No... this is yet another of your diatribes on religion.

Hate Preacher and Daughter wearing matching offensive T-shirts.

Apparently the Father, a hate preacher, is a really really bad example. Hopefully his daughter will not follow his footsteps.

We knew full well she didn't choose the shirt on her own.

What do you get when you mix honey, ginger, streusel, vanilla seeds, cinnamon, clove and nutmeg, bake it to a crisp, and blend it with vanilla ice cream?

You get Immaculate Con­fection, a new Sebastian Joe’s ice cream flavor dedicated to the Basilica of St. Mary.

The Basilica staff came up with the idea to create an ice cream flavor in honor of the Minneapolis monument’s centennial celebration last year, according to Johan van Parys, director of liturgy and sacred arts at the Basilica.

After discussing the idea with parishioner Michael Pellizzer, one of the owners of Sebastian Joe’s Ice Cream Cafe in Minneapolis, van Parys sent an e-mail to staff members asking for flavor suggestions.

“The wildest ideas came up,” van Parys said.

One person suggested a flavor called Basilica Windows — vanilla ice cream with swirls of strawberry and blueberry syrup, chocolate chips, orange and lemon peel.

Another idea was Basilica Blend, a diverse mix of German chocolate, Irish whiskey, Italian almonds, Mexican cinnamon and African coffee.

Sebastian Joe’s made several samples based on the Basilica employees’ suggestions. Then they took a vote.

The winning recipe came from acolyte Maureen Bourgeois.

Mark Wyss, coordinator of liturgy and sacred arts, came up with the name, a play on the Basilica’s former name, Immaculate Conception.

Pellizzer said Immaculate Confection has developed quite a following.

“It’s one of those gimmick flavors,” he said. “The name kind of creates a little bit of controversy. People see it and they laugh. Some people get it and some people don’t. . . . But it has a real nice, mellow flavor.”

New Basilica ice cream a taste of heaven



"Immaculate Con­fection" - that's kind of cute. "Basilica Windows" is a clever visual idea too.

For the longest time, the question just sat there on his screen. Cursor blinking. Waiting quietly, like a patient priest in a confessor's box. Religious Views: _____.

Creating a Facebook profile for the first time, Eric Heim hadn't expected something so serious. Hunched over his laptop, he had whipped through the social network Web site's questionnaire about his interests, favorite movies and relationship status, typing witty replies wherever possible. But when he reached the little blank box asking for his core beliefs, it stopped him short.

"It's Facebook. The whole point is to keep it light and playful, you know?" said Heim, 27, a college student from Dumfries. "But a question like that kind of makes you think."

Such public proclamations of beliefs used to require a baptism in water, or a circumcision, or learning the five pillars of Islam. Now Facebook users announce their spiritual identity with the stroke of a few keys. And what they are typing into the open-ended box offers a revealing peek into modern faith and what happens to that faith as it migrates online.

Of its 250 million users worldwide, Facebook says more than 150 million people choose to write something in the religious views box.

Amid the endless trivialities of social networking sites -- the quotes from Monty Python, the Stephen Colbert for Prez groups, the goofy-but-calculatingly-attractive profile pics -- the tiny box has become a surprisingly meaningful pit stop for philosophical inquiry.

Millions have plumbed their innermost thoughts, struggling to sum up their beliefs in roughly 10 words or less. For many, it has led to age-old questions about purpose, the existence of the divine and the meaning of life itself.

Complete article at link. It's an interesting look at how people view religion in the modern world.

Ahh yes, welcome to your modern world... where millions sum up their innermost thoughts and beliefs in ten words or less.

That's facebook, which, obviously, does not encompass the whole of the modern world. One would think you'd appreciate people contemplating thir spirituality. Perhaps you just have a knee jerk negative reaction to everything.

Soul-Searching on Facebook

For Many Users, Religion Question Is Not Easy to Answer



Complete article at link. It's an interesting look at how people view religion in the modern world.

