Well, my problem with the new atheism is that it doesn't address WHY people believe (or not), what they get out of it, how it affects their daily lives, and so on. I think that conversion and walkaway (loss of belief) processes are fascinating insights into culture and individual psychological / emotional processes.

On the practical end, I don't care if somebody "believes in" Jesus Christ, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the eight-fold way, or zip, if they behave in a decent manner and have the humility to recognize that they could be wrong - and if they respect the right of other people to live their own lives with different belief systems.

Science and story-telling have different functions. This should be obvious.

Science is story-telling.

The use of the word story is Semantic Fallacy.

State what "Fallacy" you are referring to and tell me how the assertion that the stories told from fossils about the numbers of offspring resulting from the presence of absence of "traits" attributed to those is not telling a story which the fossil evidence doesn't contain.

"Science is story-telling"
____________________

The writer applies the broad literary meaning of story while applying it to the critical discipline of scientific method. You do too.

I'd be curious to know what it was in my rather terse statement that you think allows you to claim that I was using the "broad literary meaning of story." You might not like the word being applied to science, but "A caused B" is a story.

"A caused B" within the context of scientific method is a theory, not a story.

"A caused B" within the context of English literature is a story.

These are conventions of language, and conflating the two is nonsensical.

A theory is in fact a story based on some independent speculative or known information. The theory can be proved somehow, disproved or left hanging like the "theory of everything." It is still a specific type of story.

As I suggested to Apoplexy a moment ago, you'd be a little more credible as a proponent of strict science if you would provide a little evidence – a credible language reference source, for example – to back up your claims.

Natural selection is the creation of a narrative to assert something, sometimes even creating the "B" for "A" to have caused. If that's not story telling, it's only because you chose to not call it what it really is.
As I noted, Richard Lewontin was honest enough to admit that, Stephen Jay Gould was accurate enough to point out that Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology made up "Just-so" stories all the time.

It seems to me that attempts to conflate stories and science here is more interested in denigrating one side of the comparison than reflecting any worthwhile equivalence. If the status of science should be diminished, then at least do it head-on and not with these semantics.

Natural selection is the projection of an explanation for currently observed interactions into the past, in analogous situations. It is the consensus opinion in current studies to explain the mechanisms of evolution.

You are leaning on a single source, Lewontin, to deny the validity of a theory when the source, from everything I've seen including your quotes, is warning against hubris. This warning does not justify your out-right denial of validity.

I'd be interested to know, what do you propose in place of natural selection to explain evolution's mechanisms?

Just so there's no confusion, I have no intention of denigrating science. I am perfectly happy with the theory of evolution through natural selection. But I also have no problem with referring to the scientific view as a "story" of origins. I don't think Darwin would have, either. You're fighting on the wrong front when you quibble about that word.

It is absurd to say that the creation of stories is a denigration of science when that's exactly what scientists often, though not always, do. They've been doing it from the beginning of science. Einstein said his stories about traveling on a beam of light helped him enormously in thinking about the problems of physics he dealt with, Dalton, if I recall, correctly dreamed a story that helped him formulate his atomic theory. All of the interpretation of fossils which come up with scenarios explaining aspects of them are stories. The fossilized organisms can't tell what really happened in real life to them millions of years ago, not enough of the artifacts of their lives are available to come up with anything accurate in that regard.

The pretense that scientists don't do that is a denial of reality as can be seen in both what scientists say and in the personal testimony of scientists, themselves.

I'm not "leaning on a single source" I named a list of total believers in natural selection as the sources of my skepticism. What is this, I thought atheists claimed to own, skepticism, only not of natural selection? Aren't ALL claims of science not to be subjected to skeptical inquiry? Now, where have I heard that phrase before?

You're still conflating "stories" in a literary sense, for example Einstein's story of traveling on a beam of light, with scientific theories, for example the theories he arrived at.

There is a reason we distinguish between theory, story, eye-witness accounts, etc. This is because of their context.

The interpretation of fossils via scenarios are based on scientific theories, which are separated from stories by their more stringent requirements regarding coherence and truth. If you insist that every "story" be the best possible interpretation of phenomena, then these are "stories", but that's not how the word is commonly applied.

We do not need fossilized organisms to tell us what happened to them, we can work it out as long as life today is analogous to life then. Which, as far as we know, it was.

