WIP

This is just too stupid for words! A prison rape is still a rape, not part of that category of false accusation of rape anyway. And he would not be raped in prison because he was a rapist anyway, it would happen because he was perceived as weak, low status, or because of racial or ethnic reasons; so it still has no part of the same conversation. Whatever shame a man might feel for enduring false accusation of any crime for that matter, pales in comparison to what someone....usually a woman or girl, would feel being forced into sex against their will, often being violently assaulted first for anything regarded as uncooperative....and this happens in those date-rape cases too that some guys just want to blow off as the guy going a little bit too far. Many rape victims are physically injured during the assault, sometimes with permanent injuries that require surgery afterwards. And then, we have to examine the psychological traumas that accompany the physical injuries and fear of death that accompany a rape assault. Claiming an equivalence between rape and rape accusation is similar to the anti-circumcision advocates who claim male circumcision is equally harmful and as traumatic as female genital mutilation; and every guy who's been circumcised (including your's truly) knows that is complete bullshit also! What you and others are doing, including the OP and following posts on this thread is legitimizing rape culture by presenting rape as something of a minor inconvenience for women. Some the statistics I've come across since misogyny went into the doldrums a week or so ago are: 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, 9 of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003, 3% of American men — or 1 in 33 — have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. In 2003, 1 in every ten rape victims were male. 15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12.............more details at http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims Effects of Rapevictims of sexual assault are: 3 times more likely to suffer from depression. 6 times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. 13 times more likely to abuse alcohol. 26 times more likely to abuse drugs. 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide. http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims I'd be interested in seeing how the stats for the falsely accused match up! And worth noting a point I made previously that the OP considers trivial: numbers of falsely accused pale in comparison to the numbers who are victims of rape, so the size and scale of the problem also makes it more pressing concern than false accusation....which as we have noted time and time again, could easily be dealt with by keeping court proceedings confidential until after the trial....and that would be the case for all of those other examples of false accusation. For what it's worth, false accusation of murder is certainly more serious than false accusation of rape! Another interesting point about how the social climate normalizes rape and sexual assault: A lot of people accuse feminists of thinking that all men are rapists. That’s not true. But do you know who think all men are rapists? Rapists do. They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again. Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape............................... http://dbzer0.com/blog/feminists-dont-think-all-men-are-rapists-rapists-do Frat Survey Asks: ‘If You Could Rape Someone, Who Would it Be?’ Rape in the US military: America's dirty little secret from the U.K. SUN: Rape simulator sold on Amazon Players start the game stalking and sexually assaulting a mother on an underground station. They then move on to attack her two young daughters – described in the game as "virgin schoolgirls". And reviews describe "tears glistening in the young girl's eyes" as one is attacked. Players can also enter 'freeform mode' where they join up with other players to gang rape women. And incredibly players are rewarded for forcing victims to have abortions. One review said: "If she does become pregnant you're supposed to force her to get an abortion, otherwise she gets more and more visibly pregnant each time you have sex. "If you allow the child to be born then the woman will throw you in front of a train!" The game was created by the Japanese production house Illusion, also responsible for the games "Battle Raper" and "Artificial Girl". mpu A spokesman for the company said: "We believe there is no problem with the software, which has cleared the domestic ratings of an ethics watchdog body." Amazon has now withdrawn the game after complaints from users – deeming it to be inappropriate. Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2235915/Rape-simulator-sold-on-Amazon.html#ixzz2Lka7PugT At this point, it's worth pausing and asking if all of you who advocate for complete open and uncensored approach to porn are also okay with this? And I'll end with this link: A female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire Most of these links came from a quick search of Reddit, and I could have filled a whole page if I had the time or inclination; but I think the basic point that rape IS more serious than false criminal accusations is conclusive, and attempts to minimize the effects of rape and attack the motives and lifestyle of the accused are evidence that our society at large, which doesn't like hearing about it for many individual reasons, is either directly or accidentally fostering a rape culture that we thought was ending with reforms 30 to 40 years ago, but is still with us and has a number of reactionary forces at work trying to bring it back with a vengeance!

Regardless of his credentials, it is a chicken move to call himself an "agnostic" on macro-evolution...which should be noted is not a term recognized by other biologists in his field. The separation of evolutionary theory into macro and micro was a creationist fallback position taken by the more intelligent and scientifically literate creationists to accommodate observed evolutionary changes that were easily observable, while attempting to rule out the impact of changes over longer periods of time. In other words, according every serious commentator on evolution that I've heard says that "macro" evolution is just the series of "micro" evolutionary steps that have taken place over time. There is no categorical difference. I would consider the attempt to make this separation similar to conservative social theorists including the evolutionary psychologists like Stephen Pinker, who created something they call "equity feminists" as opposed to "gender feminists," totally different topic, but another example of how motivated ideologues create fictitious divisions to support their theories. That blog entry cited is a waste of time because it presents a false impression that Dawkins and E.O. Wilson (who had diverging theories on the forces behind evolution) were claiming they had conclusive evidence for their divergent approaches -- that for Dawkins, is the evolutionary process is a matter of competition between selfish replicators (genes) trying to produce as many copies as possible, or Wilson's theory that genecentric evolutionary theory could not explain evolutionary changes adequately that benefit species and especially entire groups of species such as colony insects, which act for the benefit of the colony, not individual goals of any kind. So, he and later David Sloan Wilson (no relation) developed a competing theory to Dawkins referred to as group level or multilevel selection theory. Not only are there differences unmentioned in that post, but neither is the fact that these biologists see their role as attempting to explain how evolution works, not claiming that they have proof how. If anything, Dawkins gets the most criticism by his peers as being one who uses his standing and reputation in the community of biology to aggressively try to knock down competing theories to his selfish gene theory of evolution. I would have taken a critique that mentioned the differences a little more seriously than one who pretends they are all part of some anti-God conspiracy! And it's even further off topic in an already totally off topic theme here, but even regarding their thinking and attitudes on religion and secularism, the Wilsons and Dawkins are poles apart from each other. But, the author of that piece might not even be aware of this fact. edit note: just wanted to mention in case you noticed, that this new stupid system here won't let me post now if there are any images in the post, including quoted posts; so I had to delete the emoticon that was in your post, if that matters or changes context.

