Most US Protestants belong to creationist denominations

Jerry Coyne criticizes a study that makes a big deal of the fact that 63% of believers in the U.S. belong to religious organizations that are officially pro-evolution. Coyne rightly points out that even in pro-evolution denominations, lots of believers in the pews have creationist sympathies. He only briefly mentions, however, the fact that “This [...]

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Massimo Pigliucci is a childish, raging, foaming at the mouth fundamentalist with a cavalier attitude toward the substance, rationality and coherence of his arguments

Yesterday, Massimo Pigliucci wrote a post titled “PZ Myers is a witless wanker who peddles pablum.” Pigliucci says he didn’t really mean it, but was just imitating PZ’s overblown rhetoric to make the point that it’s a bad thing. My title is an imitation of Massimo’s approach to post-titling, since he uses all the words [...]

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On hating evo psych

A criticism of evolutionary psychology that literally centers on insulting the opposition’s mating fitness and social status?
Now that’s irony.
–A comment on BoingBoing
Also: the people in the comments who say feminism isn’t monolithic are absolutely right. Some definitions make you as “they have a word for that?” while in other contexts feminism seems to be the [...]

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Report on the Hitchens-D’Souza debate

Overall, I’m very happy to have attended the debate. The amount of real interaction between Hitchens and D’Souza was far less than I was hoping for, in part due to the format of the debate. Still, Hitchens made for a very good representative of atheism, and actually I was pleasantly surprised by the approach he [...]

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Anti-adaptation bias

February 14, 2010 by Chris Hallquist  
Filed under biology, mind, science, stupidity

Here’s Jerry Coyne on the evolutionary roots of religion:
I like the “byproduct” hypothesis, if for no other reason than it’s almost self-evidently true. Surely every human behavior is in some sense a byproduct of genes that evolved for other reasons. And if religion, like music-making, jokes, and pornography, is an outgrowth of genes that [...]

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