Religious Children Less Capable of Distinguishing Fantasy...

In two studies, 5- and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. C...

 Passive and Active Observation

It is usual to say that the two sources of experience are Observation and Experiment. When we merely note and record the phenomena which occur around us in the ordinary course of nature we are said to observe. When we change the course of nature by the intervention of our will and muscular powers, and thus produce unusual combinations and conditions of phenomena, we are said to experiment. [Sir John] Herschel has justly remarked that we might properly call these two modes of experience passiv...

 China and India Aborting Millions of Fetuses

Williamson’s wise advice went unheeded. In the years after her study was published in 1978, ultrasound became increasingly available in Singapore and other countries in South and East Asia. The introduction of this technology enabled a new and brutal form of sex selection: if the sonogram shows it’s a girl, abort. Researchers’ estimates of the number of female fetuses aborted over the past twenty years are mind-boggling: ten million in India, twenty million in China. Because of this pra...