Category Archives: Science

‘Fertility gap’ Helps Explain Political Divide

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Republican House members overwhelmingly come from districts that have high percentages of married people and lots of children. . .

Many Democrats represent areas that have many single people and relatively few children. Democratic districts that have large numbers of children tend to be predominantly Hispanic or, to a lesser extent, African-American.

This “fertility gap” is crucial to understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives, says Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. These childbearing patterns shape divisions over issues such as welfare, education and child tax credits, he says.

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Do Harsh Pot Laws Create a Dangerous Drinking Culture? Five Reasons to Get Stoned Instead of Drunk

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Myths about marijuana convince people that alcohol is safer, but science shows pot is the healthier choice.

Alcohol kills approximately 70,000 people per year. Prescription pills, which have helped overdose become the leading cause of accidental death in America, result in more than 20,000 deaths per year. Marijuana has never killed anybody. 

1.  Marijuana is not a gateway drug.

[T]he truth is that marijuana is not a gateway drug, and the vast majority of people who smoke pot will never move onto harder drugs.

2. Pot smoke is relatively benign and does not cause lung cancer.

Researchers studied the effects of marijuana smoke on lung function, and found that smoking pot does not cause the same irreversible breathing problems as cigarettes.

3.  Pot does not cause schizophrenia.

These mental health issues are generally as baseless and misleading as past prohibitionist claims . . . the rates of schizophrenia in society have not increased as marijuana use has become widespread.

4. Driving high is not very dangerous. 

A study by the Institute for the Study of Labor, a research center for science, politics, and business in Bonn, Germany, showed that in states where medical marijuana is legal, adults were smoking more marijuana and drinking less alcohol, and the result was a 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalities.

5. Pot does not make you lazy.

The technical name for marijuana-induced laziness is “amotivational syndrome,” and research suggests it has a lot more to do with other factors than with pot. A study on marijuana use and amotivational syndrome shows circumstances unique to a person, or some underlying problem, are more to blame for amotivational syndrome than the drug itself.

6. You get this one for free.

More than 30,000 Americans die every year from the health effects of alcohol. The comparable number for marijuana is zero. 

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Richard Dawkins: Education Is The Only Antidote To Religion

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Richard Dawkins believes that education is the only ‘antidote’ to religion. “We need to protect children from being indoctrinated. It goes on to the next generation and then they see that their children get indoctrinated.”

“If children are taught, however moderately, that faith is a virtue, they are taught that they don’t need evidence to believe something; that they can believe something just because it’s their faith. . .

He believes that atheism will soon become a more popular framework for people. “There seems to be a correlation with education. It’s certainly true within the US — the more educated people are more likely to give up religion.”

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Sir Richard Branson: It’s Time to End The Failed War on Drugs

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Just as prohibition of alcohol failed in the United States in the 1920s, the war on drugs has failed globally. Over the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion has been spent fighting this battle, and all we have to show for it is increased drug use, overflowing jails, billions of pounds and dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted, and thriving crime syndicates. It is time for a new approach.

. . . Between 1998 and 2008, opiate use increased by more than 34 per cent, even as prison populations swelled and profits for drug traffickers soared.

Many political leaders and public figures acknowledge privately that repressive strategies have only made the drug problem worse. It took 14 years for America’s leaders to repeal Prohibition. After 50 years of the failed drug war, it is time for today’s leaders to find the courage to speak out.

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Republican Representative Vicky Hartzler: [Anti-Choice Advocates] Should Post Pictures of Fetuses in College Dorms (VIDEO)

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Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) spoke at an event organized by the Family Research Council to mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade this morning and urged anti-choice advocates to plaster pictures of babies and aborted fetuses to recruit more people to their cause. . . Nearly 90 percent of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy, however, and look nothing like the fetuses depicted on anti-abortion propaganda posters.

Watch video here . . .

Quote: Sam Harris

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Sam Harris, Ph.D. (born 1967)
Neuroscientist, Author, and Outspoken Atheist

The Catholic Church has spent two millennia demonizing human sexuality to a degree unmatched by any other institution, declaring the most basic, healthy, mature, and consensual behaviors taboo. Indeed, this organization still opposes the use of contraception, preferring, instead, that the poorest people on earth be blessed with the largest families and the shortest lives. As a consequence of this hallowed and incorrigible stupidity, the Church has condemned generations of decent people to shame and hypocrisy — or to Neolithic fecundity, poverty, and death by AIDS. Add to this inhumanity the artifice of cloistered celibacy, and you now have an institution — one of the wealthiest on earth — that preferentially attracts pederasts, pedophiles, and sexual sadists into its ranks, promotes them to positions of authority, and grants them privileged access to children. Finally, consider that vast numbers of children will be born out of wedlock, and their unwed mothers vilified, wherever Church teaching holds sway — leading boys and girls by the thousands to be abandoned to Church-run orphanages only to be raped and terrorized by the clergy. Here, in this ghoulish machinery set to whirling through the ages by the opposing winds of shame and sadism, we mortals can finally glimpse how strangely perfect are the ways of the Lord.

Jonathan T. Pararajasingham: God and Logic – Why Reality Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Them

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In examination of the God hypothesis, we must first look to define reality, logic, existence and truth.

There are two ways to think about reality. The first is the “observable universe”, which is everything we will ever perceive through the senses. The second is “total reality”, which may include other realms, dimensions or the multiverse. We currently only glimpse total reality by the use of pure mathematics. When we examine reality, we find it to have certain properties; everything consists of matter or energy which follow fixed, consistent laws of nature which are mathematically describable.

Logic is derived from reality. In a sense, we made up the concept of “logic,” which follows the fact that the laws of nature are consistent and fixed, where matter is extremely well behaved in following such laws. Matter and energy can be thought of as logically describable. In this way, “logic” describes “reality” with ultimate precision. Various methods of verification (perception, testability, consistency, evidence and logic itself) support the logic of total reality. These methods have been placed in greater frameworks we now call science and mathematics, which are methods used to uncover the logic of reality. Essentially, logical methodology uncovers logical reality. Even total reality follows pure mathematics, which is intrinsically logical. Because of all this, we think of logic as a good thing simply because it describes reality so precisely.

Read more here . . . 

Let’s Stop Voting in Churches

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A Baylor University study just published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion found that having a church in clear sight can influence people’s answers to questions. Co-author Wade Rowatt pointed out that the “important finding here is that people near a religious building reported slightly but significantly more conservative social and political attitudes than similar people near a government building.” The Baylor study confirms an earlier Stanford University study that shows the same effect when looking specifically at how people’s voting place influences their vote. Stanford researcher Jonah Berger said, “Voting in a church could activate norms of following church doctrine. Such effects may even occur outside an individual’s awareness.”

Since polling place influences the vote, governments and election boards should do all they can to find neutral voting locations. And it would seem very unlikely that churches would be chosen if neutrality were the aim. Why not use schools, courthouses, firehouses and the like instead?

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