You're straying dangerously close to Ken Ham's ridiculous distinction between "observational science" and "historical science". If you insist on this approach, it would be appreciated to at least see some consistency of approach when dealing with religious claims.

Of course you are now trying to associate what I'm saying with Ken Ham's ideology. It's the kind of thing I've come to expect atheists to do. Making associations in order to avoid what their opponents really say. There's a name for that, perhaps, perhaps its covered under The Genetic Fallacy, though I'm not really interested in labeling it. You are wrong.

There is nothing "ridiculous" in admitting that almost everything about the lives of organisms, even those tiny percentage which have left fossil evidence, is unknowable because we didn't observe them in real life. Anyone who proposes to do science or to read science in the absence of understanding that has, literally, not gotten to the first level of competent understanding. Which has nothing to do with whether or not you believe in creationism or think that Intelligent Design, the kind they do in Seattle for pay, is valid science.

The conventional evolutionary biologists who come up with stories about the lives of those ancient fossils in the absence of evidence are making up stories as certainly as Lamarck did - with Darwin's approval, by the way - and as their Intelligent Design foes do. It's the only way to come up with scenarios of what might have happened and what might have resulted from it. Only, generally, other than the fossil, we don't really know what resulted from any given fossil's or group of fossils' lives. That information is permanently lost in time, no one was there to observe it, not to mention observing it with the quality that comprises what is considered valid observational science of real organisms today.

Marc Hauser made up stories about the tamarins he was writing about in peer-reviewed papers, one after another. They had to have been stories because when the lapses of his reviewers caught up with them, what he said hadn't happened as seen on the lab film of those experiments.

"It's the kind of thing I've come to expect atheists to do. Making associations in order to avoid what their opponents really say."

This is a truly hilarious moment of hypocrisy. I'll leave the response at that.

"There is nothing "ridiculous" in admitting that almost everything about the lives of organisms, even those tiny percentage which have left fossil evidence, is unknowable because we didn't observe them in real life."

If you assume that conditions today are, on matters that count, the same as they were a billion years ago, it is possible to work out reliably what mechanisms were at play. This is a fundamental assumption of all of science: that the experiment done now can be repeated in the same conditions with the same result.

Your rejection of this fundamental concept means rejecting all of scientific theory in every field until some arbitrary point in the recent past. It makes cosmology, geology and any other science which relies on uniformity over time literally impossible. It means that any evidence from any experiment performed today inadmissible in any possible study of the past, no matter how analogous the situation, because "we weren't there". It's an arbitrary and absurd position to hold.

"I'll leave it at that." Oh, no, point out the hypocrisy you accuse me of, citing what I've said, accurately and fully.

1. It is a certainty that conditions today are not, in matters that count, the same as they were billions of years ago. If you deny those differences you are as in much of a denial of the geological record as people who refuse to believe the age of fossils and the radical differences in those in different geological strata. And that in each of the 3.5+ billions of years now generally accepted as the history of life on Earth, those conditions varied and changed drastically. So your first contention is in error.

2. Without seeing what actually happened at any given time in any given place it is totally impossible to determine with any accuracy what was happening, what plants, animals, etc. were leaving more successful offspring which propagated as opposed to which didn't, what "traits" you want to contend led to that difference in percentage - something which would be impossible to know without having detailed knowledge of their anatomy, their well being, food supply, exposure to diseases, predators, chance events, the differences in percentages that give rise to rapidly changing percentages under various conditions giving rise to genetic drift, and a myriad of other known and as of yet probably unsuspected vectors that would be crucial in determining whether or not natural selection would be a valid explanation for changes from one species to the next. In the vast majority of species in those billions of years, we have no knowledge of any of those things, we don't even know what species turned into what species. Very, very few lines of descent are even partially documented in the more recent periods. The only thing we can know is that, for example, modern human beings were not there but other individuals with whom we share anatomical similarities and, if we're lucky, surviving evidence of genetic commonality. We don't know why that happened or exactly how, we only know that it did happen.

I'm fine with there being no universal explanation of how evolution happened, I, personally, doubt there was any one entirely dominant force governing that, if in the case of things like chance and genetic drift can be held to govern things. I don't need an explanation to accept that evolution was a fact, but, then, I'm not interested in using it idologically as atheists have been since they got their hands on the drafts that Darwin was showing his friends and associates. Galton, in his memoir, talks about how excited he was as soon as he read it, seeing the ideological use it was in promoting his materialist ideology, Ernst Haeckel, as well, though I believe he had to wait for publication.

