http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/02/muslim-rape-epidemic-in-sweden-and.html and this is already five years ago!

Excerpt: The article quoted a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo (note: her name is Unni Wikan) as saying that "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor's conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it."

From a report in 2005: 66% of assault crimes and 80% of sexual crimes in Sweden are committed by foreigners, among which "those from North Africa and Western Asia were overrepresented."

(the über pc article: http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=2683&date=20051214)

I was really impressed with this. This really puts the ethics embedded in star trek that I really enjoyed under the microscope.

One of the difficulties of lifting the underlying ethics out of the series is that the series itself spans its creation over an incredible period of time; I'm not sure Gene Roddenberry was thinking 30 years ahead when he first came up with it =P. Also, Gene died shortly into the 4th season of start trek TNG...he wasn't around to be really involved with deep space 9, voyager, or enterprise. This is reflected in TOS vs. TNG; in TOS, the goal was to, "explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." TOS was about adventure; they had the people fly out to find a new world, fly down 'n meet 'em, and then get in all kinds of trouble. They seemed to focus on meeting civilizations that were approximately as technologically advanced as starfleet's. In TNG, the stated mission is the same, but the show has a much stronger anthropological sentiment to it. They actually fly down to places where they would be considered gods (and occasionally are, when they screw up).

From the anthropological perspective, the prime directive really does make a lot of sense...to a point. Suppose that you do come across some relatively underdeveloped civilization, and you have the chance to immediately save a lot of citizens of that civilization. Your direct interference with that civilization will indeed mess up your experiments concerning the study of how civilizations develop, so it's something that you generally want to avoid. Trying to save a civilization from one problem necessarily induces another problem. By solving a civilization's problem, their behavior may change to become reliant, and therefor dependent, upon you. Then, what are the ethics of *not* stopping your mission to explore out new civilizations? What are the ethics of *not* creating a supply line to suit the needs of your newly dependent civilization? Should you try to make that civilization self-sufficient to solve their own problems, what are the ethics of giving them technology without the social infrastructure for them to be able to deal with that technology? Finally, after all that, suppose that you give a new civilization new technology and a new social infrastructure to be able to deal with that technology responsibly; you've just committed a much more interesting and philosophical upset, and you've essentially wiped out an entire culture, and replaced it with another. From an anthropological standpoint, that's complete disaster.

That said, there are still times when it's a much bigger disaster to let things fall their course. Suppose a natural disaster is about to occur in which an entire planet will be destroyed. In this case, by not intervening, the entire culture and population will be eradicated, which is completely unacceptable from both anthropological and humanitarian standpoints. What do you do? In one episode of TNG (I can't remember which one), the solution was to transport the entire civilization to their holodecks, and transfer them to a new planet, all the while they believe that they are migrating to some new location on their homeworld. They preserved both the life and the culture, and satisfied both standpoints, which is a great and rare solution.

This video illustrates this caveat and many others by showing that the prime directive should *not* be considered a dogma that should be followed by every anthropologist blindly, but rather should be a rule of thumb. In a tough spot, it'll get you the best outcome most of the time. At other times, advanced levels of thought are necessary in order to fish out the actual best solution. For someone to break this rule of thumb very frequently might raise some eyebrows about what they are doing, as is the case seen in the clip where the senior officer was putting Picard in the hotseat about breaking the directive on 9 separate occasions in a short span of time.

The fact of the matter, though, is that it is *not* treated as a dogma in the series; it *is* treated as a rule of thumb. The fact that Picard broke it on 9 occasions in a short span of time truly shows this. In several other clips that was shown in this video, they actually *did* end up breaking the prime directive.