Religion can be the biggest mindfork in existence. People will do damned near anything in the name of god, even things they would never have considered doing just days before.

I can appreciate their efforts...we simply appear to have differing definitions of depth.

Roman Catholic couples are being encouraged to pray together before they have sex.

A book published by a prominent Church group invites those setting out on married life to recite the specially-composed Prayer Before Making Love.

It is aimed at 'purifying their intentions' so that the act is not about selfishness or hedonism.

The prayer, which appears in the Prayer Book for Spouses, implores God 'to place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites, self-offering that tells the truth and does not deceive, forgiveness that truly receives, loving physical union that welcomes'.

It adds: 'Open our hearts to you, to each other and to the goodness of your will.

'Cover our poverty in the richness of your mercy and forgiveness. Clothe us in true dignity and take to yourself our shared aspirations, for your glory, for ever and ever.'

The 64-page book has been published by the London-based Catholic Truth Society.

The book contains prayers for every stage of marriage and family life, including engagement, planning for parenthood, pregnancy and caring for children and elderly parents.

The prayers, written by a variety of authors, are interspersed with Catholic teaching on the meaning of marriage and family.

The book pushes the message that marriage should be exclusive and life-long and condemns abortion.

It criticises 'those who, in our times, consider it too difficult, or indeed impossible, to be bound to one person for the whole of life, and those caught up in a culture that rejects the indissolubility of marriage and openly mocks the commitment of spouses to fidelity'.

It adds: 'It is a fundamental duty of the Church to reaffirm strongly the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage.'

Some people claim to have seen the faces of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on a piece of cheese toast, in a baby scan, on a pretzel, and even in a blob of dried chocolate

Now the surface of the planet Mars can be added to this list.

If looked at from the right angle – and with disbelief suspended – this photo released by Nasa can appear to show the face and robed body of Christ.

The image was taken by a camera on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on August 3 and published this week The view shows gullies near the edge of the Hale crater on southern Mars.

It remains to be seen whether the discovery will prove as lucrative as past examples.

In 2004, a decade-old cheese sandwich allegedly bearing a likeness of the Virgin Mary was sold to an online casino for nearly £15,000 and helped shift hundreds of T-shirts depicting the sandwich.

Some people claim to have seen the faces of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on a piece of cheese toast, in a baby scan, on a pretzel, and even in a blob of dried chocolate.

Has Jesus Christ been spotted on Mars?



Personally I can't see this one...

Maybe God wanted Uncle Frank immortalized on Mars. Nobody ever thinks of that.

A number of Swedish churches have decided to serve fortified wine during communion in hopes of reducing the risk of spreading swine flu, according to several media reports.

Church authorities hope that fortified wine will provide better protection than light or alcohol-free wine against the spread of swine flu when the communion cup is passed around.

Karlskoga church in central Sweden has decided to reintroduce fortified wine and the issue is also being debated among parishes in Piteå in northern Sweden.

“We will have a vicars meeting where we will discuss this issue. Everything points to the fact that we will decide to reintroduce fortified wine during communion,” dean Stieg Berggren told Piteå-Tidningen newspaper.

The question of whether or not to serve fortified wine remains a local one.

“At the national level, we haven't made any recommendations about fortified wine,” Stefan Håkansson, press secretary at the offices of the Church of Sweden, told TT news agency.

Several churches have recommended that visitors shouldn't partake of communion at all to prevent the spread of swine flu.

Fortified wine to prevent spread of swine flu: Church of Sweden



Jesus gave me swine flu? Wiping the chalice with an alcohol pad after each use would probably help too.

Intinction is the Eucharistic practice of partly dipping the consecrated bread, or host, into the consecrated wine before distributing it to the communicant.

Might want to go with Intinction if they decide not to forgo communion.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intinction

If the priest doesn't have the flu, that should work. (though the priest could wind up with the virus on his hands from a parishioner in the process.)

Better to forgo to be safe.

