How Religion Keeps the Poor Poor.

Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty | The Economist

The problem with religion is that it teaches poor people to accept their 'place' in society and not to aspire to something better. This is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from a piece of research carried our recently by a group of sociologists and psychologists led by Jana B. Berkessel of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.

The team found that, contrary to accepted ideas, people with a low socioeconomic status (SES) in a developed country carry a higher psychological burden than their counterparts in developing countries. The assumption had been that the psychological burden would ease as society developed and became more prosperous. However the research showed that there was an inverse relationship between the psychological burden of SES and the religiosity of the society and there was a similar relationship between religiosity and economic development.

In other words, as society develops economically, so religiosity falls, removing the religious norms that ease the burden of low SES.

This conclusion came as a result of statistical analysis of three surveys covering 3.3 million people in 156 countries.

This teaching to accept your place is not confined to Christianity either but can be found in almost all major religions. The team say:

Among the religious norms that enable cultural groups to thrive is a set relevant for SES. That set eases the burden of lower SES (“The poor are admitted into Paradise before the rich, by five hundred years;” Vol. 5, Book 37, Hadith 4261, The Qur’an; “For those who are poor and destitute; May I turn into all things they could need;” Ch. 3, Verse 10, Bodhisattvacharyavatara) and it does so in part by casting a bad light on higher SES [“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God;” Matthew 19:24, The Bible, “The demoniac person thinks: So much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more;” Ch. 16, Verse 13, Bhagavad-Gita (16, 29)]

Their open access paper is published in PNAS:

Significance
According to a fundamental assumption in the social sciences, the burden of lower socioeconomic status (SES) is more severe in developing nations. In contrast to this assumption, recent research has shown that the burden of lower SES is less—not more—severe in developing nations. In three large-scale global data sets, we show that national religiosity can explain this puzzling finding. Developing nations are more religious, and most world religions uphold norms that, in part, function to ease the burden of lower SES and to cast a bad light on higher SES. In times of declining religiosity, this finding is a call to scientists and policymakers to monitor the increasingly harmful effects of lower SES and its far-reaching social consequences.

Abstract
Lower socioeconomic status (SES) harms psychological well-being, an effect responsible for widespread human suffering. This effect has long been assumed to weaken as nations develop economically. Recent evidence, however, has contradicted this fundamental assumption, finding instead that the psychological burden of lower SES is even greater in developed nations than in developing ones. That evidence has elicited consternation because it suggests that economic development is no cure for the psychological burden of lower SES. So, why is that burden greatest in developed nations? Here, we test whether national religiosity can explain this puzzle. National religiosity is particularly low in developed nations. Consequently, developed nations lack religious norms that may ease the burden of lower SES. Drawing on three different data sets of 1,567,204, 1,493,207, and 274,393 people across 156, 85, and 92 nations, we show that low levels of national religiosity can account for the greater burden of lower SES in developed nations. This finding suggests that, as national religiosity continues to decline, lower SES will become increasingly harmful for well-being—a societal change that is socially consequential and demands political attention.

Berkessel, Jana B.; Gebauer, Jochen E.; Joshanloo, Mohsen; Bleidorn, Wiebke; Rentfrow, Peter J.; Potter, Jeff; Gosling, Samuel D.
National religiosity eases the psychological burden of poverty
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 2021, 118 (39) e2103913118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2103913118

Copyright: © 2012 The authors. Published by the National Academy of Sciences.
Open access Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

It looks as though both Seneca and Napoleon were right in that religion is used by the ruling class to keep the poor happy and contented so they never aspire to anything better. The priesthoods are complicit in this deception in return for protection and special status within the state.

This much was evident in the repose of religions to a Pew Research forecast a few years ago that support for religions will grow in coming years as the populations of third-world and developing countries is set to increase. They were jubilant at the though that the number of poor people in the world was going to increase and that they would benefit from this growth, part of which, with their teachings against contraception and family planning and for female subservience, they were responsible for.

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Atheist News - How Atheists Don't Need a God to be Good, But Theists Need One to be Bad.