Your hypocrisy is in accusing atheists of only dealing with caricatures of theistic belief systems, and then citing Stalin when dealing with atheism in general. Your hypocrisy is in accusing atheists of "making associations in order to avoid dealing with what their opponents really say" one sentence after "It's the kind of thing I expect atheists to do". This is straightforward.

1. It is not. While factors like climate and atmospheric content change, fundamental drivers like adaptation did not. It is a fundamental principle of science that the universe has not changed its basic laws in 14 billion years of existence. You are free to reject that, but don't cherry-pick "observational science".

2. This is not true. It is possible to work out mechanisms based on the effect those mechanisms have. Again, what you're doing is undermining the whole of science to satisfy your Quixotic tilting at natural selection.

What have I said about natural selection and the requirements of verifying it in reality instead of in story telling that isn't true? Tell me, how you would verify its presence or even reality in the natural world, in the real life, uncontrolled conditions under which it would have had to operate in the period before human beings began to practice selective breeding which cannot really reproduce those unknown and unknowable conditions.

I'm merely applying the claims of scientists as to what would be needed and logical analysis to the conditions that would be necessary to show that natural selection is a thing, as they say, and what role it plays in bringing about evolution of species when other forces, such as genetic drift are known to be at work. As it is, I don't think you can point out anything wrong with what I said, so you characterize it dismissively. That is generally what the Darwinian fundamentalists do instead of responding to what was said.

Stalin is a good example of someone with absolute power and absolutely no moral restraints. He was an atheist who conducted one of the most extensive wars against religion during the 1920s and 30s. murdering enormous numbers of people in that one murder campaign, as well as tens of millions in his other murder campaigns. Not to mention such matters as denials of rights, enslavement, torture, false imprisonment, and falsely accusing and convicting people of crimes.

As I've mentioned the trust-fund baby, Corliss Lamont, a big wig in "Humanism" the foremost promoter of atheism in the United States, almost certainly the money in the foundation of such groups as CSICOP and, I would bet anything, CFI, was a huge fan of Stalin, even up till the end of Stalin's regime writing a pamphlet promoting his Soviet Union for publication even as his "Jewish Doctors" pogrom was underway. And he was hardly the only hero of "Humanism" who was a huge fan of Stalin. Even many people who were otherwise admirable in many ways, such as I. F. Stone, one of my journalism heroes, had a period of Stalinism to stain his biography. You should look up the letter that Max Eastman wrote, breaking with Lamont, it's available online, in which he gives his reasons for the break over Lamont's Stalinist activities. Eastman, an atheist as well, who praised Lamont's book purported to disprove the possibility of immortality, his Doctoral dissertation in philosophy, I believe. Of course, Eastman not having any real liberal inclinations and having no real sense of morality, instead of becoming a real liberal after he fled Stalinism, he joined up with the far right, as so many other atheist "leftists" did, especially the Trotskyites who became the original neo-cons, most of them in the atheist circles at City College. Somewhere online you can also find Irving Kristol's article about that. I have also become entirely convinced that atheism, materialism, is the absolute death of liberalism, in the American sense of the word, things like equality, justice and universally held moral obligations. I think materialism is inevitably corrosive of democracy, which is how I first became interested in these matters, after reading what atheists were saying in large numbers about 12 years ago.

I don't rely on single sources, I have researched these matters in the way they used to teach people in the humanities to do back when I was in school.

"Stalin is a good example of someone with absolute power and absolutely no moral restraints." - Camera Obscura

The god of the old testament is a better example of that. :)

You have of obviously not read the First Testament. Just like almost everyone who spouts that same vilification of the Jewish scriptures. I'd refer you to Marilynne Robinson's essay, The Fate of Ideas: Moses. Just one of the observations she made was to point out that, as compared to most other codes of law, the Mosaic law forbade capital punishment for crimes against property. That alone makes the First Testament entirely less blood thirsty than most other codes of law, scriptures.... Considering the governments that atheists have promoted as great events in history, including the Reign of Terror and Stalin's, nothing in the First Testament matches those for bloodiness. Materialism, after all, considers people to just be objects without inherent rights or to whom moral obligations are owed. And it shows in history.