Religious leaders should play a frontline role in mobilising people to take action against global warming, according to a leading scientist.

Lord May, a former chief scientist to the government, said religious groups could use their influence to motivate believers into reducing the environmental impact of their lives.

The international reach of faith-based organisations and their authoritarian structures give religious groups an almost unrivalled ability to encourage a large proportion of the world's population to go green, he said.

Lord May highlighted the value of religion in uniting communities to tackle environmental challenges ahead of his presidential address to the British Science Association festival at the University of Surrey in Guildford today.

Speaking before the address, May said religion had historically played a major role in policing social behaviour through the notion of a supernatural "enforcer", a system that could help unify communities to tackle environmental challenges. "How better it is if the punisher is an all-powerful, all-seeing deity," he said.

NEWBURG, Pa. -- Rachel Esh, owner of an Amish dry-goods store here, was giddy as customers kept arriving. Cars spilled out of the dirt parking lot onto the hay and potato fields, crushing a few of her neighbor's potatoes.

She ushered the crowd of 40 people swarming in front of her cash register into a line that snaked out the door of Rachel's Country Store. The cause of the commotion: novelist Cindy Woodsmall, who had stopped by to autograph books.

Ms. Woodsmall writes "bonnet books," or Amish love stories, which are a booming new subcategory of the romance genre. The books, written by non-Amish writers, are aimed at a mainstream audience. But Ms. Woodsmall researches her stories among the Pennsylvania Amish, and she has a loyal Amish following.

The plot of her 2006 novel, "When the Heart Cries," revolves around Hannah, a young Amish woman who falls in love with a Mennonite and hides her plans to marry him from her strict parents. The lovers struggle to overcome the cultural divide, and actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages: "His warm, gentle lips moved over hers, and she returned the favor, until Hannah thought they might both take flight right then and there. Finally desperate for air, they parted."

Most bonnet books are G-rated romances, often involving an Amish character who falls for an outsider. Publishers attribute the books' popularity to their pastoral settings and forbidden love scenarios à la Romeo and Juliet. Lately, the genre has expanded to include Amish thrillers and murder mysteries. Most of the authors are women.

Beverly Lewis, who sets her novels among the Amish in Pennsylvania, has sold 13.5 million copies of her books. Wanda Brunstetter's novels take place in Amish communities in Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania, and have sold more than four million copies. Publishing house Thomas Nelson plans to release five Amish novels this fall, and six more in 2010.

Barnes & Noble book buyer Jane Love said Amish novels currently account for 15 of the chain's top 100 religious fiction titles. "It's almost like you put a person with a bonnet or an Amish field in the background and it automatically starts to sell well," Ms. Love said.

The explosion of Amish fiction has drawn mixed reactions within Amish communities. Emma Smoker, 39, who was selling homemade pies -- apple, blueberry and shoofly -- in front of Rachel's, said the books don't interest her.

"I live the Amish life -- I don't need to read about it," said Mrs. Smoker, who is the sister of store owner Rachel Esh. From what her friends tell her, she added, the books "aren't quite true to life."

Ms. Esh said some Amish customers snap up the Amish fiction she stocks, but others tell her they don't like the way the books portray the community.

"There will always be people who say we're getting too exposed," said Ms. Esh, a 48-year-old member of the local Old Order Amish community.

Old Order Amish shun modern technologies such as electricity and TV, forbid members to own cars and computers, and speak Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect. They sew their own clothes and try to lead simple lives based on faith and community. The U.S. Amish population has more than doubled in the past 18 years, growing to about 233,000, largely because of high birth rates. About 85% of Amish teenagers, given the choice, end up joining these communities.

While there are no religious strictures against contemporary novels, the church has traditionally viewed fiction as distracting and deceitful, says Donald Kraybill, a senior fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, a religious studies center at Elizabethtown College.

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question:

'When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection.

Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.

Where is the natural order of things in my son?'

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. 'I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.'

Then he told the following story:

Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, 'Do you think they'll let me play?' I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.

