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Atheist Associations

A Chart of Religiousness, IQ, Morality and More

Gerald found this interesting chart chock full of information. Of course, remember correlation does not necessitate causation, but it is striking how the numbers fall.

Links on the full page >>

Links and Other Bits

Over the past several weeks I’ve accumulated links and information from several of our members. If you have information you want to share with us, just email it to Neece or leave a comment below. I’ll do a regular roundup of links and information in the future. If it’s about science, critical thinking, books or other media, or religion and atheism, share it with us whenever you come across it.

You may have noticed the tab under the banner that says Library. That lists all the books and media we each recommend. Feel free to contribute to it. In that list you’ll find that Tim recommended a book called  Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. Brent found an interview on Groks Science Radio Show with the author.

Daniel has three stories to share:

The first…

A Wild Ride With Robert Sapolsky

Brent sent me a link to a page on the web. It’s a conversation with Robert Sapolsky, a quiet, funny, apparently brilliant professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and of neurology at Stanford’s School of Medicine. Professor Sapolsky has written several books such as:

The link Brent sent me was called TOXO and he suggested it to me, to share with you, because we’re reading The God Virus: How religion infects our lives and culture, by Daniel W Ray. Now the video on that page was Robert Sapolsky talking about a most interesting parasite called Toxoplasma. This is what pregnant…

Participate in Atheism and Secularity Research

1008I can’t remember who twittered this yesterday, but I noticed this site: The Center for Atheist Research.

Want to help researchers learn about atheists, brights and humanists and how we think? I took the atheist survey yesterday and it was quite thorough. It took about 25 minutes at the most, and I felt like I was being counted, so to speak. As a housewife activist atheist, I really don’t fit what people think “nones” are, so it’s nice to share my worldview with people interested in looking at such things.

Oh, it’s completely confidential. They don’t take any personal information so if you’re in the closet don’t worry, you’re secret is safe with them.

Here’s what they say on their home page:

Atheists and other secularists who have a naturalistic worldview (a philosophy of life that does not involve a belief in God, higher

Logical Fallacy: Correlation Does Not Imply Causation

silly_animalz_may_058Here are several examples of people trying to use the logical fallacy of Correlation and Causation which is loosely defined as follows: Just because two events occur together does not mean that one caused the other. Or just because two variables have a connection does not automatically imply that one causes the other.

1. From a creationist website:

1. “All crime is a result of sin, and of course there was crime before Charles Darwin promoted evolution, but as the theory increased so did the crime rate. Today Creation is not taught, even as a theory, in our schools, therefore children have nothing to base their morality upon. As God has been removed from the classroom, so all kinds of evil has multiplied on our streets. Remove the Bible and you take away the conscience of the nation. Evolution has absolutely nothing to offer with regards

Book Club June 28: Atheist Universe

We talked about Atheist Universe by David Mills

Chapters 1-4 (to page 104)

We had 7 people at the Book Club meeting. I think those of us who had the book and read it have found it interesting. We got off topic quite a bit but still talked about the first 4 chapters, picking our favorite bits and sharing them. Then the rest of us expounded on those thoughts.

Feel free to comment with more details and further the discussion! Stay tuned for the next book club meeting and accompanying post. :)

Sunday, June 28 at 5:08pm

At the Blue Moose (corner of Spruce and Walnut)

Gerald mentioned a study at the meeting. Here is a link to it: Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

Basically the study shows that the more religious democratic…