Why Are Educated People More Likely to Be Atheists? | Psychology Today

The more education a person receives, the more likely they are to become atheists (1). Non belief also increases with intelligence and income. Residents of more educated countries see religion as less important (link is external) in their daily lives (2).

Why are highly educated people more likely to be atheists? There are two categories of explanation. Either religious people lack a capacity for skepticism, or they choose to make a blind leap of faith and subscribe to the belief system adopted by their religious community.

The Santa Claus Analogy
According to a deficient skepticism view, educated people are more capable of critical thought. They subject the claims of religious teachers to more intense skeptical inquiry. This is rather like older children asking themselves how a fat man can navigate a 9-inch chimney flue, magically reemerging next to the Christmas tree with packages measuring more than a foot in three dimensions. Older children connect these absurdities with a pattern of suspicious movements by parents and draw the inevitable conclusion that Santa Clause is a charade perpetrated by parents on children. Younger children are more trusting and less skeptical.

Logical though the rational-capacity explanation for atheism is, it is not entirely satisfactory for different reasons. Rational capacity does not always translate into religious skepticism, as noted for the distinguished scientists of past eras who were rabidly religious for the most part. Similarly, in religious countries, people may well stop believing in Santa Clause when they grow up but still hang on to their religious belief system. So it takes more than skepticism to separate people from their religious faith.

Why do religious people trash some implausible beliefs but keep others. Perhaps they get something out of the beliefs they keep. Once a person grows up, their parents no longer shower them with gifts during the holiday season so that they have no particular reason to sustain their credulity concerning Santa Claus, although they do pass on the belief to children.

If religious beliefs do not yield tangible benefits for adults, they may yield emotional rewards. The emotive aspects of religious belief can persist despite development of improved reasoning ability. Religious beliefs and rituals may continue to help adults to feel good. Belief and disbelief are more a matter of feelings than of reason.

Why elevate the emotional aspects of religious belief over the cognitive, or intellectual ones? One possibility is that religion functions as a form of emotion focused coping. It provides a defense against life's difficulties and disappointments.

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Why Are Educated People More Likely to Be Atheists? | Psychology Today

Gun Show "Loophole" Exposed!

A ten minute film that is worth watching.

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Will Smith Stunned By French Tax Proposal

Hump Day Hunnies

Do Emotions Trump Facts? - Thomas Sowell

Those of us who like to believe that human beings are rational can sometimes have a hard time trying

to explain what is going on in politics. It is still a puzzle to me how millions of patriotic Americans could have voted in 2008 for a man who for 20 years -- TWENTY YEARS -- was a follower of a preacher who poured out his hatred for America in the most gross gutter terms.
Today's big puzzle is how so many otherwise rational people have become enamored of Donald Trump, projecting onto him virtues and principles that he clearly does not have, and ignoring gross defects that are all too blatant.

There was a time when someone who publicly mocked a handicapped man would have told us all we needed to know about his character, and his political fling would have been over. But that was before we became a society where common decency is optional.

Yet there are even a few people with strong conservative principles who have lined up with this man, whose history has demonstrated no principles at all, other than an ability to make self-serving deals, and who has shown what Thorstein Veblen once called "a versatility of convictions."

With the Iowa caucuses coming up, it is easy to understand why Iowa governor Terry Branstad is slamming Trump's chief rival, Senator Ted Cruz, who has opposed massive government subsidies to ethanol, which have dumped tons of taxpayer money on Iowa for growing corn. Iowa's Senator Charles Grassley has come right out and said that is why he opposes Senator Cruz.

Former Senator Bob Dole, an establishment Republican if ever there was one, has joined the attacks on Ted Cruz, on grounds that Senator Cruz is disliked by other politicians.

When Senator Dole was active, he was liked by both Democrats and Republicans. He joined the long list of likable Republican candidates for president that the Republican establishment chose-- and that the voters roundly rejected.

With both establishment Republicans and anti-establishment Republicans now taking sides with Donald Trump, it is hard to see what principle-- if any-- is behind his support.

Some may see Trump's success in business as a sign that he can manage the economy. But the great economist David Ricardo, two centuries ago, pointed out that business success did not mean that someone understands economic issues facing a nation.

