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High IQ implies atheism?
Professor Richard Lynn says in a forthcoming paper for the journal Intelligence, that there is a strong correlation between high IQ and lack of religious belief and that average intelligence predicts atheism rates.
Professor Lynn told Times Higher Education:
“Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ. Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God.”
Richard Lynn has frequently courted contraversy with prior papers claiming racial & gender difference in IQ levels.
More info at Times Higher Education
Evolution now confirmed in lab
New Scientist reports that evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, has confirmed evolution occuring in his lab over a 20 year period.
Lenski’s experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. “The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events,” he says. “That’s just what creationists say can’t happen.”
More info at New Scientist
Keep on rockin’ in the free(mason) world
Musicians is Boston are finding a new home - in Freemasonry!
Gary Robley, drummer for Dashboard Jesus and J. Geils cover band Blow Your Face Out, said he joined because his father was a Mason, as are many of his friends.
“There were a bunch of musicians I knew in it,” Robley said. “It was kind of a brotherhood. Musicians have always been a part of Masonry since its inception.”
For Hank Peirce, a Unitarian minister and former roadie for hardcore band Slapshot, Masonry provided a safe haven when he went through a divorce.
“It’s important to have ‘men space,’ where we can talk about things going on in our lives,” he said. “The lodge is a sanctuary. When you’re here, you’re doing rituals that men have done for hundreds of years.”
More info at The Boston Herald
No wedding because you’re impotent, says Bishop
A 26-year-old man was told he couldn’t have a Catholic wedding after being made paraplegic in a car accident.
Salvatore de Ciuco, spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo in central Italy, said: “No bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of admitted impotence as it is a motive for annulment”.
The man’s fiance said she was aware of his disability, and married him later in a civil ceremony.
Perhaps we should also point out that according to the Church, the young man in question is not going to heaven either now:
He that is wounded in the stones, or has his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD. - Deuteronomy 23:1
We’ve never been quite sure why a working penis is an essential prerequisite for Heaven, but clearly there’s more going on up there than just sitting around playing harps all day.
Austin Spare art for sale
Fulgar of London have a few interesting pictures available from infamous (and highly over-rated in our opinion) occult artist Austin Osman Spare. If you’ve got a couple of grand to spare (spot the pun), have a look…
Unfortunately Fulgar in their wisdom have decided to “copy protect” the pictures, so no illustration is forthcoming to this article unless someone donates 2000 quid to us in the next days. Sigh.
Paranormal Channel coming to UK
Yvette Fielding of TV’s Most Haunted is set to launch an entire channel devoted to the paranormal.
“We are putting on air, on June 9, the very first paranormal channel in Great Britain,” said Fielding
“It will be available on Sky and feature anything from Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, through to ghosts. We are putting it on 24 hours a day, so just tune in and enjoy.”
More info at Digital Spy.
Interview with Lon Milo DuQuette
There’s an excellent interview with the always entertaining and enlightening Lon Milo DuQuette at Ghost Village. Lon talks about his new book Enochian Vision Magick, which we here at abrahadabra.net highly recommend. Lon is the finest magical author alive today, as well as being Deputy Grand Master of Ordo Templi Orientis in the USA.
Pagan tomb under St. Peter’s Basilica reopened
The Vatican unveiled the largest and most luxurious of the pagan tombs in the necropolis under St. Peter’s Basilica on Tuesday after nearly a year of restoration work.
A section of the pagan Valeri tomb built during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
A family of former slaves built the Valeri Mausoleum during the second half of the second century, when Emperor Marcus Aurelius ruled. It is one of 22 pagan tombs in the grottoes under the basilica.
The newly restored tomb was shown to media Tuesday. Visitors can have a guided tour of the grottoes by appointment.
Emperor Constantine, a convert to Christianity, had the pagan burial grounds covered up in the fourth century so the basilica could be built over the site holding St. Peter’s tomb.
Vandals damage Stonehenge
The night-time attack by two men last week involved the central megalith in the 5,000-year-old ring of standing stones, with English Heritage saying the vandals could have been looking for a souvenir.
A chip of stone about the size of a large coin was removed, while a 2.5-inch long scratch was left on the Heel Stone, at the centre of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, near Salisbury.
Kenya mob reportedly burns 11 ‘witches’
A group of up to 300 young men have burned to death 11 people suspected of being witches and wizards in western Kenya — in some cases slitting their victims’ throats or clubbing them to death before burning their bodies, officials said.
The gang moved from home to home through two villages, identifying their victims by using a list with names of suspected witches and wizards and the kind of spells they were believed to have cast on the community, said Ben Makori, a local councilor.