title: Secular humanism

text: However, distinctions between "ethical" and "secular" humanists are for the most part historical, and practically meaningless in the present day or to contemporary individuals who identify with humanism. Since the mid-20th century, the development of new concepts such as the "life stance" (which encompasses both humanist views and religious outlooks) has defused this conflict. Most humanist organisations identify with "humanism" without a pre-modifier (such a "secular" or "ethical") and assert humanism as a non-religious philosophy or approach to life. Generally speaking, all humanists, including religious humanists, reject deference to supernatural beliefs; promote the practical, methodological naturalism of science; and largely endorse the stance of metaphysical naturalism. The result is an approach to issues in a secular way. Humanism addresses ethics without reference to the supernatural as well, attesting that ethics is a human enterprise (see naturalistic ethics).


title: Secular humanism

text: Accounts of humanism are also careful not to treat secular humanism analogously with religions, which implies a community who strictly attempt to adhere to the same obligations or beliefs. Holding a secular humanist philosophy does not prescribe a specific theory of morality or code of ethics. As stated by the Council for Secular Humanism,


title: Secular humanism

text: Secular humanists affirm that with the present state of scientific knowledge, dogmatic belief in an absolutist moral or ethical system (e.g. Kantian, Islamic, Christian) is unreasonable. However, it affirms that individuals engaging in rational moral/ethical deliberations can discover some universal "objective standards".


title: Secular humanism

text: Many humanists adopt principles of the Golden Rule. Some believe that universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society. However, they believe such necessary universality can and should be achieved by developing a richer notion of morality through reason, experience and scientific inquiry rather than through faith in a supernatural realm or source.


title: Secular humanism

text: Humanists Andrew Copson and Alice Roberts, in their casual introduction to humanism "The Little Book of Humanism", propose that a distinctive aspect of humanist morality is its recognition that every moral situation is in some sense unique, and so potentially calls for different approach than the last (i.e. the ability to vacillate situationally between consequentialism and virtue ethics). In the book, they quote from Kristen Bell's advocacy of moral particularism as developed by Jonathan Dancy.


title: Secular humanism

text: Humanism is compatible with atheism, and by definition usually entails at least a form of weak or agnostic atheism, and agnosticism,


title: Secular humanism

text: but being atheist or agnostic does not automatically make one a humanist. Nevertheless, humanism is diametrically opposed to state atheism.


title: Secular humanism

text: According to Paul Kurtz, considered by some to be the founder of the American secular humanist movement, one of the differences between Marxist–Leninist atheists and humanists is the latter's commitment to "human freedom and democracy" while stating that the militant atheism of the Soviet Union consistently violated basic human rights.


title: Secular humanism

text: Kurtz also stated that the "defense of religious liberty is as precious to the humanist as are the rights of the believers". Greg M. Epstein states that, "modern, organized Humanism began, in the minds of its founders, as nothing more nor less than a religion without a God".


title: Secular humanism

text: Many humanists address ethics from the point of view of ethical naturalism, and some support an actual science of morality.


title: Secular humanism

text: Secular humanist organizations are found in all parts of the world. Those who call themselves humanists are estimated to number between four and five million people worldwide in 31 countries, but there is uncertainty because of the lack of universal definition throughout censuses. Humanism is a non-theistic belief system and, as such, it could be a sub-category of "Religion" only if that term is defined to mean "Religion and (any) belief system". This is the case in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on freedom of religion "and" beliefs. Many national censuses contentiously define Humanism as a further sub-category of the sub-category "No Religion", which typically includes atheist, rationalist and agnostic thought. In England, Wales 25% of people specify that they have 'No religion' up from 15% in 2001 and in Australia, around 30% of the population specifies "No Religion" in the national census. In the US, the decennial census does not inquire about religious affiliation or its lack; surveys report the figure at roughly 13%. In the 2001 Canadian census, 16.5% of the populace reported having no religious affiliation. In the 2011 Scottish census, 37% stated they had no religion up from 28% in 2001. One of the largest Humanist organizations in the world (relative to population) is Norway's "Human-Etisk Forbund", which had over 86,000 members out of a population of around 4.6 million in 2013 – approximately 2% of the population.


title: Secular humanism

text: The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is the worldwide umbrella organization for those adhering to the Humanist life stance. It represents the views of over three million Humanists organized in over 100 national organizations in 30 countries. Originally based in the Netherlands, the IHEU now operates from London. Some regional groups that adhere to variants of the Humanist life stance, such as the humanist subgroup of the Unitarian Universalist Association, do not belong to the IHEU. Although the European Humanist Federation is also separate from the IHEU, the two organisations work together and share an agreed protocol.


title: Secular humanism

text: Starting in the mid-20th century, religious fundamentalists and the religious right began using the term "secular humanism" in hostile fashion. Francis A. Schaeffer, an American theologian based in Switzerland, seizing upon the exclusion of the divine from most humanist writings, argued that rampant secular humanism would lead to moral relativism and ethical bankruptcy in his book "How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture" (1976). Schaeffer portrayed secular humanism as pernicious and diabolical, and warned it would undermine the moral and spiritual tablet of America. His themes have been very widely repeated in Fundamentalist preaching in North America. Toumey (1993) found that secular humanism is typically portrayed as a vast evil conspiracy, deceitful and immoral, responsible for feminism, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, and New Age spirituality. In certain areas of the world, Humanism finds itself in conflict with religious fundamentalism, especially over the issue of the separation of church and state. Many Humanists see religions as superstitious, repressive and closed-minded, while religious fundamentalists may see Humanists as a threat to the values set out in their sacred texts.


title: Secular humanism

text: In recent years, humanists such as Dwight Gilbert Jones and R. Joseph Hoffmann have decried the over-association of Humanism with affirmations of non-belief and atheism. Jones cites a lack of new ideas being presented or debated outside of secularism, while Hoffmann is unequivocal: "I regard the use of the term 'humanism' to mean secular humanism or atheism to be one of the greatest tragedies of twentieth century movementology, perpetrated by second-class minds and perpetuated by third-class polemicists and village atheists. The attempt to sever humanism from the religious and the spiritual was a flatfooted, largely American way of taking on the religious right. It lacked finesse, subtlety, and the European sense of history."


title: Secular humanism

text: Humanism, as a term which describes a person's non-religious views, comes with no obligation to celebrate or revere specific days in the year as a religion would. As a result, individual humanists choose of their own accord whether to take part in prevailing national holidays where they live. For example, humanists in Europe and North America typically celebrate holidays, such as Christmas, but as secular holidays rather than Christian festivals. Other humanists choose to mark the winter and summer solstice and the equinoxes. European humanists may often emphasise the fact that human beings have found reasons to celebrate at these times in the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years before the arrival of Christianity. Humanists may also identify culturally with religious traditions and holidays celebrated in their family in the community. For example, humanists with a Jewish identity will often celebrate most Jewish holidays in a secular manner.


title: Secular humanism

text: Humanists International endorses World Humanist Day (21 June), Darwin Day (12 February), Human Rights Day (10 December) and HumanLight (23 December) as official days of humanist celebration, though none are yet a public holiday. Humanist organisations typically organise events around these dates which draw attention to their programmes of activities.


title: Secular humanism

text: In many countries, humanist celebrants (officiants) perform celebrancy services for weddings, funerals, child namings, coming of age ceremonies, and other rituals. In countries like Scotland and Norway, these are extremely popular. In Scotland, more people have a humanist wedding than are married by any religious denomination, including Scotland's largest churches; over 20% of Scottish weddings are humanist. In Norway, over 20% of young people choose humanist coming-of-age ceremonies every year.


title: Secular humanism

text: The issue of whether and in what sense secular humanism might be considered a religion, and what the implications of this would be, has become the subject of legal maneuvering and political debate in the United States. The first reference to "secular humanism" in a US legal context was in 1961, although church-state separation lawyer Leo Pfeffer had referred to it in his 1958 book, "Creeds in Competition".


title: Secular humanism

text: The Education for Economic Security Act of 1984 included a section, Section 20 U.S.C.A. 4059, which initially read: "Grants under this subchapter ['Magnet School Assistance'] may not be used for consultants, for transportation or for any activity which does not augment academic improvement." With no public notice, Senator Orrin Hatch tacked onto the proposed exclusionary subsection the words "or for any course of instruction the substance of which is Secular Humanism". Implementation of this provision ran into practical problems because neither the Senator's staff, nor the Senate's Committee on Labor and Human Resources, nor the Department of Justice could propose a definition of what would constitute a "course of instruction the substance of which is Secular Humanism". So, this determination was left up to local school boards. The provision provoked a storm of controversy which within a year led Senator Hatch to propose, and Congress to pass, an amendment to delete from the statute all reference to secular humanism. While this episode did not dissuade fundamentalists from continuing to object to what they regarded as the "teaching of Secular Humanism", it did point out the vagueness of the claim.


title: Secular humanism

text: The phrase "secular humanism" became prominent after it was used in the United States Supreme Court case "Torcaso v. Watkins." In the 1961 decision, Justice Hugo Black commented in a footnote, "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others."