Misinformation and Facts about Secularism and Religion | Psychology Today

In this devastating rebuttal of the 2011 claim by Dr Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D, that generally, religious people are more moral than non-religious people, David Niose, former president of both the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America, points out the factual and unfounded errors in Plante's article. In particular:

Plante casually claims that religious people are "better citizens" and "behave better." And without citing any sources, he tells us: "Research has consistently found that religious people are less likely to engage in criminal behavior, marital infidelity, alcoholism, unprotected sexual activity. . ." In other words, according to Plante, if you're not religious you might be a good person, but on average you are more likely to have these undesirable characteristics. This is a bold assertion that, of course, immediately puts secular individuals on the defensive. (Just imagine if the same claims were made against any other minority group.) It is precisely claims like these that lead to many Americans having an unfavorable view of atheists and other nonbelievers. Fortunately for atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists, there is no factual basis for Plante's claim that "research has consistently found" secular individuals to be more prone to such antisocial behavior.

Creationism's Favourite Felon is Back Behind Bars.

Mr Kent Hovind. Back in prison, this time for assaulting his ex-girlfriend.

Creationist Kent Hovind Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail for Domestic Violence | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Creationism's favourite criminal, Mr Kent Hovind, is back in prison. Let's try to help him be a better person.

To anyone familiar with Hovind's distain for the law of the land, believing he makes his own laws because he has a close personal relationship with God, this will come as no surprise, since Hovind pushes a relentlessly literal interpretation of the Bible and the Bible positively commands behaviour which might have been acceptable in a brutal, Late Bronze/Early Iron Age tribal society but which is, following the European Enlightenment and the incorporation of Humanism into Christianity, now regarded as criminal in most civilised societies.

Talibangelical Hate News - Trumpanzee Loon, Pastor Greg Locke, Banned from Twitter

After Twitter Ban, Christian Hate-Preacher Greg Locke Whines About “Persecution” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news. Pastor Greg Locke, of Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee, is such a goldmine of anti-fundamentalist propaganda that it'll be a shame to lose him, but on the other hand, events have shown that there are people, especially in USA, who are gullible enough to let him think for them. Given his increasing advocacy of violence, repeated misinformation about Trump's defeat last November, which he still can't bring himself to accept, and his Trumpanzee/QAnon-inspired anti Covid vaccine lies, he constitutes the sort of danger to society that Twitter should be protecting its customers from.

In fact, the true value of preachers of hate like Locke is that they server to remind us what a violent and hate-filled religion Christianity would be if it hadn't been moderated and civilised by a hefty dose of Humanism following the European Enlightenment. They simply preach a pure version of primitive Medieval Christianity, based on Bronze Age, despotic Middle Eastern tribalism of which the Taliban and the Spanish Inquisition would be proud.

Christian Bigotry News - SCOTUS Decision Confirms Even Christians Must Obey the Law.

Flower Shop owner, Baronelle Stutzman.
Court rules she must not victimise gays even if she is a Christian and so feels she should be entitled to.

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal from Anti-Gay Christian Florist Barronelle Stutzman | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

In declining to hear a case, the Supreme Court of the United States, even with its Trump-given conservative Christian majority, has in effect confirmed that even Christian bigots do not have the right to deny other people their basic human rights and so cannot victimise minorities of their choice.

In 2013, Baronelle Stutzman, the owner of a New York flower shop, refused to supply flowers for the wedding of Robert Ingersoll to Curt Freed, even though same-sex marriage is legal in New York, and discrimination of the grounds of sexual orienation is illegal. She was prosecuted by NY law enforcement officials, found guilty and fined $1000.

Religion - Providing Excuses for People who Need Excuses

The vital element to consider is the gender norms and beliefs surrounding male dominance and male superiority, created by power hierarchies that accord men greater status.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies
Gender Equality and Violence Against Women

Domestic abuse more prevalent among Anglican churchgoers, new report finds - ABC News

Australia has a significant problem of domestic violence perpetrated mostly by men against women with whom they are in an intimate relationship and especially common in Anglican communities. The problem was first highlighted by an ABC News investigation which reported:

Research shows that the men most likely to abuse their wives are evangelical Christians who attend church sporadically*. Church leaders in Australia say they abhor abuse of any kind. But advocates say the church is not just failing to sufficiently address domestic violence, it is both enabling and concealing it

The report had cited as a typical example, a couple named 'Sally' and 'Peter' and the exchange that took place the evening before Sally left the household with nothing except her young daughter and what cloths she could carry to escape from the nightly abuse.

