exists
Ron concludes that atheists are less intelligent than agnostics from this, but Jason Malloy in the comments has several follow ups which clear up the issue a bit and suggest that Ron spoke too soon.
mikethemadbiologist | February 16, 2007...and William Donohue of the Catholic League says nothing. The Family Research Council is a rightwing faith-tank and advocacy group. And at least one board member and blogger thinks it is also very Protestant. Here's what FRC board member Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote:
Nevertheless, the office he holds is an unbiblical institution based in a monarchial ministry that is incompatible with the New Testament's vision of the church. Furthermore, he claims also to be a head of state -- a situation that adds untold layers of additional confusion…
clock | February 15, 2007Remember this, and use it next time you are debating religion, politics or pseudoscience:
"....someone wearing nothing but a Peter Gibbons-esque cheerful smile and having nothing but kind words for anyone will always be wrong if he says 2 + 2 = 5, and that if I call him a douchebag on wheels and use terms like "donkey punch" in the course of correcting him, it doesn't change who is right; it just changes the input into the popularity contest...
clock | February 15, 2007I have read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and "Breaking The Spell" by Daniel Dennett a couple of months ago, could not bear to slog all the way through "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, and am still waiting to get my copies of "God: the Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger and "Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion" by Barbara J. King. I was going to write a big meta-review of all of them together, perhaps adding in "Darwin's Cathedral" by David Sloan Wilson as an anti-toxin to the Dawkins/Dennet naive understanding of evolution (and just plain old nastiness…
mikethemadbiologist | February 15, 2007There's an interesting interview with Mara Vanderslice about her attempts to integrate 'religious' people (i.e., Christian--funny how Jews and Muslims, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic aren't part of the 'religious' left according to Vanderslice) into the Democratic party. While I've ripped into Vanderslice before, there's a lot I agree with, particularly the need for Democrats to define their policies in moral terms, not technocratic ones. But then I hit this paragraph (italics mine):
I hope that I'll find a way to continue to pioneer this path for the Democrats. I'd love to be involved…
clock | February 15, 2007Litbrit (also check the comments on the re-post here) tells it beautifully:
That is why so many of us have spoken out--we don't want government telling us what we should believe and how we should run our private, personal lives or how we should use our private, personal bodies. Not because we "hate" religion, but because we revere freedom.
And Amanda:
I want to assure you very much that I don't judge all Christians by the nasty actions of a few. Basically, as I've said before, I find it a shame that the word "Christian" gets applied both to true believers and those who just profess to believe…
scientificactivist | February 13, 2007As 2008 approaches, many of the Republican contenders for the Presidency will try to paint themselves as moderates. An article in today's Washington Post, though, underlines why we should be weary of their empty rhetoric.
Romney, who is expected to formally enter the presidential race today in Dearborn, Mich., has been particularly aggressive. In October he held a casual gathering at his Boston home for a who's who of social conservative leaders. Falwell and evangelist Franklin Graham munched on sandwiches and sipped soup alongside former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and pastor Richard…
pharyngula | February 13, 2007Take a look at the newly introduced California Bill AB 165.
This bill would establish the Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives within the office of the Governor and would require the
office to serve as a clearinghouse of information on federal, state,
and local funding for charitable services performed by charitable
organizations, as defined, encourage those organizations to seek
public funding for their charitable services, act as a liaison
between state agencies and those organizations, and advise the
Governor, the Legislature, and an advisory board of the office on the
barriers…
pharyngula | February 12, 2007Minnesota has its own Christian ministry scandal, but it probably won't get that much national attention, since there's no sex and it's just the usual "minister fleeces flock" story. Mac Hammond runs one of those mega-scam mega-churches in a Minneapolis suburb, where he preaches and practices his Prosperity Gospel. It's a story to make an atheist or a Christian retch.
"Noah was the first investment banker," he said at the start of one recent sermon, which was filled with folksy charm, biblical references and business jargon. "He was buying stock when the rest of the world was liquidating."…
oracknows | February 12, 2007I've written about the corrosive effect that religion can have on medical care when it is allowed to become too pervasive. One example where the intersection of religion and medicine concerns me is when various religious doctors insist on very dubious evidence that religiosity is good for a patient's health and that physicians should therefore take a "spiritual history" of all of their patients, with one even going so far as to claim that "excluding God from a consultation should be grounds for malpractice." I've also critically discussed studies that purport to show various benefits of…
pharyngula | February 11, 2007Today is Evolution Sunday. It's that day when participating ministers will say a few supportive words about evolution from their pulpits, or as I prefer to think of it, when a few people whose training and day-to-day practice are antithetical to science will attempt to legitimize their invalid beliefs and expand their pretense to intellectual authority by co-opting a few slogans.