I believe that the person who created this video was just upset that he was never issued a starfleet academy textbook on the prime directive which spells out every detail and nuance of the directive =P. Of course they don't go into high levels of detail on it; the mass wouldn't be interested, or would just take a course on ethics & philosophy instead. Instead of going into high detail, they did as entertainers do, and just presented the rule in its most frustrating (and therefore interesting) fashion, by showing all of the situations when it makes us violate our own compulsion to follow our own set of moral standards. I believe that the prime directive in the series does come close to that which the author of the clip wants, but is merely stifled in its presentation by drama and intrigue.

>> ^coolhund:

Religion is part of our world. Its even in our genes one way or the other (god gene). Thus its part of science.
You cant talk through ignorance. Just give it up with trying to explain these people that they believe in bullshit. You wouldnt listen to that either if someone came up and said science is bullshit, no matter if its true or not.


How is asking a question while admitting one's expected reaction to the reply trolling?

As expected, I got a good laugh out of this. Religion is part of our world, yes, just as astrology, witchcraft, alchemy and and other superstition-based activities are. That does not make them part of science. We can observe these phenomena, in anthropology, history, neurobiology, etc. but that does not necessarily make them a part of science. I think what you meant to say is "religion is a part of reality", which would be true (for now). So were human sacrifice, slavery, misogyny, etc., for the better part of Humanity's existence. Lumping it all into science just because it exists or existed makes no sense.

As for the "god gene" business, that term is a vulgarisation (a misleading one imo) of the theory that humans are predisposed to superstitious belief. Not religion. Micheal Shermer and others make a point of explaining how this would have been beneficial to early survival (projecting agency, for example).

actually ... yes... you can smell it too
like theres one part when a t rex roars in your face and you get in the face with water and a blast of air that smells like bad breath. also the chairs vibrate and roll around and you can feel wind and breath and stuff. so yeah, you're occupying space while watching a 3D movie.. but in a 4D movie there are phsycial effects that cause the movie to also occupy your space. it'd be cool if that film thing wasn't just propaganda invading my science museum.
In reply to this comment by pavel_one:
Aren't all 3D movies actually 4D? I just don't see how you can leave that 4th D out.
Are you really saying that it's a 3D movie with smell-o-vision? The awesome of shale gas in a 3D movie with stench is mind-boggling.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
yeah yeah ok... sure
but the oil and natural gas barons who fund this tea bagging nonsense publicly acknowledge science and the fossil origins of fossil fuels.

example: i live in on top of a previously impossible to tap natural gas shale. they just discovered how to tap the shit out of that gas. the shale is a huge deal here and has brought a lot development and growth to my adorable little cowtown in the last 3 years or so. so much so in fact, that the natural gas companies funded massive renovations to our science museum. so a room in the museum is now dedicated to the science of natural gas. one of the attractions is a 10 minute long 4D movie about how natural gas got underneath fort worth, and how these genius's are getting it out. the movie takes you back in time all the way to the big bang and fast forwards to different periods, clearly acknowledging that the earth is far far far far older than 6,000 years and that god didn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

soooo, i understand that shaping and funding a movement that denies climate change is good for them, but a wonderful justification for denying the science is the godly origins of the earth... but at the same time they're spending thousands to educate an entire city on the ancientness and godlessness of fossil fuels.....

so nothing about this fits. i've never met a teabagger (and i'm probably more inclined to meet more teabaggers than most of the sift because of my geography) that 1. didn't deny the scientific origins of the universe 2. didn't deny climate change and when hard pressed with facts, didn't resort to "jesus is coming back" and 3. didn't looooooove the shit out of some fossil fuels ...... are they really really just too stupid to notice that the circle doesn't close? this makes me sad.

or is it just a cultural thing?? like, texas has been an oil rich state for over a century now. oil is just kind of embedded in our culture and is just accepted as something positive and a point of pride. and the discussion doesn't go much further than that. i grew up in a city who's football mascot was a fucking oil rig. when i think of symbols that mean texas to me, i see an oil rig. oil=texas. texas=home. home=good. done. thought circle complete. i hope that's it. and it's not just outrageous stupidity and a short few years of brain washing alone. i'm sad.