Trump boasts that he can make deals, among his many other boasts. But is a deal-maker what this country needs at this crucial time? Is not one of the biggest criticisms of today's Congressional Republicans that they have made all too many deals with Democrats, betraying the principles on which they ran for office?

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Do Emotions Trump Facts? - Thomas Sowell - Page 2

The Unbearable Weight of Privilege

By Patricia McCarthy
 

So, this year, none of the actors nominated for an Oscar is African-American.  For this, the leftist elites have their dander up in a big way.  Some of the many talented, wealthy, privileged African-Americans who are members of the Academy are so angry that they are going to boycott the awards this year.  So are many of the not African-Americans, of course.  Many of them truly do think everything is about them, that the world revolves around them and their work.


On the weekend of Martin Luther King's birthday, these folks had him turning over in his grave.  King's wish for everyone to be judged by the "content of their character" has been smashed to smithereens during the seven years of the Obama administration.  Under Obama, everything is about skin color.  Everything.  Not character, not merit, not good citizenship, only race.  Is the Academy membership racist?  It is not – not for a moment.  No industry has bent over backward more than the film industry to be inclusive of all races. 


African-Americans are about thirteen percent of the American population.  One point seven percent of our population is gay.  Does anyone actually think these groups are underrepresented in our culture?  Our music, our television programs, our films?  No.  The entertainment industry is legendary for its efforts to be interracial, inter-everybody.  It has been for at least four decades.  These groups are overrepresented by design, and for good reason.  People hardly notice race anymore.  Certainly our younger generations do not.  They would hardly notice their friends' skin color if it were not for their teachers and university professors separating them out by race and sexual orientation and indicting them for their "privilege" if they happen to be Caucasian.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/the_unbearable_weight_of_privilege.html#ixzz3yFkOYTKM
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5 Near-Identical Jesus Christ Myths That Predate Jesus

I studied history in college, and spent a lot of my time researching ancient civilizations and comparative religions. As an agnostic, I am fascinated by religion and the idea of faith and belief, across all religions spanning the entirety of human existence. Some of the most fascinating projects that I did in college involved comparing ancient mythology to modern religious beliefs, finding similarities and multiple parallels. For example, anyone who has ever read The Epic of Gilgamesh will know that many biblical stories are plucked straight from the story, including the flood myth and the virgin birth myth.

Historians and religious scholars know that religious texts are made up of a series of myths (that’s not to say they are not true, but just that they are mythical stories). These myths appear across different religions and eras, and the same stories repeat themselves over and over again throughout history. Today, I will present to you five near-identical “Jesus” myths that predate Jesus Christ.

Please note that many of these stories have differing translations and interpretations, some of which tell different stories. The main idea of this list is to remind you that the story of Jesus Christ is rooted in ancient myth.

Read them all here:
5 Near-Identical Jesus Christ Myths That Predate Jesus

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Don’t believe the hype – 10 persistent cancer myths debunked - Cancer Research UK - Science blog

Google ‘cancer’ and you’ll be faced with millions of web pages. And the number of YouTube videos
you find if you look up ‘cancer cure’ is similarly vast.

The problem is that much of the information out there is at best inaccurate, or at worst dangerously misleading. There are plenty of evidence-based, easy to understand pages about cancer, but there are just as many, if not more, pages spreading myths.

And it can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction, as much of the inaccurate information looks and sounds perfectly plausible. But if you scratch the surface and look at the evidence, many continually perpetuated ‘truths’ become unstuck.

In this post, we want to set the record straight on 10 cancer myths we regularly encounter. Driven by the evidence, not by rhetoric or anecdote, we describe what the reality of research actually shows to be true.

• Myth 1: Cancer is a man-made, modern disease
• Myth 2: Superfoods prevent cancer
• Myth 3: ‘Acidic’ diets cause cancer
• Myth 4: Cancer has a sweet tooth
• Myth 5: Cancer is a fungus – and sodium bicarbonate is the cure
• Myth 6: There’s a miracle cancer cure…
• Myth 7: …And Big Pharma are suppressing it
• Myth 8: Cancer treatment kills more than it cures
• Myth 9: We’ve made no progress in fighting cancer
• Myth 10: Sharks don’t get cancer

Don’t believe the hype – 10 persistent cancer myths debunked - Cancer Research UK - Science blog

Lie Witness News - MLK Day Edition

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Obama Versus the Separation of Powers

By J.R. Dunn

 

One virtue possessed by all bad presidents, whether they’re evil, venal, lazy, or incompetent, is that they always reveal the weakness of the political system at the time of their tenure. In this, Obama is no different than any other bozo that has inhabited the White House.

