My Christmas message? There's probably no God

[mr blur]

It is neither emotionally nor spiritually deficient to reject religions that seek to infantilise us with impossible beliefs

Bravo!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/23/atheism-disestablishentment-rowan-williams-humanism

[moggie]

1. Interesting snippet from that article

Here is an enjoyably impudent piece of research from Innsbruck University. People were observed buying newspapers, using an honesty box to pay. They were interviewed later - so the person with the clipboard seemed unconnected with the newspaper purchase - and asked about age, occupation and attitudes. Men cheated more than women; people over 50 cheated more than the young; higher education made no difference; and by a long chalk churchgoers cheated most. This may be a statistical anomaly. But we all know one thing: religion no more makes people good than lack of it makes the rest of us bad.

Amusing, but the PDF of the research in question says "Out of the 402 customers, 215 (53 percent) agreed to participate in the interview. Customers who participated in the interview made higher payments for the paper than those who did not (25.8 versus 17.9 cents, p = 0.004)". So we don't know how many of the less honest non-interviewees were churchgoers. But there shouldn't have been any churchgoers stealing the newspapers, if they took their religion seriously.

The paper says:

People who regularly attend service at church pay 22.1 cents less for the Sunday tabloid ... This is a large effect, and we can only speculate with regard to its reasons. One reason might be that the church attendees lacked the coin money to make a proper payment. Active religious participation is high in the region, and on a typical Sunday morning it is plausible that many people might have donated some of their coin money to the church. Of course, this explanation does not change the fact that church attendees are particularly dishonest when paying for the newspaper.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1277208

Interesting. I'd like to see further research on this. For example, are churchgoers more honest on days when they don't go to church? Perhaps they have a quota of "goodness", and subconsciously feel that going to church meets their short-term quota, leaving them free to cheat.

[LeftishBrit]

2. I'm reminded here of the old joke..

"A survey showed that 75% of clergymen in this town take the local paper. The other 25% buy it."