>> ^RFlagg:

Because Jesus is coming again soon to rapture them away so they don't care what they do to the earth, besides god gave them dominion over the Earth to rape and pillage it as they please. They don't believe in anthropological global warming anyhow since they don't believe in science, though some of them believe in peak oil which is why they think we need to drill "our own oil" by international companies selling it on the international market... Also he put the oil in the earth already made along with fossils, and accelerated light so that a galaxy 12 billion light years away can be seen now even though the universe is only 6,500 years old, and all that other prof that he had nothing to do with the creation of the universe. It is that whole god chose the foolish things to confound the wise... and he hid things from the wise and learned and revealed them to children... and all the other excuses they have for explaining such things.
>> ^peggedbea:
i'm super fascinated with how evolution denying teabaggers justify their raging boner for fossil fuels.

Aren't all 3D movies actually 4D? I just don't see how you can leave that 4th D out.
Are you really saying that it's a 3D movie with smell-o-vision? The awesome of shale gas in a 3D movie with stench is mind-boggling.

In reply to this comment by peggedbea:
yeah yeah ok... sure
but the oil and natural gas barons who fund this tea bagging nonsense publicly acknowledge science and the fossil origins of fossil fuels.

example: i live in on top of a previously impossible to tap natural gas shale. they just discovered how to tap the shit out of that gas. the shale is a huge deal here and has brought a lot development and growth to my adorable little cowtown in the last 3 years or so. so much so in fact, that the natural gas companies funded massive renovations to our science museum. so a room in the museum is now dedicated to the science of natural gas. one of the attractions is a 10 minute long 4D movie about how natural gas got underneath fort worth, and how these genius's are getting it out. the movie takes you back in time all the way to the big bang and fast forwards to different periods, clearly acknowledging that the earth is far far far far older than 6,000 years and that god didn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

soooo, i understand that shaping and funding a movement that denies climate change is good for them, but a wonderful justification for denying the science is the godly origins of the earth... but at the same time they're spending thousands to educate an entire city on the ancientness and godlessness of fossil fuels.....

so nothing about this fits. i've never met a teabagger (and i'm probably more inclined to meet more teabaggers than most of the sift because of my geography) that 1. didn't deny the scientific origins of the universe 2. didn't deny climate change and when hard pressed with facts, didn't resort to "jesus is coming back" and 3. didn't looooooove the shit out of some fossil fuels ...... are they really really just too stupid to notice that the circle doesn't close? this makes me sad.

or is it just a cultural thing?? like, texas has been an oil rich state for over a century now. oil is just kind of embedded in our culture and is just accepted as something positive and a point of pride. and the discussion doesn't go much further than that. i grew up in a city who's football mascot was a fucking oil rig. when i think of symbols that mean texas to me, i see an oil rig. oil=texas. texas=home. home=good. done. thought circle complete. i hope that's it. and it's not just outrageous stupidity and a short few years of brain washing alone. i'm sad.

>> ^RFlagg:

Because Jesus is coming again soon to rapture them away so they don't care what they do to the earth, besides god gave them dominion over the Earth to rape and pillage it as they please. They don't believe in anthropological global warming anyhow since they don't believe in science, though some of them believe in peak oil which is why they think we need to drill "our own oil" by international companies selling it on the international market... Also he put the oil in the earth already made along with fossils, and accelerated light so that a galaxy 12 billion light years away can be seen now even though the universe is only 6,500 years old, and all that other prof that he had nothing to do with the creation of the universe. It is that whole god chose the foolish things to confound the wise... and he hid things from the wise and learned and revealed them to children... and all the other excuses they have for explaining such things.
>> ^peggedbea:
i'm super fascinated with how evolution denying teabaggers justify their raging boner for fossil fuels.

