Razib at Gene Expression used data from the General Social Survey for certain religious denominations and compared them to the proportion of followers in that faith who believe the Bible should be interpreted literally. He put IQ levels on the vertical axis and the percent of Bible-is-literal believers on the horizontal axis. Here’s what he found: As Razib writes, it’s not strictly causation/correlation (emphasis his). … The correlation here is probably not one of simple causality in either direction. It… Read more
There are religious people who accept evolution. Not enough of them. But many of them. Art is one example. He accepted evolution even after he became a Born-Again Baptist. In college, though, he realized he was making the mistake of taking it on faith. It took a more scientifically-versed friend to fully explain the implications of the theory. Very cool story. In the excerpt below, he talks about a discussion he had with this friend. Anyway, back to second year… Read more
Hermione always was the brightest one at Hogwarts… 🙂 (via My Confined Space) [tags]atheist, atheism, Harry Potter, Hermione[/tags] Read more
It’s the end of the school year. I’ve started asking my high school students informally what they wish would’ve been different in math this year. It’s my first year of teaching so the list is going to be long. Among the things I’ve heard: Less lecturing, less homework, more review time before tests, more going outside. One student, who likes to crack jokes in class, said: “Different teacher!” (One student won’t be passing my class…) Anyway, I’m bracing myself for… Read more
Great Christina raises some important questions in another terrific post: What is your mission statement? Why do you blog? I’ll add a few more: What is our endgame as atheist bloggers? Do we want religion to become eradicated? Do we want more theists to treat atheists and atheism with respect? — This would involve the notion that laws would not be passed based on religious beliefs. Do we just want to rant? Personally, I feel like I’ve done something worthwhile… Read more
I got a Letter from God… …and it was really creepy. I’m not usually interested in posting the “religion sucks” kind of threads, but sometimes the outrage gets to be just too much to ignore. A few days ago this arrived in the mail: The envelope is covered front and back with gushy prayers and promises for my spiritual, physical and financial blessings, in all-caps with half of the words underlined in red. It is from the Saint Matthew’s Churches,… Read more
The coolest music video you’ll see all day is below. The song is “Malignant Narcissism” by the band Rush. The video was created by Bobby Standridge. You may want the full screen for this one: Rush lyricist Neil Peart also mentions Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in the liner notes to their album Snakes and Arrows: I was also thinking, like Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, about how children are usually imprinted with a particular faith, along with their… Read more
A collection of amusing links send by readers over the weekend: A California Ford dealership doesn’t want the business of any non-Christians — with audio of the offensive commercial! (via Spazeboy) Best Bar Mitzvah speech *ever* (via Anne) Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, experienced “nirvana” during (and after) a stroke. Dr. Taylor’s talk at TED can be seen here (via MTran): She seems bemused but not at all put off by the hundreds who have reached out to her on… Read more
The editorial cartoon by Chris OBrion of The Roanoke Times illustrates the importance of not giving preference to one religion in the classroom. It’s not like we need to ignore religion altogether, though. A Comparative Religions class would put the faiths on the same level and allow for (I imagine) very interesting discussions. The next one makes a different point (click to embiggen). As Carl Sagan would say, science is a candle in the dark. Religion offers a lot of… Read more
Since 1620, residents of Castrillo de Murcia (Spain) have been holding a baby jump to ward off the devil. Yep. A baby jump. Like this: Jumpers dressed as the Colacho, a character representing the Devil, bounded over clusters of bemused infants laid out on mattresses. So far this year, no babies have been injured. Which says nothing about how they fared in previous years… The wiser among us know that jumping babies this way is no way to keep the… Read more