This exchange was triggered by Sally coming down stairs to say 'Goodnight' which Peter interpreted as her unwillingness to have sex. He began screaming abuse at her and accused her of being a disobedient wife who was disobeying God's instruction to be obedient to her husband. He grabbed a Bible and quoted from it:

Attack on Roe v. Wade Could Backfire on Conservative Repuglicans

The State of Abortion and Contraception Attitudes in All 50 States | PRRI

With a stable majority of Americans supporting a woman's right to abortion in all or most cases, attempts to repeal Roe v. Wade in SCOTUS, exploiting the new Trump-supplied right-wing majority, could backfire badly on the Repuglicans, since conservative evangelicals tend to be the only demographic group with less than 50% support for the continuing legality of abortions, so repealing Roe v. Wade could precipitate a move of moderate and liberal red voters to vote blue in red states. Most of the opposition, by numbers, comes from white evangelical Christians, matched only by a few minority faiths such as Mormons, Jehovah's Winesses and Hispanic Catholics. All the major non-evangelicals are strongly or moderately pro-abortion legality in all or most cases.

What a repeal of Roe v. Wade would produce is a situation where Repuglican politicians in red states would no longer be able to pander to their evangelical base by passing anti-abortion legislation, confident that it will be struck down in the lower courts, so they can pose as champions of conservative 'values', thwarted by a liberal establishment.

They would then be faced with the choice of continuing to pander to their extremist wing by passing increasingly restrictive anti-abortion measures and accepting the consequences of losing large numbers of their less extreme supporters to the Democrts or alientating the fanatics by not using their new-found freedom to restrict a woman's right to choose.

Humanism is Slowly Civilising Christianity

Bishop-elect Megan Rohrer of the Sierra Pacific synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. The San Francisco pastor is the first transgender person to be elected bishop in the denomination or in any of the U.S.'s major Christian faiths.

Lutherans elect Megan Rohrer first transgender bishop

In an example of how Humanist egalitarian ideas have penetrated even the more fundamentalist, historically misogynistic and macho flavours of Christianity, the American Lutherans have elected their first transgender bishop.

In the early days of Luther's Protestant Reformation, women were expected to be married 'as ordained by God' and had a strict role within the marriage of motherhood and subservience to her husband.

Nunneries were suppressed and the former nuns were expected to marry, as remaining unmarried was considered to be a defiance against God's ordinance. Indeed, one such nun, Katharina von Bora, having been helped escape the nunnery by Luther himself who sent a cart with barrels of herring for her and 8 other nuns to hide behind, made her way to Wittenberg and married Martin Luther and dutifully bore him several children.

Lutheran reformers established matrimonial and moral courts to enforce Luther's Bible-based ideas of gender roles within a marriage. Adultery is now strictly prohibited and both genders must make their bodies available for “conjugal duties”. Women now have one role and one role only - they are to be professional mothers - to bear children and raise them in the 'one true faith'. There is no role for women outside of marriage and subservience to her husband, because God has ordered it thus.

Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house and bear and bring up children… If a woman grows weary and at least dies from child bearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing - she is there to do it.

Women have narrow shoulders and wide hips, therefore they ought to be domestic; their very physique is a sign from their Creator that he intended them to limit their activity to the home.

Martin Luther

And, they have a book which says so!

For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

1 Corinthians 33-35

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Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

Ephesians 5:22-24

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Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

1 Peter 3:1-7

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Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

1 Timothy 2:11-12

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The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

Titus 2:3-5

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And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord.

Ephesians 5:21-22

These 'Orders from God' reputedly inspired St Augustine of Hippo - considered one of Christianity's greatest thinkers - to declare:

Any woman who acts in such a way that she cannot give birth to as many children as she is capable of, makes herself guilty of that many murders.

St Augustine of Hippo

This obsessive repression and subjugation of women reaches its peak in the teachings of the Swiss Lutheran, Johannes Calvin, founder of the misogynistic Presbyterians, who can scarcely conceal his loathing of women:

John Calvin

We take nothing from the womb but pure filth [meras sordes]. The seething spring of sin is so deep and abundant that vices are always bubbling up from it to bespatter and stain what is otherwise pure.... We should remember that we are not guilty of one offense only but are buried in innumerable impurities.... all human works, if judged according to their own worth, are nothing but filth and defilement.... they are always spattered and befouled with many stains.... it is certain that there is no one who is not covered with infinite filth.

In John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait, 1989,
William J. Bouwsma, Oxford University Press, USA, p. 36.

The modern manifestation of this Lutheran misogyny was of course the allotted role of women in Nazi Germany as expressed in the slogan - Kinder, Küche, Kirche (Chidren, Kitchen, Church). These "3K's" were originally 4 K's in the Lutheran German Proverb by Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander:

Vier Ks sind Voraussetzung für eine fromme Frau, nämlich dass sie Rücksicht auf Kirche, Kammer, Küche, Kinder nimmt. (Four K's are requisite of a pious woman, namely, that she keeps regard for church, bedroom, kitchen, children.)