Very well. Chose a word that more accurately describes your intent. If you can't, the correct assumption must be mine.

I don't need to "chose" another word, "story" communicates my meaning perfectly sufficiently: The word "story" derives (via Latin "historia") from the Greek "ἵστωρια," meaning (Liddell-Scott lexicon) "inquiry, knowledge obtained from inquiry, or an account (a narrative or history) of one's inquiries." However, one need not reach so far: the Oxford English Dictionary currently includes as definitions: "An account of past events in someone’s life or in the evolution of something" and "A situation viewed in terms of the information known about it or its similarity to another."

I thought you science groupies were all about "evidence," but you sure don't seem to have brought any to this discussion.

Well done by default. Since you chose to exclude the objectionable definitions* of "story", your usage becomes acceptable.
*
a piece of gossip; a rumor.
"there have been lots of stories going around, as you can imagine"
synonyms:rumor, piece of gossip, whisper;
speculation
"there have been a lot of stories going around"
informal
a false statement or explanation; a lie.

A story can be true, speculative or false. It is still a story. The story of someone's life if a biography might say one thing and if an autobiography another. It is still a story. Both versions are true, speculative or false. That does NOT make them less of a story.

The word "story" doesn't describe scientific explanation accurately. The term is redolent with chaos.

Scientific explanations are based on "known" criteria and can usually be reproduced by other scientists. Not so with theories or scientific explanations based on informed speculation. If the underlying information has some flaws or is itself speculative, no matter how rational, it is still a story told by a scientist based on his (their) best guess.

Most evolution theories can not be reproduced in a lab or out in nature and as such are scientific stories that rely on a preponderance of "evidence." Sometimes the underlying science itself changes and the story goes out the window. Facts don't themselves change so if science is based on facts why are they always revising their results in many areas. Maybe their FACTS are not true facts but self serving bits of information presented as "settled science" as Al Gore would say.

The definitions I cited are valid definitions. There's nothing "objectionable" about any other definitions, they just weren't relevant to the issue. My usage doesn't "become" acceptable, it is acceptable. Language obviously isn't your strong suit.

Natural selection is based on the creation of narrative, it has to be because the fossil evidence alone wouldn't suffice to come up with an explanation of how evolution happened.

Evolution is a fact, natural selection is more like a creation myth explaining how it happened. As it turns out in the post-war period, it isn't the universal acid that it is held to be as such other things that are clearly demonstrable without the creation of narrative, such as genetic drift, are clearly part of evolution.

perhaps you need to study the scientific method...scientists often find their research proves their hypothesis wrong. That's the beginning of testing what's really going on. Religion just believes the first notion or hypothesis that comes to the human mind and believes that as truth. Science loves a false answer. It prompts new question.

Religion doesn't want questions that it cannot answer. I have dozens of friends who had their hands rapped or legs (or worse) whipped for asking questions the teacher didn't want to answer. They never believed the claptrap they were fed and suffered for not being able to accept it. They couldn't wait to escape the old time religion.

How do you propose running tests to determine the reproductive success of animals, plants, etc. which died tens and hundreds of millions of years ago? How do you propose to do so for a valid representative sample of the trillions of organisms that are the basic evidence that would be needed to test the validity of natural selection? Natural selection is the creation of a narrative that purports to explain how species diverge and evolve but the evidence that shows that is why that happened is lost, forever. To claim it as the overarching explanation of evolution is only possible if you overlook the inconvenient fact that you can't know that in the lost past and that your assumptions of the strength of natural selection as a "force" masks or distorts any observation you can make in living organisms. Richard Lewontin said:

"It is not only in the investigation of human society that the truth is sometimes unavailable. Natural scientists, in their overweening pride, have come to believe that eventually everything we want to know will be known. But that is not true. For some things there is simply not world enough and time. It may be, given the necessary constraints on time and resources available to the natural sciences, that we will never have more than a rudimentary understanding of the central nervous system. For other things, especially in biology where so many of the multitude of forces operating are individually so weak, no conceivable technique of observation can measure them. In evolutionary biology, for example, there is no possibility of measuring the selective forces operating on most genes because those forces are so weak, yet the eventual evolution of the organisms is governed by them. Worse, there is no way to confirm or reject stories about the selective forces that operated in the past to bring traits to their present state, no matter how strong those forces were. Over and over, in these essays reproduced here, I have tried to give an impression of the limitations on the possibility of our knowledge. Science is a social activity carried out by a remarkable, but by no means omnipotent species. Even the Olympians were limited in their powers."