I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, 'We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.'

Shay struggled over to the team's bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart.. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three.

In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again.

Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.

At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning
aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.

The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay.

As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.

The game would now be over.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman..

Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman's head, out of reach of all team mates.

Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, 'Shay, run to first!

Run to first!'

Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base.

He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, 'Run to second, run to second!'

Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base.

B y the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball . the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team.

He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head.

Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.

All were screaming, 'Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay'

Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, 'Run to third!

Shay, run to third!'

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, 'Shay, run home! Run home!'

Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team

'That day', said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face,'the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world'.

Shay didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!

Received from a friend by email

Received from a friend by email

The ancient Egyptian sky-goddess, one of the Ennead of Heliopolos. She is the personification of the sky and of the heavens, the daughter of Shu and Tefnut.

Nu was the barrier separating the forces of chaos from the ordered cosmos in this world. The god Re was said to enter her mouth after setting in the evening and travel through her body during the night to be reborn from her vulva each morning. She also swallows the stars and have them reborn later. In the death cult she plays a part in the resurrection of the dead; she is portrayed on the inside of the lids of the sarcophagi. The pharaoh was said to enter her body after death, from which he would later be resurrected.

As sky-goddess Nut was portrayed as a naked woman covered with painted stars, held up by Shu. Thus she forms the firmament above her husband Seb, the earth. Her fingers and toes were believed to touch the four cardinal points or directions. The principal sanctuary of Nut was at Heliopolis.

I've read that before. It was different but touching. I know it's cynical question but I have to wonder how many of those are just creative writing?

I found this interesting. I was at Organization For Economic Co-Operation and Development: Doing better for Children, and I noticed this picture:



And I was struck by how similar it is to ancient representations of the Goddess Nut:



Nut



CESRAS: Ancient Egyptian Scenes: Separation of Earth and Sky

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

I've read that before. It was different but touching. I know it's cynical question but I have to wonder how many of those are just creative writing?

Claim: a less-abled boy hits a home run because the boys he's playing with let him win the game.

Status: Undetermined

The story quoted above is "Perfection at the Plate," a work of Rabbi Paysach Krohn which appeared in his 1999 book, Echoes of the Maggid. Echoes is a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" type work, described by its publishers as "heartwarming stories and parables of wisdom and inspiration." It is the fifth such tome in the Maggid series. Rabbi Krohn says that the story is true and that he was told it by Shaya's father, who is a friend of his.

The true value of any inspirational tale lies not in its veracity (or lack thereof) but in its ability to move those who read it to improve some facet of themselves.

What is that girl in red hanging from?

We commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question "Where does evolution leave God?" Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.

Where does quantum physics leave god?

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.

The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn't successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

Mississippi topped the list for Mississippi topped the list for conservative religious beliefs and teen birth rates, according to the study results, which will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Reproductive Health. (See chart below.)

However, the results don't say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: "We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself."

Strayhorn agrees and says the study aimed to look at communities (or states) as a whole.

"It is possible that an anti-contraception attitude could be caused by religious cultures and that could exert its effect mainly on the non-religious individuals in the culture," Strayhorn told LiveScience. But, he added, "We don't know."

Strayhorn compiled data from various data sets. The religiosity information came from a sample of nearly 36,000 participants who were part of the U.S. Religious Landscapes Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted in 2007, while the teen birth and abortion statistics came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For religiosity, the researchers averaged the percentage of respondents who agreed with conservative responses to eight statements, including: ''There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion," and ''Scripture should be taken literally, word for word."

They found a strong correlation between statewide conservative religiousness and statewide teen birth rate even when they accounted for income and abortion rates.

For instance, the results showed more abortions among teenagers in the less religious states, which would skew the findings since fewer teens in these states would have births. But even after accounting for the abortions, the study team still found a state's level of religiosity could predict their teen birth rate. The higher the religiosity, the higher was the teen birth rate on average.

John Santelli of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University calls the study "well-done," adding that the results are not surprising.

