Why Is America So Religious?
blow.blogs.nytimes.com
blow.blogs.nytimes.com
Well, I'm a Harvard/Columbia-educated old-time hacker (53 now), been through several start-ups, have run my own software "lifestyle" company for nearly 20 years, and I'm also an enthusiastic Roman Catholic. (Gasp, the horror.)
I believe I can give a good defense of my faith to anyone whose mind isn't already completely closed, but this wouldn't be the place to do it... Maybe over a beer late some night.
I'm a nonpracticing Catholic, but I don't rank in the list above.
I think the "militant atheism" meme is a product of pop culture and a misplaced projection of anger at our current political regime. I also think that few "devout" atheists think that Barack Obama is a looney because he's a practicing Christian, so I think this has more to do with culture than with religion.
Many people deride Sarah Palin for assorted religious beliefs (such as the co-existence of people and dinosaurs) yet there is next to no deriding of Obama for believing that there lived a man who could bring the dead back to life, and who was himself killed and then rose from the dead.
How and where do people draw the line for acceptable bizarre beliefs?
First, the other comment in this thread, where the commenter talks about all the conversations they have with Christians that are useful and don't wind up offending people? I'm guessing they don't start by calling people's beliefs "bizarre". Bizarre means "strikingly out of the ordinary"; Christianity is one of the most common belief systems on the planet. Just a thought.
Second, Palin's beliefs are far outside of the mainstream. Mainstream Christians don't reject the most basic findings of science; plenty of mainstream Christians believe in evolution, the big bang, and quantum mechanics. Palin's beliefs are, by modern standards, eccentric. They also directly impact her job: I have zero problem with a President who believes in the Ten Commandments, but a lot of problems with a President who believes who should ban books on evolution from the libraries.
Does that answer your question?
Good thing you're not saying normal people actually evaluate beliefs according to how popular they are. Because that would be bizarre.
If you say, "I am a Christian", few think that bizarre. If you say, "I believe it that someone could bring the dead back to life just by willing it so", many more will think it bizarre.
The mundane ubiquity of various religions seems to have shielded people from any real scrutiny of what those religions ask one to believe. And many of those beliefs, common or not, are just plain bizarre.
I don't disagree that that Palin's beliefs would have a sooner, greater impact on national life, but do you not think that a president's belief in an afterlife or almighty creator will also effect executive decisions?
I understand there is a constant debate about teaching evolution in the States. Presumably this is backed up with a substantial minority. Certainly it is not Bizarre enough to exclude her from gaining traction in a mainstream party (Governor, VP). If a Salafist became a VP in Iraq (a formerly relatively secular country), we would take that of evidence of a move towards more conservative religion.
Maybe that's a bad example because at the moment, a Salafist politician in the middle east probably has more immediate political consequences. But all the same, I couldn't imagine a Scientologist VP of the US.
I am genuinely asking here. Is the fact that Palin is an acceptable politician a hint that the beliefs are 'mainstream' or does it just mean that religion is really a non0issue in US politics.
Her beliefs and attitudes are very similar to the mainstream in the rural communities I am familiar with. I will go out on a limb and say that there are quite a few people in rural Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Minnesota, and Idaho who would be Palin supporters.
I'm not sure if this can be extended to 'mainstream' in the rest of America, because more people live in big cities and suburbs, which are much different than the rural areas. Even rural areas in other parts of the country seem wildly different. Rural New Mexico, "the South" and Oregon all seemed very different from each other and from anything that I experienced growing up. I'm not sure how Palin would fare in those places.
To that significant portion of the population, the word "evolution" is just a buzzword, and a political football.
Most of the people who have a problem with the teaching of evolution don't really have a problem with evolution per se; they have a stake in a culture war that our media and our politicians are stoking up to serve their own interests.
I don't think this has anything whatsoever to do with religion. If I had to guess --- just totally off the top of my head --- the people who really commit themselves to believing in the literal truth of the Bible are probably far more "reasonable" in arguments than the Colorado Springs megachurch set is.
