[Phys-L] Re: god friendly science

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 20:08 -0500 5/26/05, Brian Whatcott wrote:
> I can't help recall [though doubtless in mangled form] the Jesuit
> aphorism to the effect,
> "give me a child young enough, and he will be mine for ever"
>
> One could continue in this vein, such as...
> A child from a non-religious home background will be more likely to
> have a criminal record.
> A child exposed only to American public schools is more likely to hold
> adverse opinions about religious belief.
> ....and so on......
QWhile the Jesuit aphorism ma y have some truth to it (recall the
adage, "the acorn never falls far from the tree"), the other two are
patently false. Countless surveys have shown that the fraction of
prisoners who are atheists is far below the fraction of atheists
among the general population. Of course, this may be due to all sorts
of reasons--perhaps atheists come mainly from the middle and upper
classes, groups that seldom see the inside of a prison regardless of
religious orientation, or perhaps atheists are smarter than the
religious and so, although they commit roughly the same fraction of
the crimes as their presence in the population, their higher
intelligence enables them to get away with it more often, or perhaps
others that one can think up.

As to the second possibility above, I have seen no evidence that
public schools have any effect on the religious beliefs of their
students. I know many more people who have been driven away from
religion by the excesses of the religious private schools they
attended as a child, than had that happen to them at public school.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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