"The index of religiosity is tapping into more fundamentalist religious belief," Santelli said. "I'm sure there are parts of New England that have very low teen birth rates, which have pretty high religious participation, but they're probably less conservative, less fundamentalist type of congregations."

This table shows data that reflect birth rates and religiousness throughout the United States. "Birth rate" is the state’s national ranking by rate of teen births according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and "religiousness" is the state’s national ranking based on responses to a survey of religious beliefs taken by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Asterisks indicate that no data are available.

Where does quantum physics leave god?

Teen birth rates highest in most religious states

Link may be due to communities frowning on contraception, researchers say



After years of hearing "Do it the way we do it" from religious conservatives, we're slowing coming to understand that the way the do it doesn't work, and they should look to those with more liberal attitudes which DO work, rather than the other way around.

I would be interested to what other cultural factors also show a high degree of correlation with teen births.

Ronald Bailey sums up a new paper by Gregory Paul in the journal Evolutionary Psychology:

Paul argues that evidence strongly shows that as socioeconomic conditions improve secularism/atheism increases. Paul is a thorough-going progressive who fully endorses the economic security policies found in most western European countries. According to Paul, religious belief remains more prevalent in the United States largely because of Americans experience higher levels of economic and social insecurity than do the citizens of other rich countries. Paul asserts that the fact that secularism increases with perceived economic and physical security undercuts the argument that religious belief is natural (genetic) to human beings.

Paul Bloom compares the pitfalls of short-term and long-term decisions:

People who succumb to short-term impulses often do awful things, such as driving drunk or beating up their children. They would better off if their long-term selves had control, and could block and distract these short-term choices. But often the situation is flipped, and it’s the long-term self that’s misguided. It can become committed to belief systems that have immoral consequences. Terrorism and genocide, for instance, are typically deliberate choices, not acts of passion; it’s the long-term self that’s the guilty one. Indeed, people often have to force themselves to commit terrible acts; they have to work to defy the natural and legitimate moral impulses of their short-term selves.

Kind of like the distinction between a battlefield moment of abuse of prisoners, and a systematic program to torture and abuse them, monitored by a bureaucracy and authorized by the president.

[...] but there is another tradition in which, far from being the guarantor of a better future, curiosity is a vice and even a sin. Indeed, it has often been considered the original sin.

When God told Adam he could eat of all the fruits of the Garden of Eden, but not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he placed what has been called a “provoking object” in Adam’s eyes. The provocation was to go beyond the boundaries God had established and thereby set himself up a rival deity, a being with no limits on what he can conceive, a being whose intellect could, in time, comprehend anything and everything. Such a being would imagine himself, God-like, standing to the side of the universe and, armed only with the power of his mind, mastering its intricacies. Those who engage in this fantasy, says Thomas Aquinas, think “they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue.”

Another churchman, Lorenzo Scupoli, put it this way in 1589: “They make an idol of their own understanding” (“Knowledge puffeth up,” I Corinthians 8:1). Pascal said it succinctly: “Curiosity is only vanity.” Jonathan Robinson, writing in this century, makes the same point: “What we are talking about is the desire to satisfy our curiosity on any and every conceivable subject that takes our fancy” (“Spiritual Combat Revisited”).

Give this indictment of men in love with their own capacities a positive twist and it becomes a description of the scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution. It is a project that celebrates the expansion of knowledge’s boundaries as an undoubted good, and it is a project that Chairman Leach salutes when he proudly lists the joint efforts by the University of Virginia and the N.E.H. to digitalize just about everything. “The computer revolution,” he announces, “holds out the prospect that the digital library could be become an international citadel for the pursuit of curiosity.”

That’s exactly what Paul Griffiths, professor of divinity at Duke University, is afraid of. Where Leach welcomes the enlargement of curiosity’s empire, Griffiths, who is writing a book on the vice of curiosity, sees it as a sign of moral and spiritual danger: “Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life” (“Reason and the Reasons of Faith”). The prescriptions come in the form of familiar injunctions: follow the inquiry as far as it goes, leave no stone unturned, there is always more to know, the more information the better. “In a world where curiosity rules,” Griffiths declares, “unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device . . . amounts to nothing less than a . . . radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction.”