The movie mentioned part of the role that the oil and auto companies -- combined together as the Highway Lobby -- have had in forcing government policy to trash rail and transit systems and build highways for them (in the Eisenhower 50's, the interstate system was built under the pretense of "national defense") and pretty much established most of the changing pattern of life after WWII when the construction of highways enabled the modern urban lifestyle where people live miles away from where they work and drive the highway every day to and from work. And that gets to where I don't see huge advantages with this traditional liberal environmental solution of switching from gasoline to battery power! Certainly on balance, I'm sure battery-powered cars would be an improvement, but those improvements would likely turn out to be marginal, and may even set us up for even larger back end costs of high tech that are mostly dumped on impoverished third world nations today....such as in West African countries, where desperate locals do the dirty job of handling and salvaging our computer devices for usable materials....and of course exposing themselves to toxic metals and chemicals in the process. Depending on how automotive lithium-ion batteries are constructed -- remember -- they are not all the same! The ones I've heard proposed for new electric cars are lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide, or NMC batteries. These have longer life than lithium batteries used for cellphones and the like, but lower energy densities, and although they are considered safer, but it's hard to imagine a world with millions of discarded NMC batteries without exposure to cobalt poisoning! And then there is the other problem associated with Big Green environmental solutions of using new technologies and materials to substitute our way out of having to change lifestyles in the coming decades....all of the batteries, and the new high-tech windmills and solar panels require high amounts of rare earth elements that are not only "rare" but also difficult to extract and refine without creating environmental disasters, because rare earths are usually combined with other, very toxic elements like mercury. Much of the reason why China almost corners the rare earths markets today is because....at least up till now, environment and poisoning locals hasn't been a top priority over there! This sort of "green" future may be a matter of choosing toxic metals poisoning over increased carbon levels. Why not examine the option that will eventually have to be taken at some point in the future: start unwinding car culture, suburban culture, the disproportionate spending on highways, and start putting the money back into refurbishing the rail systems and urban transit now so that people living in the future without cars to drive them around, will still have access to transportation and not be stuck in their little villages as people were prior to the Industrial Era?

The Bloomberg article notes that the F-35 project is "too big to kill." Noting that Lockheed (like every other weapons contractor) spreads their production throughout the Lower 48, what happens is almost every podunck district has House Rep who can be leveraged to support the project or face nasty campaign ads blaming him for "killing local jobs." And that of course is added leverage to go with all the bribes and kickbacks that the Congressman will cash in on after leaving office. But what's in it for Canada? Why is the Conservative Government so slavishly devoted to this project? The only thing I can't think of is that Harper's devotion to the Neocons goes beyond agreeing with any and every U.S. foreign policy initiative to include arms purchases also.

What's delusional is not recognizing the connection between digging stored solar energy out of the ground and burning it and the resulting increases in greenhouse gas levels. Or recognizing the connection between rising greenhouse gas levels and rising global average temperatures: The average combined global land and ocean surface temperature for January 2013 tied with 1995 as the ninth warmest January since records began in 1880, at 0.54°C (0.97°F) above the 20th century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F). http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/1 Or recognizing that rising global average land and sea temperatures will precipitate a mass extinction that will likely take out the human race along with those presently on the endangered species lists. p.s. Start leaving it in the ground now! it's not going anywhere, and future generations may have some needs for petroleum products also. Why use everything up now and nothing for the future?

If there is anyone here familiar with The Bugle Podcast by John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman, their most recent episode: Bugle 224 – Papal Proton Packshas everything I needed to hear about the Pope's resignation...begins at 6:05 "The Audacity Of Pope"

Do you doubt that carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas also? We learned this over 40 years ago in science class. I suppose the periods in Earth history when CO2 levels spike just happen to coincide with glacier-melting and mass extinctions.

The Liberal Party is option one of the banks, and option two for every other corporation, so I don't see where it is all that relevant which party received the most in corporate money. Recall that the Conservatives were the ones who wanted to end public financing of election spending. If that was allowed, The Conservatives would have the biggest advantage, since they are the party that goes the whole 9 yards prostituting themselves in the interests of the big money. Just because they aren't always rewarded for their efforts....remember that the money goes to candidates that win elections, and up till recent years the Liberals were considered the natural governing party federally. And, I haven't checked, but I'd be willing to bet that your observations about the Liberals getting more money than the Federal Conservatives is out of date and no longer the case.

> A Republican health care plan....ha ha ha. Yes, Republican! The first time the concept of an individual mandate to force everyone to buy private health insurance appeared was when Bob Dole proposed it back in 93 - when he was Senate Majority Leader, as the pragmatic alternative to Hillary Care....when Bill put his wife in charge of crafting a national health care plan. Clinton's plan was employer-mandated purchasing of private health insurance for employees, so the reasonable Republican alternative was to offer nationwide, comprehensive health insurance; but make the individual responsible for the requirement to buy from coverage from private health insurance companies.....and Dole may have been the last of the now extinct species known as "pragmatic" conservative Republicans.....as since that time, Republican candidates check their brains at the door and take marching orders directly from ALEC and associated think tank-sponsored lobbyists. Conservatives Sowed Idea of Health Care Mandate, Only to Spurn It Later Okay, you live in Canada right? What do we have in this country? If Obama was even remotely close to being a socialist he would have started expanding Medicare with the Medicare buy-in option...which would have been that creeping socialism you are so afraid of! But, he didn't did he? The Medicare Buy In proposals polled higher than any of the fumbling private health mandates that were offered. They did pretend to offer an optional Medicare buy in, but that was a fraud, as a handful of thinking liberals perceived at the time in Washington, since they noticed that the Obama Administration wasn't doing anything to explain or promote a Medicare Buy In option....which was feared by the health insurance companies that Obama has been collecting money from....since that evil government institution of Medicare could have offered health insurance cheaper than the corporate conglomerates on the private market.....so much for free enterprize! Who's idea was it to change the quote feature on this board? This is bullshit!

