The law too often avoids or misuses statistical evidence. This problem is partially explained by the absence of a shared normative framework for working with such evidence. There is considerable disagreement within the legal community about how statistical evidence relates to legal inquiry. It is proposed that the first step to addressing the problem is to accept Bayesianism as a normative framework that leads to outcomes that largely align with legal intuitions. It is only once this has been accepted that we can proceed to encourage education about common conceptual errors involving statistical evidence as well as techniques to limit their occurrence. Objections to using Bayesianism in the legal context are addressed. It is argued that the objection based on the irrelevance of statistical evidence is fundamentally incoherent in its failure to identify most evidence as statistical. Second, objections to the incompleteness of a Bayesian approach in accounting for non-truth-related values do place legitimate limits on the use of Bayesianism in the law but in no way undermine its normative usefulness. Lastly, many criticisms of the role of Bayesianism in the law rest on misunderstandings of the meaning and manipulation of statistical evidence and are best addressed by presenting statistical evidence in ways that encourage correct understanding. Once it is accepted that, put in its proper place, a Bayesian approach to understanding statistical evidence can align with most fundamental legal intuitions, a less fearful approach to the use of statistical evidence in the law can emerge.

The law too often avoids or misuses statistical evidence. This problem is partially explained by the absence of a shared normative framework for working with such evidence. There is considerable disagreement within the legal community about how statistical evidence relates to legal inquiry. It is proposed that the first step to addressing the problem is to accept Bayesianism as a normative framework that leads to outcomes that largely align with legal intuitions. It is only once this has been accepted that we can proceed to encourage education about common conceptual errors involving statistical evidence as well as techniques to limit their occurrence. Objections to using Bayesianism in the legal context are addressed. It is argued that the objection based on the irrelevance of statistical evidence is fundamentally incoherent in its failure to identify most evidence as statistical. Second, objections to the incompleteness of a Bayesian approach in accounting for non-truth-related values do place legitimate limits on the use of Bayesianism in the law but in no way undermine its normative usefulness. Lastly, many criticisms of the role of Bayesianism in the law rest on misunderstandings of the meaning and manipulation of statistical evidence and are best addressed by presenting statistical evidence in ways that encourage correct understanding. Once it is accepted that, put in its proper place, a Bayesian approach to understanding statistical evidence can align with most fundamental legal intuitions, a less fearful approach to the use of statistical evidence in the law can emerge.

Self-rated religiosity has been studied alongside intelligence for nearly 100 years. The predominant finding is a negative relationship between measures of self-rated religiosity and individual measures of intelligence. That is, as intelligence increases, the degree of self-rated religiosity decreases; as intelligence scores decrease, self-rated religiosity tends to increase. Spirituality has been studied intermittently as a separate theoretical construct since the 1970’s and there has been a recent empirical drive to consider and refer to these concepts separately. Valid and reliable measures of intelligence have not yet been examined alongside empirically validated, individual, self-rated measures of spirituality. In this study, 44 undergraduate students from the University of Saskatchewan completed the Shipley-2 abbreviated test of intelligence and the Spiritual Well Being Questionnaire (SWBQ). Due to the nature of religiosity relative to spirituality, as well as individual differences in characteristic propensities to engage in logical reasoning, it was hypothesized that when compared to past research examining measured intelligence relative to self-endorsed measures of religiosity, a relatively weak relationship would be observed. The nature and strength of the relationship between self-rated measures of spirituality and measured intelligence was nearly identical to a recent meta-analysis study examining the relationship between self-rated religiosity and measured intelligence. However, a relatively strong negative relationship was observed between the transcendent factor of the SWBQ – the factor most closely associated with notions of a God, religion, or religiosity – and intelligence. This finding supports the hypothesis and suggests that perhaps it is the notion of a God or other sentient being that is driving or inflating the widely observed negative relationship between self-rated religiosity and intelligence.