Evan, you asked: I seem to recall reading somewhere that Dr. Cochran had speculated about a relict Neanderthal population in Europe, or perhaps had a guess about the population which had the most Neanderthal gene introgression. My guess would be he meant the Basques. The live close to the last known site of Neanderhtal occupation in Europe, they have unusally high levels of RH negative and Type O blood. Some have linked this to Neanderthals who aslo lack a Rhesus factor as well as type A or B blood. I'm not convinced and I don't think their facial features do not resemble Neadnerthals any more than other modern Europeans.

Mental illness (legitimate ones, not the goffiness listed in the DSM) are probably just spandrals. Some consequence of higher brain function probably but not an ends in and of themselves.

true faith leading to eternal life 
 
This questions seems to assume that all religions share a belief in eternal life and hold that as a goal.  
 
Modern Judaism, for example, in America in particular, does not universally share that belief. It is more of a "do what God wants so He will bless you in this life" mentality. That is not to say many religious Jews(again as an example, I've heard pagan echo this sentiment as well) don't believe the point of Judaism is eternal life.  
 
This distinction may be related to the question of whether or not one can be religious and believe that all religions contain the truth. That is a little different from the question of whether they pave the way to eternal life. 
 
On a side note, I've found it odd that Mormons and Muslims share some beliefs(polygamy and their concept of heaven) yet Mormons culturally resemble Evangelical Christians who do not share such beliefs.

The comments in the software are not really all that odd. Sometimes programmers get silly when they are trying to work something out. 
 
Now, using different coefficients on different data sets to get the correct results and hard coding data is a pretty big deal. 
 
Why doesn't anyone ever argue in favor of global warming? Imagine the beachfront property in Antarctica and Greenland...

Marriage rate went down by 15%. Maybe delaying marriage had a positive affect, too.

Marriage rate went down by 15%. Maybe delaying marriage had a positive affect, too.

ElamBend 
 
I don't know of a specific history book but if you have an iphone there is a free app for Cyrus the Great by Mohammed Komeili. It is a quick read (warning: sometimes he goes over the the in his praise) but I highly recommend it. Also the end of Plutarch's Alexander deals with Darius' Persia.

A when someone asked a Prominent Kalash, "Are you Greek?" He responded "The Greek Government gives us money to say we are Greek. So, we are Greek!" 
 
The Kalash Pantheon resembles the Hindu more so than the ancient Greek but their attitude towards female sexuality would make some blush and earns them the contempt of their Muslim neighbors.

How to limit paternity obligations is a challenge for pro athletes.  
 
Is it really a mystery to them? 
 
Reform of the no-fault divorce laws would go a lot further than just prenups. If legislation were passed to stop making it profitable to break up your marriage and family then maybe the women would think twice about getting married or at least not be able to take the guy to the cleaners when they change their mind about him. 
 
These cases are not so much financial irresponsibility on the part of the man but rather infatuation intoxication, especially for those over 45 or so. They grew up when America had a low divorce rate, how could they have anticipated the cultural tsunami that would leave a 60% divorce rate?

" If Christianity had not become the dominant religion of the Roman world I suspect some other religious system would have become the vessel for classical culture."  
 
Don't forget that Muslims also preserved much of the Greek and Roman knowledge. 
 
I wonder how this theory applies when one higher religion replaces another.  
 
In Persia, Zoroastrians were replaced with Muslims. To this day, Iranians lament the Arab invasion although Iran has hardly been uncivilized since the change, particularly compared to its neighbors. Where would you rather live over the last several centuries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran? 
 
The decline of the Hindu Khmer Empire coincided with the rise of Theravada Buddhism. Buddhist teaching undermined the Hindu based political structure. The Khmer urban centers were largely abandoned as the people returned to a decentralized way of life (partly due to other factors as well such as the rise of the Thai and internal civil, economic and political problems.) Cambodia has never recovered.

bbartlog wrote you have a good enough grasp of your own limitations to do nothing in cases where you can't help, *and* you can either convince people to accept this or have a handy placebo treatment for these cases (seems implausible) 
 
A good point, indeed. I would expand this to society as a whole accepting that even modern medicine has a window of application. OBs, in particular, are expected to act as gods and anticipate any and every possible situation then sued when the fall short.  
 
Realistic expectations in the minds of doctors, patients and jurors regarding what a physicisian can actually accomplish would likely reduce the multi-million dollar settlements based on raw emotion.

Because before roughly 50 to 100 years ago, going to the doctor was worse than doing nothing. He bled you, gave your wife a disease by not washing his hands while delivering her baby, etc. 
 
 
This seems to be referring to the Christian and Western perspective. I'm not aware of widespread religious aversion to doctors in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism (even within the West it seems limited in sect and time.) Galen's approach to medicine lined up quite well with the Koran and so Islamic civilization made much use of his work in the middle ages.  
 
I was always under the impression that medieval peasants had little access to doctors. So whether they would reject their services or not was of little importance. 
 
If a woman died due to doctor assisted childbirth in which she delivered a healthy baby, how much would that affect natural selection? Isn't it more important that genes passed to the next generation than that the mother had a longer life expectancy?  
 
Doctors of the Incan Empire, for example, were able to do more good than harm with surgeries for head trauma. Some skulls indicate men that had more than one such surgery during their lifetimes. This did not present a conflict for their religion.

The Greek immigrants in the mid/late 20th Century tended to assimilate slower to American cultural norms. They arrived at a time where there was less pressure to give up their traditions. This may partly explain the lasting power of the Eastern Orthodox churches. 
 
I agree with Muffy that the term "Protestant" had a very different meaning from how it is colloquially used today as in this post. A lot of churches have sprung up in America that fall under the Protestant umbrella but technically shouldn't(Pentecostals, Mormons,Shakers.) But I think most people understand it in the way this author uses it.