Either way: rejecting evolution is far outside the mainstream.
Is that really so? I think the majority of Christians aren't familiar enough with any of those things to really know if they believe them.
As far as Palin is concerned, after hearing the kinds of bullshit answers she's been giving I've come to think she is a typical ignorant american hypocrite at her core and it would not surprise me if she knew less about specific Christian teachings then she knows about scientific ones.
Too many people confuse faith with the idea of absolute belief. It's one thing to be faithful to a set of teachings and it's another to believe a particular set of statements to be literally true.
I'm no great fan of religion because most require the suspension of inquiry into their core principles when really that's exactly what they should encourage.
I agree here. Religion encourages you to stop looking for answers and to just believe what you're told. Where did the Universe come from? "God made it." Where did God come from? "He has always been."
Those answers aren't good enough for me.
Don't be satisfied with easy answers: alway dig deeper for reason. The easy answers to "Why the central basis to every single religion is wrong" is temptingly easy as well. (hint: "it's impossible") What is the basis for ethical behaviour? (hint: "herd instinct/evolutionary advantage") What keeps humanity "going" in the face of understanding that each of us and the universe will die one day? (hint: that "something" will continue on.) Look deeper, keep asking.
Jesus' first and greatest commandment, contrary to popular belief, isn't love your neighbour. It was 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Christians are required to use our intellects as part of worship. The first step to understanding anything is to find out what it's all about; making insulting blanket statements and feeling condescendingly superior without actual knowledge is something "the other camp" does, no?
I understand the wish to be diplomatic & uninflammatory. After all, a lot of wars have started over these kinds of things but.. I think that statement doesn't make much sense. I think that making that statement is confusing religion with scripture. If you take Christians as an example, many do not believe various elements (eg Adam & Eve) to be literally true. OK. I understand.
But all that means they are essentially reading a different text. One is reading a history & rule book. The other is reading a book which contains high level principles in the form of stories, some of which may be based on real events. There are lots of variations.
What they have in common is that both are receiving information from a divine, supernatural (unless you do semantic cartwheels) source. Both believe this information to be definitively true. To me (an atheist) the distinctions seem less significant then the commonalities. The religious have a source of information that I do not have.
The words faith, belief, god, religion etc. are very hard to generalise. But the idea behind them is often simply information
I think it does.
It makes the distinction between making an attempt to reconcile a set of moral and spiritual concepts with our scientific knowledge of the world, and rejecting scientific thought in favor of literal interpretation of a scripture.
If you think of it as a Venn diagram, religious belief and scientific knowledge are, for the most part, disjoint, but overlap (which usually means "conflict") in certain areas. The distinction is between people who, in that area of conflict, tend to give precedence to either belief or science.
I think you're wrong here. I think few give precedence to science. They find a way to work around the conflict. Giving precedence is along the lines of 'I see a green sheep so I know they exist' taking precedence over 'I read on wikipedia that all sheep are white.'Generally, the latter set of believers interpret 'wikipedia' in a way that does not cause conflict or minimises conflict.
Obviously there is a practical distinction between various points on the scale between Obama & Bin laden (with Palin somewhere in between). But the scale is not about how they deal with 'conflict.' It's about how often the conflicts occur & where. That's the practical scale that affects what people do & how they vote.
On the more fundamental scale of how they deal with such conflict, the variations tend to be much smaller.
Edit: Clarification
Certainly absolute beliefs matter in a practical sense. If I were in The States, Obama's beliefs wouldn't worry me. Palin's might. In the very theoretical sense, they both worry me a little. But even Palin's beliefs are probably less likely to affect anything to the degree that her social conservatism (related but not equivalent) is likely to have.
Jesus was a nice guy--->The bible contains divine guidance--->The Bible is infallible
That's fine for practical reasons (eg politics). But those are essentially different beliefs. They're not on a scale in the same way that Christianity, Buddhism or Zoroastrianism are not on a scale.
