My heart is much warmer now!

I agree! I think it would be more worthwhile to study the cultural features that interfere with cooperation. I think the results might surprise a lot of people.

Indeed. You might get a wise population, but chances are they got that way one at a time—rather than all at once. It's not like you can make a movie, or distribute a pill, which can make a whole population more mature at the same time. Wisdom requires hard work to attain, and not everybody is interested in doing…

Flatulance. Nothing clears an area faster.

This is interesting, but humans have always had a process of collective intelligence. We call it "culture." Modern communications/computing technology has just made the process faster.

I've enjoyed this discussion as well! Thank you!

Thanks for checking out the videos.

Yes—exactly. It's extremely hard to control for this stuff, which makes any sort of sociological speculation on this scale extremely problematic.

That's what I'm saying—the more strongly creationists argue the point, the more unpopular their views become. I was never saying that criticism wasn't necessary. I'm just saying that the kind of moral panic on the part of the anti-religious crowd about what "those darn creationists" are doing to the children is…

I think it's all about branding. The Republican leadership uses Christianity the way Constantine did... as a tool for manipulating people too fearful and under-educated to understand their own philosophy. Which is unfortunate, considering how much Jesus himself was trying to fight that kind of thing.

Thank you, but if you'll look back at what I've written, I've never claimed to be either Christian, or particularly religious. I'm simply someone who can see the value in religion and spirituality.

But, see, I think saying that is being a rather selective about the evidence. Buddhism is a religion/spirituality; albiet a very philosophical one. There are many forms of religion which simply don't conform to the fanatical, scripture-thumping archetype which critics of religion seem to fixate on.

Evolution completely removes the need for a Saviour from sin.

Yes—some statistical information would be nice, as would some methodologically sound studies of religion and its alleged perniciousness (which that simplistic correlational stuff about religiosity and IQ stuff is not—correlation does not mean causation).

Ah, well. Your logic is incredible. Clearly you have it all figured out. Feel free to ignore what I said.

No. Buddhism is founded on a four part argument called the Four Noble Truths. To paraphrase:

Done. Buddhism.

Thank you for this very thoughtful reply. I agree, it is a problem. I'm not sure what the solution is, or how we can stop stupid people from getting into positions of power... of course, that's a problem in politics generally, even when religion is not involved.

I'm not interested in semantic games either, but I don't like research that muddles an already complex issue with ill-defined experimental criteria. The answer you get to a question always depends on the way in which the question is framed.