I would agree with you except for the fact that billionaire donors buying liberals is not support for the "left," it's just co-opting the left. As we can see with the way Obama has carried on the war and military spending policies of the Bush Administration, offered no real banking and finance reform, set up a Republican health care plan rather than expanding Medicare or even offering the Medicare buy-in option that was dangled in front of the public, and last but not least, will soon give the go-ahead to finishing the Keystone XL Pipeline after a little gnashing about to pretend to really being more concerned about the environment rather than money. So, what is really a left wing cause that is supported by any billionaires? Even when they appear to be acting on altruistic reasons like the Gates Foundation, we find that their concept of education reform means that they mean privatizing public schools as charter schools to be run by one of the tentacles of their corporate branches: http://Bill and Melinda Gates's Foundation Helps ALEC Undercut Public Education

Since everything else that America does finds its way to Canada, I would really be concerned about catching this disease also. I'm sure that Harper is doing everything he can possibly think of to take the shackles off of campaign spending and outright bribing of politicians that is happening now in the U.S. I don't believe that the U.S. is a real, functioning democratic state anymore; because a place where money is the legal equivalent to free speech, is a land where those with the most money have the biggest megaphone, and likewise, a system where politicians can retire and immediately call themselves lobbyists to cash in on the IOU's that they have earned while doing the bidding of corporate masters while in office, is a system where the will of the majority gets overruled by the minority with most of the money. It's the money that makes the difference between plutocracy and democracy.

Since you've framed your anti-native argument around the notion of western cultural superiority, I am going to challenge you on that basis rather than the legal arguments that everyone else is focusing on, because it was this hubris of being morally, racially and culturally superior to the first nations peoples of the Americas that led to all of the genocides and strategies to marginalize and slowly exterminate anyone claiming first nations status today. You will learn too late that you should have listened to those people who were trying to cling to the old ways with their outmoded ideas like sustainability - not drawing more from nature than can be provided indefinitely. The 7 billion+ people living on this planet today are within years or at most - decades from using up all of the essential non-renewable resources that are necessary to keep what we call civilization functioning. Eventually, the capital and extraction costs of retrieving essential non-renewables reaches the point where the costs of extraction, refining and development overtake the utility benefits of having the resource. What happens then? For a detailed look at what is and what is not already reaching or already past peak resource exploitation, I would suggest taking a look at a book that provides a detailed examination from the reports provided by mining and other resource industry materials available for public access by an engineer named Christopher Clugston: http://www.nnrscarcity.com/ Those who believe we can innovate and substitute our way endlessly into the future need to take a hard look at the numbers. Failure to do so is delusional thinking and living in denial by those who are the most emotionally invested in faith in human progress. Even if we set aside the overtaking of renewable resources and increasing environmental damage caused by modern consumer-driven industrialism, an objective examination of inputs and outputs reveals that what you consider being on the "right side" and traditionalists being on the "wrong side," is a way of life that didn't even get started until less than 300 years ago when the enlightenment project began, and through human hubris and overconfidence, has almost used up its necessary resources and turned nature into a giant toilet that is already backing up and eroding the quality of life. In a matter of decades or even years, even the richest and most isolated people who have enriched themselves from this system won't be able to protect themselves from the destruction and inevitable collapse of civilization. In this inevitable future, who is on the right side of history: the greedy, hedonistic exploiters of nature or the simple, backward peoples of the world trying to figure out how to live again in harmony with nature?

First, I don't see any moral equivalency between funding environmental activists, social justice and peace advocates, compared to funding climate change denial & assorted pro-oil propaganda, neocon war strategies working in the interests of military weapons contractors, and right wing reactionary religious movements that are anti-science, want to roll back women's rights and even civil rights for minorities. Where is the moral equivalence first of all? If this is what George Soros is putting his money on, then he is on the right side of human history even if it's by accident rather than design. And I don't consider the Green Capitalist organizations that advocate piddling, tinkering with the dials of modern economic life to be doing much better than oil-funded interests that want to drive the world into extinction as a business strategy. It's more a matter of how long it takes to get there. Real radicals take on capitalist economics directly and advocate changes that will be necessary to adapt to a no-growth future. Taking a long term view, the plutocrats who have gone on an aggressive campaign to damage and marginalize liberal reformers of the system have set the course for a future violent confrontation between the few with most of the money and resources, and the many who are waiting to be organized into populist movements that will likely react with violence to overthrow present day entrenched interests.

