Ah … everyone loves a statistical map, and this collection takes the cake!

A Kansas State University geography PhD student, Tom Vought, created density maps of the seven deadly sins across the US. The operationalizations of some of these constructs are unquestionably up for debate, but this is a totally fun demo to play around with, anyway. Interesting how the Bible Belt seems to be most deeply entrenched in sinful behavior … if asked for a retort, I bet they would point out that the seven deadly sins is a catholic concept, anyway.

The first article linked below describes the project, including the statistics that were used to index each of the 7 deadly sins. The second link goes straight to interactive maps of the US for each of the seven deadly sins. Classic!

RTFA: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/mar/26/one-na…

The question of evil and where it lurks has been largely ignored by the scientific community, which is why a recently released study titled “The Spatial Distribution of the Seven Deadly Sins Within Nevada” is groundbreaking: Never before has a state’s fall from grace been so precisely graphed and plotted.

Geographers from Kansas State University have used certain statistical measurements to quantify Nevada’s sins and come up with a county-by-county map purporting to show various degrees of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride in the Silver State. By culling statistics from nationwide databanks of things like sexually transmitted disease infection rates (lust) or killings per capita (wrath), the researchers came up with a sin index. This is a precision party trick – rigorous mapping of ridiculous data.

Interactive Graph for the US:

RTFA: http://www.lasvegassun.com/photos/galleries/2009/mar…

RTFA: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-115…

Some go even further and say the site and its implications are incredible. As Reading University professor Steve Mithen says: ‘Gobekli Tepe is too extraordinary for my mind to understand.’

So what is it that has energised and astounded the sober world of academia?

The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge.

Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images – mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions…

Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old.

That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC.

Amazing! and here we are 15,000 years later. Might I suggest a relationship between weather and religion?

reference link
On many occasions the world has borne little resemblance to what we experience today. For example, we are currently in the middle of an ice epoch (longer than an ice age) which has lasted millions of years and is likely to continue for millions more.

Yet, in the context of the history of the planet, this is not a normal period. More average conditions would be significantly warmer, producing the lush vegetation and hot conditions that prevailed aeons ago, when dinosaurs walked the Earth for millions of years.

The reason why we are in the middle of such a cold epoch has a great deal to do with the positioning of the land masses. Almost imperceptibly, the great continents are constantly moving and changing location. Throughout the history of the Earth it has been unusual to have one polar ice-cap; it is unique for us now to have two of them…

Within an ice epoch there are ice ages, which alternate with shorter warmer periods known as interglacials. At the moment the Earth is passing through an interglacial period. This has lasted for around 10,000 years following the last Ice Age, which in turn went on for some 100,000 years. It would appear from historical climatic evidence that this ice age/interglacial pattern was established at the beginning of this ice epoch. Perhaps ominously for man, the pattern suggests that ice ages last around 100,000 years on average and the shorter, warmer interglacials around 10,000 – so we are nearing the end of our current warmer period.

The creation of this “religious” site coincides with the end of the last age.

…within the current interglacial period, starting some 10,000 years ago, there have been smaller patterns emerging – periods of warmer weather, followed by colder weather and so on. These have been broken down by climatologists into four main periods.

The first followed the end of the last Ice Age, indeed it caused it to end. The Earth probably reached its warmest about 5,000 or 6,000 years ago. At this time the temperature would have been on average about 2C (3.6F) warmer than the present day.

This period has acquired the name the Optimum period as a result, and was followed by a much colder spell. This more or less coincided with the historical period called the Iron Age, which reached its coldest around 2,500 years ago.

The article about the stones mentions weather in a different way however:

The world’s first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat – first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals – such as rye and oats – also started here.

But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn’t just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always thus. As the carvings on the stones show – and as archaeological remains reveal – this was once a richly pastoral region.

The article goes on to blame farming as the cause of the ecological crisis but I have my doubts. Regardless, the people had to leave their “garden of eden”.

RTFA: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/17/saud…

The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom’s top cleric saying that it’s OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.

“It is incorrect to say that it’s not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger,” Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom’s grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. “A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she’s too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her.”

“… The judge required the girl’s husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty.”

Wow. I grew up a liberal believing everyone should be treated equal, but should this apply to government and religion? Honestly, this is one of America’s ALLIES, how fucked up is the rest of the middle east?