It might be just the local tea baggers here.
To be fair they haven't used the Jesus is coming soon as an excuse to do as they will, but it is something the locals seem to believe. After the election of Obama they actually thought that perhaps that will make Jesus come back sooner...I didn't realize god was so weak that his planned time for sending his son back could be altered by the actions of man, then again they seem to think god is to weak to do his job of convicting people of sins and punishing them for them, so they have to do that work for him... Anyhow, Jesus coming back soon seems to be a common thought, so I extended that to them as an excuse for using fossil fuels.
Very few of the tea baggers I know will acknowledge that global warming has anything to do with human activity. Those that do seem to think it is a very small nearly unmeasurable part of it, with cow farts having far more effect.
None of the tea baggers I know acknowledge the scientific origins of the universe, they may not be young Earth creationist, but they all are of the "design speaks of a designer" mentality. Of the old Earth creationist locally, some go with the gap theory, but most go with a day to god is as a thousand years or more to us. I personally don't know anyone who is a geocentrist.
None of the tea baggers here, home to people have a "MASTERS DEGREE IN COMMUNICATION" run for Stark County Treasurer would seem to believe that the movement is funded by any big companies, and that it is purely a grass roots movement.
Nothing I've seen of the tea baggers on the sift or news makes sense though. I just can't work out their thought process without resorting to religious dogma, and the firm belief that the far right Republican's are the only true Christians and the only ones who should be elected.
I was never a tea bagger, but I used to drink deep of the same sort of kool-aid and glad I am out of that movement now. So it may be indeed a cultural issue... We may just have more idiots incapable of independent thought here. I have been a sad panda for them for some time.

>> ^peggedbea:

yeah yeah ok... sure
but the oil and natural gas barons who fund this tea bagging nonsense publicly acknowledge science and the fossil origins of fossil fuels.
example: i live in on top of a previously impossible to tap natural gas shale. they just discovered how to tap the shit out of that gas. the shale is a huge deal here and has brought a lot development and growth to my adorable little cowtown in the last 3 years or so. so much so in fact, that the natural gas companies funded massive renovations to our science museum. so a room in the museum is now dedicated to the science of natural gas. one of the attractions is a 10 minute long 4D movie about how natural gas got underneath fort worth, and how these genius's are getting it out. the movie takes you back in time all the way to the big bang and fast forwards to different periods, clearly acknowledging that the earth is far far far far older than 6,000 years and that god didn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
soooo, i understand that shaping and funding a movement that denies climate change is good for them, but a wonderful justification for denying the science is the godly origins of the earth... but at the same time they're spending thousands to educate an entire city on the ancientness and godlessness of fossil fuels.....
so nothing about this fits. i've never met a teabagger (and i'm probably more inclined to meet more teabaggers than most of the sift because of my geography) that 1. didn't deny the scientific origins of the universe 2. didn't deny climate change and when hard pressed with facts, didn't resort to "jesus is coming back" and 3. didn't looooooove the shit out of some fossil fuels ...... are they really really just too stupid to notice that the circle doesn't close? this makes me sad.
or is it just a cultural thing?? like, texas has been an oil rich state for over a century now. oil is just kind of embedded in our culture and is just accepted as something positive and a point of pride. and the discussion doesn't go much further than that. i grew up in a city who's football mascot was a fucking oil rig. when i think of symbols that mean texas to me, i see an oil rig. oil=texas. texas=home. home=good. done. thought circle complete. i hope that's it. and it's not just outrageous stupidity and a short few years of brain washing alone. i'm sad.
>> ^RFlagg:
Because Jesus is coming again soon to rapture them away so they don't care what they do to the earth, besides god gave them dominion over the Earth to rape and pillage it as they please. They don't believe in anthropological global warming anyhow since they don't believe in science, though some of them believe in peak oil which is why they think we need to drill "our own oil" by international companies selling it on the international market... Also he put the oil in the earth already made along with fossils, and accelerated light so that a galaxy 12 billion light years away can be seen now even though the universe is only 6,500 years old, and all that other prof that he had nothing to do with the creation of the universe. It is that whole god chose the foolish things to confound the wise... and he hid things from the wise and learned and revealed them to children... and all the other excuses they have for explaining such things.
>> ^peggedbea:
i'm super fascinated with how evolution denying teabaggers justify their raging boner for fossil fuels.

