Noyau (1)

…the noyau, an animal society held together by mutual animosity rather than co-operation

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative.

2,559 thoughts on “Noyau (1)”

  1. Keiths said:

    Who created humans, in your view? It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me — it was someone else, a purposeful being with its own mind.

    But it was you and me, Keiths – and everyone else, and everything else, as aspects of God, that created all of this. On April 23, 2012 I said this:

    f your point is that the world either is, or is not, flat, I can counter that under some interpretations of quantum physics and multiverse theory, observers can individually (or in groups) collapse entirely different experiential universes according to their observational perspective. John Wheeler even went so far as to say that conscious observation collapsed an entire history of the universe in correlation to its perspective. Many physicists have held the view that the universe is ordered by mind in this way. Quantum eraser experiments can be interpreted to support the idea that quantum collapse can change historical subatomic events.

    So, wherever a true contradiction between experiences would occur, the multiverse can simply branch off another version that comports with the offending view, compete with supportive context and history. In one branch, one group is proven right and the other group is demonstrated wrong, the second group being a psychoplasmic configuration of those people, while in the minds of the **actual** 2nd group, they experience being proven right over the first group, who in that branch are the psychoplasmic automatons.

    Evidence

    I can’t find the thread that OP of mine refers to where I am discussing my ‘model of reality” wrt free will/psychoplasm, but I’m pretty sure I referred to my view that the mind creates reality (which spawned the whole “mind-powers murray” thing and let to many comments about me creating things with my mind), although I’m not sure I specifically stated that I hold that it creates the past to necessarily conform with the present.

    Views similar to this in that you, I, and everyone else are aspects of god is a fairly common theistic perspective, although said in different ways, so the idea that humans were/are created by ” someone else” is a nonsensical perspective, especially from my particular worldview perspective. God is not “someone else”, any more than life is “something else” wrt a living organism.

    But, I don’t expect that to stop your quote-mining habit.

  2. The argument about what “atheism” means is also really stupid. It can be reasonably defined in several ways. So long as people are clear, it makes no difference whatever. I’d say the most common usages are

    Someone who doesn’t believe in God.
    Someone who believes there’s no God.
    Someone who claims to know there’s no God.

    They all mean something different. I presume it’s possible for people here to understand that and be clear what they mean when they use the term, and ask others what THEY mean when they use it. Patrick likes the first definition. There’s nothing whatever wrong with that choice.

  3. fifthmonarchyman:

    hotshoe_: Go fix your own brethren’s heinous anti-atheist and sectarian persecution before you start getting all paranoid that you’re about to receive some much-deserved but completely non-existent anti-theist persecution.

    The only way to fix that sort of thing with out violence is by pointing out that their behavior is inconsistent with the teachings of Christ. The only place that that sort of dialog can happen is in the public square.

    Yet you would prohibit religious discussion in pubic because you think it rude.

    You say such idiotic things.

    The only way to fix that is NOT by pointing out their behavior is inconsistent with christ. It’s by pointing out that their behavior is inconsistent with decent manners, human empathy, and civilization. Which is not a religious discussion at all, and is certainly compatible with talk “in the public square”.

    IF pointing out that their behavior is inconsistent with christ ever worked, I’d be all in favor of doing that, but your christian assholes already get plenty of christ talk in their local churches. If it works, let it work there. You must go to them and preach to them in their churches.

    Don’t pollute our public spaces with your rude religious showing-off.

  4. fifthmonarchyman: exactly, geeze

    Thanks for contradicting yourself in the span of two posts..

    Atheism doesn’t have tenets.

    Individual atheists can and do have tenets – morality, honesty, sense of fairness, altruism, etc. They just don’t need an organized religion to tell them to follow the golden rule.

  5. fifthmonarchyman: Apparently you divide it into two groups Atheists and everyone else.

    That’s another example of a nonsensical and irritating remark. I can divide it into pumpkins and non-pumpkins too, if I have a reason to. Or Christians and non-Christians if that’s what I want to talk about. Also conflators and non-conflators, fallacy committers and sound argument makers.

  6. OMagain said:

    You also refuse to address the point that you are willing to sacrifice 10,000 people a year to prevent something which being armed does not usually prevent.

    No, I’ve directly addressed that a couple of times now, but I see you’re now into the “reiterating propagandized, misleading talking points” stage of the discussion.

