Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the “intellectual elite” considered themselves atheists than the national average.

A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.

But the conclusions - in a paper for the academic journal Intelligence - have been branded “simplistic” by critics.
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Professor Lynn, who has provoked controversy in the past with research linking intelligence to race and sex, said university academics were less likely to believe in God than almost anyone else.

A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers.

A separate poll in the 90s found only seven per cent of members of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God.

Submitted By: (Mike Walker) mikemcmack (at) yahoo (dot) com

by Robert G. Ingersoll
1894
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Somebody ought to tell the truth about the Bible. The preachers dare not, because they would be driven from their pulpits. Professors in colleges dare not, because they would lose their salaries. Politicians dare not. They would be defeated. Editors dare not. They would lose subscribers. Merchants dare not, because they might lose customers. Men of fashion dare not, fearing that they would lose caste. Even clerks dare not, because they might be discharged. And so I thought I would do it myself.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Submitted by: (variable) variable (at) unm (dot) edu
Check out his Website

When I think of an Atheist Church I think of a beautiful ornate building with stained glass impressions of Marie Curie, Charles Darwin, and images of how evolution may have happened. I think of karaoke being sung by hundreds of intelligent informed atheists in a huge building aglow with the energy of interesting lectures and interactive community games. So, if this is the First Church of Atheism, where are the buildings, and how do I help in making more of them? How do I make a career out of being a minister with weekly lessons on real cosmology, real biology, real social sciences, and real morality?
Let’s get it done!

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In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has shown that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes.

“Striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts were noted after only 36 years, which is an extremely short time scale,” says Duncan Irschick, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “These physical changes have occurred side-by-side with dramatic changes in population density and social structure.”

Written by: Jacki McMaster

When I was an infant, my parents had me baptized. They didn’t want to, but my Grandmother insisted. They agreed to her wishes, because neither of them was very for or against religion.

My mother was raised Christian, Methodist to be specific. The church never felt like home to her. She always told me, “It’s silly to think that you have to go to a specific place once a week to worship God. And it’s even sillier that they make you pay to do it. God is in everything around you. Appreciating the world is prayer enough.”

My father, on the other hand, was raised Jewish. His father was a non-practicing Christian, but his mother attended synagogue regularly and decided to raise her 3 children accordingly. When my father was 12 years old, he decided that he was not going to have his Bar Mitzvah. He didn’t believe in what he was learning, and didn’t want to put in the time and effort necessary to learn the required tasks. His mother was not happy, but allowed him to make his own decision.