It's a sign of just how far decent Humanist ideas of full human rights for all, regardless of gender, sexuality, skin colour, ethnic origin, social class or ability have penetrated the once deeply misogynistic Lutheran church that they are now prepared to allow not just a woman but a transgender woman to be anything other than silent in church and confine herself to the home in dutiful submission to her 'superior' husband.

At this rate of progress, there will be little of these old, outmoded religions left in a generation or two, although it's hard to imagine how some of the more fundamentalist flavours of Christianity can abandon their fundamental, institutionalised hatred of others and still claim to be Christian. The one hope is that, if the American Lutherans can manage it, the others can too.

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Fundamentally Racist Christians

Source

Do Multiracial Churches Offer Healthy Community for Non-White Attendees? - Barna Group

A survey by the Christian Barna Group has revealed a shocking level of racism in American churches, according to their Beyond Diversity project.

29% of practicing Black Christians reported experiencing racial prejudice in multiracial churches; 27% reported feeling required to give up their racial/ethnic identity in order to integrate successfully into a multiracial church and 28% say they find it difficult to build relationships in multiracial churches.

Persecution News - The Doubt That Strikes Terror in the Heart of Religions.

Said Djabelkhir

3 years in prison and a 50,000 Dinar fine

Said Djabelkhir,
Sentenced to 3 years in prison and a 50,000 Dinar fine.

Algeria: quash the conviction of humanist academic Said Djabelkhir, Freethinker.

Can you imagine a fundamental disagreement between two scientists over a basic principle in science resulting in the state locking up one of the scientists while supporters of the other called for his execution?

That's exactly what has happened in Algeria because of a fundamental disagreement in Islam.

New York Religions - Trying to Solve the Problems Religions Cause.

Dec 11, 2019. Orthodox Jewish men pass New York City police guarding a Brooklyn synagogue prior to a funeral for Mosche Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was killed in a shooting at a market in Jersey City, N.J.

Credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

In New York, interfaith coalition makes common cause against rising tide of hate

Concerned by the rising tide of inter-faith tension and hate resulting in violent attacks on members of one faith by members of another, a group of New York's faith organizations have got together to try to solve the problem faiths are causing.

According to a report in Religion News Service:

On April 16, clergy from 20 New York congregations, including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Christians, met as the Interfaith Security Council held its first meeting to talk about how to share expertise and improve relations with law enforcement.

This was prompted by, amongst other incidents, the mass shooting in Pittsburg, PA, in October 2018, when a gunman attacked worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue, killing 11 people, vandalism at four synagogues in the Riverdale neighbourhood of Bronx, NY, last week, and the killing of Mosche Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn in Jersey City, N.J. on Dec 11, 2019. Armed police had to be deployed at the Brooklyn synagogue where his funeral took place.

The Interfaith Security Council is an umbrella organisation bringing together several other religious security organizations, one of which is 67th Precinct Clergy Council of Brooklyn, which supports mostly churches in the borough’s East Flatbush area. It's president, Pastor Gilford Monrose, of Mt. Zion Church of God 7th Day, blamed white supremacists for the escalating level of inter-faith violence with:

Right-Wing Christians for Lynch Law

George Floyed by Lukas Carlson, 2020

Right-Wing Activists Attack Conviction of Derek Chauvin, Engage in Whataboutism | Right Wing Watch

In the wake of the conviction of ex-police officer, Derek Chauvin, for the extra-judicial killing of George Floyd, yet another in a long list of white police officers killing black people, right-wing white supremacist Christian fundamentalists are coming out in favour of these murders and in defense of the murderers.

Right-wing extremist, Candace Owens, who at the time of the killing tried to justify it by branding Floyd, "a horrible human being" and then categorised the protests that followed as catering for "the bottom denominator in society" (i.e. black people), declared the verdict "mob justice".

Trumpanzee lawyer, Jenna Ellis claimed the jury reached its 'guilty' verdicts because they were influenced by 'leftist' to make him "pay for the collective sins of white people".

Another neo-fascist extremist, Mike Cernovich, declared that the verdict will result in police officers leaving the cities to move into 'deep red' areas,

On Tucker, Candace Owens calls the Chauvin verdict "mob justice" and declares that "this was not a fair trial. No person can say this was a fair trial." pic.twitter.com/A9OtJaKa9K

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 21, 2021

presumably because he believes in these Repugnican areas they can continue to kill black people with impunity, like in the good ol' days of Jim Crow, segregation and KKK Lynchings. He was supported in this by the far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, who blamed the anti-fascist "Antifa", whom Trump declared to be "terrorists". Remember how in Trump’s America, opposing fascism was regarded as terrorism?