Griffiths builds on the religious tradition in which curiosity is condemned because it distracts men from the study and worship of God, shackling them, says Augustine, “to an inferior love.” But curiosity can also distract men from secular obligations by so occupying their minds that there is no room left for other considerations. These men (and women) fail to register the pain of animals subjected to experiments in the name of knowledge, pay no heed to the social consequences of their investigations, and take no heed of the warnings issued in Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (not to mention the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk).

They are obsessive and obsessed and exhibit, says John Henry Newman, something akin to a mental disorder. “In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman: once fairly started on a subject, they have no power of self-control” (“The Idea of a University”). They have no power of self-control because they have no allegiance — to a deity, to human flourishing, to community — that might serve as a check on their insatiable curiosity. (Curiosity is inherently insatiable; its satisfactions are only momentary; there is always another horizon.)

In short, curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom — is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God — the God, ultimately, of self — we want to worship. Given the evidence, including Chairman Leach’s address, the answer would seem to be yes.

Americans who don't identify with any religion are now 15% of the USA, but trends in a new study shows they could one day surpass the nation's largest denominations — including Catholics, now 24% of the nation.

American Nones: Profile of the No Religion Population, to be released today by Trinity College, finds this faith-free group already includes nearly 19% of U.S. men and 12% of women. Of these, 35% say they were Catholic at age 12.

"Will a day come when the Nones are on top? We can't predict for sure," says lead researcher Barry Kosmin.

But if Nones, now 22% of all adults ages 18 to 29, continue to gain among young adults, to draw more people "switching out" from denominations and to replace more religious older people, researchers forecast one in five Americans will be Nones in 20 years.

"Trends clearly favor this," Kosmin says. But he also notes, "There could be a Great Awakening (massive Protestant revival) or immigration may bring in more Catholic believers."

Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., directed three editions of the American Religious Identification Survey over 18 years. The 2008 ARIS (pdf), based on a sampling of 54,000 U.S. adults, also burrowed in for a closer look at 1,106 Nones, who answered extra questions about their beliefs and behaviors and views on God.

The report finds:

•Not all Nones are alike. Half (51%) still believe in God or a higher power.

•Nones also are the only major U. S. faith group that's majority male. Even when girls grow up with unbelieving parents, they're more likely to find a faith as adults than their brothers.

"Women are also less skeptical than men and less drawn to irreligious and anti-religious views. They are more likely to reject a secular upbringing," Kosmin says.

"There is a lot of 'churning' going on but Nones gain much more from switching (people leaving religion) than from natural growth (children emulating unbelieving parents)," he says.

•The percentage of atheist Nones — who say there's no such thing as God — hasn't budged in years.

"It's not as though dozens of people at the Methodist Church read (atheist Richard) Dawkins and suddenly decided God doesn't exist," says Kosmin.

"There are so many misconceptions about who the Nones are. They're not New Age searchers or spiritual or even hardened atheists," says Kosmin.

"They're a stew of agnostics, deists and rationalists. They sound more like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine. Their very interesting enlightenment approach is like the Founding Fathers' kind: Skeptical about organized religion and clerics while still holding to an idea of God."

One quirky fact: 33% of Nones claim Irish ancestry, although the U.S. Census says only 10% of the USA does.

"We have no idea why," he says. "Maybe you could ask (Fox newscaster) Bill O'Reilly.

In some way, researchers found Nones are very much like the overall, largely religious, U.S. population. There's no statistical difference on education, or income or marital status. They are just as likely to be divorced as anybody else.

"Nones are not a fringe group anymore and are now part of Middle America. They're present in every socio-demographic group, Keysar concludes in their report.

Jesus is relationship, not religeon