title: Secular humanism

text: The footnote in "Torcaso v. Watkins" referenced "Fellowship of Humanity v. County of Alameda", a 1957 case in which an organization of humanists sought a tax exemption on the ground that they used their property "solely and exclusively for religious worship." Despite the group's non-theistic beliefs, the court determined that the activities of the "Fellowship of Humanity", which included weekly Sunday meetings, were analogous to the activities of theistic churches and thus entitled to an exemption. The "Fellowship of Humanity" case itself referred to "Humanism" but did not mention the term "secular humanism". Nonetheless, this case was cited by Justice Black to justify the inclusion of secular humanism in the list of religions in his note. Presumably Justice Black added the word "secular" to emphasize the non-theistic nature of the "Fellowship of Humanity" and distinguish their brand of humanism from that associated with, for example, Christian humanism.


title: Secular humanism

text: Another case alluded to in the "Torcaso v. Watkins" footnote, and said by some to have established secular humanism as a religion under the law, is the 1957 tax case of "", 249 F.2d 127 (D.C. Cir. 1957). The "Washington Ethical Society" functions much like a church, but regards itself as a non-theistic religious institution, honoring the importance of ethical living without mandating a belief in a supernatural origin for ethics. The case involved denial of the Society's application for tax exemption as a religious organization. The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the Tax Court's ruling, defined the Society as a religious organization, and granted its tax exemption. The Society terms its practice Ethical Culture. Though Ethical Culture is based on a humanist philosophy, it is regarded by some as a type of religious humanism. Hence, it would seem most accurate to say that this case affirmed that a religion need not be theistic to qualify as a religion under the law, rather than asserting that it established generic secular humanism as a religion.


title: Secular humanism

text: In the cases of both the "Fellowship of Humanity" and the "Washington Ethical Society," the court decisions turned not so much on the particular beliefs of practitioners as on the function and form of the practice being similar to the function and form of the practices in other religious institutions.


title: Secular humanism

text: The implication in Justice Black's footnote that secular humanism is a religion has been seized upon by religious opponents of the teaching of evolution, who have made the argument that teaching evolution amounts to teaching a religious idea. The claim that secular humanism could be considered a religion for legal purposes was examined by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in "Peloza v. Capistrano School District", 37 F.3d 517 (9th Cir. 1994), "cert. denied", 515 U.S. 1173 (1995). In this case, a science teacher argued that, by requiring him to teach evolution, his school district was forcing him to teach the "religion" of secular humanism. The Court responded, "We reject this claim because neither the Supreme Court, nor this circuit, has ever held that evolutionism or Secular Humanism are 'religions' for Establishment Clause purposes." The Supreme Court refused to review the case.


title: Secular humanism

text: The Court's statement in "Torcaso" does not stand for the proposition that humanism, no matter in what form and no matter how practiced, amounts to a religion under the First Amendment. The Court offered no test for determining what system of beliefs qualified as a "religion" under the First Amendment. The most one may read into the "Torcaso" footnote is the idea that a particular non-theistic group calling itself the "Fellowship of Humanity" qualified as a religious organization under California law.


title: Secular humanism

text: Decisions about tax status have been based on whether an organization functions like a church. On the other hand, Establishment Clause cases turn on whether the ideas or symbols involved are inherently religious. An organization can function like a church while advocating beliefs that are not necessarily inherently religious. Author Marci Hamilton has pointed out: "Moreover, the debate is not between secularists and the religious. The debate is believers and non-believers on the one side debating believers and non-believers on the other side. You've got citizens who are [...] of faith who believe in the separation of church and state and you have a set of believers who do not believe in the separation of church and state."


title: Secular humanism

text: In the 1987 case of "Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County" a group of plaintiffs brought a case alleging that the school system was teaching the tenets of an anti-religious religion called "secular humanism" in violation of the Establishment Clause. The complainants asked that 44 different elementary through high school level textbooks (including books on home economics, social science and literature) be removed from the curriculum. Federal judge William Brevard Hand ruled for the plaintiffs agreeing that the books promoted secular humanism, which he ruled to be a religion. The Eleventh Circuit Court unanimously reversed him, with Judge Frank stating that Hand held a "misconception of the relationship between church and state mandated by the establishment clause," commenting also that the textbooks did not show "an attitude antagonistic to theistic belief. The message conveyed by these textbooks is one of neutrality: the textbooks neither endorse theistic religion as a system of belief, nor discredit it".


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: S. Epatha Merkerson (born November 28, 1952) is a film, stage, and television actress. She has received numerous high-profile accolades for her work, including an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, four NAACP Image Awards, two Obie Awards and two Tony Award nominations. She is best known for her award-winning portrayal of Lieutenant Anita Van Buren on the NBC police procedural drama series "Law & Order", a role she played from 1993 to 2010, appearing in 388 episodes of the series. She is also known for playing Reba the Mail Lady on "Pee-wee's Playhouse" and Sharon Goodwin in the NBC medical drama "Chicago Med" since the series premiered in November 2015 (and in crossover appearances on "Chicago Fire" and "Chicago P.D.")


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: Merkerson was born in Saginaw, Michigan but raised in Detroit. She is the youngest of five children (Linda Merkerson, Debbie Merkerson-Gooch, Barrie Merkerson, and Zephry Merkerson) raised by their mother, Ann, who worked for the post office.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: During a segment on the January 31, 2012, episode of "The Wendy Williams Show", when asked about the origin of her name, Merkerson said that "Epatha" was the name of "a grade-school teacher who was influential in keeping her father in school". Merkerson graduated from Cooley High School in 1970 and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre at Wayne State University in 1976. She was made an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Wayne State University in May 2009 and received the same distinction from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in 2012, from Montclair State University in 2013, and from the University of Pittsburgh in 2017.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: Merkerson made her television debut as Reba the Mail Lady on "Pee-wee's Playhouse". Merkerson has also appeared on "The Cosby Show", among other series.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: She first appeared in the NBC police procedural drama "Law & Order" in "Mushrooms" (Season 1: Episode 17) as the grief-stricken mother of an 11-month-old boy who is shot accidentally. Her performance impressed the producers enough to select Merkerson to replace Dann Florek as detective squad chief in the series' fourth season, making her one of the few actors to secure a recurring role after an initial single appearance on the show.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: Merkerson's career began to rise after she assumed the lead role in the one-woman play "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill". That was followed by her performance as Berniece in August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize–winning play "The Piano Lesson". For that, she was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Play. Merkerson has also won 2 Obie Awards for her work in "I'm Not Stupid" and "Birdie Blue", a Helen Hayes Award for "The Old Settler", and a Lucille Lortel nomination for "F**king A" by Suzan-Lori Parks. Her screen credits include "Jacob's Ladder", "Loose Cannons", "She's Gotta Have It", James Cameron's ""; and "Navy Seals". In 2006, she won a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild award for her performance in the HBO film "Lackawanna Blues". In 2007, she starred as Lola Delaney in the Los Angeles stage production of William Inge's "Come Back, Little Sheba." In January 2008 the production opened a successful run on Broadway and earned Merkerson her second Tony nomination.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: On April 1, 2010, it was confirmed that after 17 seasons, Merkerson would leave "Law & Order" at the end of the show's twentieth season. Her departure from "Law & Order", which aired on May 24, 2010, was also the show's final episode. In total, Merkerson appeared on the series for 17 consecutive seasons—395 episodes—which was more than any other actor associated with the program.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: In 2012, Merkerson became the host of "Find Our Missing", a reality-reenactment series on TV One which profiles missing people of color. She performed in Steven Spielberg's 2012 film "Lincoln" as Lydia Hamilton Smith, housekeeper to Tommy Lee Jones's character, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: In 2014, Merkerson appeared in the Primary Stages production of "While I Yet Live", written by Billy Porter. In 2015, she joined the cast of NBC medical drama "Chicago Med" as Sharon Goodwin, Chief of Patient and Medical Services. The series was conceived and written by "Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf, along with Matt Olmstead, Derek Haas and Michael Brandt. 2014, Merkerson became a spokesperson for Merck America's Diabetes Challenge, to increase Type 2 diabetes awareness among African Americans.


title: S. Epatha Merkerson

text: Merkerson appeared on the television series of Henry Louis Gates' "Finding Your Roots" on February 5, 2019 (Season 5, Episode 5), in which he revealed that she was a descendant of Isaac Hawkins and eight others of the 272 enslaved people who were sold in the 1838 Jesuit slave sale by Jesuit priests. These priests owned plantations on which the enslaved people tilled tobacco; proceeds from the sale were used to pay off the debts of the Jesuit-operated Georgetown College (now Georgetown University).


title: New religious movement

text: A new religious movement (NRM), also known as alternative spirituality or a new religion, is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin or they can be part of a wider religion, in which case they are distinct from pre-existing denominations. Some NRMs deal with the challenges which the modernizing world poses to them by embracing individualism, while other NRMs deal with them by embracing tightly knit collective means. Scholars have estimated that NRMs number in the tens of thousands worldwide, with most of their members living in Asia and Africa. Most NRMs only have a few members, some of them have thousands of members, and a few of them have more than a million members.


title: New religious movement

text: There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for defining a "new religious movement". There is debate as to how the term "new" should be interpreted in this context. One perspective is that it should designate a religion that is more recent in its origins than large, well-established religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. An alternate perspective is that "new" should mean that a religion is more recent in its formation. Some scholars view the 1950s or the end of the Second World War in 1945 as the defining time, while others look as far back as from the middle of the 19th century or the founding of the Latter Day Saint movement in 1830 and Tenrikyo in 1838.