Separation of powers is the one element that distinguishes the United States from previous democratic systems. (And before people hurt themselves in their rush to point out that “the U.S. is a republic and not a democracy” -- a “republic” is any governmental system that’s not a monarchy. Nazi Germany and the USSR were “republics.” The U.S. is a republic utilizing a system of representative democracy.)

The French political thinker Montesquieu was the author of De l’esprit des loix (The Spirit of the Laws), a book from the same shelf as The Wealth of Nations and The Influence of Sea Power on History, as being  massively influential though generally unread. In this, one of the first works of serious political science, Montesquieu made three major arguments -- the one that concerns us here involves separation of powers.

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Montesquieu

Book XI, chapter 6, the most famous of the entire book -- had lain in his drawers, save for revision or correction, since it was penned in 1734. It at once became perhaps the most important piece of political writing of the 18th century.

Montesquieu’s understand of history informed him that concentration of power leads inevitably to despotism -- no matter how solidly a democratic system was founded, eventually an Augustus or a Lorenzo would show up, concentrate all power in his own person and eventually undermine senate or council. From that point on, whatever it might call itself, the state was a simple autocracy. There was never a way back, and the usual sequel was degeneration and collapse.

Montesquieu’s solution was separation of powers:

Dividing political authority into the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, he asserted that, in the state that most effectively promotes liberty, these three powers must be confided to different individuals or bodies, acting independently.

Read the rest here:
Articles: Obama Versus the Separation of Powers

The Elephant in the Constitution

 by Tim Brown

The issue over the idea of natural born citizen is being touted quite a bit leading up to the GOP debate this week and in its wake, too many people are confused and have not looked at what the Constitution says, nor have they taken the time to go back and see how the founders understood the term. They regurgitate what conservative talking heads and such spew out about Supreme Court rulings and cite laws that do not deal with the term natural born citizen. However, the elephant in the room (or the Constitution) that is never addressed is the differences of how there are the apparent differences of citizens in the Constitution itself.

I have alluded to this previously when pointing out that the Constitution specifically addresses in the very qualifications that there are natural born citizens and citizens.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution reads:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. (Emphasis mine)

Now, there is no question that men like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal all meet the criteria of being at least 35 years old and have been residents in the States. There is also no question that these men are citizens. The question is, are they natural born citizens?

Read the rest:
The Elephant in the Constitution that No One References when dealing with the Natural Born Citizen Issue |

By The Numbers - Muslim Opinions and Demographics

'Messing With the Constitution' - Thomas Sowell

In recent years, a small but growing number of people have advocated a convention of states to
propose amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The reaction to the proposal has been hostile, out of all proportion to either the originality or the danger of such a convention.

The political left has been especially vehement in its denunciations of what they call "messing with the Constitution." A recent proposal by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas to hold a Constitutional convention of states has been denounced by the Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and nationally by an editorial in the liberal "USA Today."

The irony in all this is that no one has messed with the Constitution more or longer than the political left, over the past hundred years.

This began with Progressives like Woodrow Wilson, who openly declared the Constitution an impediment to the kinds of "reforms" the Progressive movement wanted, and urged judges to "interpret" the Constitution in such a way as to loosen its limits on federal power.

It has long been a complaint of the left that the process of amending the Constitution is too hard, so they have depended on federal judges -- especially Supreme Court Justices -- to amend the Constitution, de facto and piecemeal, in a leftward direction.

This judicial amendment process has been going on now for generations, so that today government officials at the local, state or national level can often seize private property in disregard of the 5th Amendment's protections.

For nearly 40 years, the Supreme Court has been evading the 14th Amendment's provision of "equal protection" of the law for all, in order to let government-imposed group preferences and quotas continue, under the name of "affirmative action."

