Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
It’s Bad, Mmmkay?
Religion == bad, and thanks to FARK we come to learn of a study that actually comes out and says so. Or at least, gives us a push off in that direction.
The Institute for Humanist Studies has an article up that points to a study by Gregory S. Paul, in Baltimore, Maryland…a place known to me as a wonderland where people don’t know how to get the hell out of the way when there’s a car coming down the road. Eh, okay that was nasty. Sorry. You jaywalkers need to be called out on the “innernets” for your own good. Darwin can take a break sometimes. Anyway. There’s some data out there that sets up a good solid statistical connection between people of certain countries believing in God, and people in certain countries committing suicide, and getting pregnant, and killing each other, etc. Guess what? God makes people kill each other.
Well, the language is a little more scientific than that, but in sum, that is what it says. Secular societies are shining little utopias compared to the knuckle-dragging societies where people are actually religious.
The data are pretty sound.
Of course, it IS cherry-picked; on that, there can be no doubt. The history of the world, especially the post-industrial world, is packed with stories of communist societies killing people, a phenomenon that enjoys no similar counterpart in faith-based societies or “faith-flavored” societies. It’s sincere cherry-picking, or it could be, I guess. But it’s cherry-picking nonetheless. The secular communist societies aren’t in the study. Bad things happen to the correlation, of course, once you put them in, because they done some bad stuff.
There is another problem of which I have come to be aware, one that applies to all studies that compare the United States with other countries and conclude with an unflattering light being cast in the direction of us Yanks. It doesn’t have anything to do with suspicions cast upon the motives involved in such studies — although those suspicions are there, and the problems they suggest are all too real. It has to do with comparing industrialized countries with a super-industrialized specimen amongst them.
Whether our religious beliefs have a causal relationship with our financial success, or not, it seems difficult to argue against the financial success having a causal relationship with the metrics being studied. My acceptance of that premise, has a lot to do with my regard for any “America-versus-X” study as being contaminated to the point of uselessness. To say, so-and-so per thousand people are murdered every ten years in America, and compare the same metric in, let us say, Norway — well, that just doesn’t work. Any school of statistical thought that would observe such a comparison, and place confidence in a theory derived from it, would discredit itself. It’s like comparing homicides per thousand people per decade in the financial district of a large city, versus out in the suburbs of that same metropolitan area. It’s apples-and-oranges.
America, for now, is in a class by itself. Anyone who works with statistics, and doesn’t treat America that way, isn’t working with statistics very well. They may do a great job of sticking to proven facts and applying scientific principles, but without common sense tying it all together it’s still just so much nonsense. Kind of reminds me of the Water Humor letter from the early nineties.
Still, it’s an interesting read if nothing else.
BONUS: A couple of FARKers got into it about something I thought was off-topic, at least, until you start to form conclusions from the study and want to argue about how much something has been proven. The one who I thought was doing a poorer job of sticking to the subject-at-hand, came up with this essay about correlation versus causation. It’s a red herring, but packed with some good lean meat and makes some great points.
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