Found this Scott Martens post via Jonathan Edelstein (via Randy MacDonald). Titled The Secular Itjihad, the post is a rumination on the relationship between the secular state and the various religious traditions that exist as subsets within it, with a specific focus on Islam. I highly suggest Conrad Barwa’s “brief” (his words) comment on Martens’ post!

Additionally, Martens notes asserts that:

Another thing I’ve learned from what I have managed to read of Islamic thought: It is so varied that it actually makes Marxism look like a tightly-knit coherent movement. Whatever it is that someone says is Islamic, you can find some significant community of Muslims somewhere who will tell you the exact opposite.

Quantification is crucial here. There are a non-trivial number of Muslims who fit in well within the liberal order in the United States. And there is a wide diversity of opinion on a variety of topics in Islam. But one must not pretend as if the spectrum is populated by groups of roughly congruent size & influence. My personal opinion is that the Muslim liberals in the form of Irshad Manji are a vanishingly small minority in the Dar-al-Islam, perhaps, small enough perhaps to be discarded from the equation. On the other hand, though the radical Salafi fundamentalists are a minority as well, I do not believe that they are trivial enough to be discarded from the equation. In a similar fashion, Christian Reconstructionists have views that would make a Salafi radical proud, but they are such a small minority within the Christian community that they can be discarded from the equation when characterizing Christianity.

If Western liberals favor the liberals within Islam, as I believe they should, they have the possibility of changing the function that characterizes Islam appreciably. In such a fashion, they are influencing and offering their opinion on how Islam should be interpreted, at least indirectly, even if by justifying a liberal order by appealing to the liberal form of Islam as substrate.

Also, I point to this review of Irshad Manji’s book The Trouble With Islam by a Canadian Muslim woman who has a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Harvard. If you read her right, dhimmis had special rights, the same rights, but not all the responsibilities, as Muslims. I agree that Manji’s personal experience with Islam and her lesbianism allows her to tap into some anger-but this comment about dhimmis (which the woman repeated when interviewed with Manji) is pretty hilarious. If all the barbarism (speaking from a Western perspective) is simply because of the cultures that practice Islam, not Islam itself, I still find it peculiar as to why Islam was so successful in converting these peoples to the One True Faith.

Posted by razib at 08:26 PM

I just had a stray thought the other day.

When it comes to issues that I feel are scientifically (natural science in particular) tractable I’m a big fan of reductionism, breaking it down into its parts, examining it in detail, demystifying it. I tend to have a negative reaction when people talk about “holism.” On the other hand, I have an aversion of excessive deconstruction and analysis when it comes to softer disciplines. I don’t see the benefit in laboring over every single sentence in a piece of literature, examining, breaking it apart, reconstituting it, contextualizing it, and so forth. Isn’t art supposed to be about the gestalt?

Posted by razib at 03:22 PM

I have alluded several times to the possible selection pressures that dense post-neolithic life might have induced in various populations. But I realized that I make it seem like there is a constant environment after the introduction of agriculture in any given population. There are various post-neolithic lifestyles, with the farmer vs. nomad dichotomy foremost in the minds of many. But, how often did farming populations practice nomadism, and make the switch back, or perhaps revert to hunter-gatherer lifestyle when marginalized?

Posted by razib at 05:12 PM

Evolution is in the news in Georgia right now.

I find it interesting that the Republican governor of Georgia is trying to strike a moderate pose on this issue. Jimmy Carter has also weighed in, reaffirming his status as a liberal evangelical by opposing any erosion of the teaching of evolution. As I’ve noted before, evolution is not a controversial subject at the elite levels, and populist politicians tend to quell the debate on this topic so that they don’t have to show their non-popular hand….

There are many bloggers talking about this so I’ll leave it at that.

Posted by razib at 07:58 PM

Research Around the World Links Religion to Economic Development. I need to read this paper they published before I comment, but there’s part of what they say….

“This is a revised view of the Protestant ethic,” he continued. He noted that many mostly Protestant, wealthy countries were now more interested in quality of life, and that many Eastern countries were now more focused on economic growth — with some populations even converting, as Mr. Barro noted, to Christianity and specifically to Protestantism.

“Confucian countries are now the most Protestant countries on earth, in terms of a moral imperative to work hard, save money, to do well,” Mr. Inglehart said.

One of the researchers works at The Hoover Institute. Has anyone found any evidence that a right-wing American think-tank in the past generation has published anything unflattering toward religion?

