Apparently, some people think that talking or merely thinking about an event can actually bring it about. To me, that's incomprehensible. When I was young, I assumed that the concept of "tempting fate' was a poetic metaphor. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that some people take it literally!Jonathan Abramowitz and colleagues, at the University of North Carolina, have done a nice little stud
9 Vote(s)
May 29, 2010
March 2, 2010
Is this why atheists are, on average, more intelligent?
There's a new paper out by Satoshi Kanazawa which is causing a bit of a stir. You might have seen something about it already - I'm a little behind the curve on this one, but on the plus side I have actually read the paper, unlike many other pundits!What's got people talking is the correlation between atheism and intelligence, although that isn't what the paper is actually about. It's already pret
16 Vote(s)
16 Vote(s)
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December 14, 2009
December 5, 2009
Someone to blame when disaster strikes
Here's a Friday evening paradox for you. For most atheists, the abundance of suffering in the world is a pretty clinching argument against the existence of a moral god. Yet religion seems to thrive in places where suffering is greatest (the graphic shows the correlation across US states between a basket of 'suffering' measures and belief in God).What gives? Kurt Gray, a psychologist at Harvard, h
8 Vote(s)
8 Vote(s)
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November 20, 2009
Do atheists make better parents?
I've done a few posts recently about fertility, so how about the next stage, parenthood? How do non-religious parents differ from religious ones?Here's a study by Bart Duriez, from the Catholic University Leuven in Belgium, which looks into just that. He quizzed over 900 secondary school students in Belgium about their religious attitudes and their parents approaches to parenting. He also asked
7 Vote(s)
7 Vote(s)
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November 15, 2009
Why Rabbi Sacks is wrong on religion and fertility
Rabbi Johnathan Sacks has been hitting the headlines recently with his latest warnings on the perils of nonbelief. Michael Blume has dug out the transcript of his speech, so you can get it from the horses mouth.Most of it is the usual stuff... but then comes the bit where he says that atheists are slowly killing Europe because they're failing to have enough kids.This is a fascinating claim, not o
8 Vote(s)
8 Vote(s)
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September 22, 2009
Why do atheists have fewer kids?
Here's something interesting from the papers last week. First we've got the philosopher Julian Baggini, an atheist, arguing in The Guardian for the virtues of a childless life. Then, in response, Ed West writes in The Telegraph arguing that atheism is facing a kind of demographic implosion, as the religious inexorably overwhelm them in in the fertility arms race.Now, this isn't a new argument, b
11 Vote(s)
11 Vote(s)
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September 3, 2009
Why are atheists so disliked?
Bruce Hood has a post up about the atheist bus ad controversy in the US state of Iowa (OK, it was a couple of weeks ago, but I've been away...). What caught my eye was a comment by Konrad:The thing that got me was the governor of the state saying that he found the ad disturbing. Clearly, people seem to treat religious adherence as symbolic of group identity so that they find the idea of atheists
5 Vote(s)
5 Vote(s)
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June 19, 2009
Atheists also have a sense of awe and wonder
Cardinal Cormack Murphy O'Connor caused a stir last month with his claim that atheists are not fully human because they don't have a sense of transcendental. Now, atheists mostly aren't transcendental almost by definition - the word refers to a belief in something for which there is no evidence.But do atheists also lack more common human emotions, like a sense of awe and wonder? After all, these
13 Vote(s)
13 Vote(s)
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May 10, 2009
American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.
I was looking over my blog archives when I came across a lecture by Richard Dawkins in which he urges all atheists to openly state their position -- and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. About 17:50 into the video, Dawkins comes to a depressing conclusion. In his words:"We have reached a truly remarkable situation, then: a grotesque mismatch between the American
19 Vote(s)
19 Vote(s)
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