Blair, certainly.

Both.

The dangling participle is a bitch.

Am i the only one who saw this coming? (although i am surrounded by mormons, which is probably worse than the usual religious group to be surrounded by (they, for example, think that literally all non-mormons worship the devil. It is official doctrine of the church.), so I may have been more likely to thihnk this.)

Studies also suggest white people are the most altruistic, and women are more altruistic than are men.

They should start dispensing statistics with warning labels like on cigarette cartons - Statistician General's Warning: Correlation Does Not Imply Causation.

Correlation Implies Further Study Necessary.

I think a focus group would deem that has less impact, not the least reason being that correlation does not always imply further study is necessary (just ask Tyler Vigen) - but yes that was the basic implication I was going for.

I enjoy when people smack about faith as much as the next guy, but I prefer my smack a la carte without a garnish of sophistry, so I hope someone will link to that necessary further study.

Talk smack, I meant. Love it.

OH MY GOD I AM AN ATHEIST BUT EVERY MORMON KID I KNOW IS A TOTALLY NICE PERSON.

The Mormons (at least in Jenks, Oklahoma) are extremely nice, and probably the best kids in intelligence and philanthropy at my school. Mormonism doesn't even believe in hell, only levels of heaven -- unless you experience God, then deny him, in which case you go to some dark pit but nobody ever truly experiences God so that doesn't happen-- maybe your Mormons are bad, but don't hate on all of them.

@tvrocks if that was sarcasm then I apologize

I'm pretty sure that wasn't sarcasm, I've heard a lot worse.

@yoyoyozo

"It's absolutely ridiculous that a party would lose almost half of its supporters if an athiest was nominated for office."

How many atheists would vote for a Young Earth Creationist? Now to be fair, neither would I. I wouldn't vote for someone that I suspect would try to undermine evolution in classrooms, etc. I know up front that I would disagree with this person on a non-negotiable.

Likewise, my experiences with atheism (more accurately anti-theism, but most people don't make that distinction) would leave me wondering if I was just supporting another person who was going to be hot for erasing "In God we Trust" off of the currency and "One nation under God" out of the Pledge. You might rightly support these ideas, but it doesn't mean I have to.

Still, that would only be a concern of mine. (ie. Am I helping to put someone in office who would actively oppose something I hold dear?) Essentially though, that would be my initial objection to the candidate, and I have initial objections to all candidates.

That's Crazy Anglican for you.

Lucid, eloquent, and concise as always....right? ;-)

Of course! :)

Am i the only one who saw this coming? (although i am surrounded by mormons, which is probably worse than the usual religious group to be surrounded by (they, for example, think that literally all non-mormons worship the devil. It is official doctrine of the church.), so I may have been more likely to thihnk this.)

My Taekwondo instructor is a Mormon, so I was always surrounded by a good many of them in TKD class. They were always among the nicest people, I had met.

sorry, computer shut down and i restored the pages. (thought i was in notes.)

@James: I live in utah where it is the normal things, and am also deep into the religion. There is an idea presented in a lot of the meetings that they are better than literally all other groups (although i guess that is normal to an extent.). The main reason why i expected this is because it seems like they are particularly bigoted compared to most other groups, and it is also one of the least liberal of religions. I am mainly speaking based off of my particular experience, with the members of the lds church that i know personally, compared to my atheist/ agnostic friends.

The study seems extraordinarily subjective to me. Christian and Muslim children were more troubled by clips showing one character pushing another. They believed that the offending individual should face, on average, more severe consequences than their nonreligious peers. This equals mean...?

Yeah that struck me as odd too. I read it differently though, I thought the children were more likely to see anti-social behavior as "mean" and on average more deserving of severe consequences. I saw this as in line with what their parents said about them. They were more sensitive to the plights of others, in that they were asking for more severe punishments on behalf of the wronged party.

I was also a little bemused by the grouping game that they were playing. Going back and looking at some of their literature review it seems like they are accusing other researcher with measuring religiosity in a way that made religion look too good and thus they wanted to measure it differently so that the results would be more “correct”. From what I could gather it seems this group is challenging the notion that religion promotes pro-social behavior which was a notion that other psychological studies (all the way back to Freud) have supported. The crux being that “low religiosity” might not accurately separate out atheists from uncommitted believers (Galen, 2012), but then they go on and release this:

“Parental religious identification was then coded into Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, atheism, agnostic, spiritual, multi-theistic, other, and no answer. From the frequency distributions, three large groupings were established: Christians, Muslims, and not religious.” (Decety, et.al, 2015)

Which leads to the questions. Which groups were compiled to make the “not religious” group and if they were compiled differently how would that affect the comparison?
It seems like both sides are engaged in an internal struggle of “who do we count to get the results we want”.