Equal rights under the law have been made to vanish by saying the magic word "diversity," whose sweeping benefits are simply assumed and proclaimed endlessly, rather than demonstrated.
The judicial pretense of merely "interpreting" the Constitution is just part of the dishonesty in this process. The underlying claim that it is almost impossible to amend the Constitution was belied during the very years when the Progressive movement was getting underway in the early 20th century.

The Constitution was amended four times in eight years! Over the years since it was adopted, the Constitution has been amended more than two dozen times. Why, then, is the proposal to call a convention of states to propose -- just propose -- amendments to the Constitution considered such a radical and dangerous departure?

Read the rest:
'Messing With the Constitution' - Thomas Sowell - Page 2

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Arrogant or Proud?

Arrogant or a just a Proud US Marine?

A Marine Sergeant wrote this in response to an army guy who posted a comment on a Marine Corps site that he was sick and tired of "Marine Arrogance."

The Sergeant says... "I think that's what makes Marines special, if only in our own minds, is that elusive Quality of Esprit de Corps. It's the fact that we, as individual Marines, don't feel that we are individual Marines. When we wear our uniform, when we hear our Hymn, when we go into battle, we are going with every other Marine who ever wore the uniform.

Standing behind us are the Marines who fought during the birth of our nation. We're standing with the Marines who fought in WWI and gave birth to the legend of the "Teuful Hunden," or "Devil Dogs."
We are standing with the Marines who took Iwo and Tarawa and countless other blood soaked islands throughout the Pacific. We are standing with the "Frozen Chosin" and our beloved Chesty Puller. We are standing with the Marines who battled at Hue City and Khe Sanh and the muddy rice paddies of South East Asia. We are standing with the Marines who fought in Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom and now are fighting in Afghanistan.

Like real brothers, their blood courses through our veins, and when we go into battle, we would rather lay down our lives than be a disappointment to them. We carry on our backs their legacy, their deaths, and their honor. We carry that for the rest of our lives.

The Marine Corps uniform doesn't come off when our active duty is over. We wear it daily in our attitude and our love of Corps and country. We wear it on our tattoos and our bumper stickers. We wear it on our hearts. It's why, no matter where we are in the world, on November 10th, every Marine celebrates the Marine Corps birthday.

It's why we'll never be an army of 1. It's why we never stop being Marines. It's why, for most of us, being a Marine isn't something we were. It's something we are. It's the most important part of who and what we are.

Some say we're arrogant. We say we're proud. We have a right to be proud. We are the United States Marines, the most feared and ferocious group of warriors to walk the face of this earth. When America's enemies formulate their battle plans, they plan on going around Marine units because they know damn well that they can't go through them.

We are what other branches wish they were. We are the modern day Spartans. This isn't bragging. It's written in the battle history of our country. When there's a parade and the Marines march by, everyone pays a little more attention.

Some say, "arrogance." We call it "pride." It's why, in a crowd of servicemen, you can always spot the Marine. Why are Marines special? I don't know. We just are.

 -Semper Fidelis-

Hump Day Hunnies

Everything You Need To Know About Socialism in 20 Quotes

1) "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money." -- Margaret
Thatcher

2) "It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress." -- John Stuart Mill

3) "Socialism is when government's taking care of you, you send all your money to the government, the government decides how to spend it instead of letting the people spend it and make all those decisions." -- Bob Latta

4) "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." -- Adolf Hitler

5) "What distinguished Nazism from other brands of socialism and communism was not so much that it included more aspects from the political right (though there were some). What distinguished Nazism was that it forthrightly included a worldview we now associate almost completely with the political left: identity politics. This was what distinguished Nazism from doctrinaire communism, and it seems hard to argue the marriage of one leftist vision to another can somehow produce right-wing progeny." -- Jonah Goldberg

6) "The goal of socialism is communism." -- Vladimir Lenin

7) "This isn't new. Those who favor socialism always make the moral case for it. The truth is, maybe they actually believe in it, but in the real world, socialism harms, it weakens the economies of countries that have tried it. It just does. Weaker economies hurt everybody in them. Socialism kills incentive, opportunity, freedom. It is the opposite of what America is all about. Look, socialism always harms the people it claims to help the most. It handicaps them, leaving them weaker, less self-determined, less free." -- Bobby Jindal

8) “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” -- Frédéric Bastiat

Read the rest:

Everything You Need To Know About Socialism in 20 Quotes - John Hawkins - Page 2

The Forgotten History of Gay Marriage

Republicans and other opponents of gay marriage often speak of marriage as being a 2,000 year old
tradition (or even older). Quite apart from the fact that the definition of marriage has changed from when it was a business transaction, usually between men, there is ample evidence that within just Christian tradition, it has changed from the point where same-sex relationships were not just tolerated but celebrated.