In recent years in American politics, there has been an uneasy sense of suspicion about how the oddball assortment of right wing think tanks, pundits, talk show hosts, politicians and bloggers all seem to fall in line so quickly....even when it's issues that they showed little concern for previously: like climate change, Israel and fundamentalist Christianity. Well, now we have at least part of the answer: Donor's Trust . And think back a couple of years to all of the spinning and wailing by the likes of Glenn Beck about the Tides Foundation funding a conspiracy to take away our oil and we see that the right follows their tried and true strategy of accusing their enemies of doing what they have been doing all along! And they have a lot more money to do it with compared to what the middle of the road liberal activists funded by George Soros or Bill Gates: Founded in 1999, Donors Trust (and an affiliated group, Donors Capital Fund) has raised north of $500 million and doled out $400 million to more than 1,000 conservative and libertarian groups, according to Whitney Ball, the group's CEO. Donors Trust allows wealthy contributors who want to donate millions to the most important causes on the right to do so anonymously, essentially scrubbing the identity of those underwriting conservative and libertarian organizations. Wisconsin's 2011 assault on collective bargaining rights? Donors Trust helped fund that. ALEC, the conservative bill mill? Donors Trust supports it. The climate deniers at the Heartland Institute? They get Donors Trust money, too. Donor Trust's increasingly important role in the conservative movement is perhaps most evident on the issue of climate change. The group has funded much of the climate-change denier movement—bankrolling, for instance, the Heartland Institute, a torchbearer in the denier movement. (It recently compared those who believe in climate change to terrorists.) At the same time, climate-denier funding from family and corporate foundations—say, Exxon's foundation—has declined, according to Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University who studies the climate change "counter-movement."..................................................... Across the conservative spectrum, Brulle found that Donors Trust is playing an ever larger role. In 2003, Donors Trust money was the source of 3 percent of the funding for more than 100 conservative groups whose financial records Brulle has studied. By 2010, that percentage had grown to 24 percent. Brulle surmises that financial underwriters of the climate counter-movement and the conservative agenda writ large give through Donors Trust to wipe their fingerprints off donations to Heartland and others. "We just have this great big unknown out there about where all the money is coming from," he says. And, in the years to come, the unknown will only get bigger. Yep, there getting bigger all right! This is what MJ's Andy Kroll found last week: Here's what the latest filing shows us: Donors Trust is only getting bigger. In 2011, the group received more than $39 million in donations, an increase of $10 million from 2010, and handed out almost $30 million—both record sums. As in years past, recipients of Donors Trust cash include the biggest players in conservative politics today: the David Koch-chaired Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Cato Institute, the FreedomWorks Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, and the influential State Policy Network. Like all of its previous IRS filings, Donors Trust's 2011 paperwork does not include a shred of information about the identity of Donors Trust's bankrollers. That's partly why the nonprofit is increasingly popular: At a time when conservative donors find themselves singled out by political candidates and the media, Donors Trust offers anonymity. When Donors Trust money lands at Heritage or Cato, it doesn't include the name of the original source of the money; it simply says Donors Trust. Increasingly, as this latest filing shows, conservative donors are choosing to funnel their money through Donors Trust instead of giving it themselves, meaning more of the money fueling conservative politics is draped in secrecy. "We just have this great big unknown out there about where all the money is coming from," Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University who studies money in the conservative movement, recently told me. an article in the Guardian with information provided by Greenpeace US on Donor's Trust's contributions to funding climate change denial show just how important they have become. for some reason the edit says I can't post the graph shown in the article, click the link below if you want to see it: Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science The problem today is that journalism in the U.S. is almost so firmly in the pocket of the plutocrats that I have to wonder how long investigative journalism that directly challenges them will be able to continue?

I wouldn't say all religions bring out the best in people, but those that do have the advantage of combining tradition, ritual and even the subtle coercion of being part of the group, to motivate people towards a stronger commitment than just talking about doing good deeds.

If any belief system can be called a religion then antitheism can be a religion. My problem with atheist movements promoting atheism is that it is packaged with the humanist tradition that we are making the world a better place as time goes on. The evidence today is that our world is more polluted, with more people, and less resources that would be needed to support a sustainable civilized world. But new atheists are overwhelmingly techno-optimists and cannot even rationally consider a future with declining returns that will unwind much if not most of what we have developed. In order to present a vision that everyone will be happier once they have thrown off the shackles of their religious beliefs, the new atheists have to present a humanist utopia that is becoming more unlikely as the years go by. Realistic atheists who see hard times ahead, say 'go with whatever gets you through the night,' and refrain from passing judgment on what others believe unless those beliefs present clear examples of harm.

Because this like every other issue, is not an either/or situation. Which is what you seem to look for on every issue you comment on! A nation's currency can lose value if it is printing money....or more correctly in the modern banking system adding too much credit too fast, or a nation that is a major net importer of oil like the U.S. will see a drop in currency value if more money has to be spent on oil imports. It's not an either/or situation and NO, the U.S. Dollar decline cannot be detached from the increase in oil prices. Going back in time, the economic malaise that was pervasive through the 70's just happened to coincide with the increase in oil prices, as the mostly debt-fueled economic growth of the 80's - attributed to Reagan and Thatcher, just happen to coincide with the sharp drop in oil prices when non-OPEC nations like Mexico and England/Norway started becoming major oil producers. And I wouldn't blame all of the present debt loads and economic ruin on George Bush II's unbridled war spending either, which doubled the U.S. national debt. The increase in oil prices preceded the slowdown in imports and the banking meltdown five years ago. And I have no doubt that the Obama Administration is banking on Bakken shale oil and tar sands oil imports to save the economy again, regardless of whatever empty slogans he spouted in his State Of The Union Address....so as for the other thread, Obama is going to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.....I'd be willing to put money on it! http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9633#.USKBrGe1MfS

I ought to check in on my own threads more often! Thanks for the links. I wonder if the sensitivity to low frequency sound might be part of the reason why ghost sightings are actually less frequent today than years ago. My father grew up on the South Shore of the Gaspe during the 1920's, when that area was still rural farmland with very few cars. Most people were still using horse&buggy even through the 30's. He often mentioned that he saw ghosts, as did everyone else down there when he was young.....haunted houses, ghosts in the woods, along the road, even a ghost ship...that likely every fisherman on the East Coast saw, since it was such a widely told and reported sighting. But, in his later years after he retired and would go down to visit the old people that were still alive there, he didn't hear many ghost stories from the younger people living there. That area of Gaspe isn't exactly busy by our standards today, but it's not the same as it would have been before cars, tourists, electricity etc.. The other story I wish I could find is a comment tossed off by Swiss neuroscientist - Olaf Blanke a few years ago, when he published a report on discovering that he could induce out-of-body experiences in one of his patients...a woman who suffered from epilepsy, by applying a low current electrical stimulation to the right angular gyrus region of the cortex -- which is now considered essential for maintaining our spatial sense, telling us that our consciousness is contained in our physical bodies....otherwise, disabling the right angular gyrus allows us to believe we are floating out of our bodies up towards the ceiling etc.. Anyway, the comment Blanke mentioned briefly was that stimulating the angular gyrus region on the left hemisphere....associated with our math and analytical thinking abilities....would induce a sensation of another "presence" in the room. Like another person was standing near the woman, but just behind her or out of range for her to see. It would be interesting to see if this part of the brain has some connection to ghost stories, but I couldn't find anything so I can only assume no one's bothered to do any research on it yet aside from the anecdotes.