yeah yeah ok... sure
but the oil and natural gas barons who fund this tea bagging nonsense publicly acknowledge science and the fossil origins of fossil fuels.

example: i live in on top of a previously impossible to tap natural gas shale. they just discovered how to tap the shit out of that gas. the shale is a huge deal here and has brought a lot development and growth to my adorable little cowtown in the last 3 years or so. so much so in fact, that the natural gas companies funded massive renovations to our science museum. so a room in the museum is now dedicated to the science of natural gas. one of the attractions is a 10 minute long 4D movie about how natural gas got underneath fort worth, and how these genius's are getting it out. the movie takes you back in time all the way to the big bang and fast forwards to different periods, clearly acknowledging that the earth is far far far far older than 6,000 years and that god didn't necessarily have anything to do with it.

soooo, i understand that shaping and funding a movement that denies climate change is good for them, but a wonderful justification for denying the science is the godly origins of the earth... but at the same time they're spending thousands to educate an entire city on the ancientness and godlessness of fossil fuels.....

so nothing about this fits. i've never met a teabagger (and i'm probably more inclined to meet more teabaggers than most of the sift because of my geography) that 1. didn't deny the scientific origins of the universe 2. didn't deny climate change and when hard pressed with facts, didn't resort to "jesus is coming back" and 3. didn't looooooove the shit out of some fossil fuels ...... are they really really just too stupid to notice that the circle doesn't close? this makes me sad.

or is it just a cultural thing?? like, texas has been an oil rich state for over a century now. oil is just kind of embedded in our culture and is just accepted as something positive and a point of pride. and the discussion doesn't go much further than that. i grew up in a city who's football mascot was a fucking oil rig. when i think of symbols that mean texas to me, i see an oil rig. oil=texas. texas=home. home=good. done. thought circle complete. i hope that's it. and it's not just outrageous stupidity and a short few years of brain washing alone. i'm sad.

>> ^RFlagg:

Because Jesus is coming again soon to rapture them away so they don't care what they do to the earth, besides god gave them dominion over the Earth to rape and pillage it as they please. They don't believe in anthropological global warming anyhow since they don't believe in science, though some of them believe in peak oil which is why they think we need to drill "our own oil" by international companies selling it on the international market... Also he put the oil in the earth already made along with fossils, and accelerated light so that a galaxy 12 billion light years away can be seen now even though the universe is only 6,500 years old, and all that other prof that he had nothing to do with the creation of the universe. It is that whole god chose the foolish things to confound the wise... and he hid things from the wise and learned and revealed them to children... and all the other excuses they have for explaining such things.
>> ^peggedbea:
i'm super fascinated with how evolution denying teabaggers justify their raging boner for fossil fuels.

Because Jesus is coming again soon to rapture them away so they don't care what they do to the earth, besides god gave them dominion over the Earth to rape and pillage it as they please. They don't believe in anthropological global warming anyhow since they don't believe in science, though some of them believe in peak oil which is why they think we need to drill "our own oil" by international companies selling it on the international market... Also he put the oil in the earth already made along with fossils, and accelerated light so that a galaxy 12 billion light years away can be seen now even though the universe is only 6,500 years old, and all that other prof that he had nothing to do with the creation of the universe. It is that whole god chose the foolish things to confound the wise... and he hid things from the wise and learned and revealed them to children... and all the other excuses they have for explaining such things.

>> ^peggedbea:

i'm super fascinated with how evolution denying teabaggers justify their raging boner for fossil fuels.

