Generational Replacement Behind Growth of Secularims

One important factor behind the growth of the religiously unaffiliated is generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones. Among the youngest Millennials (those ages 18-22, who were minors in 2007 and thus not eligible to be interviewed in Pew Research Center surveys conducted that year), fully one-third (34%) are religiously unaffiliated, compared with about one-in-ten members of the Silent Generation (9%) and one-in-twenty members of the World War II-era...

 The Critical Path

H UMANITY IS MOVING EVER DEEPER into crisis—a crisis without prec¬ edent. av upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity from a complex of around-the-world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently col¬ ored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole. Second, we are in an unprecedented crisis because cosmic evolution is also...

 The Past and Future of the Mississippi

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian Period, must a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the ...

 Theories on Handedness

Because it develops so early, this brain asymmetry appears to be largely innate. It is possible, however, that environmental factors begin operating even before birth. One hypothesis is that the right hand becomes more skillfull because it has greater freedom to move in the womb. About three-quarters of all fetuses spend the last several weeks of gestation with their right arm facing out—toward the mother's abdominal wall. This arm has more space in which to move than does the left arm, whi...

 Mark Twain, the Mississippi, and Scientific Conjecture

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:-- In the space of one hundred...