title: New religious movement

text: New religions have typically faced opposition from established religious organisations and secular institutions. In Western nations, a secular anti-cult movement and a Christian countercult movement emerged during the 1970s and 1980s to oppose emergent groups. In the 1970s, the distinct field of new religions studies developed within the academic study of religion. There are several scholarly organisations and peer-reviewed journals devoted to the subject. Religious studies scholars contextualize the rise of NRMs in modernity as a product of, and answer to modern processes of secularization, globalization, detraditionalization, fragmentation, reflexivity, and individualization.


title: New religious movement

text: In 1830 the Latter Day Saint movement was founded by Joseph Smith. It is one of the largest new religious movements in terms of membership. In Japan, 1838 marks the beginning of Tenrikyo. In 1844 Bábism was established in Iran, from which the Baháʼí Faith was founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 1863. In 1860 Donghak, later Cheondoism, was founded by Choi Jae-Woo in Korea. It later ignited the Donghak Peasant Revolution in 1894. In 1889, Ahmadiyya, an Islamic branch, was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. In 1891, the Unity Church, the first New Thought denomination, was founded in the United States.


title: New religious movement

text: In 1893, the first Parliament of the World's Religions was held in Chicago. The conference included NRMs of the time such as spiritualism, Baháʼí Faith, and Christian Science. Henry Harris Jessup, who addressed the meeting, was the first to mention the Baháʼí Faith in the United States. Also attending were Soyen Shaku, the "First American Ancestor" of Zen, the Theravāda Buddhist preacher Anagarika Dharmapala, and the Jain preacher Virchand Gandhi. This conference gave Asian religious teachers their first wide American audience.


title: New religious movement

text: In 1911, the Nazareth Baptist Church, the first and one of the largest modern African initiated churches, was founded by Isaiah Shembe in South Africa. The early 20th century also saw a rise in interest in Asatru. The 1930s saw the rise of the Nation of Islam and the Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States; the rise of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica; the rise of Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo in Vietnam; the rise of Soka Gakkai in Japan; and the rise Zailiism and Yiguandao in China. In the 1940s, Gerald Gardner began to outline the modern pagan religion of Wicca.


title: New religious movement

text: New religious movements expanded in many nations in the 1950s and 1960s. Japanese new religions became very popular after the Shinto Directive (1945) forced the Japanese government to separate itself from Shinto, which had been the state religion of Japan, bringing about greater freedom of religion. In 1954 Scientology was founded in the United States and the Unification Church was founded in South Korea. In 1955 the Aetherius Society was founded in England. It and some other NRMs, have been called UFO religions because they combine the belief in extraterrestrial life with traditional religious principles. In 1965, Paul Twitchell founded Eckankar, an NRM derived partially from Sant Mat. In 1966 the International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in the United States by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan. In 1967, The Beatles' visit to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India brought public attention to the Transcendental Meditation movement.


title: New religious movement

text: In the late 1980s and 1990s, the decline of communism and the revolutions of 1989 opened up new opportunities for NRMs. Falun Gong was first taught publicly in Northeast China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi. At first it was accepted by the Chinese government and by 1999 there were 70 million practitioners in China, but in July 1999 the government started to view the movement as a threat and began attempts to eradicate it.


title: New religious movement

text: In the 21st century, many NRMs are using the Internet to give out information, to recruit members, and sometimes to hold online meetings and rituals. That is sometimes referred to as cybersectarianism. Sabina Magliocco, professor of Anthropology and Folklore at California State University, Northridge, has discussed the growing popularity of new religious movements on the Internet.


title: New religious movement

text: In 2006 J. Gordon Melton, executive director of the Institute for the Study of American Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told "The New York Times" that 40 to 45 new religious movements emerge each year in the United States. In 2007, religious scholar Elijah Siegler said that, though no NRM had become the dominant faith in any country, many of the concepts they first introduced (often referred to as "New Age" ideas) have become part of worldwide mainstream culture.


title: New religious movement

text: As noted by Barker, NRMs should not be "lumped together". They differ from one another on many issues.


title: New religious movement

text: Virtually no generalisation can be made about NRMs that applies to every group, with Barrett noting that "generalizations tend not to be very helpful" when studying NRMs. Melton expressed the view that there is "no single characteristic or set of characteristics" that all new religions share, "not even their newness." Bryan Wilson wrote, "Chief among the miss-directed assertions has been the tendency to speak of new religious movements as if they differed very little if at all, one from another. The tendency has been to lump them altogether and indiscriminately to attribute to all of the characteristics which are, in fact, valid for only one or two." NRMs themselves often claim that they exist at a crucial place in time and space.


title: New religious movement

text: Some NRMs venerate unique scriptures, while others reinterpret existing texts, utilizing a range of older elements. They frequently claim that these are not new, but rather had been forgotten truths that are being revived. NRM scriptures often incorporate modern scientific knowledge, sometimes with the claim that they are bringing unity to science and religion. Some NRMs believe that their scriptures are received through mediums. "The Urantia Book", the core scripture of the Urantia Movement, was published in 1955 and is said to be the product of a continuous process of revelation from "celestial beings" which began in 1911. Some NRMs, particularly those that are forms of occultism, have a prescribed system of courses and grades through which members can progress.


title: New religious movement

text: Some NRMs promote celibacy, the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both. Some, including the Shakers and more recent NRMs, inspired by Hindu traditions, see it as a lifelong commitment. Others, including the Unification Church, as a stage in spiritual development. In some Buddhist NRMs, celibacy is practiced mostly by older women who become nuns. Some people join NRMs and practice celibacy as a rite of passage in order to move beyond previous sexual problems or bad experiences. Groups that promote celibacy require a strong recruitment drive to survive; the Shakers established orphanages to bring new members into their community.


title: New religious movement

text: Violent incidents involving NRMs are very rare. In events having a large number of casualties, the new religion was led by a charismatic leader. Beginning in 1978 the deaths of 913 members of the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana by both murder and suicide brought an image of "killer cults" to public attention. Several subsequent events contributed to the concept. In 1994, members of the Order of the Solar Temple committed suicide in Canada and Switzerland. In 1995 members of the Japanese new religion Aum Shinrikyo murdered a number of people during a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. In 1997, 39 members of the Heaven's Gate group committed suicide in the belief that their spirits would leave the Earth and join a passing comet. There have also been cases in which members of NRMs have been killed after they engaged in dangerous actions due to mistaken belief in their own invincibility. For example, in Uganda, several hundred members of the Holy Spirit Movement were killed as they approached gunfire because its leader, Alice Lakwena, told them that they would be protected from bullets by the oil of the shea tree.


title: New religious movement

text: NRMs are typically founded and led by a charismatic leader. The death of any religion's founder represents a significant moment in its history. Over the months and years following its leader's death, the movement can die out, fragment into multiple groups, consolidate its position, or change its nature to become something quite different than what its founder intended. In some cases, an NRM moves closer to the religious mainstream after the death of its founder.


title: New religious movement

text: A number of founders of new religions established plans for succession to prevent confusion after their deaths. Mary Baker Eddy, the American founder of Christian Science, spent fifteen years working on her book "The Manual of the Mother Church", which laid out how the group should be run by her successors.


title: New religious movement

text: The leadership of the Baháʼí Faith passed through a succession of individuals until 1963, when it was assumed by the Universal House of Justice, members of which are elected by the worldwide congregation. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, appointed 11 "Western Gurus" to act as initiating gurus and to continue to direct the organisation. However, according to British scholar of religion Gavin Flood, "many problems followed from their appointment and the movement has since veered away from investing absolute authority in a few, fallible, human teachers.”


title: New religious movement

text: NRMs typically consist largely of first-generation believers, and thus often have a younger average membership than mainstream religious congregations. Some NRMs have been formed by groups who have split from a pre-existing religious group. As these members grow older, many have children who are then brought up within the NRM.


title: New religious movement

text: In the Third World, NRMs most often appeal to the poor and oppressed sectors of society. Within Western countries, they are more likely to appeal to members of the middle and upper-middle classes, with Barrett stating that new religions in the UK and US largely attract "white, middle-class late teens and twenties." There are exceptions, such as the Rastafari movement and the Nation of Islam, which have primarily attracted disadvantaged black youth in Western countries.


title: New religious movement

text: A popular conception, unsupported by evidence, holds that those who convert to new religions are either mentally ill or become so through their involvement with them. Dick Anthony, a forensic psychologist noted for his writings on the brainwashing controversy, has defended NRMs, and in 1988 argued that involvement in such movements may often be beneficial: "There's a large research literature published in mainstream journals on the mental health effects of new religions. For the most part, the effects seem to be positive in any way that's measurable."


title: New religious movement

text: Those who convert to an NRM typically believe that in doing so they are gaining some benefit in their life. This can come in many forms, from an increasing sense of freedom to a release from drug dependency, and a feeling of self-respect and direction. Many of those who have left NRMs report that they have gained from their experience. There are various reasons as to why an individual would join and then remain part of an NRM, including both push and pull factors. According to Marc Galanter, professor of psychiatry at NYU, typical reasons why people join NRMs include a search for community and a spiritual quest. Sociologists Stark and Bainbridge, in discussing the process by which people join new religious groups, have questioned the utility of the concept of "conversion", suggesting that "affiliation" is a more useful concept.