As you might guess, I'm not exactly against the event, but I definitely do not support it. I'm sure a few readers are going to complain that I should be praising these efforts to get people to take baby steps in the…
jrosenhouse | February 9, 2007Sam Harris has replied to the Andrew Sullivan essay I discussed in Wednesday's post. Let's consider some highlights:
I am, of course, unconvinced by your response. But this can hardly disappoint you, as it was not intended to convince me. You simply wrote to inform me that you have never doubted God's existence, cannot account for how you came to believe in Him, and are well aware that these facts will not (and should not) persuade me of the legitimacy of your religious beliefs. I now feel like a tennis player, in mid-serve, who notices that his opponent is no longer holding a racket.
You…
pharyngula | February 9, 2007I am deeply amused. I'm no fan of "faith & religion" sections of newspapers—axe them and expand the funny pages, I say—but here's one editor with smarts who gets the thumbs up from me. He gets lots of complaints that those dang non-Christians are being over-represented on the religion page; some of them are typical bigotry of the dominant delusion:
A couple of critics wanted to know why we were wasting ink on these "false" beliefs when Christ is the only path to salvation. Another caller said he was tired of having "that Islam religion … shoved in my face."
Now here's what I like: the…
clock | February 8, 2007Ah, why do I have to be so busy on a news-filled day (no, not Anna Nicole Smith)? I barely saw the computer today. I'd get home, have about 5 minutes before I have to go out again and so on. NPR did not mention Edwards until 4pm or so (that I heard in the car), so when I first got home I only had time to open e-mail, scan about 50 new messages, home in to the one that had the news, open it, get the links and quickly post without more than a quick skim of the statements by Edwards and others, let alone any time to add commentary (except for what the title implied I felt at the time). And…
oracknows | February 8, 2007Here's more evidence.
Yeah, I know it's old, but Donohue's popping up again, and I had forgotten what a nutjob he can be.
End of rare political rant. You may return to your regularly scheduled medical and science blogging.
ADDENDUM:
More examples have shown up in my in-box of the "wit" and lack of wisdom of William Donohue:
On using Martin Luther King as an example (on YouTube here).
On sexual abuse by priests: ""[M]ost 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn't allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?"
omnibrain | February 8, 2007Ohh Kirk Cameron you're so silly!
"We are very excited about this game because it presents both sides of the creation-evolution argument, and in doing so, shows that the contemporary theory of evolution is perhaps the greatest hoax of modern times," said creator Kirk Cameron
I heard about this game coming out a month or two ago but was never able to find much more information on it until now. I'm not really sure how the game shows evolution as 'stupid' but this quote should hold you over until you want to spend the $29.95 to buy the game:
"Intelligent Design versus Evolution" is unique in…
mikethemadbiologist | February 7, 2007I hate being right, but I knew the Mighty Conservative Wurlitzer was going to slime Amanda and Shakes. Before I get to a detailed discussion of the NY Times article about the whole blogger kerfuffle, I have a very simple question.
What if Amanda and Shakes, rather than being campaign bloggers, had taken important administrative, behind-the-scenes jobs with the Edwards campaign?
Seriously, both parties have had all sorts of people as campaign workers. So why are bloggers a big deal? If they were doing a bad job, then they should be fired because of their shoddy work. But many campaign…
jrosenhouse | February 7, 2007The blogalogue between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan on the subject of the reasonableness of religious faith continues. We pick up the action with Sullivan's latest salvo. He is responding to the following question asked by Harris: “What would constitute “proof” for you that your current beliefs about God are mistaken? (i.e., what would get you to fundamentally doubt the validity of faith in general and of Christianity in particular?)”
Let's consider Sullivan's reply in full:
I have never doubted the existence of God. Never. My acceptance of God's existence - of a force beyond everything…
omnibrain | February 6, 2007I'm proud to report that Ted Haggard is no longer gay since he underwent three whole weeks of very intensive counseling. He was so impressed with his counseling that him and his wife are going to attend university and get their masters degrees in psychology (I'm psyched he's joining me in my chosen profession!). It sounds like they'll be going to Phoenix Online University or somewhere similar and hopefully counseling people to ungay themselves just like he was so successful in doing! All praise Rev. Haggard!
The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced…
clock | February 6, 2007Lance wrote a brilliant post - An alien anthropologist discusses marriage with the Pope - which reminded me of an old (April 24, 2005) post of mine, which, perhaps, stood the test of time after all...
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I have not mentioned the Pope on this blog yet. What will the election of Ratzinger mean for the future? I don't know - nobody really does - but here are some thoughts.
If it is true that there are 1 billion Catholics on this planet, that makes it about a 6th or 7th of the world's population. This makes the Vatican the largest existing purveyor of myth, irrationality…