    I’ve linked to the necessary starting points for anyone (wth an open mind and actually interested in finding out the facts) to begin an unbiased examination, and have laid some groundwork pointing out the repeated bait and switch equivocations employed by anti-gun nuts. Not much more I can do on the subject.

  7. fifthmonarchyman: You as a tolerant western liberal atheist are outnumbered by the Chinese Communists and hence it’s you who are not the true Atheist.

    Did I not hear something recently about CCP members being explicitly forbidden from following the Christian faith. This article suggest there are more Christians in China than communist party members.

    The fact is when a Christian persecutes he is acting against the teachings of Christ.

    Didn’t stop a few folks getting burned at the stake. What was the sack of Constantinople? Béziers? Caedite eos. Novit enim dominus qui sunt eius

    When a Atheist persecutes he is being perfectly consistent with the tenets of atheism.

    Find me the citation for any tenet of atheism?.

    You may disagree with the atheist who acts in such a manner but your shared belief in no god offers you no foundation to tell him he is wrong.

    It is perfectly possible to agree a code of ethics without having to believe in the existence of a particular god.

  8. William J. Murray: I’ve linked to the necessary starting points for anyone (wth an open mind and actually interested in finding out the facts) to begin an unbiased examination, and have laid some groundwork pointing out the repeated bait and switch equivocations employed by anti-gun nuts. Not much more I can do on the subject.

    One thing you might do is familiarise yourself with other places, other states, other countries where people manage perfectly well without having guns in their waistbands and strewn around the house.

  9. Let’s look at it this way: from the perspective of characters in a dream, is the dreamer “someone else”? No. The characters in the dream – indeed, everything in the dream – are aspects of the dreamer.

  11. Well, if your concept of theism includes a God-concept that are dreamlike projections of the human mind, then we probably don’t disagree that profoundly, but why call such a projection “God”?

  12. Alan Fox: One thing you might do is familiarise yourself with other places, other state, other countries where people manage perfectly well without having guns in their waistbands and strewn around the house.

    Japan is a perfect example of just such a place; but that’s not what the discussion was about – it was about France and the challenge of allowing non-assimilated refugees and immigrants loose in an unarmed population.

    We haven’t even gotten into the “WTF do you do when you’re disarmed and your government goes bad” problem.

    IMO, anti-gun nuts are misogynistic idiots that don’t understand the basic right and responsibility to protect yourself and loved ones. The police cannot do this.

    Those who would trade freedom for safety (or the false promise thereof) deserve neither.

  13. William J. Murray: I’ve linked to the necessary starting points for anyone (wth an open mind and actually interested in finding out the facts) to begin an unbiased examination,

    You won’t be commenting on the quality of the study you cited then?

    William J. Murray: the repeated bait and switch equivocations employed by anti-gun nuts.

    Actually it’s the gun nuts who are the nuts. Who are the nuts, the people who advocate universal ownership of devices whose only purpose is to kill that allow impulses to become actions in a mere pull of a trigger or the people who are anti that?

    Your attempt to reflect the “nuts” label onto those who are anti-gun just shows how few tactics have actually worked, that you are reduced to playground level turnabouts. I’m not a nut, you’re the nut!

    William J. Murray: Not much more I can do on the subject.

    You could consider that your point of view is flawed because you’ve cherry picked the evidence that supports that view, but no, I guess that’s not an option.

  14. Elizabeth:
    Well, if your concept of theism includes a God-concept that are dreamlike projections of the human mind, then we probably don’t disagree that profoundly, but why call such a projection “God”?

    We would be the dream-like projections in the mind of god, not vice-versa.

  15. walto: That’s another example of a nonsensical and irritating remark.

    I don’t mean to be irritating. I do mean to be clear

    Here is what you said.

    quote:

    At least 120 people killed by non-atheists in France today because they were (possibly) insufficiently theist or the wrong kind of theist.

    end quote:

    If you did not mean say the events in France were committed by Theists as apposed to Jihadist Muslims I apologize. You could have said something like this

    “At least 120 people killed by Jihadist Muslims in France today because they were (possibly) insufficiently Muslim or the wrong kind of Muslim.”

    That would be an accurate and clear statement but it would not score culture-war points. So apparently that formulation of the statement did not even occur to you.

    peace

  16. fifthmonarchyman: Lumping Jihadist Muslims into the same category as the Amish and Salvation Army is counterproductive.

    You need to know who your enemy is and it’s not Aunt Martha’s prayer group.

