What evidence is there, that mars men are not green?
The problem with such questions is, they tend more to verificate a non existing correlative connection rather than to falsify, giving no evidence people will see their prejudice affirmed, worst case for skeptics.SE
Such "questions" are untruthable, worse they tend more to truthening in the worst case, the problem is u cannot connect human social mass behaviour to superficial properties (religiousness, jewish, republican, creationist.....)
Exactly what happened here:
Answer states, "Religiosity may be primarily influenced by genetics"
Duhhh, can this really make sense? I would have closed the question for above reasons, but the answer even got 5 upvotes, what really shocks me. He gives a source link, from a very doubtful religious study "scientist" who is constantly critized on this scilogs.eu Blogsite for his unscientific generalizing correlations studies. Ironically, if skeptical abilities are determined by genes, does is make sense even trying to convince people, that their assumptions, prejudices are wrong, that they make fallacies, ignore exp. data like creationists? How does it come that nearly all kids in germany are educated in school in a christian way and nonetheless we have pretty successful scientists. How is it, that you can learn formal languages (progamming/speaking languages with diff. logic/grammar/syntax etc.) even at a high age. And where comes the IQ factor in...? Why even try to learn about fallacy types, if ur genes define ur rationality?!! Than one should just close skeptics.SE, because data, reasoning, learning plays no bigger role...
I think the answer shows, there is barely knowledge in what genes can cause, and esp. how statistical analysis works. Thats no offend, we r all here to learn, but it shows the tragic with such Q&A, when people fortunately try to give a answer and invest time, but end in affirmating prejudices on each other. You need clearly defined and measurable termini to be able to make any significant statement in this statistical surveys, than this even doesnt mean, there has to be a causal connection!
I thought about answering the question, but think the time is better invested here to hinder further questions of this type...
If such question arise, i would just close them and point to FAQ - no questions on prejudices/group behaviour correlated to superficial, not clearly defineable measuremnt values. Currently i would add religious studies to pseudoscience, there are no clear definition what religiousness is and a lot of raisin picking of verificating data in brain, behaviour, evolution studies. Very selective perception these scientist have
U CANT ARGUE VS. PREJUDICES, U CAN ONLY LOOSE DOIN THIS
Answer on oddthinking comment to explain my point/apprehension more exactly:
Ask urself (if u think too the answer is misleading cause implicating genes determine group behaviour or even individual world picture of strongly locally distributed people, so non-religious reproduce with religious on and on, how can u think there is religionsness gene defining how u logical conclude, how much external data u gather to form a opinion??? How to define a statistcal significance here) How would u have structured/formulated ur answer on this question to get a higher vote according to the SE system (high vote means correct answer). U have to use alot of methodism arguing from statistics to usable measurement values in behavioural science, what will, like in any political TV discussion not work, thats why politicans use prejudices when arguing alot, its often simple, fast, effective. If we start here in the answers arguing about methodism in other answers, it gets a mess/war and the answer with the lowest common denominator will often win or, the methodical correct answer (doubting the question is at all answerable scientifically or critisizing other answers given) in best case get as much votes.
I mean, this is SE, alot here are (hobby) programmers and have learned, even as adult different programming languages with diff. syntax, logic. Of course u can learn and change ur mind, ur thoughts are not determined by genes, but by culture, media, IQ, knowledge, learning...
If u allow such questions u have to introduce two very important properties which i expect to be mentioned in many of these questions due to their subject necessarily, otherwise u loose the skeptical view:
Is something a sufficient condition, or only necessary but not implicating specific effect (e.g. religiousness). Not only here, alot of this religious studies results "offered" in blog posts suggest on a methodical inexperienced readers, that a correlation means causal connection. Even the exact difference between correl. - causal most avg. educated people are IMHO not aware of. If u bombard somebody with this correlations on religiousness on and on, at some time the critical treshold will be exceeded, prejudices and necessary but not sufficient correlations will lead to believing religiousness is genetical caused, is natural, is a normal thing. Thats how the fallacy goes on avg. joe and how this religious studies scientist legitimate their "research"
Its like watching complex physical processes/phenomenons and compare them by superficial properties of view, like color. Well, if there are diff. physical processes showing the same color, color has to be a natural thing!?? But its just a describing conceptual value, epiphenomenon of our human perception. Many physical process have a color, thats doesnt mean that a distinct color plays physically any role in this process. Religiousness maybe a necessary condition in many individual and social phenomenons, but not causing our nature like genes are known to do. Even there the term epigenetics exists, as scientiests came to conlusion, that genes alone not always define our nature/behaviour. No complex phenomenon can be simplified to few causal connections. But thats how human mind tries to simplify connections and most animals do, building fast usable rule of thumbs/pseudo-causalities etc. which will work of course only in specific situations but not explain the nature of anything.
So u see how long my explanation got here to make this clear, i dont want to do this methodical rant in every new skeptics.SE question striping and affirmating prejudices, as i will only achieve agreement with scientific educated people. Thats also the reason why seldom a scientist loving his profession goes into politics, its much more forming opinions than arguing & concluding truth. As with most internet boards. The SE system works better, esp. for such vague questions, but IMHO u have to draw a bottom line concerning the prejudice character of the questions, otherwise u get the countereffect and people will quote on other sites something true, as it was accepted here as correct. Then u will loose alot of educated scientists frequenting here and start a downward spiral. The skeptics section is very young, so esp. at the beginning one should draw a higher bottom line and then maybe lower it if at all. But by counting religious tagged post u can pretty well estimate how much popularity u will lose here. Thats the whole point of SE or quora system, at the beginning u have to gather some experts as it will define the quality of the site in the end, the rating system itself cannot guarentee quality, its necessary but not sufficient ;)
So what to do, esp. here? Either u forbid those questions (which anyway will not generate alot of useful information besides statistical noise) or u keep them open to exactly show how scientific methodism and reasoning works. Maybe an option, i dont know, depends likely how eager the most responding guys here are to falsify pseudo-science methodism and truths. Esp. with religious studies its hard, as these are located on true university departments, but often origined and are influenced by theological departments. So I myself would just forbid anything relating to religiousness currently, enough other sites & blogs. I dont think this is the place to missionate or anti-missionate here, belief is no scientific topic, many scientist are practically agnostics or atheist. Why misuse their methods to draw conclusions in mainly truthening questions/prejudices. I dont know how you want to reformulate this questions to make them less suggestive/prejudice affirmating.
