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Like how 72.8% of Philosophy PhDs are atheists? Also, IIRC, the National Academy of Science is upwards of 90%. edit: I got data. It's a dramatic trend and the data is old. I couldn't find anything current, but based on the trend, there's like 1 theist left in the NAS.

I did present. There's a link directly to the paper.

Yeah, it's best not to try or even call then. Good thinking!

Dude. Seriously. Go to a library and get the Nature paper. Your post is still a complete straw man. Tell me, what about education is it that you think I'm saying causes a decline in religious belief? The facts disagree with you.

Sometimes I'm not sure how to explain things to him such that he doesn't take them as huge straw men on my actual positions.

On a societal level, yes. The second study was suggesting a causal link and not just a correlation between religious belief and analytical thinking. So, higher educated people are also more likely to utilize analytic thinking more often. I guess this makes education a sort of "double whammy" against religious belief. We're talking statistics here. There's no warrant to say it's true for every member of every population. You should know by now that I almost never use universal generalizations. At the same time, we must not go the other way and try to say that since it's not true in every case that it's not true as a trend and there is no causal connection. A anti-bacterial agent that only kills 99.9997% of bacteria is still something which kills bacteria. See the paper in Nature linked in the OP. It's surprising to me how many members of science forums can't access journals. If there's a university nearby, you can probably get a guest pass for computer access in their library and read it there. Simply accessing it from within a university computer network should give you access since most universities have Nature access. Are you sure it was analytically? The point of the paper in Nature was the disparity between the two modes of human thought. There's the emotional mode (which is easy for humans to do) and there's the analytical (read: logical) mode which is hard for humans to do. Evolution breeds laziness, so the emotional mode usually wins out. The findings in the Nature paper seem to indicate that the more one uses the second mode, the less likely they are to be religious (which is consistent with data about religiousity vs education level). Such as? The correlation holds with "favorable" measures like income equality, access to healthcare, education level, and life expectancy (which, by the way, was plotted). Newsflash: the US isn't the only country in the world. Draw a line for best fit and remove the US if it offends you so much. The correlations still hold. There's also a correlation with IQ which could hint at education being a key factor. Well, the right kind of education. The kind teaching actual cognitive skills rather than a list of facts.

The math tag gobbling is fixed it seems.

So far, so good. No one thinks that equations are prescriptive; they are descriptive and predictive. The whole world is waiting. Do it and collect your Nobel Prize. I happen to have a copy of "Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I" handy. What would you like me to look up? Mathematical systems and logical systems are both examples of formal systems, but maths=logics would be wrong. And not all math is equal. So, you've basically got a bunch of false premises and no "logic" to back it the argument. You came across a correct conclusion, but even a broken clock it right twice a day. Furthermore, your little rant had absolutely nothing to do with the modnote you quoted. No, you didn't. Why not? Crows can order things which are cardinally equivelant to certain constructions of simple arithmetic, but that in no way means that they know what numbers are. Numbers are an abstract construction. Comparing cardinality doesn't even require numbers; it merely requires matching.

It's been linked by me on this board about ten thousand times on a societal level, religiosity and just about every measure of social health are strikingly inversely correlated. But why is that? A study from last year in Nature may give us a clue. It shows that increasing analytical thinking makes one less likely to be religious. The correlation on a societal scale could all simply be because of higher proportions of educated people in the populations. I guess education really might kill gods.

And there's still the problem of irradiating the crew and the inherent instability.

Alvin Plantinga is famous for his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, so I decided to turn it on its head. A few probability rules: P(A&B)=P(B&A) P(A&B)=P(A|B)XP(B) Substituting, we get: P(A|B)XP(B)=P(B|A)XP(A) Rearranging, we get: [math]P(A)=\frac{P(A|B){\times}P(B)}{P(B|A)}[/math] Plantinga tells us that if unguided evolution were true, then it is very probable that our ability to naturally come to true beliefs is unreliable. That is, P(T|U) is very very close to 1 (Plantinga wants it to be as close to 1 as possible if not 1). It is, however, a fact that our ability to naturally come to true beliefs is unreliable. Our logical and probabilistic intuitions are very very bad. We can do these things, but it's very taxing compared to the way we naturally do things and it requires training to avoid fallacies. Even our memories of past events are unreliable. Even after learning how to do things the correct way and doing a lot of practice, we are still subject to the pitfalls that are collectively human psychology. So, if P(T) isn't 1, it is VERY close to it. [math]P(U)=\frac{P(U|T){\times}P(T)}{P(T|U)}=P(U|T){\times}\frac{P(T)}{P(T|U)}[/math] Since P(T) and P(T|U) are both incredibly high (both either 1 or so close to 1 as to effectively be 1), they effectively cancel. That leaves P(U)≈P(U|T). So, given the unreliability to naturally come to true beliefs, how likely is it that unguided evolution is true? Well, evolution itself is a fact so that rules out a lot of supernatural explanations. But would guided evolution be likely to give us such horrible mental faculties? I think Plantinga would say no. So, I'm going to put P(U|T) as very high. Thus, it is extremely likely that unguided evolution (read: naturalism) is true.

Even in an Alcubierre drive, c is still constant and invariant. And velocities still don't add the Galilean way.

Not even close. It's essentially the fundamental quale of disgusting.

I just realized that I am reading this thread almost immediately before going to my Evolutionary Anthropology class.

Nah, there's no starving to death. I'm not really picky at all and I mostly live off of homemade Tandoori chicken and Ramen noodles. There's nothing on that list against that.

I actually love grapefruit. It tastes good and it's fun to eat if you do it right.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing here to even say is flawed. It's meaningless.

Mars colonization is a great example, actually. There's almost no breeding with the populations on Earth (it's far too expensive for round-trip travel). That alone would eventually lead to speciation. Then there's the dramatic differences in the environment. Yeah, when humanity spreads among the stars, it will be humanities among the stars.

Kaku does tend to say a lot of stupid things on TV so he can appear on TV, but I doubt even he would say something that wrong.

It's objectively disgusting.

I'll eat just about everything but vegemite.

And Buddhists aren't concerned with Buddhist cosmology, their concerns are different. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Anyone with your position is ignorant of their own religion. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/why-christians-shouldnt-accept-millions

Oh, immortal, I should add to my above post that, if you don't agree with me, you are "ignorant and confused" and you "have got no idea as to what you are doing".