    Yes, it is, in a sense, because the religious moderates provide cover for the terrorists by legitimizing all religious belief and preventing any challenge to religious indoctrination – the indoctrination which is the gateway to physical action against the “wrong” kind of believer or non-believer. Although the moderates themselves are likely to be targets of the extremists, the moderates continue to delude themselves that religion is a positive good as a whole and therefore society cannot take any rational steps to curtail its pernicious influence.

    The undeserved respect which religion currently has in our society, and the moderates’ unjustified demand that we must respect beliefs in the name of religious tolerance, prevent us from saying that the Koran and the Bible contain life-destroying nonsense.

    Religious moderates (of whatever faith) are not as immediately life-threatening as fanatics, but are the enemy of reason and secular life nonetheless.

  18. hotshoe_: Religious moderates (of whatever faith) are not as immediately life-threatening as fanatics, but are the enemy of reason and secular life nonetheless.

    Do you think the Amish are religious moderates?

    peace

  19. fifthmonarchyman: You obviously did not read the argument I posted. Williams appealed to scripture. His argument came squarely from the radical Christian Anabaptist/Puritantradition.

    There is no hint of the enlightenment in his words.

    peace

    So is it your contention that he was not influenced by his society, that he was ignorant of all (at least nearly all) but scripture?

    If not, you really don’t have a point, other than ignoring context and learning.

    Glen Davidson

  20. William J. Murray: IMO, anti-gun nuts are misogynistic idiots that don’t understand the basic right and responsibility to protect yourself and loved ones. The police cannot do this.

    But it’s been demonstrated over and over again that having a gun in a household does the opposite of that.

    But I suppose facts are not really what’s important in issues like this with people like you.

    http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full

    After they controlled for a number of potentially confounding factors, the presence of a gun in the home was associated with a nearly fivefold risk of suicide (adjusted odds ratio = 4.8) (13) and an almost threefold risk of homicide (adjusted odds ratio = 2.7) (14).

    But meh, facts.

  22. DNA_Jock:
    William,
    I encourage you to read the paper I linked to earlier, (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2443681), the abstract of which you proceeded to quote-mine (All those caveats that you bolded were used by the authors, Aneja et al., regarding their conclusion that RTC laws lead to large increases (+33%) in gun aggravated assaults).
    The fact of the matter is that Lott and Mustard’s “More Guns, Less Crime” analysis contains a string of embarrassing mistakes (Who the fuck uses 36 collinear demographic variables?). Fix these errors and it turns out (Aneja et al. Table 8a, line 1) that RTC laws lead to an increase in Rape and Larceny, and a probable increase in aggravated assault, robbery, auto theft and burglary. There’s a slight increase in murder too, but that effect is too small to have any confidence that it’s real.
    Lott managed to get his bogus numbers by carefully choosing his time frame to coincide with the end of the crack epidemic.
    As you have admitted previously, you are not qualified to “arbit” such research, so you are just “cheer-leading”.
    Shake those pom-poms.

    Thanks, D-J, that’s a helpful analysis.

  23. fifthmonarchyman: If the atheist expressed views that are popular in the USA and did it in a non condescending way I would expect the odds are pretty good.

    I don’t think that combination is very likely

    peace

    So you think that other people might not be biased, while your “assessment” of atheists in the very same comment is wholly biased.

    Your usual standard of “thinking.”

    Glen Davidson

  24. GlenDavidson: So is it your contention that he was not influenced by his society, that he was ignorant of all (at least nearly all) but scripture?

    I’m saying that his society pious Puritan pre civil war and England and America was not influenced by the enlightenment.

    I don’t see how you can argue otherwise without positing time travel.

    peace

  25. hotshoe_: Tell me why you care about my answer.

    Because I think you are the voice of those who hate me and folks like me and I’d like to understand what makes you tick.

    peace

  26. fifthmonarchyman: I’m saying that his society pious Puritan pre civil war and England and America was not influenced by the enlightenment.

    I don’t see how you can argue otherwise without positing time travel.

    peace

    Oh I see, you’re playing a definitional game, it wasn’t the Enlightenment yet so he couldn’t have been influenced by the Enlightenment.

    Well, could he have been influenced by ideas shortly prior to the Enlightenment that actually gave rise to the Enlightenment? Because that was the issue, not the fact that you’re pedantic whenever it’s convenient for you to be.