I consider myself an atheist because I don't believe in putting even a weak supernatural stamp (purpose or intelligence designing the universe etc.) on the great existential questions.....sort of if I don't find an acceptable answer, I'll leave it blank until I find one. And, for the moment, I would say the apparent chaos and waste made apparent through cosmology (this is assuming that the purpose of a universe is to make life flourish) make me skeptical that the universe is designed. That said, I became disenchanted with organizing around atheism in recent years. This has been one of the biggest shifts in my thinking in recent years. Setting up an atheist organization means bringing in people with radically different political and social ideas and trying to put them together in a group. The most successful atheist or freethought organizations I've found are in places where being an unbeliever or even a non-Christian is difficult. One group I visited was the Atlanta Freethought Society -- which I made a side trip to take in one of their meetings when my wife and I were visiting one of my cousins living in the Atlanta area. Atlanta Freethought is large enough to support their own headquarters, and a very active group. I suspect a lot of the apparent harmony comes from the fact that the group is so similar: white, liberal, university graduates, mostly professionals -- they seem to have a lot more in common than just being atheists! Throw in a bunch of libertarians and a side dish of marxists and I'd like to see how well everything goes! And that is the problem, because if I compare my experiences locally with atheist/humanist freethought to attending the local Unitarian Church...which likely is about 25% atheist/agnostic, it's a completely different experience. Because to be a U.U., you can have just about any metaphysical belief there is, but it has to be in harmony with the Seven Principles that form the core of U.U. ideology. Most religions have a combination of adherence to a metaphysical dogma and adherence to a moral code. The U.U.'s just have the moral code that's mandatory, while the new atheists are trying to form an organization with no set moral code, just a system structured around non-belief; and that's why I suspect the only situations where it works are groups like Atlanta Freethought and this large Atheist Community of Austin, which produces two or three regular podcasts and Youtube videos, where the group is persecuted or shunned by mostly fundamentalists and the group is in agreement on basic moral philosophy. Outside of these situations, the only way you keep a group together around atheism is being hyper-antireligion, like new atheist writers, bloggers, and online communities, where almost all the focus is on condemning religion...mostly Christianity and Islam, for anything and everything that's wrong in the world.

Haven't posted on this thread in so long I forget what I wrote and when I posted it....not that it really matters! Insert name here ___________, and the usual band of Neocons call _________ a supporter of terrorism and a threat to Israel, and the U.S. must support local ________ rebels who support democracy, but need our help -- money and guns -- to replace _________'s dictator with democracy. Only after _________'s dictator is overthrown will the people in __________ have a chance to live in a free, democratic society. Doesn't matter if _________is filled in with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Mali, same diagnosis, same prescription....unless it's a friendly dictator that is on good terms with U.S. and British oil companies and the U.S. Military Forces....in that circumstance, regime change would cause instability. Well, if no one's noticed yet, it's been one year since regime change removed Muammar Qadaffi from power in Libya, and aside from the sacking of the fake American embassy in Bengazi, and the killing of the fake ambassador, there has been nothing said in mainstream media about Libya....so how are they doing now? Well, a quick search through what will show up in a term search reveals that the Neocon spinmasters have made a full court press to be everywhere and anywhere to try to put the best face on the Libyan Debacle, which has left Libya after Gadaffi as a fractured nation that will never function again without foreign occupation.....which may have been the goal all along anyway....it's the oil that matters, not who happens to live there! One of the great, unmentioned stories of the past year that you will not find outside of alternative media is the blowback from the Libyan Invasion, that led to the killings and forced exile of hundreds of thousands of SubSahara African workers, and seeded the new wars in Mali, which is already spreading over its borders into neighbouring regimes. Anyway, this is from Voltairenet, which Neocons won't like, but it's a more honest source than everything else compromised and influenced by oil interests: Over seven months, U.S. and NATO air forces carried out 30,000 missions of which 10,000 were offensive air strikes, using more than 40,000 bombs and missiles. Additionally, Special Forces were infiltrated into Libya, among them thousands of easily concealed Qatari commandos. They also financed and armed tribal groups hostile to the Tripoli government and supported Islamic groups what only months earlier were watchlisted as terrorists. The operation in its entirety was directed by Washington, according to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, first under the rubric of Africom and then of NATO, but always under direct U.S. command. The Libyan state was thus demolished and Gadhafi himself assassinated, while the whole undertaking was being exalted as an “inspiring revolution,” as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta described it, that the United States are proud to have played a role in "by creating a unique alliance against tyranny and for freedom." The results are now clear to see. The central state is fragmenting. Cyrenaica, where two-thirds of Libyan oil is located, declared itself a semi-autonomous region with, at its head, Ahmed al-Zubair al Senussi. The choice has symbolic significance. He is the great grandson of King Idris, placed on the throne by Great Britain and the United States. In return, through the 1950’s and 60’s, he granted them military bases and oilfields, concessions that ended when the king was deposed in 1969 and ones which his great grandson will not hesitate to restore. Fezzan, a region that also has significant oilfields, also wants to be independent. All that remains to Tripolitania are the oilfields bordering the coasts of the capital, Tripoli. The big petroleum companies, to whom Gadhafi’s Libya conceded only narrow profit margins, are now obtaining optimal conditions for themselves by playing regional and local chiefs off against each other. Here's a map of Libya, showing the districts mentioned above. Cyrenaica's capital is Benghazi....that's why there was an embassy or consulate there that was more important than Tripoli....it's all about the oil! Unlike Libya, Syria is not resource rich, but Iraq and Iran are! And Syria is of such great strategic interest because the present Assad Regime is a strong ally of Iran and a link through Iraq to Lebanon and Hezbollah. The U.S. is already tipping the hat that they screwed up the regime change in Iraq of Bush II, so Obama is trying to get it right this time! That's why every once in a while you will hear of terrorist attacks and bombings again in Baghdad and the attacks on refugees and vehicles on the highway that connects Iraq with Syria. The attacks are not coming from the mostly mercenaries hired by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to overthrow Assad, most of it is the revival of that so called "Awakening Councils" -- the Sunnis who supported Saddam Hussein and carried out terrorist attacks until they were bought off and employed to fight Al Qaeda In Iraq etc. The difference between Syria and Libya, is that Gadaffi didn't have many allies aside from Africa. He was pretty much an outcast among Arab States, and in the deal made with the U.S., he ended the exploratory nuclear program and ties with Russia. But this time, it's not just Iran that's not willing to let Assad fall, it's also Russia that is not going to just sign off to this regime change. One thing for sure: if Assad falls, one year later Syria will be a fractured wasteland like Libya!