title: New religious movement

text: A popular explanation for why people join new religious movements is that they have been "brainwashed" or subject to "mind control" by the NRM itself. This explanation provides a rationale for "deprogramming", a process in which members of NRMs are illegally kidnapped by individuals who then attempt to convince them to reject their beliefs. Professional deprogrammers, therefore, have a financial interest in promoting the "brainwashing" explanation. Academic research, however, has demonstrated that these brainwashing techniques "simply do not exist".


title: New religious movement

text: Many members of NRMs leave these groups of their own free will. Some of those who do so retain friends within the movement. Some of those who leave a religious community are unhappy with the time that they spent as part of it. Leaving a NRM can pose a number of difficulties. It may result in their having to abandon a daily framework that they had previously adhered to. It may also generate mixed emotions as ex-members lose the feelings of absolute certainty that they had held while in the group.


title: New religious movement

text: The study draws from the disciplines of anthropology, psychiatry, history, psychology, sociology, religious studies, and theology. Barker noted that there are five sources of information on NRMs: the information provided by such groups themselves, that provided by ex-members as well as the friends and relatives of members, organisations that collect information on NRMs, the mainstream media, and academics studying such phenomena.


title: New religious movement

text: The study of new religions is unified by its topic of interest, rather than by its methodology, and is therefore interdisciplinary in nature. A sizeable body of scholarly literature on new religions has been published, most of it produced by social scientists. Among the disciplines that NRS utilises are anthropology, history, psychology, religious studies, and sociology. Of these approaches, sociology played a particularly prominent role in the development of the field, resulting in it being initially confined largely to a narrow array of sociological questions. This came to change in later scholarship, which began to apply theories and methods initially developed for examining more mainstream religions to the study of new ones.


title: New religious movement

text: Most research has been directed toward those new religions that attract public controversy. Less controversial NRMs tend to be the subject of less scholarly research. It has also been noted that scholars of new religions often avoid researching certain movements that scholars from other backgrounds study. The feminist spirituality movement is usually examined by scholars of women's studies, African-American new religions by scholars of Africana studies, and Native American new religions by scholars of Native American studies.


title: New religious movement

text: J. Gordon Melton argued that "new religious movements" should be defined by the way dominant religious and secular forces within a given society treat them. According to him, NRMs constituted "those religious groups that have been found, from the perspective of the dominant religious community (and in the West that is almost always a form of Christianity), to be not just different, but unacceptably different." Barker cautioned against Melton's approach, arguing that negating the "newness" of "new religious movements" raises problems, for it is "the very fact that NRMs are new that explains many of the key characteristics they display".


title: New religious movement

text: George Chryssides favors "simple" definition, for him, NRM is an organization founded within the past 150 or so years, which cannot be easily classified within one of the world's main religious traditions.


title: New religious movement

text: Scholars of religion Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein argued that "new religions are just young religions" and as a result, they are "not inherently different" from mainstream and established religious movements, with the differences between the two having been greatly exaggerated by the media and popular perceptions. Melton has stated that those NRMs that "were offshoots of older religious groups... tended to resemble their parent groups far more than they resembled each other." One question that faces scholars of religion is when a new religious movement ceases to be "new". As noted by Barker, "In the first century, Christianity was new, in the seventh century Islam was new, in the eighteenth century Methodism was new, in the nineteenth century the Seventh-day Adventists, Christadelphians, and Jehovah's Witnesses were new; in the twenty-first century the Unification Church, the ISKCON, and Scientology are beginning to look old."


title: New religious movement

text: The Roman Catholic Church has observed that the growth of sects and new religious movements is one of the "most noticeable" and "highly complex" developments in recent years, and in relation to the ecumenical movement, their "desire for peaceful relations with the Catholic Church may be weak or non-existent".


title: New religious movement

text: Some NRMs are strongly counter-cultural and 'alternative' in the society where they appear, while others are far more similar to a society's established traditional religions. Generally, Christian denominations are not seen as new religious movements; nevertheless, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, and the Shakers have been studied as NRMs. The same situation with Jewish religious movements, when Reform Judaism and newer divisions have been named among NRM.


title: New religious movement

text: There are also problems in the use of "religion" within the term "new religious movements". This is because various groups, particularly active within the New Age milieu, have many traits in common with different NRMs but emphasise personal development and humanistic psychology, and are not clearly "religious" in nature.


title: New religious movement

text: Since at least the early 2000s, most sociologists of religion have used the term "new religious movement" in order to avoid the pejorative undertones of terms like "cult" and "sect". These are words that have been used in different ways by different groups. For instance, from the nineteenth century onward a number of sociologists used the terms "cult" and "sect" in very specific ways. The sociologist Ernst Troeltsch for instance differentiated "churches" from "sect" by claiming that the former term should apply to groups that stretch across social strata while "sects" typically contain converts from socially disadvantaged sectors of society.


title: New religious movement

text: The term "cult" is used in reference to devotion or dedication to a particular person or place. For instance, within the Roman Catholic Church, devotion to Mary, mother of Jesus may be termed the "Cult of Mary". It is also used in non-religious contexts to refer to fandoms devoted to television shows like "The Prisoner", "The X-Files", and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". In the United States, people began to use "cult" in a pejorative manner, to refer to Spiritualism and Christian Science during the 1890s. As commonly used, for instance in sensationalist tabloid articles, the term "cult" continues to have pejorative associations.


title: New religious movement

text: The term "new religions" is a calque of , a Japanese term developed to describe the proliferation of Japanese new religions in the years following the Second World War. From Japan this term was translated and used by several American authors, including Jacob Needleman, to describe the range of groups that appeared in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s. This term, amongst others, was adopted by Western scholars as an alternative to "cult". However, "new religious movements" has failed to gain widespread public usage in the manner that "cult" has. Other terms that have been employed for many NRMs are "alternative religion" and "alternative spirituality", something used to convey the difference between these groups and established or mainstream religious movements while at the same time evading the problem posed by groups that are not particularly new.


title: New religious movement

text: The 1970s was the era of the so-called "cult wars," led by "cult-watching groups." The efforts of the anti-cult movement condensed a moral panic around the concept of cults. Public fears around Satanism, in particular, came to be known as a distinct phenomenon, the "Satanic Panic". Consequently, scholars such as Eileen Barker, James T. Richardson, Timothy Miller and Catherine Wessinger argued that the term "cult" had become too laden with negative connotations, and "advocated dropping its use in academia". A number of alternatives to the term "new religious movement" are used by some scholars. These include "alternative religious movements" (Miller), "emergent religions" (Ellwood) and "marginal religious movements" (Harper and Le Beau).


title: New religious movement

text: There has been opposition to NRMs throughout their history. Some historical events have been: Anti-Mormonism, the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses, the persecution of Baháʼís, and the persecution of Falun Gong. There are also instances in which violence has been directed at new religions. In the United States the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, Joseph Smith, was killed by a lynch mob in 1844. In India there have been mob killings of members of the Ananda Marga group. Such violence can also be administered by the state. In Iran, followers of the Baháʼí Faith have faced persecution, while the Ahmadiyya have faced similar violence in Pakistan. Since 1999, the persecution of Falun Gong in China has been severe. Ethan Gutmann interviewed over 100 witnesses and estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008.


title: New religious movement

text: In the 1930s, Christian critics of NRMs began referring to them as "cults". The 1938 book "The Chaos of Cults" by Jan Karel van Baalen (1890–1968), an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church in North America, was especially influential. In the US, the Christian Research Institute was founded in 1960 by Walter Martin to counter opposition to evangelical Christianity and has come to focus on criticisms of NRMs. Presently the Christian countercult movement opposes most NRMs because of theological differences. It is closely associated with evangelical Christianity. The UK-based Reachout Trust was initially established to oppose the Jehovah's Witnesses and what it regarded as "counterfeit Christian groups", but it came to wider attention in the late 1980s and 1990s for its role in promoting claims about Satanic ritual abuse.


title: New religious movement

text: In the 1970s and 1980s some NRMs, as well as some non-religious groups, came under opposition by the newly organized anti-cult movement, which mainly charged them with psychological abuse of their own members. It actively seeks to discourage people from joining new religions (which it refers to as "cults"). It also encourages members of these groups to leave them, and at times seeking to restrict their freedom of movement.


title: New religious movement

text: Family members are often distressed when a relative of theirs joins a new religion. Although children break away from their parents for all manner of reasons, in cases where NRMS are involved it is often the latter that are blamed for the break. Some anti-cultist groups emphasise the idea that "cults" always use deceit and trickery to recruit members. The anti-cult movement adopted the term "brainwashing", which had been developed by the journalist Edward Hunter and then used by Robert J. Lifton to apply to the methods employed by Chinese to convert captured US soldiers to their cause in the Korean War. Lifton himself had doubts about the applicability of his 'brainwashing' hypothesis to the techniques used by NRMs to convert recruits. A number of ex-members of various new religions have made false allegations about their experiences in such groups. For instance, in the late 1980s a man in Dublin, Ireland was given a three-year suspended sentence for falsely claiming that he had been drugged, kidnapped, and held captive by members of ISKCON.


title: New religious movement

text: Scholars of religion have often critiqued anti-cult groups of un-critically believing anecdotal stories provided by the ex-members of new religions, of encouraging ex-members to think that they are the victims of manipulation and abuse, and of irresponsibly scare-mongering about NRMs. Of the "well over a thousand groups that have been or might be called cults" listed in the files of INFORM, says Eileen Barker, the "vast majority" have not engaged in criminal activities.