What is amazing about the following story is the reaction of key Canadian religious figures to it. First, we begin with the background and a brief synopsis of reaction in the US and Britain, then we’ll move to reactions of Canadian religious figures, and close with the reactions to similar ads run in Washington D.C. and Italy:

RTFA: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM…

The atheist slogan, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life,” may soon be coming to subways and buses in Canada’s largest city.

The Toronto-based Freethought Association of Canada, inspired by a campaign that has plastered British buses with the phrase, has contacted the private firm that handles ads on the Toronto Transit Commission to see if the message would violate any rules. Organizers plan to launch a fundraising page on the website atheistbus.ca in the next few days.

The British campaign, which has inspired similar moves in Washington, Barcelona and Madrid, has sparked complaints to the country’s advertising authority and a backlash from the evangelical group Christian Voice, which has proclaimed that Britain is in “deep sin.”

Now for how Canadian religious groups are taking it:

Neil MacCarthy, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, said it was difficult to comment on ads that he hasn’t seen.

“The reality is that organized religion is often an easy target,” he said. “… At the same time, this type of campaign would likely generate discussion and dialogue around faith. And that can be a healthy thing, as long as it is done respectfully.”

The moderator of the United Church of Canada, Right Rev. David Giuliano, said he would rather see atheists say what they believe in, rather than what they are against.

But, pointing out that his church also uses advertising, he said he has some sympathy with the impetus behind the ads.

…

Mohamed Elmasry, founder of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said he had no problem with the ads: “They have a system of belief like anybody else, and they are entitled to live with this system and also propagate it among others.”

…

TTC vice-chairman Joe Mihevc, a former Christian theologian who has long sat on the ad-review committee, said he would welcome the atheist ads: “What better place to have one of the key theological, philosophical debates of our time but on public transit?”

Not a single religious group quoted said the Atheists were all damned to Hell and/or shouldn’t be allowed to post the ads. That’s a freakin’ enlightened society! I almost couldn’t believe these quotes when I read them. For me, anyway, this story is almost more interesting for the reactions of Canadian religious authorities than the ad campaign itself.

For a little comparison, here’s an article discussing the way people in the US reacted to a similar campaign being launched in Washington DC:

RTFA: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica…

[The American Humanist Association] launched our Washington DC advertising campaign on November 11 with the slogan “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” The venue was the sides, rears and insides of 230 of the city’s buses. News coverage of the campaign generated an outpouring of phone calls and e-mails, mostly negative. The largest number came directly to us but hundreds of complaints also came to Metro, the government entity that handles the city’s buses and subways. One of the complainers expressed a wish (or perhaps a prayer): “May all your atheist buses break down!”

The sudden high volume of visitors to our special campaign website www.whybelieveinagod.org crashed our server twice. Soon, the conservative talkshow hosts were clamouring to give us air time so they could argue against us and further rouse their audience. And conservative Christian organisations not only denounced our efforts but encouraged their flocks to come bleat in our ears. All this before our bus ads actually started to appear one week later.

UPDATE: Similar ads banned in Genoa, Italy for violating advertising ethics code

RTFA: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM…

Italian atheists have lost a bid to run “no God” advertisements on city buses after strong opposition from conservative political parties, a member of the group said on Saturday.

The ads reading “The bad news is that God doesn’t exist. The good news is that you don’t need him” were to have been put on buses in the northern city of Genoa, home to the Catholic cardinal who is head of the Italian Bishops Conference.

The mock-up was ready and the contract was sent to the group for signing but the publicity agency changed its mind and said the ad could not run it because it violated an ethics in advertising code, according to Giorgio Villella of The Italian Union of Atheists and Rationalist Agnostics (UAAR).

“Right-wing politicians criticized us ferociously,” Mr. Villella said by telephone from the group’s base, adding that at least one bus driver in Genoa said he would refuse to drive a “no God” bus.

“It’s strange that in a country where ads depicting near-naked women wearing skimpy lingerie is permitted on buses that we can’t run ads about atheism,” Mr. Villella said.

RTFA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFqSNpK9vm8

Don Davis of satiricalpolitical.com presents Louie Aronowitz in a laugh out loud parody of Adam Sandler’s famous Hanukkah Song.

Ha! This is actually pretty funny. If you aren’t familiar with Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah Song, then you might not recognize that this is a parody. My favorite verse:

OJ Simpson. Not an Athiest –
not that we can tell.
But even Athiests pray
that the Juice is going straight to Hell.

There’s the classic cold-hearted, condescending judgment we all expect and love from hardline religion. Athiests can hack it when it comes to condescending judgment, but for some reason it doesn’t feel consistent.

Meh – it’s made me laugh.