It all started with a routine traffic stop in 2005 by Ottawa police where the driver, 18 year old Chad Aiken, later complained to the Ontario Human Rights Commission that he was stopped only because he was black.

They took his side and as part of the initial settlement, the Ottawa Police came out with a racial profiling policy in 2011 which in general meant sensitivity training and the sentiment that:

The policy says that racial profiling is largely an unconscious phenomenon and it's often not the intent of the officer to discriminate. (CTV)

Not good enough it was ruled and so it was back to the drawing board of appeasement.

The latest:

...a new settlement reached two weeks ago requires officers to collect race-based data for two years.

"Our goal was to seek public interest remedies, so we advocated for data collection and are very pleased that the Ottawa Police Services have agreed to do that," said Barbara Hall, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Hall explained this project will help address concerns and perceptions that minority communities may have about how they are policed.

"So it really is about finding out more about how the OPS does their job and, depending on what that data says, working out responses if concerns are shown through the data," she said.

Police Chief Charles Bordeleau spoke to media Friday afternoon about the project.

"The issue of racial profiling has been spoken to in the past, and racial profiling exists across our society -- and police is no exception," he said. "The goal here is to demonstrate that we are a bias-free police service to our community." (QMI)

I don't see how you can continue to be bias-free when you have already been judged guilty of such and every subsequent upcoming action will be under the icy please everyone microscope of bureaucratic yay-nay. The only way they can prove themselves to not be biased under this judgement, is to simply stop less brown people or keep quotas by race.

I'm betting on conversations such as this - So today we stopped 15 white people, 15 blacks and 16 indians so we better get back out there and get us a couple more whitey's or someone be pointing a finger.

Can you imagine the pressure?

It is ironic that just this past February, two Ontario criminologists suggested that Canadian police should collect race-based data. Not however, to prove that we are a less or more racist society, but to pinpoint areas of social disadvantage. They argued that "suppressing race statistics makes quantitative anti-racism research impossible" and furthermore, "failure to collect data does not prevent racial profiling".

These are good commonsense arguments that I for one can roll with.

This idea of police collecting race-based data to prove they are not racist is a fail from the get go. As I've noted before - The deep reality is that certain racial groups commit more crimes than others.

And for the Ottawa Police being forced to show otherwise, I just can't wait to read their final report.

A recent study from University of British Columbia scientists is said to unveil why some people are less religious than others. In short, they conclude that those who think more analytically are less inclined to be religious believers.

See here:

Psychologists William Gervais and Ara Norenzayan, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, predicted that people who were more analytic in thinking would tend not to believe in religion, whereas people who approach problems more intuitively would tend to be believers. Their study confirmed the hypothesis and the findings illuminate the mysterious cognitive process by which we reach decisions about our beliefs. 

Cognitive theory of decision making supports the hypothesis that there are two independent processes involved in decision making. The first process is based on gut instinct, and this process is shared by other animals. The second cognitive process is an evolutionarily recent development, exclusive to humans, which utilizes logical reasoning to make decisions. Their study of 179 Canadian undergraduate students showed that people who tend to solve problems more analytically also tended to be religious disbelievers. This was demonstrated by giving the students a series of questions like the one above and then scoring them on the basis of whether they used intuition or analytic logic to reach the answers. Afterward, the researchers surveyed the students on whether or not they held religious beliefs. The results showed that the intuitive thinkers were much more likely to believe in religion.

To test whether there is a causative basis for this correlation, the researchers then used various subtle manipulations to promote analytic reasoning in test subjects. Prior research in psychology has shown that priming stimuli that subconsciously suggest analytical thinking will tend to increase analytic reasoning measured on a subsequent test. For example, if subjects are shown a picture of Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker" (seated head-in-hand pondering) they score higher in measures of analytic thinking in tests given immediately afterward. Their studies confirmed this effect but also showed that those subjects who showed increased analytic thinking also were significantly more likely to be disbelievers in religion when surveyed immediately after the test.    