Yes, a lot of charitable giving goes to religious proselytizing - like handing out bibles in Haiti after the earthquake. But, there still is an apparent gap in giving nevertheless. It could be emotional or theological blackmail....after all, even if you're not church member, when the plate gets passed around, there is small degree of coercion to follow suit. Or does the difficulty that atheists have in organizing reflect more selfish attitudes and lower levels of trust and responsibility to others? To be specific, I don't know if you, or any other atheists who comment here frequently, have ever belonged to an atheist/humanist group, but of the two prominent organizations in Canada: 1. The Canadian Humanist Association collapsed in a financial scandal before I even had a chance to join, and 2. it was pretty much the same thing with the Ontario branch of Center For Inquiry around the time I quit because this new CFI branch did little or nothing outside the Toronto area, which left many suspicious that the leader was just collecting money and doing little if nothing else. But, that's for others to worry about; I already let my membership lapse by that time and gave up trying to help the local atheist/humanist meetup group gain traction. So, maybe third time's a charm! But the anecdotal evidence would be that those who identify with atheism and humanism, are not only disinterested in belonging to real organizations, they're also stingier and less trustworthy. It wasn't just a money issue either! I got tired of broken promises from people who wanted times and locations of meetups changed, and then didn't bother showing up anyway! And I wasn't even the leader of the group. But I did understand why he effectively gave up on the group and didn't even bother with meetups himself. Autistic people are less empathetic since in the extreme cases, they are unable to develop a theory of mind that allows them to be aware of other minds. Higher functioning autistics can learn to adapt to the social world, but there would still be an empathy gap. Worth noting that empathy isn't always used for good purposes. Many highly empathetic people use their understanding of others to manipulate them. And in some cases, some subjects are so highly empathetic that they suffer permanent depression because of their awareness of suffering of others never subsides. Aside from the autistic spectrum disorders and education levels, a strong correlate between atheism...or at least abandoning organized religions and a high level of introspection is noted in a recent study that I read a couple of weeks ago and can't find right now. I tried a quick term search but I'm not coming up with anything. It seems to be a reasonable conclusion that someone who is introspective and prone to self-examination is also more likely to examine dogmas and core beliefs that they have been following, than the extravert who focuses outward and is less likely to examine their own motivations and beliefs. The problem I have with taking Sam Harris seriously is that when he speaks in hypotheticals, his ideas sound reasonable, but then when you look at how he, himself applies them to circumstances in real life, all his lofty reasoning crumbles! And he is using science to try to prove his pre-existing beliefs...not the other way around. I heard him admit this in an interview he did promoting the Moral Landscape, when he stated that he wanted to learn neuroscience to explain why people believe in gods and use science to refute some of the claims regarding the benefits of these beliefs. Even back when he first appeared on the scene with The End Of Faith, he got a lot of buzz for some pretty extreme statements like his hypothetical justification for the use of torture and a nuclear first strike against any Muslim nation possessing ICBM's. I didn't even notice it the first time I read End of Faith, because of the way Harris dances around and drops his trail of breadcrumbs until it was pointed out in a Chris Hedges column in Truthdig, condemning Harris, Hitchens and other Neocon pro-Iraq War new atheists. And the battle still goes on....as of 2011, but for the moment I'll skip Hedges's article written after the Norway Massacre and go to Harris's rebuttal, since the original article is linked. But look at Harris's defense! All he does is restate the portion in his book and bold the lines that he wants to emphasize: Below I present the only passage I have ever written on the subject of preventative nuclear war and the only passage that Hedges could be referring to in my work (“The End of Faith,” pages 128-129). I have taken the liberty of emphasizing some of the words that Hedges chose to ignore: It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side. I will let the reader judge whether this award-winning journalist has represented my views fairly. Well, I guess we can thank him for letting the reader be the judge, because by restating what he has already written, he condemns himself a second time! For instance, should I give a rat's ass that he has bolded the portion: " may be . Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime " when he starts the sentence with "the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own." Does he really think adding qualifiers: may be and that it would be unthinkable excuse the fact that he clearly sets up the premise that Muslims are unreasonable, suicidal enemies and will not act rationally if they had nukes? I would say the opposite is the case! That anyone, religious or atheist who follows Harris's simple, ill-informed understanding of Islam and other religions, is the most dangerous nuclear threat out there! Aside from the qualifiers, it boils down to: P1. We have nuclear weapons. P2. Islamic country has nuclear weapons. P3. Islamic country is not afraid to be nuked. Conclusion: It would be logical to nuke them first. The other thing I found disturbing about him and his simplistic, binary views on important issues is that the rebuttal reveals him to be petty and vindictive in the way he addresses the challenge from Hedges. Every time he mentions Chris Hedges by name he has to present the name with "the journalist" in some apparent shallow attempt to attack Hedges's credentials personally. Hedges was a long time foreign correspondent for the N.Y. Times....which, considering all the war zones and hot spots he reported from during those years, you would expect that this would provide a credential of experience all on its own - of someone who was actually in the middle of wars and civil strife rather than commenting on them from a university library! But Hedges also has degrees in theology and philosophy, and appears well read. I would say that, if you disagree with his opinions, you still have to take his writing seriously, rather than try to colour it with the impression that 'he's just a reporter, while I am a scientist.' When the battle first started between Hedges and Harris & Hitchens, I was not on his side. But Harris's rebuttal has to be one of the weakest, most idiotic written statements I ever read! It really lowered his credibility in my view and started me re-examining a lot of subjects and sources I was relying on. This is from Hedges's original article, and a better explanation of present day conflicts that are presented in a simplistic manner by most pundits from all sides: The battle under way in America is not between religion and science. It is not between those who embrace the rational and those who believe in biblical myth. It is not between Western civilization and Islam. The blustering televangelists and the New Atheists, the television pundits and our vaunted Middle East specialists and experts, are all part of our vast, simplistic culture of mindless entertainment. They are in show business. They cannot afford complexity. Religion and science, facts and lies, truth and fiction, are the least of their concerns. They trade insults and clichés like cartoon characters. They don masks. One wears the mask of religion. One wears the mask of science. One wears the mask of journalism. One wears the mask of the terrorism expert. They jab back and forth in predictable sound bites. It is a sterile and useless debate between bizarre subsets of American culture. Some use the scientific theory of evolution to explain the behavior and rules for complex social and political systems, and others insist that the six-day creation story in Genesis is a factual account. The danger we face is not in the quarrel between religion advocates and evolution advocates, but in the widespread mental habit of fundamentalism itself. We live in a fundamentalist culture. Our utopian visions of inevitable human progress, obsession with endless consumption, and fetish for power and unlimited growth are fed by illusions that are as dangerous as fantasies about the Second Coming. These beliefs are the newest expression of the infatuation with the apocalypse, one first articulated to Western culture by the early church. This apocalyptic vision was as central to the murderous beliefs of the French Jacobins, the Russian Bolsheviks and the German fascists as it was to the early Christians. The historian Arnold Toynbee argues that racism in Anglo-American culture was given a special virulence after the publication of the King James Bible. The concept of “the chosen people” was quickly adopted, he wrote, by British and American imperialists. It fed the disease of white supremacy. It gave them the moral sanction to dominate and destroy other races, from the Native Americans to those on the subcontinent. Our secular and religious fundamentalists come out of this twisted yearning for the apocalypse and belief in the “chosen people.” They advocate, in the language of religion and scientific rationalism, the divine right of our domination, the clash of civilizations. They assure us that we are headed into the broad, uplifting world of universal democracy and a global free market once we sign on for the subjugation and extermination of those who oppose us. They insist—as the fascists and the communists did—that this call for a new world is based on reason, factual evidence and science or divine will. But schemes for universal human advancement, no matter what language is used to justify them, are always mythic. They are designed to satisfy a yearning for meaning and purpose. They give the proponents of these myths the status of soothsayers and prophets. And, when acted upon, they fill the Earth with mass graves, bombed cities, widespread misery and penal colonies. The extent of this fundamentalism is evident in the strident utterances of the Christian right as well as those of the so-called New Atheists. http://www.truthdig....ills_20110726//

