Fun with Statistics

Against the Storks of Oldenburg A Humean BeingA few centuries back as the crow flies, David Hume (among others) discarded the concept of final causation.  However, this left efficient causation hanging in the air.  If there is nothing in A that "points toward" B, then there is no reason to suppose that A causes B "always or for the most part."  So committed was he to discarding finality that, faced with this inconvenient truth, Hume discarded causality entirely.  A does not "cause" B.    It is only that B happens to follow A "always or for the most part."  So far.  Tomorrow, it might not.  What appear to be laws of nature are simply the human tendency to "see" patterns regardless whether they are there.  This, of course, pulled the entire metaphysical rug out from under the new natural science; but scientists responded with a clean, manly cognitive dissonance.  They accepted the premise (final causes = boo!) while while whistling past the graveyard (of efficient causes).  That is, they acted for the most part as if causality was alive and well.

Well, they were physicists.  But over the centuries, Humean correlation gradually encroached on causation.   In the social sciences, correlation is triumphant. 

Which brings us to the topic du jour.  Does belief in heaven encourage criminal behavior?
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