Chris Mooney has an interesting post, citing recent research by Gordon Gauchat that shows a noticeable decline in trust in science among political conservatives in the United States, over the past few decades. There isn’t much that I know of in this sort of research that would help me estimate what the contribution of conservative … Conservative anti-science

I’ve been looking at some social psychology research concerning the so-called “Millennial” generation, in their twenties today. (I figure it doesn’t hurt to know more about my students.) Often, the research finds that the Millennials are an obnoxious, shallow, and stupid bunch. (OK, that’s my take on it. But basically, reading the survey results, my … More secular (and obnoxious, and stupid) Millennials

Well, I’m back from my trip to Norway and Sweden, and when you add this to my previous trip to Denmark, I can now pretend to be an expert on all things Scandinavian. Still, I did have a chance to ask locals (humanities and social science types, mostly) about whether the Scandinavian reputation for secularity … Secular Scandinavia

Above is a Turkish news photo I include completely without any sort of context. Out of curiosity, how do readers interpret something like this? An illustration of Muslim women’s docility? An image of Muslim women remaining devout and yet claiming a place in the public sphere? That it’s annoying that people behave like religious sheep … Turkish news photo Muslim women

The Brain and the Meaning of Life, by Paul Thagard (one of my favorite philosophers of science), is worth a look. It’s intended for a more popular audience, so it doesn’t have citations in the text or detailed arguments for his positions that could convince critics. It’s a book that is, however, nicely expressive of … The Brain and the Meaning of Life

Liberal religious figures baffle me when they make true but irrelevant pronouncements concerning how science does not strictly imply that their God is a fiction. But credit where it’s due—at least they don’t shit all over science like conservative God-botherers are wont to do. Take, for example, David Barton, the “historian” much favored by the … “False science”

Next week I’ll be traveling to give a couple of talks in Norway and Sweden. As always, I expect the conversations aside from the public presentations will be interesting. I want to ask my hosts about the Scandinavian reputation for deep secularity, the way that for example a sociologist such as Phil Zuckerman portrays Nordic … Scandinavian secularity

The literature on science and religion is dominated, on the religious side, by a desire for establishing consistency between science and (possibly reinterpreted) religious beliefs. I suspect that this whole literature is fatally shot through with a kind of intellectual pathology, assuming that mere compatibility achieves something, while not attempting to make the claims at … Cheap consistency

If two events or states of affairs are independent, then the probability that both will occur is equal to the multiplication of the probabilities of those two events. If p is an event (or state of affairs) that is independent of an event (or state of affairs) q, then:P(p & q) = P(p) x P(q)But … Skepticism and the Multiplication of Probabilities – Part 2