Three other interventions to boost analytic thinking had the same effect on increasing religious disbelief. This included asking subjects to arrange a collection of words into a meaningful sequence. If the words used for the subconscious prime related to analytic thinking, such as "think, reason, analyze, ponder, rational," rather than control words "hammer, shoes, jump, retrace, brown," subjects scored higher on tests of analytic thinking given immediately afterward, and they were also much more likely to be disbelievers in religion. This demonstrates that increasing critical thinking also increases religious disbelief.

Norenzayan emphasizes that "Analytical thinking is one of several factors that contribute to disbelief.  Belief and disbelief are complex phenomena that have multiple causes.  We have identified just one factor in these studies." 

Professor and Chairman Terrence Reynolds of the Department of Theology at Georgetown University finds it plausible that analytic thinking could make religious belief more difficult. "If one assumes that all rationality is tied to what we know directly through the five senses, that limits our understanding of meaning questions. Religion tends to focus on questions of meaning and value, which may not be available through analytic verification processes… by definition God is a being that transcends the senses." (Psychology Today)

So called 'disbelievers' are of course using the various articles on the study as a forum to attack Christianity and I would add that this is no surprise as atheists tend to have intellectual and emotional objections to Christianity.

What is missing in the discussion is why the scientists would apply this to a religious faith and not to faith overall? For example, if the same principles of the study were applied to antitheists or to those who believe in global warming would we have similar results? What about for those who believe in Darwinism and his just-a-theory of evolution?

It is worth noting that the deeper articles reporting on the study have pointed out that "analytic reasoning is not superior to intuitive reasoning" (#) and that "analytical thinking is one of several factors that contribute to disbelief". However, the overall implication is that reason is compromised by belief as it interferes with naturalistic empiricism, which is in itself just another theory of knowledge.

The only factual this study may provide some forward evidence of, is that those who have faith, are possibly less sceptical.

Saskatoon resident Ashu M. G. Solo is a self-described progressive who is 'trailblazing' the new field of public policy engineering and when he isn't busy doing that he sits on the committee for the Saskatoon Cultural Diversity and Race Relations Committee and its Living in Harmony Ad Hoc Subcommittee.

On the cultural diversity committee and the living in harmony thing he has "fought to protect civil rights and civil liberties" and so it is strange, to hear a man of his ilk use the term religious bigotry so loosely:

A Christian prayer by a city councillor at a City of Saskatoon volunteer appreciation dinner discriminated against non-Christians, says a volunteer who intends to complain to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.

Ashu Solo, a member of the city’s cultural diversity and race relations committee, was among the guests at the dinner Wednesday, where Coun. Randy Donauer said a blessing over the food in which he mentioned Jesus and ended with "amen."

"It made me feel like a second-class citizen. It makes you feel excluded," said Solo, who is an atheist.

"It’s ironic that I’ve now become a victim of religious bigotry and discrimination at this banquet that was supposed to be an appreciation banquet for the service of volunteers like me." (Saskatoon StarPhoenix)

There is bigotry here but it isn't coming form the Christians. If a bigot is defined as someone who treats members of a group with intolerance and hatred then one may feel that coming from Mr. Ashu Solo himself. His threats make that pointed.

Further strange is Mr. Ashu Solo's sentiment that he felt excluded by prayer, even though he claims to be an atheist.

I would tend to think that this is a good thing.

The perceived war on science is said to have officially begun with the election of George W. Bush in 2000 who grew to bear the monikor of an anti-science president. The perception was cheered on by  the media and left-wing lobby and later, following the election of the Stephen Harper Conservatives, it began to be portrayed as an issue here. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is anti-science, his government is a step back, it's a crusade against the scientists.

Unfortunately, the ideological name calling is not singular to the government alone but is part of a much wider effort to paint all persons with a conservative or libertarian bent as ignorant. Disagreeing with the schizoid policies of Canadian scientist David Suzuki can make one a knuckle-dragging redneck.

