The Gene Expression science blog has an interesting post today:

♦ Biblical literalism or low IQ: which came first?

It’s a meta analysis of existing data culled from various sources which indicates that people who hold onto literal biblical interpretations tend to have lower IQs, and people of certain denominations have lower educations. For example, Unitarians, Episcopalians, and Methodists tend to have less literal biblical interpretations and higher education levels, while Southern Baptists and Pentecostal tend to have the lower IQs and education.

This correlation doesn’t surprise me. Regardless of the validity or truthfulness of the Christian Bible, it’s “easy” to just say “it’s all true” and treat each distinct component as truth. It doesn’t take much thinking or reason to accept what you’re told by authority–we’re fundamentally geared to do so, as humans. Even the cognitive dissonance which is required to believe the Bible literally does not take much thought–in fact, living with cognitive dissonance requires one not to think much about the contradictions and paradoxes that create the dissonance.

But, forgetting religious validity, still, it takes a much more thoughtful person to reason about something presented as fact and appreciate nuance, interpretation, incorporate conflicting data and change your belief and thinking based on new or newly interpreted data! People with lower mental faculties and/or less experience with the challenges of education tend to prefer certainty and order and abhor uncertainty and intellectual conflict that demands resolution, and will tend to believe unquestioningly what they are told by those they look to as authorities in order to preserve order and provide guidance on what to do in their lives.

Religious belief in general doesn’t respond to IQ or education as there are a great many educated intellectuals who hold onto religious beliefs. Though, most Nobel Prize winners in the non-arts have been atheists, and in the past when religious belief was compulsory (lest you were burned as a heretic) many of history’s intellectuals were as close to Deists as the cultural religious attitude would allow.

A couple bits of news in religious ignorance which have caught my eye today. The first is just rediculous, but the second may have far-reaching negative effects on most American public school children.

But first:
♦ Ford dealership uses bigoted radio ads to sell cars

In a gorgeous display of perfect irony, this Ford dealership radio ad states that 86% of Americans believe in god, and the remaining 14% should “sit down and shut up” while the Christians practice their right of free speech.

Yep.

Well, first of all, according to the last U.S. census, only 72% of American’s professed to being Christian. According to the recent exhaustive and comprehensive Pew study, 78% of American’s claim to be Christian (and 16% being non-believers of any faith). Well, 3/4 of the population claims to be Christian…not 86% but better than half, one could say. But according to the Assotiation of Religion Data Archives, only 71% of “Christians” believe Jesus is the son of God…argueably the one quality that defines what it means to be “Christian”. And I can say from unscientific personal anecdotal experience, even living in the Bible Belt, that a significant number of people who reflexively claim to be “Christian” do so out of conditioning and the idea that there isn’t anything else to believe in. That the alternatives are Islamofascism and nilistic atheism.

But this is pedantry. The real gauling part of this story is he whole “because we’re the presumed majority we have the right of free speech, the rest of you don’t–suck it.” Yeah, you have the right to say what you want,and even make public radio commercials saying whatever you want. But so does the 14% (or 16%, rather, or 25%…). Free speech works the way it’s designed to when those with the unpopular speech are given the same rights and accord as those in the majority.

That stuff is annoying. But this is scary:

♦ That’s it. Texas really is doomed.

It seems a very outspoken and activist creationist who is vocally anti-science is in charge of education in Texas. He recently ignored nearly three years of expert work on research and study for English standards, and had his own standards agenda written overnight by social conservatives and then ramroded it through the Texas Board of Education. The science curriculum standards are next up for review.

Why the effects of this is more far-reaching than it seems is because text book editors look to Texas (as well as California) when setting their own standards and content because of the number of copies both states buy from the major textbook publishers.

Ah, the marriage of ignorance, ideology, and corporitism! What a country!

A really interesting, a little scary, story on io9 today:

♦ The “Trust Me” Drug That Makes You Take Social Risks

Basically, there’s a drug available which can alter the way the brain perceives people and can chemically make you more trusting and willing to behave on that trust.

Lee Randolph on Debunking Christianity discusses this and the entire concept of the brain having physiological areas which affect behavior, and discusses the religious implications in the context of divine reward and punishment:

♦ Brain’s ‘Trust Machinery’ Identified

The Friendly Atheist, a few days back, posted this thought-provoking article:

♦ Why Does God Allow Suffering?

The stream of comments below the article are really interesting to read and consider.

I have to say, this whole concept (along with the absurdity of a slow-spreading revealed religion being the best method an omnipotent god could come up with to spread the only means by which a person avoids eternal punishment for being created a flawed human outside theirn own control) was what clinched my disbelief in any Judeo-Christian idea of God, after years of sincere belief. There’s simply no reasonable excuse, explanation, apology, for it.

So, with bags in hand and lines of people and busy security areas, we all have to take our shoes off at airports because someone failed to try to blow up a plane using a non-working and implaussible shoe bomb.

So, because a group of failed wannabe terrorists had thought about making a chemical bomb on a plane using carried on liquids–a plan which even a high school chemistry student will tell you is implaussible at best (and many chemists much more experienced and knowledgeable than a high school student have tried to tell people this), we have to put our limited amount of tiny bottles in special bags and not be able to take on any drinks through security.

Useless security hoops that do nothing except slow down the lines, irk people off, make all passengers feel like so much suspect cattle while giving security agents bloated feelings of superiority and behavior to match.

Meanwhile, actually possible security holes which would be a lot easier to maintain, cheaper on tax payers, and negatively affect far less people, are being ignored and there’s not much care:

♦ Sea-Tac’s security: Are they serious?