Update: Here is an abstract of a previous paper published by the authors on this topic. Note:

Barro and McCleary suggest that higher rates of religious beliefs stimulate growth because they help to sustain aspects of individual behavior that enhance productivity. They believe that higher church attendance depresses growth because it signifies a greater use of resources by the religion sector. However, that suppression of growth is tempered by the extent to which church attendance leads to greater religious beliefs, which in turn encourages economic growth.

Yeah, OK….

Update II: OK, here’s the some papers in PDF by these two. Will comment in extended entry later….

Posted by razib at 07:33 PM Comments

Zack gave me the idea of filling this form. Below are states I’ve visited (includes walking around).

Posted by razib at 04:02 PM

Dwarf-date show sparks controversy.

Posted by razib at 04:07 PM

Research Around the World Links Religion to Economic Development. I need to read this paper they published before I comment, but there’s part of what they say….

“This is a revised view of the Protestant ethic,” he continued. He noted that many mostly Protestant, wealthy countries were now more interested in quality of life, and that many Eastern countries were now more focused on economic growth — with some populations even converting, as Mr. Barro noted, to Christianity and specifically to Protestantism.

“Confucian countries are now the most Protestant countries on earth, in terms of a moral imperative to work hard, save money, to do well,” Mr. Inglehart said.

One of the researchers works at The Hoover Institute. Has anyone found any evidence that a right-wing American think-tank in the past generation has published anything unflattering toward religion?

Update: Here is an abstract of a previous paper published by the authors on this topic. Note:

Barro and McCleary suggest that higher rates of religious beliefs stimulate growth because they help to sustain aspects of individual behavior that enhance productivity. They believe that higher church attendance depresses growth because it signifies a greater use of resources by the religion sector. However, that suppression of growth is tempered by the extent to which church attendance leads to greater religious beliefs, which in turn encourages economic growth.

Yeah, OK….

Update II: OK, here’s the some papers in PDF by these two. Will comment in extended entry later….

Godless comments:

This is why sociology is to social science as astrology is to astronomy. Culture is important, but you can’t study humans while entirely neglecting human biology. Instead of copious regressions, contradictory conclusions, and Thernstromian circomlocution about “Confucian Protestantism”, GNXP invites you to consider a more parsimonious hypothesis: a strongly negative religiosity-IQ correlation:

coupled with a strongly positive IQ-GDP correlation:

Note: (Figure 2. Per capita GDP by racial group. “White” here means European white; “East Asian” means the racially homogenous polities: Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan. ) [Godless notes: The above graph has several incorrect values. The GDP-per-capita for Taiwan and South Korea is substantially higher than has been indicated, and Singapore has been excluded. I will do a reproduction of this graph with 2002 GDP-per-capita data soon.]

One doesn’t need any “Confucian Protestants” or bizarre separations between church-attendance and religious belief to explain the GDP data. This pair of researchers seems cast in the Thernstrom mould: resolutely anti-biological explanations of phenomena that must – in part – be viewed through the lens of h-bd.

Posted by razib at 08:33 PM

Godless’ previous post brought up some questions/assertions about the genetic heritage of East/Southeast Asians. Here a few relevant articles in PubMed.

Mitochondrial DNA diversity in Southeast Asian populations.

The Emerging Limbs and Twigs of the East Asian mtDNA Tree.

Phylogeographic Differentiation of Mitochondrial DNA in Han Chinese.

Y chromosomal DNA variation in east Asian populations and its potential for inferring the peopling of Korea.

Three major lineages of Asian Y chromosomes: implications for the peopling of east and southeast Asia.

Much more in the “related articles” function of PubMed.

Personally, I believe that recent social norms are important in the development of skills and predispositions suited to a modern economy, the “northern” Han and the “southern” Han (assuming they are two disparate groups) have both gone through governance by the “Mandarinate” for about the same time period (the later sinicization of the south is compensated by the dominance of barbarians in north China for long periods). Phylogenetic relationships determined through studies of neutral genes might be less important than we might presume. A comparison of the g of Cantonese with Outer Mongolians might be used to test this hypothesis.

Posted by razib at 02:30 PM

Everyone has heard about the police department that rejected very intelligent applicants (higher turnover from this subset). But if this is true, it’s really bizarre.

I was a Rhodes Scholar nominee, inducted into the Mensa society in May 2001, named to the National Dean’s List for three consecutive years, successfully competed in intercollegiate forensics and served as student body president.
…
Recently, I interviewed with a school in one of the metro Atlanta counties, only to receive an e-mail from the principal stating, “Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become. However, it is highly recommended that you seek employment at the collegiate level; there your intellectual comportment would be greatly appreciated. Good luck.”

What was that about role models ?

Posted by razib at 12:36 PM