Recently, the American Sociological Review published a study by one Gordon Gauchat (Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States)(h/t) which explores "time trends in the public trust in science" from 1974 to 2010. The chart below shows us that once upon a time, liberals and conservatives shared a similar trust in science:

As we can see, over time there began to grow a divergence between the two ideologies. Those with a liberal bent trust more while all those others trust less.

A number of theories are tested to explain the 'sink' such as the emergence of the "new right" (NR) which has affiliations with the religious right whose cultural mentality is portrayed as being absoluted and dynamically opposed to secular institutions. That tends to be the most popular theory and it's purported trend in Canadian politics began with a stunt by liberalist Warren Kinsella (read more here). While it has become somewhat of a populist sentiment, according to the analysis of the data by Gauchat, it doesn't help to explain anything.

The Christian right, is not adding to any significant conservative dilutions of scientific trust although it can also be said that a lot of Christians don't trust the scientific establishment either. It is nothing more then speculation to pin one onto the other. Even the 'anti-science' policies of George W. Bush are insignificant.

The reality is:

...that much of what passes for science today is deeply compromised. Scientists who answer to the political needs of regulatory agencies have a habit of following the exigencies of their political masters rather than scientific rigour. Well-educated conservatives are aware of the politicization of the climate-change debate and understand that a vast number of prestigious scientists, likely the majority of top scientists, are climate-change skeptics.

Gauchat in his study strives mightily to disentangle his subsets of data and explain the mysteries of conservative thinking. Yet had he not been obsessively preoccupied with conservatives in what advertises itself as a study of the broad public’s trust in science, he could have stepped back from his data and seen it for what it actually shows. The conservatives aren’t the oddity; the true-believing liberals are.

In 1974, the starting point for the study, all political groups that he considered — liberals, moderates and conservatives — held science in high esteem, with conservatives the most enamoured of science of the three, followed closely by liberals and then moderates. It was the moderates, not the conservatives, who first became disillusioned with the scientific establishment, and the moderates remain relatively disillusioned today. After the moderates began their disillusionment, conservatives, too, began to question the science that the establishment was purveying. Today the conservatives are more disillusioned than even the moderates, but only by a small margin. These two groups started at about the same place in 1974 and they have today arrived at about the same place. Nothing especially noteworthy here.

The liberals, on the other hand, never stopped being enamoured by the scientific establishment, never took seriously the complaints of establishment critics, never themselves questioned the science that the establishment produced. (Lawrence Solomon - Financial Post)

A notable finding by Gauchat is that attainment of high school diplomas and graduate degrees is higher for conservatives then liberals, and the decline in scientific trust actually correlates to an increase in conservative educational components. Educated conservatives become less confident in the scientific establishment. The data is significant enough to state that conservative discontent with science is not attributable to the uneducated. Apparently, the more learned you become, the more you question.

Gordon Gauchat:

In essence, this study greatly complicates claims of the deficit model, which predicts that individuals with higher levels of education will possess greater trust in science, by showing that educated conservatives uniquely experienced the decline in trust. This interesting result may indicate that educated conservatives have been most affected by the NR’s identity work. Moreover, it suggests that scientific literacy and education are unlikely to have uniform effects on various publics, especially when ideology and identity intervene to create social ontologies in opposition to established cultures of knowledge (e.g., the scientific community, intelligentsia, and mainstream media).

Summing it up we find something very familiar:

....conservatives’ unfavorable attitudes are most acute in relation to government funding of science and the use of scientific knowledge to influence social policy. Conservatives thus appear especially averse to regulatory science, defined here as the mutual dependence of organized science and government policy.

It isn't the science we don't like, it is the inherent mix of pseudo with social-engineering policies pumped out day after day by an evergrowing community of statist government established scientific entities (see Elizabeth May for a perfect case study). Some of those 'established government entities' are now becoming former government funded entities and that is what is prompting the outcry from the seemingly 'anti-anti-science' lobby.

It ain't really about the science, it be about the ideological policy.

It isn't stupid to be right, but the reverse may be true if one tends to think otherwise.