Go far enough back and we all have the same ancestors. After that, there were a bunch of people and some of them preyed on others. At the same time, there were any number of disasters and windfalls, any amount of luck, good and bad, death, disease, theft, charity, feuds and reconciliations, new ideas and paradigms; all of which affected the society in which we find ourselves and the advantages our parents could pass onto us, what our grandparents could pass on to our parents, our great-grandparents to our grandparents and on. Historical inequality exists, racially driven and, crucially, otherwise, but all of it completely beyond our control so it may as well have been random. Do we consider every bounce of the die in its course, or do we just say it came up six?

Say a millionaire discovered he would have been twice as rich if only his maid's ancestors hadn't ripped his family off 500 years ago, does the maid write him a cheque? History may make for amusing speculation, but it's not a serious study and can never be applied to anything meaningful. For example, I like the idea that black and white were getting along fine until the 1600s when some scheming rich folk invented racism.

>> ^peggedbea:

I may be misunderstanding your point. So, sure, any anthropology class will teach you that race doesn't really exist and is only a cultural construct, like gender (not sex, gender).
But to say that inequality based on who your ancestors were doesn't exist and that how you may be subconsciously perceived by societal institutions is just a "roll of the dice" is a bit of a stretch.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that last line. But American society was indeed set up to intentionally draw lines based on "race" and to both create and exploit racial tensions. And it worked fantastically well. Poor whites and white indentured servants were intentionally pitted against black slaves to be a buffer against revolts. The same concept is still being used to day with extravagant success, pit the lower classes against each other on the basis of some arbitrary tribe identification and they won't look too closely at how actively you're fucking them all over.

I may be misunderstanding your point. So, sure, any anthropology class will teach you that race doesn't really exist and is only a cultural construct, like gender (not sex, gender).

But to say that inequality based on who your ancestors were doesn't exist and that how you may be subconsciously perceived by societal institutions is just a "roll of the dice" is a bit of a stretch.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that last line. But American society was indeed set up to intentionally draw lines based on "race" and to both create and exploit racial tensions. And it worked fantastically well. Poor whites and white indentured servants were intentionally pitted against black slaves to be a buffer against revolts. The same concept is still being used to day with extravagant success, pit the lower classes against each other on the basis of some arbitrary tribe identification and they won't look too closely at how actively you're fucking them all over.

>> ^gorillaman:

There's no such thing as white privilege; there's no such thing as a white race or a black race. It seems harsh to say this guy spent an hour talking about literally nothing at all, but there it is. He's living in a fantasy world where people are linked in a way that simply doesn't exist in any objective sense.
The world is a collection of individuals, and some of us were born into disadvantageous circumstances and some of us were born into advantageous circumstances. Yes, in the past some more individuals behaved like dicks to some other individuals, for a variety of reasons, and some of us have benefited incidentally from that while others have not. But that's really all it boils down to, the whole history of humanity is just one big roll of the dice, and some of us rolled higher than others.
Now, if we want to talk about correcting those imbalances on an individual basis through whatever social means - progressive taxes, subsidies, culling racists, fine; that could be a conversation worth having, but if we're going to go on pretending we've all been naturally and necessarily divided into these arbitrary tribes based on vague genetic similarities, well, it's just noise.

I usually love TED, but you can't have a substantial conversation about aid and its efficacy or lack thereof if you aren't willing to engage in serious and critical political discourse. Unfortunately TED has always been too politically correct for its own good, but when you look at their trailing list of corporate sponsors how can you be surprised.

Hmmm, lentils, bed nets, immunization . . . what about the context that all these aid measures take place in? Africa is not some generic entity to be pitied. As an 'African' a South African more specifically, I get seriously annoyed by the disingenuous way in which 'African' issues are constantly portrayed and inevitably lugged together. Just trying to get a basic inkling on the poverty and aid issues underpinned by the social, economic and political fabric that exists in South Africa alone would take an incredible amount of time and is VERY specific.