title: New religious movement

text: New religious movements and cults have appeared as themes or subjects in literature and popular culture, while notable representatives of such groups have produced a large body of literary works. Beginning in the 1700s authors in the English-speaking world began introducing members of "cults" as antagonists. In the twentieth century, concern for the rights and feelings of religious minorities led authors to most often invent fictional cults for their villains to be members of. Fictional cults continue to be popular in film, television, and gaming in the same way, while some popular works treat new religious movements in a serious manner.


title: New religious movement

text: An article on the categorization of new religious movements in US print media published by "The Association for the Sociology of Religion" (formerly the American "Catholic Sociological Society"), criticizes the print media for failing to recognize social-scientific efforts in the area of new religious movements, and its tendency to use popular or anti-cultist definitions rather than social-scientific insight, and asserts that "The failure of the print media to recognize social-scientific efforts in the area of religious movement organizations impels us to add yet another failing mark to the media report card Weiss (1985) has constructed to assess the media's reporting of the social sciences."


title: Poison dart frog

text: Poison dart frog (also known as dart-poison frog, poison frog or formerly known as poison arrow frog) is the common name of a group of frogs in the family Dendrobatidae which are native to tropical Central and South America. These species are diurnal and often have brightly colored bodies. This bright coloration is correlated with the toxicity of the species, making them aposematic. Some species of the family Dendrobatidae exhibit extremely bright coloration along with high toxicity, while others have cryptic coloration with minimal to no amount of observed toxicity. The species that have great toxicity derive this feature from their diet of ants, mites and termites. However, other species that exhibit cryptic coloration, and low to no amounts of toxicity, eat a much larger variety of prey. Many species of this family are threatened due to human infrastructure encroaching on their habitats.


title: Poison dart frog

text: These amphibians are often called "dart frogs" due to the Native Americans' use of their to poison the tips of blowdarts. However, out of over 170 species, only four have been documented as being used for this purpose (curare plants are more commonly used for in Native American darts) all of which come from the genus "Phyllobates", which is characterized by the relatively large size and high levels of toxicity of its members.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Most species of poison dart frogs are small, sometimes less than in adult length, although a few grow up to in length. They weigh 1 oz. on average. Most poison dart frogs are brightly colored, displaying aposematic patterns to warn potential predators. Their bright coloration is associated with their toxicity and levels of alkaloids. For example, frogs of the genus "Dendrobates" have high levels of alkaloids, whereas "Colostethus" species are cryptically colored and are not toxic.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Poison dart frogs are an example of an aposematic organism. Their bright coloration advertises unpalatability to potential predators. Aposematism is currently thought to have originated at least four times within the poison dart family according to phylogenetic trees, and dendrobatid frogs have since undergone dramatic divergences – both interspecific and intraspecific – in their aposematic coloration. This is surprising given the frequency-dependent nature of this type of defense mechanism.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Adult frogs lay their eggs in moist places, including on leaves, in plants, among exposed roots, and elsewhere. Once the eggs hatch, the adult piggybacks the tadpoles, one at a time, to suitable water: either a pool, or the water gathered in the throat of bromeliads or other plants. The tadpoles remain there until they metamorphose, in some species fed by unfertilized eggs laid at regular intervals by the mother.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Poison dart frogs are endemic to humid, tropical environments of Central and South America. These frogs are generally found in tropical rainforests, including in Bolivia, Costa Rica, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, French Guiana, Peru, Panama, Guyana, Nicaragua, and Hawaii (introduced).


title: Poison dart frog

text: Natural habitats include moist, lowland forests (subtropical and tropical), high-altitude shrubland (subtropical and tropical), moist montanes and rivers (subtropical and tropical), freshwater marshes, intermittent freshwater marshes, lakes and swamps. Other species can be found in seasonally wet or flooded lowland grassland, arable land, pastureland, rural gardens, plantations, moist savanna and heavily degraded former forest. Premontane forests and rocky areas have also been known to hold frogs. Dendrobatids tend to live on or close to the ground, but also in trees as much as from the ground.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Many species of poison dart frogs are dedicated parents. Many poison dart frogs in the genera "Oophaga" and "Ranitomeya" carry their newly hatched tadpoles into the canopy; the tadpoles stick to the mucus on the backs of their parents. Once in the upper reaches of the rainforest trees, the parents deposit their young in the pools of water that accumulate in epiphytic plants, such as bromeliads. The tadpoles feed on invertebrates in their nursery, and their mother will even supplement their diet by depositing eggs into the water. Other poison frogs lay their eggs on the forest floor, hidden beneath the leaf litter. Poison frogs fertilize their eggs externally; the female lays a cluster of eggs and a male fertilizes them afterward, in the same manner as most fish. Poison frogs can often be observed clutching each other, similar to the manner most frogs copulate. However, these demonstrations are actually territorial wrestling matches. Both males and females frequently engage in disputes over territory. A male will fight for the most prominent roosts from which to broadcast his mating call; females fight over desirable nests, and even invade the nests of other females to devour competitor's eggs.


title: Poison dart frog

text: The operational sex ratio in the poison dart frog family is mostly female biased. This leads to a few characteristic behaviors and traits found in organisms with an uneven sex ratio. In general, females have a choice of mate. In turn, males show brighter coloration, are territorial, and are aggressive toward other males. Females select mates based on coloration (mainly dorsal), calling perch location, and territory.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Dart frogs are the focus of major phylogenetic studies, and undergo taxonomic changes frequently. The family Dendrobatidae currently contains 16 genera, with about 200 species.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Some poison dart frogs species include a number of conspecific color morphs that emerged as recently as 6,000 years ago. Therefore, species such as "Dendrobates tinctorius", "Oophaga pumilio", and "Oophaga granulifera" can include color pattern morphs that can be interbred (colors are under polygenic control, while the actual patterns are probably controlled by a single locus). Differing coloration has historically misidentified single species as separate, and there is still controversy among taxonomists over classification.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Variation in predation regimens may have influenced the evolution of polymorphism in "Oophaga granulifera", while sexual selection appears to have contributed to differentiation among the Bocas del Toro populations of "Oophaga pumilio".


title: Poison dart frog

text: The chemical defense mechanisms of the Dendrobates family is the result of endogenous means. As explained before, essentially this means that its ability to defend through chemical violence and defense is a means that has come through the consumption of a particular diet. In fact when captive raised species were raised they exhibited non-detectable levels of toxins whereas the wild-caught species did as a result of their calcium and vitamin Drosophila and cricket diet. The secretion of these chemicals is released by the granular glands of the frog. The discharge happens as a result of acetylcholine being released into the body which triggers the sympathetic or parasympathetic system depending on the species which leads to the chemical being secreted. The chemical secreted by the Dndrobatid family of frogs is said to be incredibly unique as some species secrete alkaloids that consist of a greatly different and unique chemical structure and toxicity. It has been suggested that initially the granular glands were solely responsible for the production and synthesis of the diverse toxins a part of the different species of Dendrobates, then through evolution the glands were adapted to also be responsible for storage, and then finally even the secretion of them upon triggering.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Many poison dart frogs secrete lipophilic alkaloid toxins such as allopumiliotoxin 267A, batrachotoxin, epibatidine, histrionicotoxin, and pumiliotoxin 251D through their skin. Alkaloids in the skin glands of poison frogs serve as a chemical defense against predation, and they are therefore able to be active alongside potential predators during the day. About 28 structural classes of alkaloids are known in poison frogs. The most toxic of poison dart frog species is "Phyllobates terribilis". It is argued that dart frogs do not synthesize their poisons, but sequester the chemicals from arthropod prey items, such as ants, centipedes and mites – the diet-toxicity hypothesis. Because of this, captive-bred animals do not possess significant levels of toxins as they are reared on diets that do not contain the alkaloids sequestered by wild populations. In fact, new studies suggest that the maternal frogs of some species lay unfertilized eggs, which are laced with trace amounts of alkaloids, to feed the tadpoles. This behavior shows that the poisons are introduced from a very young age. Nonetheless, the captive-bred frogs retain the ability to accumulate alkaloids when they are once again provided an alkaloidal diet. Despite the toxins used by some poison dart frogs, some predators have developed the ability to withstand them. One is the snake "Erythrolamprus epinephalus", which has developed immunity to the poison.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Chemicals extracted from the skin of "Epipedobates tricolor" may have medicinal value. Scientists use this poison to make a painkiller. One such chemical is a painkiller 200 times as potent as morphine, called epibatidine; however, the therapeutic dose is very close to the fatal dose. A derivative ABT-594 developed by Abbott Laboratories, called Tebanicline got as far as Phase II trials in humans, but was dropped from further development due to dangerous gastrointestinal side effects. Secretions from dendrobatids are also showing promise as muscle relaxants, heart stimulants and appetite suppressants. The most poisonous of these frogs, the golden poison frog ("Phyllobates terribilis"), has enough toxin on average to kill ten to twenty men or about twenty thousand mice. Most other dendrobatids, while colorful and toxic enough to discourage predation, pose far less risk to humans or other large animals.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Conspicuous coloration in these frogs is further associated with diet specialization, body mass, aerobic capacity, and chemical defense. Conspicuousness and toxicity may be inversely related, as polymorphic poison dart frogs that are less conspicuous are more toxic than the brightest and most conspicuous species. Energetic costs of producing toxins and bright color pigments lead to potential trade-offs between toxicity and bright coloration, and prey with strong secondary defenses have less to gain from costly signaling. Therefore, prey populations that are more toxic are predicted to manifest less bright signals, opposing the classical view that increased conspicuousness always evolves with increased toxicity.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Skin toxicity evolved alongside bright coloration, perhaps preceding it. Toxicity may have relied on a shift in diet to alkaloid-rich arthropods, which likely occurred at least four times among the dendrobatids. Either aposematism and aerobic capacity preceded greater resource gathering, making it easier for frogs to go out and gather the ants and mites required for diet specialization, contrary to classical aposematic theory, which assumes that toxicity from diet arises before signaling. Alternatively, diet specialization preceded higher aerobic capacity, and aposematism evolved to allow dendrobatids to gather resources without predation. Prey mobility could also explain the initial development of aposematic signaling. If prey have characteristics that make them more exposed to predators, such as when some dendrobatids shifted from nocturnal to diurnal behavior, then they have more reason to develop aposematism. After the switch, the frogs had greater ecological opportunities, causing dietary specialization to arise. Thus, aposematism is not merely a signaling system, but a way for organisms to gain greater access to resources and increase their reproductive success.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Dietary conservatism (long-term neophobia) in predators could facilitate the evolution of warning coloration, if predators avoid novel morphs for a long enough period of time. Another possibility is genetic drift, the so-called gradual-change hypothesis, which could strengthen weak pre-existing aposematism.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Sexual selection may have played a role in the diversification of skin color and pattern in poison frogs. With female preferences in play, male coloration could evolve rapidly. Sexual selection is influenced by many things. The parental investment may shed some light on the evolution of coloration in relation to female choice. In "Oophaga pumilio", the female provides care for the offspring for several weeks whereas the males provides care for a few days, implying a strong female preference. Sexual selection increases phenotypic variation drastically. In populations of "O. pumilio" that participated in sexual selection, the phenotypic polymorphism was evident. The lack of sexual dimorphism in some dendrobatid populations however suggests that sexual selection is not a valid explanation.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Functional trade-offs are seen in poison frog defense mechanisms relating to toxin resistance. Poison dart frogs containing epibatidine have undergone a 3 amino acid mutation on receptors of the body, allowing the frog to be resistant to its own poison. Epibatidine-producing frogs have evolved poison resistance of body receptors independently three times. This target-site insensitivity to the potent toxin epibatidine on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors provides a toxin resistance while reducing the affinity of acetylcholine binding.