In the famous St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai, there is an icon which shows two robed Christian saints getting married. Their ‘pronubus’ (official witness, or “best man”) is none other than Jesus Christ.

The happy couple are 4th Century Christian martyrs, Saint Serge and Saint Bacchus — both men.

Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that “we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life.” More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, Saint Serge is described as the “sweet companion and lover (erastai)” of St. Bacchus.

Legend says that Bacchus appeared to the dying Sergius as an angel, telling him to be brave because they would soon be reunited in heaven.

Yale historian John Richard Boswell discovered this early Christian history and wrote about it nearly 20 years ago in “Same Sex Unions In Pre-Modern Europe“ (1994).

In ancient church liturgical documents, he found the existence of an “Office of Same Sex Union” (10th and 11th century Greek) and the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century Slavonic).

He found many examples of:

• A community gathered in a church
• A blessing of the couple before the altar
• Their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages
• The participation of a priest
• The taking of the Eucharist
• A wedding banquet afterwards

A 14th century Serbian Slavonic “Office of the Same Sex Union,” uniting two men or two women, had the couple having their right hands laid on the Gospel while having a cross placed in their left hands. Having kissed the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Boswell documented such sanctified unions up until the 18th century.

In late medieval France, a contract of “enbrotherment” (affrèrement) existed for men who pledged to live together sharing ‘un pain, un vin, et une bourse’ – one bread, one wine, and one purse.

Other religions, such as Hinduism and some native American religions, have respect for same-sex couples weaved into their history.

When right-wing evangelical Christians talk about “traditional marriage,” there is no such thing.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/the-forgotten-history-of-gay-marriage.html#ixzz3ww8VcTbc

Historical Jesus Christ Never Existed? Jesus Myth Believers Are ‘Seriously Confused’ By Real History, Says Catholic Priest

If the person of Jesus Christ never existed, then Christians are some of the most miserable people on
the planet based upon Paul’s writings in the Bible. In recent years, the truth of the historical Jesus Christ has been debated by philosophers, scientists, and historians, but believers in the Jesus myth theory have been growing, especially in America and the UK. According to one Catholic priest, this fact only proves that some people are “seriously confused” in regards to Jesus’ history.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, atheist beliefs are rapidly growing in America, according to a new Pew poll. At the same time, some atheists are starting to form atheist mega churches and are calling atheism a “religion.”

A little over a year ago, an advocate for the Jesus myth position named Michael Paulkovich claimed that he scrutinized 126 texts dated to the time of Jesus and could not find any evidence for a historical Jesus. Historians Dr. Candida Moss and Dr. Joel Baden responded to the controversy generated by Paulkovich by pointing out that only 10 out of the 126 historical writers listed by Paulkovich would ever be expected to mention Jesus Christ at all.

Famous atheists like Richard Dawkins may support the Jesus myth position, but fellow atheists were actually more brutal in their condemnation of Paulkovich’s research. One wrote that “it’s embarrassing that some people think of me in the same breath as clowns like [Paulkovich].” Another atheist wrote that “Paulkovich’s article was the worst pseudo historical nonsense I’ve read on this subject all year.”

In fact, New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman is a former Christian, and he also scathingly compares the Jesus myth supporters to young Earth creationists.
“These views are so extreme (that Jesus did not exist) and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology,” he wrote, according to Historical Jesus Studies.

Read more:

Historical Jesus Christ Never Existed? Jesus Myth Believers Are ‘Seriously Confused’ By Real History, Says Catholic Priest

The Donald: What Bill Whittle Loves About Donald Trump...

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