While he didn't say so, the impossibility of measuring presumed "selective forces" alone would mean that those can't be subjected to scientific method. You would need to observe those "forces", measure them against other possible "forces", and analyze those in terms of reproductive success attributable to those to demonstrate the presence, or absence, of natural selection in any given scenario, not to mention that you'd have to do that to an enormous number of such scenarios when there is no evidence available to do that. And when I say "scenario" I'm using the wrong word because you would have to see the organisms, in the wild, in their normal environment to do that.

Evolution is an obvious phenomenon, obvious in both the clear relatedness and the diversity of organisms today and in the fossil record, natural selection is the creation of narratives, OK, I'll say it, creation myths, to explain that. I agreed with Lewontin and Gould and others on that when it was evolutionary psychology and Sociobiology but I've come to also believe it's the truth about the overarching theory that is used to make up those Just-so stories of evo-psy.

I think Marx got it right in his second consideration of natural selection, Darwin was both misinterpreting Malthus who pointed out that human beings are NOT like animals in the wild due to the enhanced ability of human beings to ensure their survival and reproduction through the benefits of human culture, Darwin, instead, took Malthus' imposition of the British class system on the entirety of the human population and imposed it on the entire biosphere.

Opinions can differ on that but it is a fact that as honest an assessment of natural selection as Richard Lewontin's proves it can't be subjected to scientific methods.

when fish were running out of food in the water they started eating from the banks but their fins were inadequate to get them to the food and back. Over time the fins starting becoming more like feet and then small legs. They know that because they found a fossilized one. Fish who could find food survived and the ones who didn't died off. That's how natural selection works. They have found the single cell life and most of the links to now, they continue to find more evidence not less.

Which is a story. The fossil evidence doesn't tell that story, the story is created to sort of fit into what the fossils appear to be. The story might be right or it might be merely of seeming plausibility depending on what framing you choose to believe and what evidence is available. But you don't know that, as the great geneticist Richard Lewontin said,

"In evolutionary biology, for example, there is no possibility of measuring the selective forces operating on most genes because those forces are so weak, yet the eventual evolution of the organisms is governed by them. Worse, there is no way to confirm or reject stories about the selective forces that operated in the past to bring traits to their present state, no matter how strong those forces were."

He's admitting that that's what evolutionary biologists do when the interpret fossil or other evidence in the common way it is done. They are making up stories to explain things, much in the same way that the authors of Genesis were making up stories to explain things. I know you won't like me pointing that out but it's actually the case. In most modern religious people and in a number of religious people in the past that might surprise you, they don't take the Genesis narratives to be literally true. I certainly don't believe the universe and all of life were created in six days, I certainly believe in the common ancestor of all life theory that Darwin did. I just don't buy natural selection as either a real theory of science or as being more than a product of the thinking of the Victorian British elite.

Their chosen framing of natural selection will determine the kind of stories they make up. Which might be true or they might not be, as he said, when it's in the actual bottom line of natural selection, the forces proposed to be selection are so weak that you can't really know. Given the choice between believing Lewontin's honest, clear and logically coherent admission or the claims of the Drawinian fundamentalists, I'll buy Lewontin's admission, with reservations.

I got a lot of flack a few years back when that 35,000 year old figure of a woman was all over the news, many anthropologists claiming it was clearly a figure made by a man representing some ancient ideal of female sexuality. I asked how they knew it wasn't made by a woman or that maybe she made it as an image of her mother. Or a self portrait or as a figure to mock some other woman. Or any number of other stories that could be made up about it. You can imagine that if you chose to believe it had been made by a woman or any of those other scenarios the interpretation of the object would have been entirely different. The fact is, we have no way of knowing who made it and what they were thinking as they made it. Same as the fossils, we have the objects, we don't know the entire lives and reproductive success of those individuals as compared to others in their species which may have had or not had whatever "trait" the story is being made up about.

what science does is build hypothesis on the preponderance of the evidence they have, fossils, dna, genetic, bones, drawings on cave walls, locations of finds, etc. you point out what is unknowable, but is that necessary when you have 4 million+ years worth of evidence. Science makes assumptions and works to prove them true or false. Have you proven evolution or natural selection false?

