intelligence
A new study of almost a century’s worth of data shows that the smarter you are, the less likely you are to believe in God.
The study, conducted by Miron Zuckerman, a psychologist at the University of Rochester, examined the findings of 63 earlier studies — one dating back to the 1920s — that measured intelligence and religiosity. The majority of those studies found that more intelligent people were more likely to lack religious beliefs.
“The relation between intelligence and religion is negative,” Zuckerman said. “It was very early in the study that we realized that.”
But Zuckerman is careful to point out that his work — known as a “meta-study” because it examines a range of other studies — does not mean only dumb people believe in God.
Rather, he said, it shows only that more intelligent people may have less need for religion.
Finally, as President Obama has announced, this American war will soon be over, with most of the 44,000 American troops still in Iraq coming home in time to be with their families for Christmas.
The initial feelings that rushed over me after hearing the White House announcement were of deep relief. But then they turned to deep sadness over the terrible cost of a war that was, from the beginning, wrong; intellectually, politically, strategically and, above all, morally wrong.
The War in Iraq was fundamentally a war of choice, and it was the wrong choice.
Two long pieces this weekend described "one hell of a killing machine," and "the dark matter
Last evening, President Obama made his long-awaited announcement on beginning withdrawal of the 103,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
One of the amazing things about scripture is that, even after thousands of years, it continues to inspire. Many scholars believe that the prophet Isaiah lived in the 8th century B.C.E.
I welcomed in the New Year in Tucson, Arizona with the kind folks of the Restoration Project
[Editors' Note: Former state trooper James Bonard Fowler plead guilty this week to a misdemeanor manslaughter charge in the 1965 shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Alabama.
It's out: An enormous trove of documents about the war in Afghanistan yesterday appeared on Wikileaks (whose servers currently seem to be overwhelmed by the traffic) together with comprehensive report
Certain moments in our nation's history have consistently opened the door for the least civil voices to enact evil through civil policy: think the institution of race-based U.S. slavery, the Indian removals, Jim Crow laws, legalized segregation, the federal protection of lynching mobs, and, don't forget, the Japanese internment camps, among others.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued a frightening report on the explosive growth of extremist organizations on the radical right. It is hard to know how to account for this phenomenon.