    Glen Davidson

  27. fifthmonarchyman: I don’t mean to be irritating. I do mean to be clear

    Here is what you said.

    quote:

    At least 120 people killed by non-atheists in France today because they were (possibly) insufficiently theist or the wrong kind of theist.

    end quote:

    If you did not mean say the events in France were committed by Theists as apposed to Jihadist Muslims I apologize. You could have said something like this

    “At least 120 people killed by Jihadist Muslims in France today because they were (possibly) insufficiently Muslim or the wrong kind of Muslim.”

    That would be an accurate and clear statement but it would not score culture-war points. So apparently that formulation of the statement did not even occur to you.

    peace

    I’ve already responded to mung’s ‘insensitivity’ accusation and won’t do so again. My remark was true–almost trivially so. Your response was to knowingly, purposely, repeatedly mischararacterize what I wrote to make some kind of weird point, I guess. You could have simply said, ‘Well, all theists don’t act like that,’ and i’d have agreed. But, making points was more important to you–even if it involved the kind of bullshit it obviously DID involve. I didn’t mind conversing with you here because you generally didn’t go that way. But suit yourself.

  28. GlenDavidson: So you think that other people might not be biased, while your “assessment” of atheists in the very same comment is wholly biased.

    Nope, we are all biased. I would never argue otherwise.

    Lack of bias is not a condition for holding public office or voting in America.

    peace

  29. OMagain,

    So now unbiased readers have multiple resources to look over. I advise them to pay attention to the wording, phrasings and dates of publication.

  30. GlenDavidson: Well, could he have been influenced by ideas shortly prior to the Enlightenment that actually gave rise to the Enlightenment?

    And those ideas were? and they were Incorporated into his argument in what way Please be specific?

    Claiming that Williams was subconsciously influenced by ideas that did not exist at the time and that he would of found to be abhorrent instead of the ideas that he explicitly referenced in his argument requires a little evidence

    peace

  31. William J. Murray: Japan is a perfect example of just such a place; but that’s not what the discussion was about – it was about France and the challenge of allowing non-assimilated refugees and immigrants loose in an unarmed population.

    If there is a problem with immigrants in France it is that government policy has resulted in effective ghettos like the Paris banlieues

    We haven’t even gotten into the “WTF do you do when you’re disarmed and your government goes bad” problem.

    Pardon me if I’m skeptical of your mind-reading powers on this.

    IMO, anti-gun nuts are misogynistic idiots that don’t understand the basic right and responsibility to protect yourself and loved ones. The police cannot do this.

    For the most part, the police do do this, here in France, on a daily basis.

    Those who would trade freedom for safety (or the false promise thereof) deserve neither.

    The sort of freedom that involves being armed and suspicious of all strangers does not appeal to me. I’m sorry if that is all that is available for you.

  32. William J. Murray:
    OMagain,

    So now unbiased readers have multiple resources to look over. I advise them to pay attention to the wording, phrasings and dates of publication.

    That’s good advice. Will you take it yourself, or have you already decided on this matter–as several dozen posts of yours on this very thread strongly suggest?

  33. William J. Murray,

    IMO, anti-gun nuts are misogynistic idiots that don’t understand the basic right and responsibility to protect yourself and loved ones.

    It’s misogyny to not want a gun in the house?

    We haven’t even gotten into the “WTF do you do when you’re disarmed and your government goes bad” problem.

    Yes, the Syrian people are finding out just how valid that dumbass argument is! Personal weapons vs tanks, aircraft and a highly trained military.

    How bad is bad? Does enactment of homosexual marriage count? Imprisonment without trial? Who decides? The ones with the most guns, presumably. Might makes right.

    I’d read that people offering these bizarro justifications existed, but I never thought I’d meet one in the flesh, so to speak.

    You just like guns. No harm in admitting that. Spare us the bullshit justifications.

  34. hotshoe_: Yes, it is, in a sense, because the religious moderates provide cover for the terrorists by legitimizing all religious belief and preventing any challenge to religious indoctrination – the indoctrination which is the gateway to physical action against the “wrong” kind of believer or non-believer.

    I’m struggling to avoid this conclusion in the aftermath of the events in Paris.

  35. fifthmonarchyman:

    hotshoe_: Tell me why you care about my answer.

    Because I think you are the voice of those who hate me and folks like me and I’d like to understand what makes you tick.

    Well then, pray to your god to reveal the answer to you.