From the Progressive Economics Forum: A background study for the latest IMF report on Canada (see pages 42 to 51) adds further weight to the argument that the rise in the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar, driven in large part by high commodity prices, has underpinned a sharp decline in the US market share of Canadian manufacturers since 2000 and a major shift in the composition of Canadian exports from manufactured goods to energy and minerals. This report notes that China has taken market share in the US at the expense of Canadian manufacturers without underlining the fact that China’s currency is closely linked to the US dollar ie. the high Canadian dollar puts our manufacturers at a disadvantage compared to both US domestic producers and China based exporters to the US. On page 43 of the IMF report: 1. Canadian merchandise exports have been on a roller coast over the last two decades, surging to 40 percent by end-2000 and falling to 24 percent of GDP in 2010. After 2000, the fall in exports as a share of GDP was predominantly concentrated in manufacturing, while energy exports continued to expand and now represent about one fourth of all merchandise exports. While exporters benefited from a depreciation of the Canadian real effective exchange rate (REER) in the 1990s, commodity prices surged in the 2000s and were accompanied by a large appreciation of the REER. Higher commodity prices may well have an overall positive effect on the Canadian economy (see Carney, 2012).2 But by driving the real exchange rate up, they may have also contributed to Canada’s loss of external competitiveness and faster decline of its manufacturing share of value added over the last decade (chart). In this chapter, we focus on the factors behind Canada’s loss of external competitiveness, and in particular we try to assess the role played by higher commodity prices and the emergence of China as a major trade power. I would qualify that any overall positive effects that they might take as a given rather than a debate point, are still temporary effects that end as soon as the resource starts becoming depleted and more costly to continue extraction. You would think that it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that a high dollar is going to damage economic activity like manufacturing, which adds value rather than shipping resources off to foreign markets. But the right....especially the oil-funded right, have been vigorously spinning a false narrative that dirty tar sands bitumen benefits all of Canada economically. This should be the final nail in the coffin for the right wing economic policy of just hoovering out oil and other natural resources for export as fast as possible, but I wouldn't count on it yet! There is too much money at stake for Canadian oil and mining companies, and they own too much of our media already to let this report intrude on all of the panicked narratives now that they won't get their pipelines built to ship crud out of Canada to be processed into something resembling oil. The report also notes the negative effects on manufacturing caused by the influx of cheap imports from China and more recently other impoverished third world nations thanks to 'free trade' agreements that allow manufacturers to just close factories and pick up and move production to China or Bangladesh without facing any reprisals when shipping the products back to North American markets. After the double whammy of open door imports and relying on oil exports, it's surprising that we still are making anything for ourselves anymore! The tar sands aren't going anywhere! If it's that important, leave it in the ground for future need if it's really necessary. But the greed-driven oil industry and all of their flunkies who depend on cheques from them (like Alberta Premier Alison Redford) are in full panic mode that the U.S. will be able to get through the near future using gas and shale oil fracking instead. Once non-renewable resources are used up, they're gone for good! That should be obvious, but those who lobby for economies powered by resource extraction, act like it can just go on forever. But, as soon as developers have to start digging deeper for lower quality grades, costs rise and when it's determined that the costs outweigh the rewards of extraction, the mining operation is closed and it's time for the company to move on and dig new holes in the ground. And because the resource-dependent economy has seen their currency values increase due to resource exports, manufacturing exports decline, while the cheap dollar increases imports of all kinds. This is the Dutch Disease that oil extraction has created in every economy that has become dependent on large scale oil development; and should we be surprised that tar sands development has hollowed out manufacturing and other economic activity.

