Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Two of the last holdout areas for religion—countries and regions that have historically been resistant to nonbelief—are now becoming surprisingly secular. Those are Ireland in the West and seven countries in the Middle East—at least according to recent surveys. The stunning thing about both areas is how fast the change is coming. Let’s take the … Continue reading The Middle East and Ireland losing their religion
I’ve heard mutterings in the dark corners of the Internet that I spend too much time posting critiques of religion and theology. Well, to those who beef about that, I say, “I hear you, but I’m gonna keep doing it anyway.” For there must be constant pushback against religion, which is always sticking its nose … Continue reading Greg Sheridan in The Spectator: The West will die without Christianity
The 2018 edition of the World Happiness Report is out, and it shows pretty much what other recent reports have shown: Western European countries are the world’s happiest, the poor countries of Africa and the Middle East are the world’s unhappiest, and Finland has moved into the #1 spot. A new aspect of the report … Continue reading The 2018 UN World Happiness Report: most atheistic (and socially well off) countries are the happiest, while religious countries are poor and unhappy
I’ve written many times about the increasing evidence that religiosity is negatively correlated with the well being of a society and its inhabitants. That is, those countries (and U.S. states) that have higher indices of well being are those that are the least religious. Of course, this is a correlation and doesn’t prove causation, but … Continue reading More evidence that a caring government erodes religiosity
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of … Continue reading New York Times editorial page editor makes the “Little People” argument for religion
Here’s the second of three installments of my interview at TAM with Joel Guttormson of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. In this short clip I raise my favorite thesis, which a while I thought was largely mine, but have discovered that it’s been a going hypothesis in sociology for a long time. I … Continue reading My TAM interview, part 2, and a book on secularization
In a critique of Hegel, Marx wrote the following paragraph, whose third sentence has become a classic: Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit … Continue reading Do life’s uncertainties promote religion? A flawed study