Maybe I should insist on stopping with this "science does" stuff because "science" doesn't do anything, scientists do things. And I'll try to avoid using that narrative myth, myself. When those hypoteses are expressed in a creative narrative of action by organisms or objects in reality, it is really no different than coming up with a story. Stories can be based on preponderances of evidence, that doesn't change the fact that they are stories. Historians, scientists, other scholars all make up stories to explain things. Sometimes those are supported by testing and more evidence as those develop, sometimes they aren't. That's a fact of life in academic practice.

The problem is you're presenting the argument of Lewontin as the brave admission any biologist would make, if he had the courage.

I said he was honest, I mentioned nothing of bravery, though I'm sure that is required in his field, considering the viciousness of the Darwinian fundamentalists. I twice analyzed Richard Dawkins' most famous explanatory myth, his "first bird to call out" story for logical coherence and if it doesn't violate both mathematical coherence and the requirements of natural selection, no one has yet been able to explain to me why it doesn't. Yet it is considered science and very influential.

http://zthoughtcriminal.blo...

There isn't much going for conspiracy theories about "Darwinian fundamentalists", as much as some love a good persecution story.

It is not my job, or anyone's job, to explain to you why a blog post doesn't make sense. I have absolutely no interest in dealing with your Quixotic issue of "evolutionary psychology", beyond pointing out the obvious point that your source's arguments have not managed to convince many in relevant fields.

You're perfectly entitled to enter into the debate, provided you pay the toll of working to a relevant level of expertise. I would not call the fact you've argued with a mathematician and written a blog enough to reassure anyone that their argument is sound.

From what I've seen of your contributions to issues that I do have an interest in, ancient history and textual criticism, you are quite often the victim of your own sweeping generalizations or fringe opinions.

Oh, lots of people , from Stephen Jay Gould to Susannah Varmmuza and even Jerry Coyne's grad student, the eminent geneticist and writer H. Allen Orr have documented Darwinian Fundamentalism as a reality and a real force determining the course of evolutionary biology.

What "fringe opinions" would those be?

I'm not sure those people are saying what you're saying. It seems to me that you're saying Darwinian fundamentalism is a dogmatic assertion that natural selection controls everything, end of discussion. Fine. But you're opposing them with people who you seem to believe agree with your total rejection of natural selection as myth-making narrative. This does not seem to be the case.

If the assumptions above are correct, you're setting up a dichotomy between two extremes, one of which is sneeringly referred to as a form of fundamentalism, and the other of which doesn't actually exist.

Gould, for certain, made absolutely clear that he held the view that adaptation is a fundamental driver of evolution, and that natural selection drives adaptation. Varmuza seems to say the same. Orr certainly does too.

I certainly didn't say that Gould and Lewontin agreed with my skepticism of natural selection, I stated that, clearly, in a comment here about Lewontin, that I don't think either suspected that his and Gould's skepticism about evolutionary psychology would have lead someone who agreed with them, reading more about natural selection as it's presented by entirely orthodox Darwinists, the rational type as well as the fundamentalists, could, eventually, find himself in the same position as St. George Mivert in the 1870s. Although he was a total convert to Darwinism, on attending lectures given by Darwin's closest associate, Thomas Huxley, he found that the more he knew about it the less convincing it was to him. That's what happened when I read entirely conventional scientists, including Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley (both Thomas and Julian) Karl Pearson, A.R. Wallace, Fischer, and a host of others right up to E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and, heavens help us, Daniell Dennett. I think it's merely a conventionalized framing that is more or less required of all biologists if they hope to get work and grants to do research in this area. I think chance events, things like genetic drift are far more likely to be both real and powerful determinants in the creation of new species. Both would operate on any individuals that would be "selected for" or against due to any genetic traits, especially chance, as well as those who would be "selected against" under the framing of natural selection. Even if it were there, it would be so weak a force, as Lewontin said, that mere chance would probably drown it out. In the hands of the hard cases, such as Richard Dawkins, it becomes mathematically impossible and even contradictory of other aspects of conventional Darwinist holdings. Not to mention, at times, seeming incredible on the basis of things like the speed of sound and distances of predators and their possible prey. You can read more about that at the link I posted on one of these comments.

