Tag: religion
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The Religiosity-Racism Link
Admitting that there are “so many, many positive aspects and benefits to religiosity”, the authors of a meta-analysis on the subject have shown a positive correlation between religious affiliation and racism. Organized religion [ā¦], by its very nature, encourages people to accept one fundamental belief system as superior to all others. The required value judgment…
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Faith in Probability
Following the publishing of his first book–Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives—David Eagleman is interviewed about religion and his beliefs, providing a refreshingly new andā¦ empiricalā¦ take on religious faith, atheism and agnosticism. Every time you go into a book store, you find a lot of books written with certainty ā you find the atheist…
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The Evolution of the New Atheist Argument
In summarising the main arguments for and against the New Atheist argument, Anthony Gottlieb provides a fairly even (yet far from comprehensive) account of the evolution of 21st century atheism. Through John Wisdom‘s 1944 Parable of the Invisible Gardener, Gottlieb looks at how the arguments of “religious apologists” such as Karen Armstrong are falling back…
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Richard Dawkins on the Labelling of Children
Richard Dawkins on a video for the BBC’s Daily Politics discusses the religious and political labelling of children. I feel very strongly that it’s wrong to label children with the opinions of their parents. Nobody minds labelling a child an English child, or a French child, or a Dutch child. But you’d think I was…
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We Project Our Beliefs Onto God
Those with a belief in God subconsciously bestow him with their own opinions in order to “validate and justify” them.Ā This is a theory that has recently been strengthened by two surprisingly simple yet effective experiments conducted to find what the theist think about the beliefs of God, other people and themselves when it comes to…
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Religion and Societal Dysfunction
Dysfunctional societies and those under extreme stress rely on religion as a coping mechanism; it is “a natural invention of human minds in response to a defective habitat”. This is one conclusion from Gregory Paul who has released the findings from his research on the incidence of religious belief and how it affects the overall…
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Statistics on Social Mobility and Belief Systems
Careers in law, medicine and the media are become more exclusive, while citizens from deprived areas continue to be failed by education. New Statesman provides a summary of (some) social mobility issues in the U.K., including these somewhat startling statistics: Privately educated candidates account forĀ 7 per cent of the population, but occupy more than half…
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Richard Dawkins and Hugh Hewitt Interview
The former Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and founder of the Foundation for Reason and Science, Richard Dawkins, was recently invited to appear onĀ The Hugh Hewitt Show where the two discussed religion, Rome, evolution and much more. One particular exchange (the Okay, do you believe Jesus turned water into wine? incident) has…
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Online Dating Statistics: Religion and Race
The online dating website OkCupid has a rather fascinating blog,Ā OkTrends, written by two of the four mathematics majors who founded the site. Still in it’s infancy the blog has a few fascinating posts studying data gleamed from their expansive user base. Starting out with a brief look at their matching algorithm and the control group…
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The Atheist Demographic Disadvantage
There may be a number of reasons why theist people have more children than non-believers, as Anthony Gottlieb–former executive editor of The Economist and author of The Dream of Reason–suggests in this article from Intelligent Life. Like other demographers, Eric Kaufmann expects western Europe to become markedly more religious in the course of the 21st…