    It’ll work just as well as me explaining it, since you clearly can’t absorb the truth of anything a non-believer says without distorting it through your shitty christian / presuppositionalist filter. You might as well make up the answer in your own head, instead. Erm, make up “god’s” answer. 🙁

  36. fifthmonarchyman: And those ideas were? and they were Incorporated into his argument in what way Please be specific?

    Have you heard of the Dutch?

    Please be informed, I’m not here to make up for your ignorance.

    Claiming that Williams was subconsciously influenced by ideas that did not exist at the time and that he would of found to be abhorrent instead of the ideas that he explicitly referenced in his argument requires a little evidence

    Geez you’re an idiot. America was settled by Puritans who went to the Netherlands precisely because they were relatively tolerant religiously. The Netherlands had ended up with a society with differing beliefs, and found that they’d need to accommodate them for civil peace and for, well, making money, commerce. The Puritans preferred to set up their own theocracy, so the Pilgrims moved to America, but that doesn’t mean the Dutch experiment didn’t affect Europe, Williams, and the Americas–as well as the Enlightenment.

    Oh well, you writing without knowledge, it’s just inevitable.

    Glen Davidson

  37. Alan Fox: I’m struggling to avoid this conclusion in the aftermath of the events in Paris.

    That is why the characterization of the perpetrators of this violence as “Theists” is so unfortunate and unhelpful.

    How would you feel if I followed the news of some communist atrocity against Christians with the following statement

    “The atheist moderates provide cover for the Communists by legitimizing all atheism and preventing any challenge to anti Christian indoctrination.”

    peace

  39. GlenDavidson: The Netherlands had ended up with a society with differing beliefs, and found that they’d need to accommodate them for civil peace and for, well, making money, commerce

    The Netherlands found that a state accommodating differing beliefs was consistent with the Anabaptist Christianity that was so prevalent there at the time.

    It’s those Anabaptist beliefs that influenced Williams not the Enlightenment.

    check it out

    http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/god-government-and-roger-williams-big-idea-6291280/?no-ist

    and this

    peace

  40. Fmm, They aren’t just theists, they’re a very devout sect, extremely serious about their theism. Instead of worrying so much about the feelings of those theists with other views who don’t want to be lumped with the bad theists, you might consider the feelings of some others who maybe aren’t quite as concerned as you are with exonerating Anabaptists this morning. Are you really concerned that Christians are in danger of being tried for these crimes?

  41. hotshoe_: I’m sorry, Alan.

    Me too. Such a needless waste of innocent lives – the disruption to families, their plans and hopes.

    But the French government has done little over the years to address the problem of banlieues.

  42. Alan Fox: I’m struggling to avoid this conclusion in the aftermath of the events in Paris.

    It’s certainly an indictment of any Divine Command Theory category of moral philosophy.

    At least nobody here seems to hold to such a thing.

  43. walto: They aren’t just theists, they’re a very devout sect, extremely serious about their theism.

    So are the Amish.

    What defines these folks is not their theism it’s their Jihadist Islam.

    Waxing on and on about the Terrorist’s theism is misleading at precisely the time when clarity of purpose is needed.

    peace

  44. fifthmonarchyman: Here is what you said.

    quote:

    At least 120 people killed by non-atheists in France today because they were (possibly) insufficiently theist or the wrong kind of theist.

    end quote:

    Yes, that is what walto said. And rightly so.

    If you did not mean say the events in France were committed by Theists as apposed to Jihadist Muslims I apologize. You could have said something like this
    “At least 120 people killed by Jihadist Muslims in France today because they were (possibly) insufficiently Muslim or the wrong kind of Muslim.”

    You have completely changed the topic.

    Yes, if walto had wanted to make a statement about jihadist muslims, he could have said that.

    However, walto was making a statement about the persecution of atheists. You object to what walto wrote, so we presumably should take that as you defending the persecution of atheists. And that makes you a non-Christian, by your own words.

  45. Have to say, I’m finding myself utterly moved by the opening of the mass at Notre Dame cathedral, broadcasting now.

    Music, at least, is powerful stuff.

  46. Neil Rickert: However, walto was making a statement about the persecution of atheists.

    Were the Terrorists persecuting atheists yesterday or were they killing folks to advance the cause of their Caliphate?

    At times like this it’s important to get facts strait

    peace

  47. fifthmonarchyman: The Netherlands found that a state accommodating differing beliefs was consistent with the Anabaptist Christianity that was so prevalent there at the time.