title: Poison dart frog

text: All species of poison dart frogs are Neotropical in origin. Wild-caught specimens can maintain toxicity for some time (this can be obtained through a form of bioaccumulation), so appropriate care should be taken when handling them. While scientific study on the lifespan of poison dart frogs is scant, retagging frequencies indicate it can range from one to three years in the wild. However, these frogs typically live for much longer than that in captivity, having been reported to live as long as 25 years. These claims also seem to be questionable, since many of the larger species take a year or more to mature, and "Phyllobates" species can take more than two years. In captivity, most species thrive where the humidity is kept constant at 80 to 100% and where the temperature is around to during the day and no lower than to at night. Some species tolerate lower temperatures better than others.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Many species of poison dart frogs have recently experienced habitat loss, chytrid diseases, and collection for the pet trade. Some are listed as threatened or endangered as a result. Zoos have tried to counteract this disease by treating captive frogs with an antifungal agent that is used to cure athlete's foot in humans.


title: Poison dart frog

text: The poison dart frog is known for its aggressive and predatory behavior. As tadpoles, the individuals of the genus Dendrobates are said to exhibit some unique cannibalistic tendencies, along with many other forms of predatory behavior. Dendrobates tadpoles that either consumed three or more conspecific tadpoles and/or relatively large larvae of a specific species of mosquito by the name of Trichoprosopon digitatum common in their environment led them to having a much higher growth rate and typically lived much longer lives. Reasons for this behavior could be that predation and aggression was selected for and favored for a few reasons. One reason is to eliminate predators, and the second reason is that it serves as a source of food in habitats that were low in resources. This predation could have evolved over time and led to cannibalism as another form of predatory behavior that had benefitted individuals survival fitness. However one observation has been noted in the general characteristic of Dendrobate tadpoles including "D. arboreus, D. granuliferus, D. lehmanni, D. occultator, D. pumilio, D. Speciosus", and many other Dendrobates species is that they have reduced mouth parts as young tadpoles which limits their consumption typically to unfertilized eggs only.  Thus, it can be assumed that the cannibalistic tendencies of Dendrobates is limited to their lifetime as a tadpole and does not cross over into their adult life.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Dendrobates are a family of species very well known for their territorial and aggressive behavior not only as tadpoles, but as adults too. These aggression behaviors were not only limited to males, as many female Dendrobates also are known to defend their own native territory very aggressively. These areas that were being defended aggressively by Dendrobate were typically found to be regions that served as male calling sites. In fact, the males were seen wrestling with intruders of their territory in order to defend their calling sites as well as their vegetation. The different ways in which Dendrobates defended their own territories included physical combat and aggression. While vocalization and various behavioral displays served as a way of exhibiting one's strength or fitness, territorial disputes and fights led to physical combat and aggression at times too. Physical violence and aggression is particularly common at times of calling. If it was seen that an intruder was making calls in the territory of a Dendrobate frog then the resident frog would attempt to eliminate the competition to claim the territory and the females in it to himself. The resident frog would initially try to make its presence known by the means of vocalization and various behavioral displays as a way to exert dominance. If this did not scare away the intruder, then the resident frog would move towards the intruder and strike them. This encounter would immediately escalate into a full on fight where both are striking each other and grasping each other's limbs. Similarly, the females also often would get into fights and display aggressive behaviors in disputes over territory or a mating conflict. It was also observed that females who were going after the same male, after hearing their call, would chase each other down and wrestle to fight for the male. After a female courts with a male, they are also very likely to exhibit aggressive behavior towards any females that approach that male. Both the males and females bought their own respective sexes for each other in a fairly similar fashion.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Observations of the Dendrobates family suggest that males of the species would typically make their mating call in morning between the times of 6:30am to 11:30am. The calling would typically come from a place of elevation from various pieces of nature. The males would usually be on average one meter above the ground on limbs, trunks, and stems, or logs of trees so that their voice traveled further as well as the fact that it would help themselves be seen. The calls were signaled towards the stream as the females typically were in that area. Each male typically had their own region in which they only made calls from, and typically an individual would repeat their calls from the same spot during a mating season. After the call is received, the female makes its way to the male, and fertilization occurred in a few instances. This observed fertilization was not accomplished through amplexus. Initiation and interaction during courtship typically were the result of active females rather than males. The females stroked, climbed on, and jumped on the other in tactile courtship, and were by far the more active sex. The duration of courtship in poison frogs is long and females could even reject males even after an entire day of active following which was found to occur in a few instances. In the majority of cases, the males in fact chose the oviposition site and led the way and females usually followed the male to the site. In some Dendrodates species, such as strawberry poison frog, visual cues under high light intensity were also used to identify individuals from the same population. Different species use different cues to identify individuals from their same population during the time of mating and courtship.


title: Poison dart frog

text: The diet of the Dendrobates is unique and vital in giving this family of frogs characteristics that are distinct from the rest. The diet of Dendrobates is what gives it the alkaloids that are found in its skin. This unique skin color and pigmentation and ability to transform color is an distinct feature that finds its basis in its diet. The diet is also what allows this family of frogs to have a defense mechanism such as poison, which is why it's commonly referred to as the poison dart frog. Both skin alkaloids and venoms and toxins are substances that can be from endogenous sources. Endogenous sources essentially means that the individual themselves is producing or synthesizing those substances on their own, or they can be obtained through exogenous sources like consumption. Researchers have studied these characteristics and have formed the diet-toxicity hypothesis which just implies that they believe that the diet of these Dendrobates is what gives them their toxicity and skin alkaloids. The data from numerous studies has led to the conclusions that there are direct correlations present between the frog's diet and its skin alkaloids that act as evidence to prove the diet-toxicity hypothesis . The diet that is responsible for these characteristics consists primarily of small and leaf-litter arthropods found in its general habitat, typically ants. Their diet, however, is typically separated into two distinct categories. The first is the primary portion of Dendrobates' diet which include prey that are slow-moving, large in number, and small in size. This typically consists of ants, while also including mites, small beetles, and minor litter-dwelling taxa. The second category of prey are much rarer finds and are much larger in body size, and they tend to have high palatability and mobility. These typically consist of you orthopteroids, lepidopteran larvae, as well as spiders. The natural diet of an individual Dendrobate depends on its species, prey abundance in its location, as well as many other factors. The available species present in the individual's enivornment can influence its diet vastly. Frogs of one species can specialize in preying on one particular prey, whereas another can focus on a different type of prey. The preference is one that depends on various factors that are calculated and decided upon as the most beneficial for one’s own fitness.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Typically in many species the larger portion of parental investment falls on the shoulders of the female sex, whereas the male sex has a much smaller portion. However, it has been studied that in the family of Dendrobates, many of the species exhibit sex role reversal in which the females are competing for a limited number of males and the males are the choosers and their parental investment is much larger than the females. This theory also says that the female will typically produce eggs at an exceedingly fast rate that the males cannot possibly take full care of them which then leads to some of the males becoming unreceptive.  Dendrobates also exhibit the parental quality hypothesis. The parental quality hypothesis is where the females mating with the males try to ensure that their male mates with as few individuals as possible so that their number of offspring is limited, and thus each individual offspring receives a larger portion of care, attention, and resources. However, this creates an interesting dynamic of balance as there is a limited number of males available, and with many females competing for a limited number of males for courtship this makes it difficult ot limit the number of individuals a male mates with. Whereas in many species, the competition is flipped in that the competition is prominent among the males, among the Dendrobates it is the opposite as the females seem to have a great deal of competition among themselves for males. Females will even take the drastic measures and resort to the destroying of other female's eggs in order to make sure that the male they mated with is receptive and that it scares the male from mating with other females.