Meanwhile, rigurous effort is being made to root out possible hippie terrorists who might want to do hard to Republicans:

♦ FBI looking for vegan potluck terrorists

There’s a Yakov Smirnov joke about “In Soviet Amerika…” in this somewhere….

The Republican House Minority Leader was a bulldog for making sure telecom companies had immunity for illegally eavesdropping on American citizens–which the Congressman also supported.

But when the tables get turned, that’s an excuse for a big pay day!

♦ Boehner Wants Protection From Illegal Wiretapping - But Only For Himself

Cory Doctorow has a brief, interesting article in the Guardian Online regarding how we misunderstand the concept of large number odds and how it’s to our own disadvantage–both in gambling and crime and terrrism suspicion.

♦ The odds are stacked against us

I stand and applaud, with moist eyes, crying “Bravo!”

Well, the semester is almost done–one final tonight (contemporary theories in cultural criticism…or something like that. I never have actually learned the name of the class), then begins the summer of self-directed…stuff!

(Only one more year until I graduate with my MA in English (Creative Writing track). Assuming I pass my German literacy requirements, my comprehensive exams, and complete my thesis. To those ends…)

(…on German…)
So this summer I need to basically re-learn German. Not that I’m really complaining, I love the German language! But I’m so far behind…. Back in my BAs, 10 years ago,  I earned enough GRM credits to get my undergrad degree, but I’m technically 2 courses short for my MA. I can either take the literacy test (which is what I’ve been thinking) or take two more classes (which wouldn’t work with my day job since they don’t offer GRM classes at night). I’m still somewhat good on German grammar, conjugation, syntax, but quizzing myself on German vocabulary…unless the test is composed of all pronouns, numbers, colors, and ways to say “I don’t know” and “I don’t understand,” I’m screwed.

I need to get some really good teach-yourself-resources this summer (any suggestions?!) and then see if I can take an advanced OTC class in the Fall (so if I bomb it won’t affect my 4.0 MSU gpa *prideful grin*), and then get that test out of the way before focusing on comps….

(…on Comprehensive Exams…)
Gah! I am SO dreading these! I have to come up with ten “questions” to write about regarding various topics in all of English literature, linguistics, theory, and cultural studies, submit them for review, get back four, write papers on them, and then on exam day find out which two I’ll be “answering” and then rewrite the papers from memory. I understand the necessity–I am supposed to be a “master” of my subject when I graduate with an MA. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to have an ulcer that’s a Master of Pain in the process.

(…on Thesis/Novel…)
And for the good news: I just finished the first half of ENG699 this semester–my thesis work course. And incidentally, have finished the first half of my novel’s first draft. As my MA is Creative Writing focused, my thesis is a “creative thesis.” I looked over past English creative thesis in the university library…and I’m sort of disappointed. Almost all of the past creative thesis are collections of poems (no, that’s cool, that’s not what I’m disappointed about), but if it’s prose it’s almost all memoir (c’mon, really? Seventy pages of personal journal writing is a masters thesis?) or a couple of short stories. I like MSU, I do. But this is what they’re accepting as master’s work in creative writing? If you’re going to do short story collection (nothing wrong with that) it should be a personal anthology! At least eight and of varied genre. I saw maybe one complete novel in the collection and two partial novels (about seventy or eighty pages).

Well, if I can’t be in the University of Iowa’s Writing Program, then I’m at least going to set my own bar higher. I’m writing a complete novel, finished and polished, with an analysis anchored in critical theory, and a supplemental journal on the process of creation (I do hope to teach creative writing after all). So, last week my first draft reached 42,900 words (or about 120 pages). When I set out and created the novel’s general outline and background, I estimated it was going to be about 95,000 words long (about 275 mass market pages), and last week I felt I reached the mid-way point in the novel; it looks like I’m estimating my goal pretty well. Now this summer (and next fall) I need to finish the draft and start working on editing before ENG699 recommences Spring 09. That’s when I should be doing final edits and completing my critical analysis.

I’m considering posting my draft thus far for only friends to be able to access, and ask for feedback….

Music starts getting annoying, but watch to the end as it’s not all examples–but gets to a very valid and significant point at the end.

We can see from the Bible that the Early Jews struggled with Polytheism which is supported by Archeology.

The latest entry by Lee Randolph on Debunking Christianity:

♦ Genesis 1:26-1:27, Creation of Humans in Near Eastern Myths And The Paleolithic Era

In this entry, like his previous one I blogged about: “Genesis… Is An Amalgam of Near Eastern Creation Myths”, he goes to great lengths to document and explain the historical, anthropological basis of the beginning of “man” in near eastern myths–particularly Judeo-Christian.

It continues the concept that religions and their textual basis have origins and a history–they don’t just spring into creation from nowhere. And the Bible is no different. It has a very colorful and interesting history, and a history born in human effort and consciousness.

I’m going to try to make this quick…

BeliefNet has a short debate between a religious studies scholar and former Christian, and a bishop of the Church of England and theologian, regarding the question of suffering in the world:

♦ Is Our Pain God’s Problem?

That link used above doesn’t look like it should be specific to this particular e-debate. If you go there and you don’t see that title mentioned as the topic, start here instead:
Bio: Bart Ehrman
Then as you read, click the arrow at the top toward the right to go from entry to entry. After Ehrman’s bio will be Wright’s bio, and then the debate entries.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, this entry specifically is what I found most compelling:

♦ Bart Ehrman: God’s Kingdom Has Not Come

It really lays out the whole problem with the existence of suffering and a holy book most American’s profess they believe in which says very explicitly that suffering is the work of God, and that his kingdom will most certainly come during the 1st century A.D.
I don’t think Wright adequately addresses these issues.