    It’s those Anabaptist beliefs that influenced Williams not the Enlightenment.

    check it out

    http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/god-government-and-roger-williams-big-idea-6291280/?no-ist

    peace

    You write ignorantly, as usual. Williams clearly was in circles of power, hardly unaware of the thought and philosophy swirling around at the time. Machiavelli alone had treated religion as little but a means to power, thereby weakening the force of religion as the sole arbiter of things. Williams may or may not have read The Prince, but it influenced Shakespeare and he England. As Puritan, Williams was on the side of reaction against the previous age, but pre-Enlightenment ideas that helped give rise to the Enlightenment, like those of Machiavelli, were in the air for upper class folk like Williams.

    Your reading capacity seems rather poor. From the linked article:

    Some do not recognize Williams as achieving much of anything because, they say, his success in Rhode Island was isolated. Others have argued that Williams’ justifications for religious freedom derived too much from Scripture, and are the weaker for it. “Williams was no forerunner of the Enlightenment of Jefferson,” the historian Emil Oberholzer Jr. asserted in 1956. “When Jefferson advocated religious liberty, he did it as a child of the Enlightenment; his motive was political and social. With Williams, the child of a theological age, the motive was wholly religious.”

    I don’t think much scholarship today would agree with the 1956 judgment that “the motive was wholly religious” for anything. Machiavelli knew better, way back then. Continuing:

    Others have taken the opposite view. Vernon Parrington, a leading historian in the first half of the 20th century, called him “primarily a political philosopher rather than a theologian” and said his theory of the commonwealth “must be reckoned the richest contribution of Puritanism to American thought.” Even Harvard’s Perry Miller, who placed Williams entirely in the religious sphere, admired him as “an explorer into the dark places, the very nature of freedom.” And Yale’s Edmund Morgan, arguably America’s leading colonial historian, noted that Williams “wrote most often, most effectively, and most significantly about civil government” and “put human society in new perspective; and he demolished, for anyone who accepted his premises, some of the assumptions that encumbered the statesmen of his day and still haunt our own.”

    In any case, many do read him as a political philosopher. That a Puritan would put his case religiously hardly surprises (you pretend that what you know is based on some ridiculous presuppositions), but somehow for around 1500 years no one really noticed that the Bible (NT anyway) favored religious freedom. The lucky thing is that the NT didn’t actually address the matter, hence religious freedom could be read back into it by Williams and others.

    Glen Davidson

  48. FMM asks me to consider a hypothetical situation:

    fifthmonarchyman: “The atheist moderates provide cover for the Communists by legitimizing all atheism and preventing any challenge to anti Christian indoctrination.”

    Funnily enough, we had dinner last night with friends, a French couple, a Canadian couple who holiday here regularly and a couple originally from Belfast in northern Ireland. We discussed the events in Paris and the problem of “blind-eye” turning and tacit support. My Belfast friends recalled the “troubles” and how involvement in terrorism is not a black and white issue but rather a sliding scale and dictated by peer pressure.

    So did moderate Catholics provide cover for IRA terrorists? Most certainly in differing degrees. Did moderate Protestants provide cover for Ulster loyalist terrorists? Undoubtedly in differing degrees.

  49. Really, William, you are hanging your hat on this?

    William:: According to a recent study, the six states that allow people to carry concealed guns without a permit have much lower murder and crime rates than the six states with the lowest gun-carry permit rates (23% lower murder rate, 12% lower violent crime rate). The 25 states with the highest carry permit issuance have lower murder and violent crime rates than the other 25 states.

    What a pity that you didn’t see fit to include the next two sentences, viz:

    However, this is much too simplistic of an approach. Despite their common use, simple cross-sectional comparisons can be very misleading.

    Well, I think we can all agree with that sentiment.
    Far more telling, however, is the fact that the “study” you are touting is a pamphlet self-published by John Lott which bears all the marks of blatant cherry-picking. Sadly, they don’t actually disclose their methods (e.g. was “six states” pre-specified?), so you cannot tell. Anything at all.

    William J. Murray: So now unbiased readers have multiple resources to look over. I advise them to pay attention to the wording, phrasings and dates of publication.

    Well of course you would. A self-published methodology-free polemic is going to lack the caveats that are found in a responsible publication.
    Although Aneja et al. is more recent…
    Nice pom-poms.

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