dvunkannon
Posts: 1377
Joined: June 2008
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O'Leary's latest on Michael Ruse's take on Christopher Hitchens' situation got me thinking.
| Quote | And you can decide whether you are better off living in Todd Beamer’s version of American society or Michael Ruse’s. One must choose.
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Bogus choice of course. Accepting that Beamer was a devout Christian, he died defending America from religious fanatics that want to impose their beliefs on others. Nothing in what Ruse wrote is in opposition to that. Is O'Leary fronting Dominionism?
Ruse himself writes:
| Quote | | To their great credit, no one works like evangelicals—“justified by faith”—to help the poor and suffering. |
But a Catholic commenter on the post points out how much the Catholic Church has done. Both miss the point, and it is sad that Ruse misses it in a CHE piece, that what you really have to measure is not the raw amount but the amount relative to the available resources. Isn't that what Jesus was teaching in the widow's mite?
Saying that the aid workers recently killed in Afghanistan were not new atheists is a cheap shot. What is the actual number of atheist aid workers vs. the number expected due to their prevalence in the population, corrected for age, education, etc.? Ruse should have been able to frame that question. What is the religion of the staff of MSF, relative to their countries of origin?
Which led me to this survey on American religion. There might be more recent ones, this is just what Google gave me. Selected points:
- the high level result over ten years (1990-2001) is a seven point shift away from Xianity to secularism in America.
- small religions can exhibit the fastest growth rates, so I have to conclude that Wiccan/Druid/Pagan beliefs will soon take over the USA. How to LOL with statistics!
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I’m referring to evolution, not changes in allele frequencies. - Cornelius Hunter
I’m not an evolutionist, I’m a change in allele frequentist! - Nakashima
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