No shit? What a surprise!

/sarcasm

In all seriousness, i'm glad someone actually did a scientific study on this. Nice find.

Does this finally give us a Darwinian explanation for prevalence of the god meme?

OBVIOUSLY, this has a liberal , extreme-leftist bias towards it and that it is meant to try to tear down OUR love for GOD and COUNTRY.

There are plenty of evolutionary explanations for the prevalence of the god meme, whether or not they invoke biological survival or just memetic survival. Here's one more.

I'm happy to expand on that claim if people want me to, but I'll hold off for now.

I'm sure we'll have Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton falling all over themselves, trying to stop this terrible God-Bible thing from having a harmful impact on our children... Yeah. Yup. I'm sure they will. They'll surely have to slap those "Parental Warning" labels on that Good Book from now on. Yup.

Thomas W.: "OBVIOUSLY, this has a liberal , extreme-leftist bias towards it and that it is meant to try to tear down OUR love for GOD and COUNTRY."

Frankly I'm surprised it takes any new research at all to realize that which history proves. But if you have any facts to support your remark, I would be more than happy to hear them.

Keep in mind though… just because I happen to agree wholeheartedly with the premiss of the article damn sure doesn't mean I do not love my country.

… or were you being sarcastic?

In that case the jokes on me!

Is love of country any different than love of god? They are both examples of exceptionalism, both indicative of psuedospeciation. The devil is nothing more than our need to demonize the Other.

"Take the current conflict in Iraq as an example. Bush claims that God is on his side. Osama bin Laden claims that God, or Allah, is on his side."

So Osama is Iraqi?

Half of the students read a version of the story that included an assertion that God commanded the friends of the woman to take revenge.

Isn't it just as likely that being told there is a vengeful superbeing is disturbing, and that this disturbance leads to the putatively aggressive behavior? This guy seems like an idiot to me.

The only thing breaking about this story is that a mainstream US newssource is covering it.

But seriously, this has been discussed to death on 1gm, do we need to see it again? (no offense meant, just a thought!)

Would you say that about news covering the Bush Administration's politics? (just a question)

[blockquote] two very different universities, Vrije University in Amsterdam, Holland, where he also holds a professorship, and Brigham Young University in Utah.[/blockquote] Oddly enough de Vrije Universiteit is the [i]only[/i] university in the Netherlands that is faith based, and Amsterdam has 2 universities, so it just might be this preselection bias means the study is a bit skewed against atheists...

two very different universities, Vrije University in Amsterdam, Holland, where he also holds a professorship, and Brigham Young University in Utah.

Oddly enough de Vrije Universiteit is the only university in the Netherlands that is faith based, and Amsterdam has 2 universities, so it just might be this preselection bias means the study is a bit skewed against atheists...

"Would you say that about news covering the Bush Administration's politics? (just a question)"

Yea, I see where you're getting at. I guess I'll respond by saying that the policies of the administration changes at least in what the 'theme' is, you know, people will talk about Afghanistan until thats out of fashion, then the New Orleans hurricane, etc. (I'm not sure how accurate it is, but searching 'Afghanistan' on this blog finds most recent entry on 26 Sept of last year, and 'Katrina' 12 Oct.)

This story on the other hand is about a 'debate' (why do things that seem common sense need to be labelled 'debates'? Sad.) that has been going unchanged for a long time, as the article notes. So, it just FEELS like old news in the same way Afghanistan does. Perhaps I just have a problem here.

Frankly, I think the study kind of pales compared to a more interesting one given to kids in a school in Isreal somewhere (if anybody knows what I'm talking about.)