Rather than ask my wife if she will agree to me walking her on a dog leash to spice up our sex life, I thought....maybe a better approach would be to see if some handy factual information on female sexuality will be more helpful: 9 Interesting Things You May Not Know About the Clitoris It's Exquisitely Sensitive I kinda figured that one already! It's Bigger Than You Think Tell me more! Only one quarter of the clitoris is visible. The rest of it is inside the body, which means this organ can't really be picked up and moved. The clitoris is made up of many different parts, including the clitoral head, the hood the clitoral shaft, the urethral sponge, erectile tissue, glands, vestibular bulbs and the crura (or the clitoral legs). Only the clitoral head and the hood are located outside the body. (If you want to read more about Marie Bonaparte - along with an array of other amazing sex studies and facts - check out "Bonk." You will laugh, you will cringe and, boy, will you will learn a lot of fun and unexpected facts about human couplings.) It's a Lot Like a Penis Yeah, there's the whole "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" camp, but in reality, men and women are a lot more alike than most of us realize. It Grows The clitoris actually grows during a woman's lifetime. No, it isn't getting stretched out from too much sexy fun. The growth occurs as a result of hormonal changes in the body. When a girl’s puberty begins, the clitoris will start increasing in size. By the time puberty ends, the clitoris will be about 1.8 times larger. By the time a woman is 32 years old, the clitoris will be almost four times as big as it was at the onset of puberty. It doesn’t end there. After menopause, the clitoris will be about seven times larger than it was at birth! Don't freak out - this is still a very small area, so the change in size won't be very noticeable. And hey, it might help to explain why older women often report such hot sex! I'm hoping I can keep it up without having to resort to the viagra or cialis method! It's Only There for the Sex A woman's body includes a number of super-hot erogenous zones, but you might say many of those are sort of, well, incidental. Not the clit. It's there for fun. Yup, that’s right. The clitoris is the only part of the body designed solely for pleasure. So, while other body parts used for sexual pleasure have at least one other purpose to them, your clit is just there to get you off. Every Female Has One Birds do it. Bees do it. OK, maybe not bees, but every female mammal has a clitoris. However, we humans are one of the few species that has evolved to actually use the clitoris for sexual pleasure. It's Only There for the Sex A woman's body includes a number of super-hot erogenous zones, but you might say many of those are sort of, well, incidental. Not the clit. It's there for fun. Yup, that’s right. The clitoris is the only part of the body designed solely for pleasure. So, while other body parts used for sexual pleasure have at least one other purpose to them, your clit is just there to get you off. Every Female Has One Birds do it. Bees do it. OK, maybe not bees, but every female mammal has a clitoris. However, we humans are one of the few species that has evolved to actually use the clitoris for sexual pleasure. They're All Different Some are small, some are big, some are hidden and some protrude rather a lot. Some increase in size when aroused, and others hide under the hood. Some require a lot of pressure, others prefer a very gentle touch. Each little love bud is as unique as the woman attached to it. Now that's a little deflating, because after a bit of fumbling around trying to find it with previous girlfriends, I thought I had turned into a great lover! And it turns out I was just lucky to have a woman with a clit that's easy to find and easy to arouse!

One Billion Rising unites against gender-based violence Rallies are being held in Canada and 200 other countries worldwide as part of One Billion Rising — a movement calling for the end of violence against women and girls. Eve Ensler, author of the Vagina Monologues and founder of the organization V-Day started the global One Billion Rising movement based on the estimate in a United Nations report that said one in three women will be beaten or raped during their lifetime, meaning one billion worldwide. V-day holds various events throughout the year, but Feb. 14 marks their attempt at a single day of action globally. Women and men have been invited to “dance, rise and strike” to raise the issue of gender-based violence, while also celebrating the work being done globally to counter it. Organizers say that thousands participated in the event, dancing in the Democratic Republic of Congo — a country reported as the worst place on Earth to be a woman. I'm not sure how accurate the one billion women 'will be raped or beaten during their lifetime' number is, but even if it's one tenth that number, that's still 100 million! I was just curious when I saw this story yesterday if there are a billion, or 100 million, or a million false rape convictions to match it!

From the good luck ending religion dept.: I noticed this entry on Epiphenomena, which has been recently posting articles from several studies comparing skeptics and religious-minded people. These findings indicate that a portion of the population has a high tendency to see hidden agents....which is about what ghosts would be. And the likelihood of seeing ghosts does not match up entirely with religious belief: The human mind is naturally attuned to try to spot hidden agents. In fact, we're too good at it, because we tend to interpret all sorts of random environmental noise as actually being caused by someone. It's widely thought that this tendency contributes to religious belief, and yet it's also the case that many religious people don't claim to have seen any spiritual agents directly at work - and many no-religious people see ghosts from time to time..................................................... They found that, relative to other kinds of supernatural experiences, non-religious, supernatural agents (AKA ghosts) were more often seen when the environment was secluded, dark, quiet, and threatening. Those who had seen ghosts also reported being anxious or upset at the time. That wasn't the case for religious supernatural agents.......................................................... What this suggests is that anxiety and distress combine to make it more likely that people will see ghosts, but that this relationship doesn't hold for religious experiences. It';s interesting to contrast this with other research showing that anxiety and uncertainty can make people see things that aren't there, and also that religion is more popular in environments that are threatening or dangerous. Maybe turning to religion is one way to reduce the distress caused by supernatural experiences that are caused by threatening environments! http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2013/02/what-kind-of-person-sees-ghosts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BhaScienceGroup+%28Epiphenom%29 I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the growth in unconventional or new age spirituality in Europe, that coincides with the decline in traditional religious beliefs? But it might indicate that someone who is quick to think there's a ghost in a dark room is not going to be happier as an atheist than when they believe their religion helps them deal with the ghost.