@Crazy Angelican

There's definitely a difference. I wouldn't vote for a Young Earth Creationists because they let their beliefs seep into facts and it makes them seem unqualified. A regular theist is who is equally qualified and hold my political views are just as likely to get my vote than an athiest who views the same thing.

It's like Ben Carson believing that the pyramids were build for storing grain. Like seriously? You believe so intensely in your likely incorrect interpretation of your religion that you take that single source of information over the volumes and volumes of data that suggest otherwise, how can you lead the nation in a professional, unbias manner?

@ Yoyoyozo

first thanks, I hadn't really looked at Ben Carson and did a cursory look into his past as a result of your comment.

Wow, what an inspiring mother. A single mom with a third grade education has two boys that she keeps on the straight and narrow. One of whom goes from educational problems in elementary school to head of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John's Hopkins. Does he have my vote? I don't know, I've still got to see where he stands on the issues. Although, I cannot see a basing my evaluation of anyone's professionalism on a 17 year old quote about a relatively unimportant subject. When exactly were the pyramids a matter of national concern?. In much the same way the Reverend Wright stuff Hannity used to spout didn't really sway me against Obama.


The difference that I see between us was that I tied my vote to an issue:

Voting for a YEC proponent could very well mean undermining science education. That could very well mean that I don't vote for Ben Carson over that issue, as yet I don't know.


Voting for an atheist could mean undermining the status of religion in this country (this could range from relatively unimportant changes like "In God we Trust" being erased from the currency to much more complex and important issues over taxation of religiously inspired charities).

Regardless, people use their preconceived notions to color their opinions. That's a basic premise of philosophy and psychology. So I probably wouldn't base my vote for or against anyone based on something that they said 17 years ago, especially if they prefaced it with a statement that they considered it a personal theory, which makes me think that they realize that not a lot of people are likely to agree with them and that they aren't out to change anybody's mind about it.

@CA

Most athiests aren't anti-theist though. Things like money, and celebrating Christmas and whatnot are things that athiests know really matter to religious people, and frankly it isn't hurting anyone. I think the only controversial thing an athiest would do as president would be to ban intelligent design from science textbooks. You may or may not agree with it, but there is no way to teach it in a scientific manner, it's best kept as a social science, maybe philosophy or theology of some sort.

I understand what you mean though, though I dont like the mindset that someone could take it upon themself to allow their specific beliefs to undermine the beliefs of other, but then again it happens all the time so you have a point.

@Yoyoyozo

Yeah, sorry that I didn't make that more clear. I certainly realize that atheists and anti-theists are different. To be more accurate there are polemicists on both sides, religious and non-religious. I guess my only point was that lacking religious beliefs doesn't mean lacking all beliefs. Thus anyone could allow their beliefs to color their policy decisions. That's why we have cabinets and checks & balances and the like.

In the voters box though, it comes down to trying to figure out the candidate that is most closely in line with your values.

To address Crazy Anglican's sampling concern:

"In our sample, 23.9% of households identified as Christian (n = 280), 43% as Muslim (n = 510), 27.6% as not religious (n = 323), 2.5% as Jewish (n = 29), 1.6% as Buddhist (n = 18), 0.4% as Hindu (n = 5), 0.2% as agnostic (n = 3), and 0.5% as other (n = 6). Results from an independent samples t test, comparing altruism in children from religiously identifying (Msharing = 3.25, SD = 2.46) and non-religiously identifying (Msharing = 4.11, SD = 2.48) households indicated significantly less sharing in the former than the latter (p < 0.001). To further investigate these effects within specific religions, three large groupings were established: Christian, Muslim, and not religious; children from other religious households did not reach a large enough sample size to be included in additional analyses."

So they threw out the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, and "other" households. Elsewhere in the study n=323 is used for comparison of the "not religious" group to the Christian and Muslim groups, so the households in the "not religious" group used for statistical analysis are the same households that originally identified as "not religious."

To be clear, I don't take the study as dispositive and I don't take for granted that the methodology is sound, but sampling bias has nothing to do with it.

Also, re: the voter's box--IMO it has a lot more to do with trying to figure out the candidate most likely to be elected and implement the policies most in line with what you want government to be doing/not doing. I don't really care if the President is a scumbag except insofar as it affects his policymaking and diplomatic relations.

(ETA: Sampling bias *with respect to which people are counted as "not religious"* has nothing to do with it. There may be other issues--for example, given how the study draws from half a dozen different countries, there may be sampling bias w.r.t. national culture.)