title: Poison dart frog

text: Poison dart frogs suffer from chytridiomycosis, which is a deadly disease that is caused by the fungus "Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis" (Bd). This infection has been found in frogs from Colostethus and Dendrobates.


title: Tim Commerford

text: Tim Commerford (born February 26, 1968) is an American musician, best known as the bassist and backing vocalist for rock band Rage Against the Machine, and supergroups Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. Since 2013 and 2015, he has also been the lead singer and bassist of the bands Future User and Wakrat.


title: Tim Commerford

text: Commerford was born on February 26, 1968, in Irvine, California. Growing up, his musical idols were Gene Simmons, Sid Vicious, Steve Harris, and Geddy Lee.


title: Tim Commerford

text: In 1991, following the break-up of the band Lock Up featuring guitarist Tom Morello, the band's drummer, Jon Knox, encouraged Commerford and Zack de la Rocha to jam with Tom Morello. Tom soon called Brad Wilk, who had unsuccessfully auditioned for Lock Up. This line-up went on to form Rage Against the Machine. After frequenting the L.A. club circuit, Rage Against the Machine signed a record deal with Epic Records in 1992. That same year, the band released their self-titled debut. They achieved a phenomenal amount of mainstream success and released three more studio albums.


title: Tim Commerford

text: In late 2000, after Commerford's stunt at the VMA's, a disgruntled de la Rocha quit the band. On September 13, 2000, Rage Against the Machine performed their last concert at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles.


title: Tim Commerford

text: After Zack de la Rocha left Rage Against the Machine, music producer Rick Rubin suggested the three remaining members of Rage get together with then-former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell, and "see what happens".


title: Tim Commerford

text: By May 2001, they had begun to work in the studio, writing their first song "Light My Way". By April 2002, the newly formed band had split due to "outside" pressures, mainly from management companies. They soon got back together though, and on November 19, 2002, they released their eponymous debut, which would attain triple platinum status. Audioslave attained a large amount of success, and released another two studio albums. On May 5, 2005, Audioslave played a free concert in front of 65,000 Cuban fans, becoming the first American rock band to play a concert within Cuba.


title: Tim Commerford

text: On February 15, 2007, Chris Cornell officially announced his departure from Audioslave, thus disbanding the group.


title: Tim Commerford

text: On April 29, 2007, Rage Against the Machine reunited at the Coachella Music Festival. The band played in front of an EZLN backdrop to the largest crowd of the festival. The performance was first thought to be a one-off, but this turned out not to be the case. The band played seven more shows in the United States in 2007 (including their first non-festival concert in seven years at the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin), and in January 2008, they played their first shows outside the US as part of the Big Day Out Festival in Australia and New Zealand, and then played at the T in the Park festival in Scotland and at the Reading and Leeds festival in England in the summer of 2008.


title: Tim Commerford

text: The band continued to tour around the world, headlining many large festivals in Europe and the United States, including Lollapalooza in Chicago. In 2008 the band also played shows in Denver, Colorado and St. Paul, Minnesota, the locations of the Democratic National Convention and Republican National Convention, respectively. Their most recent performance was in 2011, at The Coliseum at Los Angeles.


title: Tim Commerford

text: Commerford co-founded provocative band Future User, together with Jordan Tarlow (keys), Jon Knox (drums) and producer Brendan O'Brien (guitars). He plays bass and is the vocalist of the band. Tim Commerford hid several months under the S.W.I.M persona on the first music videos, before unmasking himself in the "Mountain Lion" video. In the band's first video, tennis player John McEnroe subjected himself to waterboarding. The "Mountain Lion" video featured road racing cyclist Lance Armstrong, a close friend of Commerford, while a skateboarding Commerford appears to inject himself with a steroid.


title: Tim Commerford

text: In 2015, he formed "punk and hardcore-influenced band", named Wakrat. The band also features drummer Mathias Wakrat and guitarist Laurent Grangeon. The band debuted their first single, "Knucklehead", in September 2015.


title: Tim Commerford

text: In 2022, Tim Commerford launched a new project, 7D7D, with Mathias Wakrat and Jonny Polonsky. The group debuted their first single, "Capitalism", in November.


title: Tim Commerford

text: In 2016, Tim Commerford reunited with Tom Morello and Brad Wilk, and was joined by Chuck D and B-Real to form supergroup Prophets of Rage. They play covers from their Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill material, and new material as well.


title: Tim Commerford

text: Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk contributed to Maynard James Keenan's side project Puscifer and his album ""V" Is for Vagina" on the track "Momma Sed". Both have taken part in the production of Dave Grohl's 2013 "Sound City" , with the track "Time Slowing Down". In 2010, Commerford was interviewed and appeared in the documentary "".


title: Tim Commerford

text: In 2001, Commerford married his longtime girlfriend, Aleece Dimas. They have two sons together, Xavier and Quentin. In November 2018, the couple announced they were divorcing.


title: Tim Commerford

text: Commerford is a self-described "conspiracy theorist". In a "Rolling Stone" interview in 2015, he claimed that the Moon landing was faked and he confronted Buzz Aldrin about it at a John Cusack movie premiere. In the same interview, Commerford also stated that he doesn't believe ISIS is real and cast doubt upon the ISIS beheading videos:


title: Tim Commerford

text: Commerford's has been using various Music Man StingRay basses since 2016, a brand he likes since his beginnings with Rage Against The Machine. MusicMan released several custom Artist Series basses in 2021. He previously used Fender Jazz Basses with Fender Precision Bass necks and Lakland basses.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Missoula ( ; ; ) is a city in the U.S. state of Montana; it is the county seat of Missoula County. It is located along the Clark Fork River near its confluence with the Bitterroot and Blackfoot Rivers in western Montana and at the convergence of five mountain ranges, thus it is often described as the "hub of five valleys". The 2020 United States Census shows the city's population at 73,489 and the population of the Missoula Metropolitan Area at 117,922. After Billings, Missoula is the second-largest city and metropolitan area in Montana. Missoula is home to the University of Montana, a public research university.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: The Missoula area began seeing settlement by people of European descent in 1858 including William T. Hamilton, who set up a trading post along the Rattlesnake Creek, Captain Richard Grant, who settled near Grant Creek, and David Pattee, who settled near Pattee Canyon. Missoula was founded in 1860 as Hellgate Trading Post while still part of Washington Territory. By 1866, the settlement had moved east, upstream, and had been renamed Missoula Mills, later shortened to Missoula. The mills provided supplies to western settlers traveling along the Mullan Road. The establishment of Fort Missoula in 1877 to protect settlers further stabilized the economy. The arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883 brought rapid growth and the maturation of the local lumber industry. In 1893, the Montana Legislature chose Missoula as the site for the state's first university. Along with the U.S. Forest Service headquarters founded in 1908, lumber and the university remained the basis of the local economy for the next 100 years.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: By the 1990s, Missoula's lumber industry had gradually disappeared, and , the city's largest employers were the University of Montana, Missoula County Public Schools, and Missoula's two hospitals. The city is governed by a mayor–council government with 12 city council members, two from each of the six wards. In and around Missoula are of parkland, of trails, and nearly of open-space conservation land, with adjacent Mount Jumbo being home to grazing elk and mule deer during the winter. The city is also home to both of Montana's largest and its oldest active breweries, as well as the Montana Grizzlies. Notable residents include the first woman to serve in the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Archaeological artifacts date the earliest inhabitants of the Missoula Valley to with settlements as early as . From the 1700s until 1850s, those who used the land were primarily, the Salish, Kootenai, Pend d'Oreille, Blackfeet, and Shoshone. Located at the confluence of five mountain valleys, the Missoula Valley was heavily traversed by local and distant native tribes that periodically went to the Eastern Montana plains in search of bison. This led to conflicts. The narrow valley at Missoula's eastern entrance was so strewn with human bones from repeated ambushes that French fur trappers later referred to this area as "", translated as "". would remain the name of the area until it was renamed "Missoula" in 1866.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: The Lewis and Clark Expedition brought the first U.S. citizens to the area. They twice stopped just south of Missoula at Traveler's Rest. They camped there the first time on their westbound trip in September 1805. When they stayed there again, on their return in June–July 1806, Clark left heading south along the Bitterroot River and Lewis traveled north, then east, through Hellgate Canyon. In 1860, Village was established west of present-day downtown by Christopher P. Higgins and Frank Worden as a trading post to serve travelers on the recently completed Mullan Road, the first wagon road to cross the Rocky Mountains to the inland of the Pacific Northwest. The desire for a more convenient water supply to power a lumber and flour mill led to the movement of the settlement to its modern location in 1864.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: The Missoula Mills replaced Village as the economic power of the valley and replaced it as the county seat in 1866. The name "Missoula" came from the Salish name for the Clark Fork River, "nmesuletkw", which roughly translates as "place of frozen water". Fort Missoula was established in 1877 to help protect further arriving settlers. Growth accelerated with the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1883, and by charter, Missoula incorporated a municipal government as a town, the same year. In 1885, Missoula reincorporated its government as a city.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: In 1893, Missoula was chosen as the location for the first state university, the University of Montana. The need for lumber for the railway and its bridges spurred the opening of multiple saw mills in the area, and in turn, the beginning of Missoula's lumber industry, which remained the mainstay of the area economy for the next 100 years. The United States Forest Service work in Missoula began in 1905. Missoula is also home of the smokejumpers' headquarters and will be the site of the National Museum of Forest Service History. Nationally, there are nine Forest Service regions; Region1 is headquartered in Missoula.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Logging remained a mainstay of industry in Missoula with the groundbreaking of the Hoerner-Waldorf pulp mill in 1956, which resulted in protests over the resultant air pollution. An article in "Life" 13 years later speaks of Missoulians sometimes needing to drive with headlights on during the day to navigate through the smog. In 1979, almost 40% of the county labor income still came from the wood and paper-products sector. The lumber industry was hit hard by the recession of the early 1980s and Missoula's economy began to diversify. By the early 1990s, the disappearance of many of the region's log yards, along with legislation, had helped clean the air dramatically.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: , education and healthcare were Missoula's leading industries; the University of Montana, Missoula County Public Schools, and the two hospitals in the city were the largest employers. St. Patrick Hospital and Health Sciences Center, founded in 1873, is the region's only Level II trauma center and has undergone three major expansions since the 1980s. Likewise, the University of Montana grew 50% and built or renovated 20 buildings from 1990–2010. These industries, as well as expansions in business and professional services, and retail are expected to be the main engines of future growth.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Missoula is located at the western edge of Montana, approximately from the Idaho border. The city is at an elevation of above sea level, with nearby Mount Sentinel and Mount Jumbo steeply rising to and , respectively. According to the Census Bureau's figures, the city had a total area of , of which were land and were covered by water.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Around 13,000 years ago, the entire valley was at the bottom of Glacial Lake Missoula. As could be expected for a former lake bottom, the layout of Missoula is relatively flat and surrounded by steep hills. Evidence of the city of Missoula's lake-bottom past can be seen in the form of ancient horizontal wave-cut shorelines on nearby Mount Sentinel and Mount Jumbo. At the location of present-day University of Montana, the lake once had a depth of . The Clark Fork River enters the Missoula Valley from the east through Hellgate Canyon after joining the nearby Blackfoot River at the site of the former Milltown Dam. The Bitterroot River and multiple smaller tributaries join the Clark Fork on the western edge of Missoula. The city also sits at the convergence of five mountain ranges: the Bitterroot Mountains, Sapphire Range, Garnet Range, Rattlesnake Mountains, and the Reservation Divide, thus is often described as being the "hub of five valleys".


