Pericles, while I'm inclined to agree with 99% of your previous post, (it pretty much works for me too) you do give me an excuse to be pedantic again, concerning precise definitions.
How do you not believe in Unidentified Flying Objects? By definition, these could be weather balloons, or marsh gas or the planet Venus... or any of the other classical explanations for sightings.
I can well understand you not believing in flying saucers, but is it reasonable (or even logically possible) to disbelieve something that hasn't been identified?

Steven, no pursuit of knowledge conducted in a scientific manner is a waste of time.

Of course they should find out, my issue is not with the scientists, it is with popular science fiction predictions and simplistic explanations that are erroneous and promote misinformation about evolution and science generally.

I also did not say that assortive mating does not occur, it clearly does, but at the level of individuals and smaller sub-population groupings.
This is because assortive mating happens under the influence of so many factors, like attractiveness, intelligence , social status, economic status, geopgraphical location, and possibly even the Major Histocompatbility Complex (MHC)in some sub populations (just to name a few). Some are genetically controlled and some are not and many pull in different directions.
For instance, exoticness or wealth can increase a persons attractiveness, and this promotes outbreeding, even if these people are ugly. Even rich ugly people can get laid by attractive partners (although not necessarily intelligent ones).

This means that when one looks at the cumulative effects of all these influences at the larger population level, mating within the population is effectively random and assortive mating effects are quite small. This is not controversial or breaking news.

Also not breaking news is that genes are most often under negative selection within populations and thus are selected AGAINST, there are many examples of where this occurs, genetic diseases being an obvious one.

The number of examples where genes are under positive selection and can be said to be selected FOR (i.e. under positive selection) are far fewer. This is because negative genes tend to get weeded out quickly, positive selection acts much more slowly.

Of course male nipples have a purpose- they're for tweaking, although I'm not sure how that might affect breeding success.

rstuart, you shouldn’t take my word for anything, there are many websites that explain clearly the terms and concepts I have talked about, wikipedia is a reasonable place to start.

I’m glad you are interested in the subject, so please don’t let me put you off merely because I completely disagree with you.

Grim,

I don’t think ‘Secular’, ‘Agnostic’ and ‘Atheist’ are slippery to define at all.

I’ll put it another way.

How is your statement, “I am confident secularism and agnosticism if not atheism will win out”, any different from the following...

“I am confident that the rejection of religious considerations, together with the admission that the existence of a God is unknowable - if not the lack of belief in any of the God claims - will win out.”

Because of an apparent misunderstanding of the relationship between ‘Atheism’ and ‘Agnosticism’, your statement was purely tautological.

AJ, there is no difference in our statements, because you have used the same 'tautology', in distinguishing between:
"the existence of a God is unknowable" and "the lack of belief in any of the God claims".
I have already admitted a tendency to being pedantic on definitions; what's the fuss?

LOL Pericles,

"modern medical care and sanitation practices,…" is, in evolutionary terms, a recent innovation. It has existed for a few hundred years at most. We now know that evolution works much faster than we thought. But it does not work THAT fast.

I speculated on the "how" of how religion may have conferred an evolutionary advantage in the past. If, like Bugsy, you just KNOW this is not the case, write to these scientists, who are working on the problem, and tell them they are wasting their time.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13983-religion-is-a-product-of-evolution-software-suggests.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126981.000-natural-born-belief.html

I have heard of Harvey Milk. I freely confess I was over-optimistic about the speed at which religion-driven oppression of gays would disappear.

Your write:

"..you must have worked out that the US has always been the bastion of religious extremism.."

I used to think that. Now I wonder whether Europe & Australia are bastions of secularism while much of the rest of the work is more like the US. In the past few decades we have seen the rise of a Hindu nationalist party in India and the rapid spread of both Christianity and Islam in China. In fact, according to Micklethwait & Wooldridge*, on current demographic trends, by 2050, China will have BOTH the largest Christian and largest Muslim populations in the world. Now THAT will make for an interesting combination.

*See God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Back-Global-Revival-Changing/dp/B002KAORUW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254173310&sr=1-1

Both Christianity and Islam also appear to be spreading rapidly in Africa.

I am sorry that current recent research and trends are throwing doubt on your, and my, cherished beliefs. But dem's de breaks.

Actually steven, I think it's just you I think who is wasting their time on useless predictions and fantasy stories. I have no problem with what these researchers are actually doing, I think it's interesting, it just isn't what you think it is. You asked for my opinion on what was going on and I gave it and backed it up with good reasons. Interesting to note the maturity of your response to that, especially since you opined about the general lack of it in a previous posting.

By the way, if I am ever in a position to talk personally to any of these scientists, I would like to discuss what they think is behind their research, as I think it's fascinating. I don't think it would be very helpful to write a letter directly telling them what I think is going on. Since you have suggested that course of action more than once on this forum, do you do that sort of thing often? What sort of responses do you get back?