Left handedness, atheism and autism to

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Left-handed people are more likely to be atheists, a study has found, as it says belief is passed on genetically.

The study suggests that religious people have fewer genetic mutations and are therefore less likely to be left handed or have conditions such as autism or schizophrenia.

British academic Edward Dutton, a professor at Oulu University, Finland, said that in pre-industrial times religiosity was passed on like other genetic attributes because it was associated with greater stability, mental health and better social behaviors

But modern science means many people who would not previously have survived are making it to adulthood and reproducing - leading to a greater incidence of atheism.

Lack of belief in God is connected to genetic mutations which cause attributes such as left-handedness or autism, the paper argues.

Religious people in Western societies—religious in the sense that complex societies were before the Industrial Revolution—are a remnant, selected population that likely would have survived in preindustrial conditions.
The phenomenon is also behind a rise in belief in the paranormal, the study says, with 52 per cent of British people saying in 2013 that they believed in the supernatural, up from 40 per cent in 2005.

Modern religious people were likely to be descended from those who were highly religious in pre-industrial times according to the paper, which is published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science.

It found that there was a "weak but significant" association between left-handedness and being non-religious, and a stronger one between autism and being non-religious.

Studies have previously established that around 40 per cent of someone's religiousness is determined genetically.

Atheists are more likely to be left handed, study finds

The researchers are taking quite a leap of faith(pun intended)

*A wild left-handed atheist appears!*

Thinking about it, living in a world where better than 99% of the people are right handed must suck hard for you.

I have nothing against right-handers, unless they're evil, of course.

Ah, but we're the ones with sinister intentions after all.

Sinister- to the left, aka left handed.

https://english.stackexchange.com/quest ... nt-meaning

I believe all earthlings are [IOW have the potential to be, to a variable extent] E>V>I>L because we all L<I<V<E.

Wait, does this mean that evil people are leading backwards lives? That expression just made a whole lot more sense to me now.

IOW the enemy of mediocre is better.

By "IOW" do you mean "In other words"? Also, what do you mean by "the enemy of mediocre is better"? Implying that evil people dislike mediocrity? Or simply just people who leave backwards lives...since the nature of leading a backwards life suggests an unusual life rather than one of mediocrity, so perhaps people who lead more backward lives dislike mediocrity because they are not used to it?

In Other Words. it is presuming that a forward [progressive] spiritual direction is towards more spirituality and away from base physical materialism [L>I>Ving in E<V<I<L which is embracing the worldly values which is the opposite of spiritual progress]. evil people are not aware that they are mediocre because mediocrity only recognizes itself, it knows no better, it thinks it is the ultimate good which can't be exceeded. my junior high school band teacher told us kids, "when you think you're doing good, you've stopped thinking." I hope this made sense.

I'd never seen that acronym before, and the first thing that came up when I searched it was the Isle of Wight, and since that didn't make sense in the context I decided that you must mean "in other words". So....from what I gather from this... is that it is your belief that most people are mediocre and lead materialistic lives, that most people are in some respects evil, and only the few are actually good and noble, the few that have some sort of enlightenment to a ethical/spiritual path that they follow, except even they are evil in some respects because if they think they are good then they are actually just ignorant, and it takes a good person to see the error of their ways, and remain humble about themselves, whilst trying to be a good person, even though they will always be fundamentally flawed/evil. That sounds like it could cause a lot of potential inner conflict. Personally my view on morality is more subjective, and I'm not spiritual or religious, so I often feel ill-prepared for such conversations since it's not really my area.