Re:Religion may become extinct in nine nations
by jerf on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @12:40PM
(#2355145)
Accuracy of the data in question is a separate issue. My point was merely that the possibility of non-causation was covered. Inaccurate data is still not "correlation != causation" (it supercedes it).
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Re:Religion may become extinct in nine nations
by wzdd on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @12:57PM
(#2355219)
Even if winestock compiled a complete list of 195 countries, their religiosity, and their fertility rates, and showed a correlation between them (which it seems is unlikely -- see for example steadicat's post, or my other post), it would still be wrong to conclude, as winestock did, that
> Lack of religion is either non-adaptive from a fitness perspective, or it is strongly tied to traits which are themselves non-adaptive.
There is at least one other possibility, which is that there is no link between religion and fertility, even transitively.