The Church of English Racists

Church of England congregation.

BBC Panorama programme 'Is the Church Racist?' | The Church of England

An insight into one of the reasons the Church of England has suffered such a massive decline in membership and attendance was revealed in a BBC Panorama program a few days ago. The CofE is deeply and institutionally racist, at least in the lower tiers of management. Viewers were given example after example of racial abuse and discrimination and of managerial indifference to it. For example, as Dr Elizabeth Henry, the CofE's former race relations adviser related:

A really shocking incident was a young black man who received a picture of a banana [with] his head superimposed on it and underneath is said 'Bananaman'. That is a deeply offensive and a deeply racist image.

He took it to HR and did file a grievance [but] the decision was that it was not racist.

[He] left and was given a very small compensation, however he was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Look What Evangelical Christianity Causes! Penis Insecurity!

Penis Insecurity
Correlation between number of Google searches for key phrased and the number of Evangelical Christians in a US state

New study links evangelical Christianity to phallic insecurity in the United States

A paper published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion last March, offers an explanation for the sometimes bizarre behaviour and aggressive attitudes of male American Bible-belt Evangelical Christians, including their frequent fascination with guns and propensity to follow the male leaders of weird cults - behaviour that seems so at odds with what most of the rest of the developed world sees, rightly or wrongly as a peace-loving, pacifist religion.

The paper reveals an almost obsessive evangelical preoccupation with the size of their penis and suggests that this is due to:

...the largely patriarchal―and increasingly embattled and radicalized―evangelical subculture [which] explicitly or implicitly promotes equating masculinity with physical strength and size, leaving men influenced by that subculture (whether evangelical or not) to seek solutions for their privately felt failure to measure up.

Evolution News - Great Tits Have Evolved Flexible Cultures

Great tits (Parus major) can change their culture to become more efficient

Great tits change their traditions for the better | University of Konstanz

How arrogant we once were, before science taught us humility!

When I was young, back in the 1950s, we assumed us humans were exceptional in so many ways that justified believing we must be a special creation with a special purpose, being blessed with so many unique abilities. Human exceptionalism justified so much about religion and our relationship with the rest of nature and the world, which we assumed had been created solely for our benefit to be used as we saw fit. There was even an account in our book of self-justificatory origin myths that related how and why everything was created this way - "And God gave Man dominion..."

But that was in the days before we knew any better. Now we know otherwise.

• We used to think we were the only 'thinking' beings, now we know that many other species can think and solve problems.
• We used to think we were the only beings with intelligence enough to make and use tools, now we know many other species also shape and use tools.
• We used to think we were the only beings with ethics and moral codes, now we know several other species are also empathetic and know the difference between right and wrong in context.
• We used to think we were the only beings with a sense of self, now we know many other species are self-aware and have a conceptual map of their environment with them at the centre of it.
• We used to think we were the only beings with cultures, now we know that other species also form cultures which they inherit from their parents and peers.

And, that latter assumption has just taken another blow with the news that a group of researchers at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Germany have found that birds are able to change their culture to become more efficient. As the University of Konstanz press release explains:

Evolution News - Turns Out Altruism Is For The Fish

Convict chichlid, Amatitlania nigrofasciata

Turns out altruism is for the fish — Osaka City University

Christian fundamentalists will confidently assure you that their religion gives them superior morals to Atheists and members of other religions because they get their morals direct from a perfect god who defines right and wrong. Almost invariably, of course, the same fundamentalists who need to boast about their supposed superior morals are using religion for the excuses it gives them for otherwise unacceptable, antisocial attitudes and behaviour like homophobia, misogyny and/or racism, but that's another issue.

One of the claims they will make against Atheists, for example, is that Atheists see no reason not to be selfish, whereas Christian fundamentalist are altruistic because they know this is the right thing to do, not because it is inherently right but because their god tells them to be and promises them a reward for altruism or punishment for selfishness.

However, evolution by natural selection, operating at the level of genes is fully capable of explaining altruism as an evolved behavioural trait because self-sacrifice can often ensure the survival of those descendants and close kin who are carrying copies of the genes for altruistic behaviour, so ensuring the survival, even at the expense of individual carriers, of those genes through time.

