Religiosity and Fertility

A fascinating article about the relationship between religiosity and fertility can be found here http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/faith-equals-fertility

Basically it seems that religious communities (of whatever religion) produce more offspring than agnostics and atheists. If this is so, it should help Richard Dawkins' arguments for evolution but not his position as an atheist. Atheists will gradually evolve out of existence as the more religious communities increase in number.

The jury is still out on the reasons for this phenomenon. It may be that believers have larger families because of what they believe, or it could be that having a larger family predisposes you to be more open to religious belief. If the latter is the case then Dawkins and his motley crew of atheists are stuffed again ..... if they try and increase the population of atheists by having larger families they are more likely to "get religion" and their children will follow suite, so the population of atheists will actually go down. Perhaps Dr Dawkins ought to carve a niche for himself and become a specialist in "religious evolution" rather than just general evolution.

Traumatic Week

Rather a traumatic week this week. Last weekend Mrs Journeyman and I took advantage of the fact that Journeyman Junior had gone on a school trip to Germany, and went for a Christmas shopping weekend in Norwich. It was bitterly cold, but apart from that things went fine until about 2.00pm on Saturday. Standing in the middle of John Lewis' Mrs Journeyman's mobile phone goes off. Even on a weekend away she feels obliged to answer ..... so, answer she did. It was the girls at home to report that the cat had had a freak accident and was now at the emergency vets with a mangled leg, the like of which the vet had never seen before. The only practical option was to have her put down. So there we were in the middle of John Lewis' having to make life or death decisions with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth at both ends of the phone.
"Can I help you, madam," asked the manager in the furniture department. "I don't think so," said I, "we're in the middle of a major family crisis!" "Oh, I'm sorry," he replied, "I'm afraid that is something we can't help with" and he wandered off to accost someone else, leaving us to our trauma.
The girls had calmed down a bit by the time we got home the following afternoon, but Journeyman Junior wasn't due back from Germany until later that evening when we had to break the news to him, accompanied, as you might imagine, by more weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Exactly one week later we now have a new kitten. Grey tabby with a white tummy. 5 months old. The rescue centre said her name was Lola and there seems to be general agreement to keep that name, although she doesn't actually seem to respond to it. Seems to have settled in well ......... watch this space for further developments.