Feet might have been developed because bigger predators were chasing smaller fish into shallow waters where they were safe. They remained in the shallow waters for generations and their fins got stronger and developed into something that allowed them to leave the water for longer and longer periods of time, like the so called walking Asian carp, and they lost their gills.
There you go another "theory" for evolution. Stories posited by scientists have the same qualities as other creation stories. Often there is more information but in the end a leap of faith in the conclusions of the scientists (high priests) is necessary to complete the story.

but for scientists the stories are based on evidence, what is more likely than not, what is proven in similar species. On PBS a documentary called 'your inner fish' is a good example. When religious stories were written they only knew what they knew at the time. The 'gaps' were much larger and they filled them with fantastic stories completely unbelievable today by rational people. That's the main difference between religion and science, science did not stop in the first century.

Historical fiction, the good stuff, is based on evidence.

You know absolutely nothing about religion if you think religion stopped at the first century. Typical of atheists, you are entirely ignorant about what you're babbling about yet apparently hold yourself to be a genius.

religion didnt stop (unfortunately), but the writing of the texts stopped with the new testament.

Studies show atheists to be better educated and higher IQ's than believers. The cure for religion is education.

Oh, how odd, I just bought a book by James Cone written within the last twenty years. If I had it with me I'd check the date on it. I'm planning on reading one by David Bentley Hart written a couple of years ago. Seems someone failed to notify them and thousands of other writers.

Passing by the quaintness of someone who still believes in the validity of the pseudo-scientific hoax that I.Q. testing is,

You might like to look up the article in the Atlantic Montly that was entitiled:

It Turns Out Colleges Aren't Actually Atheist Factories

For people born after 1960, having a college degree doesn't cause religious disaffiliation—young, highly educated people are more likely to identify with a faith, according to a new study.

http://qz.com/416973/social...
http://www.secularism.org.u...
http://www.medicaldaily.com...

To start with, any meta analysis of studies is only as good as the studies it includes in its numbers crunching, and a number of the studies included in that study have been notable for not being particularly good studies. You don't have to take my word for that, you can take the word of an atheist and sociologist, Frank Feredi said in an article in The Independent, "Atheists are more intelligent than religious people? That's ‘sciencism’ at its worst"

"It has just been announced that a meta-analysis of 63 ‘scientific’ studies have concluded that people of faith are less intelligent than atheists. Outwardly the study, titled 'The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposed Explanations', published in the Personality and Social Psychology Review, bears all the hallmarks of a rigorous scientific monograph. Atheists looking for an argument can now say “research shows”. However experience suggests that the relationship between “research shows” and the truth is often as dodgy as that between the claim ‘God said’ and what actually occurred."

And as Jordan Modge pointed out in her article on this meta-analysis, Mentioning Furedi:

" Plus, in spite of presenting a sweeping meta-analysis, the study's authors relied on a limited range of research, as they admit in the paper. They primarily address Protestants, in the U.S. (This highlights a common problem in psychological research, which is heavily weighted toward a particular population that is rather WEIRD—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic—when compared to the rest of the world.

The most significant issue comes with the very question these researchers chose to explore. The way they framed their study suggests an implicit bias in the way scholars think about religion. "Secular researchers are likely to discover what they already suspect which is a co-relation between their values and high levels of intelligence," noted atheist sociologist Frank Furerdi. He questioned the value of such a project, where "social science research turns into advocacy research."

Given my experience with atheists casually rejecting meta-analyses of much better quality studies with data much less prone to being a reflection of bias, under much more rigorously controlled conditions, I'd say that it's no wonder you buy this one. Atheists are quite as capable of deciding what they believe and what they won't on the basis of liking it. That goes for sociologists, such as Barry Kosmin who invented the category "nones" so he wouldn't have to admit what his own data showed, that religious affiliation is the norm in the United States and most developed countries. And he, as a member of the board of CFI and one of its paid speakers has a conflict of interest that should have led other sociologists, etc. to reject his category, yet it is widely and illogically used.

I have, actually, studied these issues, as atheists bring them up. In almost every case their contentions are anything from inaccurate to total nonsense if not fraud.

And of course you have no bias the other way?
I dont believe that study. I was raised Baptist i know where fanaticism comes from.