"If you believe in Natural Selection, aren't you forced (just by looking at Europe) to conclude that Nature has selected against atheism and (just by looking at America) in favor of evangelicalism?"

Ummm, no because natural selection/evolution works at the genetic level, not the societal level :-)

Yes, but why aren't atheists driven by genetics to reproduce?

Evangelical atheists? The mind boggles.

Either one is conscious of his unworthiness before God or he is capable of atrocity--there are no two ways about it. The Nazi and the Islamofascist both believe in the essential superiority of not just their ideology but of themselves and when they "behave[d] like men, not dogs" they left behind them death, destrcution and grief; just as the Christians who Taibbi cites forgot that humbleness and wreaked atrocity.

The "servility" Taibbi speaks of is about the only check man has on his baseness--those who stare the world "frankly in the face" all too often are busy shoving their boots in someone elses.

Oh, to be sure there are "evangelical atheists." The difference is, instead of going door to door, they go to court! :^)

Well, here's one possibility.

Atheists as a group tend to be more educated than religionists (no, I don't have a reference; I just think I remember having read that somewhere reputable).

Income and education are positively correlated.

Income and birth rates are negatively correlated.

Therefore, atheists have fewer children on average, not because they are atheists, but because they tend to be wealthier.

"Atheists as a group tend to be more educated than religionists (no, I don't have a reference; I just think I remember having read that somewhere reputable)."

That would probably be the WaPo,which retracted the the editorial after being flooded with mail from religionist doctors,lawyers,university proffesors,teachers,etc.

I believe the editorialist stated that people of faith were uneducated,weakminded and easily led.Which,to give him credit,he admitted was based on nothing more than his own New Class bigotry.

OJ, athiesm (and religion) is memetic, not genetic. Just raise enough people with inane religious doctrines, add a scientific worldview to the mix, and you'll get a crop of athiests.

M, it isn't that there are not smart, highly educated religionists. Its just that there aren't a lot of dumb, uneducated athiests.

Jeff:

That begs the question. Why are atheists not bound by Darwinian survival pressures?

M/Robert:

Atheism is only possible in highly developed societies like ours that can carry freeloaders. Thus the connection to education levels.

Jeff --

I believe that correlations between leftist ideas and advanced degrees dissappear if you control for education degrees. As I believe that education degrees subtract from a person's total sum of knowledge, leaving him or her knowing less than before going to education school, I'm unimpressed.

Mr. Martinovich is wrong. Natural selection operates at multiple levels simultaneously (I've brought this up a time or two on my weblog). It is this level mixing that makes it hard to understand. Individuals, demes and meme sets all compete simulatenously, each level affecting the others.

As for this,

If you believe in Natural Selection, aren't you forced (just by looking at Europe) to conclude that Nature has selected against atheism and (just by looking at America) in favor of evangelicalism?

I'm willing to admit I'm wrong Annoying Old Guy, but I've never heard before today any evidence that natural selection in nature working on anything other than the genetic level. It is, after all, genes that we are trying to pass on, nothing else.

"Atheism is only possible in highly developed societies like ours that can carry freeloaders. Thus the connection to education levels."

Let's not go nuts here Orrin...I'm a freeloader because I'm an athiest? I usually have two words for people who tell me that.

Steve:
It works on the individual level because the individual has to both survive and reproduce in order to contribute to the gene pool.

M:
I meant no insult. It is true that advanced education has knock-on effects in people's beliefs. Not all of them necessarily good, particularly in OJ's world. Among those effects is that atheists are more frequently represented among those with college degrees than those without. That doesn't make everyone, or anything like it, with a degree an atheist, nor does it make the faithul weakminded and easily led. It simply is what it is.

OJ:
The question begged is what the heck is a Darwinian Survival Pressure?

Besides, the overall correlation in question is between wealth relative to survival requirements and birth rate, not atheism. Therefore, you really need to be asking why it is whatever it is you are referring to applies less as people become wealthier. It is possible that focussing rather too intently on atheism might occasionally prevent seeing something else that might be even more relevant.

Steve: probably the same two words I use.

David:
Really? I had no idea there are that many people, and in particular men, running around with education degrees.

Jeff --

I was a little surprised at how bad it has become. According to this site, in the 2000-01 academic year, education degrees were 8.5% of all bachelor degrees awarded (105,566 out of 1,244,171), 27.6% of all masters degrees awarded (129,066 out of 468,476) and 15% of all doctorates awarded (6716 out of 44,904). The comparable numbers for engineering were 58,098, 26,250 and 5558.

Steve:

"Thank you"?

I very much doubt that decisions to breed are unifactorial.

Orrin: Not quite :-) My apology for the tone of those comments...It's been one of those days.

Steve:

As a Canadian you have our deepest sympathy. :)

David:
I had no idea about those numbers were so large. However, I think that is an artifact of teacher's unions more than anything.

Many people would like to be teachers, but, unfortunately, merely being a subject matter expert is insufficient.

During my Islamo-fascist induced hiatus from the piloting profession, my first choice of alternative employment was as a High School math/science/history teacher. Unfortunately, a significant college background in those areas would get me nowhere, unlike a Masters in education.

An abomination? Yes.

But I'll bet those numbers would collapse if teacher certification requirements opened up to anyone with college background in the subject area.

Jeff -- I think you're exactly right. My only point is that any attempt to prove anything that starts "more people with advanced degrees . . ." just doesn't carry much weight.

By the way, does that mean that you're back to flying?

Mr. Martinovich;

For most species, that's true. But the social mammals (and humans in particular) exhibit emergent behavior that affects genetics. Just as an example, if two demes have somewhat different allele sets, it may be that the culture in deme A becomes maladaptive, leading to its demise. Deme B and its differing alleles has "won" the competition for reasons that are not directly related to the allele differences. There you have a genetic change in the species driven by something other than phenotypic expression.

This kind of thing becomes possible once you have species capable of maintain extra-somatic information. Many of the higher mammals have this property, which can be as simple as learning a trick for getting termites by sticking a reed into a termite mound. Humans, of course, are enormously different in this regard than any other species. This makes humans subject to quite a different set of evolutionary contraints than other species (beyond even the fact that humans can alter their environment to extent not available to any other species).

Orrin: It's not sympathy I need, it's American citizenship :-)

Annoying Old Guy: Sir, I bow to your superior knowledge.

David:
Thanks for asking, but no.

My airline has to recall 432 guys before my number comes up. Back in the high-clover days of 2000, that was just about a year's worth of hiring.

So the most optimistic scenario puts me back in the air around March 2005.

You asked elsewhere whether we are more than the sum of our genes and experiences. You might have noticed I am somewhat short-fused when it comes to religious certainty.

Does this data point help answer that question?

Steve:
AOG's knowledge is very bowable to.