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Located in the Northern Rockies, Missoula has a typical Rocky Mountain ecology. Local wildlife includes populations of white-tailed deer, moose, grizzly bears, black bears, osprey, and bald eagles. During the winter, rapid snowmelt on Mount Jumbo due to its steep slope leaves grass available for grazing elk and mule deer. The rivers around Missoula provide nesting habitats for bank swallows, northern rough-winged swallows, and belted kingfishers. Killdeer and spotted sandpipers can be seen foraging for insects along the gravel bars. Other species include song sparrows, catbirds, several species of warblers, and the pileated woodpecker. The rivers also provide cold, clean water for native fish such as westslope cutthroat trout and bull trout. The meandering streams also attract beaver and wood ducks. The parks also host a variety of snakes such as racers, garter snakes, and rubber boa.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Native riparian plant life includes sandbar willows and cottonwoods with Montana's state tree, the ponderosa pine, also being prevalent. Other native plants include wetland species such as cattails and beaked sedge, as well as shrubs and berry plants such as Douglas hawthorn, chokecherry, and western snowberries. To the chagrin of local farmers, Missoula is also home to several noxious weeds, which multiple programs have set out to eliminate. Notable ones include Dalmatian toadflax, spotted knapweed, leafy spurge, St. John's wort, and sulfur cinquefoil. Controversially, the Norway maples that line many of Missoula's older streets have also been declared an invasive species.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Missoula has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification "Dfb"), with cold and moderately snowy winters, hot and dry summers, and short, crisp springs and autumns. Winters are usually milder than much of the rest of the state due to Missoula's location west of the Rockies, allowing it to receive mild, moist Pacific air and avoid the worst of cold snaps; however, it also gets more precipitation in winter. Winter snowfall averages , typically occurring between October 30 and April 20. As with the rest of the state, summers are very sunny, and the average diurnal temperature variation is more than from late June through late September, due to the relative aridity. The monthly daily average temperature ranges from in December to in July. On average, annually, there are 24 days with temperatures at or above , 45 days where the temperature does not rise above freezing, and 7.8 days with temperatures reaching at or below . Record temperatures range from on January 26, 1957 up to on July 6, 2007; the record cold maximum is , last recorded on February 2, 1989, while, conversely, the record warm minimum is on July 27, 1939.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: The median income for a household in the city was $30,366, and for a family was $42,103. Males had a median income of $30,686 versus $21,559 for females. The per capita income for the city was $17,166. About 11.7% of families and 19.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 20.5% of those under age 18 and 9.3% of those age 65 or over. About 40.3% of Missoula residents age 25 and older have a bachelor's or advanced college degree.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: 's census, 66,788 people, 29,081 households, and 13,990 families resided in the city. The population density was . The 30,682 housing units averaged . The racial makeup of the city was 92.1% White, 0.5% African American, 2.8% Native American, 1.2% Asian, 0.6% from other races, and 2.8% from two or more races. Latinos of any race were 2.9% of the population.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Of the 29,081 households, 23.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.4% were married couples living together, 9.6% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 51.9% were not families. About 35.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.18 and the average family size was 2.82.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: In the city, the population was distributed as 17.9% of residents under 18, 19.7% between the ages of 18 and 24, 29.6% from 25 to 44, 22.1% from 45 to 64, and 10.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age in the city was 30.9 years. The gender makeup of the city was 49.9% male and 50.1% female.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Missoula began as a trading post in the 1860s situated along the Mullan Military Road to take advantage of the first route across the Bitterroot Mountains to the plains of Eastern Washington. Its designation as county seat in 1866 and location of the hastily built Fort Missoula in 1877 ensured Missoula's status as a regional commercial center, a status further consolidated in 1883 with the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway. The railroad expanded Missoula's trade area to cover a 150-mile radius, and Missoula's location as the railway's division point and repair shops provided hundreds of jobs. When the railway began expanding again in 1898, increased freight shipments came through the city, and with the arrival of the Milwaukee Road and regional office for the U.S. Forest Service, as well as the opening of the Flathead Indian Reservation to settlement all within a couple years of each other beginning in 1908, the economy began to expand rapidly.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Lumber mills were originally built to provide construction-grade materials for homes and businesses, but then expanded to entice and then meet the demands of the railroad; they profited from an increase in demand from railroad expansion and the nation at large. The Bonner mill, owned the Northern Pacific and Copper King Marcus Daly, became the largest producer of lumber in the northwest. In 1908, Missoula's location as both a major lumber producer and a regional commercial center helped land the city the regional office for the newly establish U.S. Forest Service, created to help manage the nation's timber supply. Over the next century, Missoula's various lumber industries was consolidated under various entities such as the Anaconda Company in the 1970s and Champion International Paper through the 1980s until most were under control of Plum Creek Timber, all the while demand in timber dropped. In 2007, a downward spiral of Missoula's lumber industry began with the closure of a plywood plant in Bonner, the closure of Bonner's sawmill in 2008, and the closing of the Smurfit-Stone Container pulp mill in 2010.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Since opening in 1895, the University of Montana has had a major impact on the development of Missoula's economy. In addition to the economic advantage from accommodating the student body, it gave the city an educated workforce not available in most of the state. The university has a close relationship with the city as Missoula's largest employer and with the millions of dollars the school brings into the city through visitors of school-sponsored sporting and cultural events. The university also houses Missoula's only business incubator, the Montana Technology Enterprise Center, and several start-up businesses.


title: Missoula, Montana

text: Missoula is the hub of its Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) economic area, which includes the Montana counties of Flathead, Lake, Lincoln, Mineral, Missoula, Ravalli, and Sanders. , the BEA listed the economic area population at 306,050. Key businesses sectors serving the area include health care, retail shopping, transportation, financial services, government and social services, education, events, arts and culture. Health care in particular is one of Missoula's fastest growing industries with St. Patrick Hospital (western Montana's only level-II trauma center) and the Community Medical Center, already the city's second- and third-largest employers behind the university. About 55% of employment in Missoula is made up of the service and retail sectors. Export industries are concentrated in heavy and civil engineering, construction, beverage production, technical services, truck transportation, and forestry-, logging-, and wood-related industries. In addition to nearly 4million out-of-state visitors annually, which makes tourism a significant aspect of the Missoula economy, Missoula also is home to a vibrant sector of alternative healthcare.