Just learning about and trying to understand my own country has been consuming enough and truthfully I only have a basic handle on a few others like Cote D'ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Botswana and Nigeria. All have an incredibly diverse and complex set of problems and they will never be addressed by grouping them together as if inflicted with some kind of 'generalised poverty disorder' that you can throw a pill at.

Pointing to the success of small scale village based social programs as some kind of science based platform for understanding and eradicating poverty in Africa is, in my opinion, totally delusional. It wreaks of the ahistorical imperial anthropology of old.

If you are going to generalise and frame 'Africa's' problems, you have to have the courage to point fingers at some of the MANY corporations, banks, institutions and nations that so readily contribute towards the vast pools of misery found throughout this beautiful continent. Poverty is a complex bi-product of Africa's colonial history and the consequent exploitation and manipulation that has dogged the continent to this day. As long as the majority of the wealth of its nations is being siphoned off into foreign bank accounts there will be no solutions bearing any lasting impact.

I really, really hope that a lot of those numbers can be explained by intentional snarkiness towards polling. "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer" seems like a fairly common human paradigm, so I tend to think that if you post a poll question that people don't really take very seriously, they are strongly tempted to provide an answer that just maintains or enhances the absurdity of the query.

Take for example the Greenpeace internet poll to name a tagged and tracked humpback whale. "Serious" names, that often had some linguistic or anthropological link to whales like "Aiko", "Kaimana", etc. got less than 1% of the total votes, and "Mr. Splashy Pants" got 78% (of 150,000+ respondents). I tend to doubt that 78% percent of respondents actually believed that was the best / most suitable name -- instead they liked the idea of promoting the more absurd / humorous option.

That can't fully explain away these numbers, and it is frankly tragic to think that anyone might actually believe that Obama "wants the terrorists to win", or "is a socialist". I think that the real direction that the GOP is taking is grim enough, but this poll doesn't really accurately describe its true failings -- and I should note that I say this as a registered republican who would really love for the party to return to some measure of sanity.

>> ^dr_izzybizzy:
What a silly argument. Not only should the makers of this video learn the basic difference between correlation and causation, they should also have a history and anthropology lesson as well. The USSR, China, and North Korea were (and still are in the case of the latter two) "non-theistic," though certainly not classifiable as "peaceful."
I wonder what the correlation is between levels of violence and uncritical acceptance of mindless propaganda films...


>> ^dag:
This.>> ^conan:
someone teach those guys the difference between correlation and causality.



>> ^Psychologic:
"Extremely accurate statistical study"? How is that determined? I'll have to look further into their methodology... it's just an odd phrase to use with statistical analysis.

Anyway, I wonder about the causality in this correlation. For instance, religious belief tends to increase in the presence of adversity (poverty, high crime rate, internal wars, etc), so it's possible that religion is at least partially propagated by those factors being measured. Perhaps a trend towards atheism is caused by stability?
Unfortunately this particular list was created in 2007, so there isn't much data from which to derive trends. It would be more informative to see how things play out over time. My guess is that declining violence/war would lead to a situation more favorable to less religion, but I don't have enough background in this area to form any real conclusions.


Come on people. This does not say that atheism leads to peace. It shows there is a correlation between them. Regardless of peace leading to atheism or atheism leading to peace or anything else, the correlation exists.

This correlation and causality crap is presumptions and not even applicable here.

What a silly argument. Not only should the makers of this video learn the basic difference between correlation and causation, they should also have a history and anthropology lesson as well. The USSR, China, and North Korea were (and still are in the case of the latter two) "non-theistic," though certainly not classifiable as "peaceful."

I wonder what the correlation is between levels of violence and uncritical acceptance of mindless propaganda films...

I often wonder if some of the conclusions that we come to about history, archaeology, and anthropology are way off. This tied in well with that but it sort of overdid it, and not in a way that particularly added to its entertainment value.

However, good enough for an upvote for John, Paul, George, and Scottie Pippen.