So, this gene-centred evolution should predict altruism in other species; species moreover which don not need to read the Bible to know right from wrong because they have an innate, inherited, set of pro-social behaviours which are also situational - the situation depending on the probability of helping the survival through time of the genes for that behaviour.

This is the finding of a group of researchers from Osaka City University, Japan, whose results were published open access in Nature Communications a few days ago. They have shown that male convict cichlid fish, Amatitlania nigrofasciata can vary their behaviour between pro-social and anti-social depending on the situation.

The Osaka City University new release explains:

Christian Hypocrisy News - Christian Apologist Sye ten Bruggencate Abused a Vulnerable Woman

Sye ten Buggencate,
(former) presuppositionalist apologist for Christianity

Christian Apologist Sye ten Bruggencate Took Advantage of a “Vulnerable Woman” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

Anyone who has spent much time 'debating' with fundamentalist Christian apologists in social media will be familiar with the Canadian apologist, Sye ten Bruggencate, a leading proponent of the infuriatingly intellectually dishonest and childish 'presuppositional' school of apologetics.

Well, maybe no longer (at least for a while, anyway).

Someone dobbed him in regarding his inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable women and he has announced his withdrawal from 'ministry'. In other words, he's giving up lying for Jesus and suckering people with false arguments, because he's been caught... er... lying.

The details of the woman and who exactly dobbed Buggencate in to the elders of his Faith Presbyterian Church in Tillsonburg, Ontario, are sketchy and still emerging but he announced his 'retirement' on his website with a terse:

LGBTQ News - More People Rejecting Religious Dogma and Self-Identifying as Gay

LGBT Identification Rises to 5.6% in Latest U.S. Estimate

A Gallop poll surveying the number of American adults now self-identifying as gay illustrates the penetration of humanist ideals of tolerance, acceptance and freedom from the stigmatisation that religion inflicts on people, as they increasingly reject organised religions in an increasingly secular society.

Hopefully, the charts I have made from the data hop speak well enough for themselves, but perhaps the most noticeable aspect is how the younger the adults are the more likely they are to self-identify as gay. This is entirely consistent with other data which shows a marked correlation between age and rejection of organized religions, with the younger adults far more likely to self-identify as 'None' or non-affiliated. Very may of these will of course be Atheists or Agnostics.

It is clear that religions are losing their grip on Americans just as surely as they lost their grip on post-war Europeans, and no longer have ownership of the institution of marriage for example with even most 'moderate' Christian churches still opposed to the idea of same-sex marriages. Perhaps this is the explanation for the unedifying spectacle of the evangelical Christian abandonment of any pretence of morality in their desperate support for the odious, morally bankrupted Donald J. Trump and the sniff of political power and influence he gave them, amounting at time to hysterical, messianic worship.

Evolution News - The Evolution of 'Selfish' Altruism

Red paper wasp, Polistes canadensis
Polistes colonies offer windows into the evolution of co-operation.

Image: P Kennedy

February: tropical-wasps | News and features | University of Bristol

One of the things Creationists pretend to find hard to understand is how 'selfish' genes, or an evolutionary process that means individuals with certain beneficial mutations have an advantage over those who don't, can produce altruism. It probably tells us something about Creationists, that they don't understand how something which isn't purely selfish can improve the chances of survival of the species over all, or why this should be beneficial.

It may also help explain the recent finding that fundamentalist evangelical Christians tend to have a low regard for the health and welfare of others, as we are seeing by their selfish behaviour during the coronavirus pandemic.

Altruism News - Covid-19 Plasma Donation is Fuelled by Kindness. No Religion Involved

Convalescent plasma is a treatment being trialled for Covid-19 and involves blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients being transfused into patients who are currently in hospital with the virus.

News - Research finds Covid plasma donation is fuelled by kindness - University of Nottingham

In a piece of research by psychologists from Nottingham University with colleagues from Australian Red Cross Lifeblood and the University of Queensland Australia, has identified 6 main motivations for recovered Covid-19 patients in the UK donating blood plasma, which is being used to treat people who are currently ill with the virus.

The study involved 419 UK residents who who indicated they had been infected with Covid-19 and were eligible to donate convalescent plasma. They were asked about their awareness of convalescent plasma, motivations, and barriers to donating.

The six main motivations were:

• Altruism from adversity.
• Post-traumatic growth.
• Moral and civic duty to help research.
• Patriotism and control.
• Reluctant altruism.
• Signalling reluctant altruism.