I give Jesus the credence I would somebody I met at a bar --->I admire his teachings and do the best I can to emulate him-->I treat all the information I can gather about him to be divinely inspired
What something is, that's dogma and inflexible. How I treat it is human nature, and infinitely scalable.
As a personal note, I think I'm somewhere between 1 and 2.
Most people don't really care whether Obama believes in Zombie Jesus, but they care about whether his interpretation of believing in Jesus leads to actions which they deem unacceptable or unkind to themselves or others. Obama, McCain and Palin are all judged by their actions, not their faith.
[PS: Jesus never said anything anyone who wasn't already "part of his flock" to begin with. He judges his own Church the harshest out of anybody. Don't let anyone tell you the fire and brimstone is meant for the unbelievers -- it's always been meant for the flock]
I suspect this is because they think he isn't really a believer, just paying the religious homage which is an entry-level criterion for any US presidential aspirant. I remember thinking this about Bill Clinton years ago (and still find it hard to believe that he's a genuine Baptist or whatever he claimed to be). Obama's a little harder to read, but I suppose for most atheists it's easy to resolve the question by thinking he probably doesn't mean it.
Just to be clear (and because I think it's interesting and would like to hear others on this), let me spell this one out. Say you're an atheist who agrees with that recent comment by Bill Maher that Christians "drink the blood of a 2000-year-old space god" (something like that) - in other words, are loony. But like most college-educated Americans you support Obama. Obama is a practising Christian. Who wants to believe that they're supporting a loon for president? It's a classic cognitive dissonance. So you look for a way to resolve the contradiction. One can think of a few:
1. Some Christians are loony but others aren't. This is what you originally suggested. But there are a lot of atheists who won't accept it.
2. He's loony but he's the lesser of two loony evils.
3. He's not a loon. He has to pretend to be Christian for political reasons. Sure it's not optimal, but such is US society, at least for now.
See what I mean? Does anybody have one to add to this list?
could i suggest that a cognitive dissonance is only necessary if the axiom that "all Christians are loony" is true? You should be having a heck of a time trying to define the two terms, then trying to argue that it is true, before you make the leap into the area of what it thus means to vote for a Christian/loony. It'd be like trying to prove a new theory starting with "1 == 1.1".
Is this so controversial or hard to follow? I'm surprised the point isn't obvious. (And I hope it's clear that I'm not arguing about the truth of these positions.)
1. Some loony, some not
2. The lesser of two loons
3. Liar
Spiritual and religious people might retort with a scale of their own about atheists. What galls me is the notion that "militant" atheists have that they're communicating anything by assailing religion. Honestly, how many people has Bill Maher talked out of Christianity? I doubt many.
I'm just asking you to accept that [...s]piritual and religious people might retort with a scale of their own about atheists
Sure. As for the subgroup you're talking about, I sometimes refer to them as "evangelical atheists". The word seems a fairly precise fit. They propagate a different evangel, of course.
1- Many Intellectuals & academics in the states are atheist. Maybe even most.
2- Atheists are unlikely to become politically powerful in the US.
These two would lead you to assume that you will come across cases of politically motivated faith.
(I won't name them, because I don't think they're "out")
I'm an atheist, and that's incredibly depressing :/
There are several studies to show that lower IQ matches with a higher probability of religion.
Of course there are odd outliers as with anything, but it's still a paradox - how can someone have logical thought, but believe in religion.
For a start the fact that they only believe in one religion and not all the others should be a red flag - an athiest and christian are very alike, the athiest just believes in one less god.
Consider that a large part of western culture is the product of rather religious people (I'm not claiming it is exclusively the product of Judeo-Christian thinkers). There is a long tradition of "odd outliers" throughout history.
I do, however, appreciate this:
For a start the fact that they only believe in one religion and not all the others should be a red flag - an athiest and christian are very alike, the athiest just believes in one less god.
Could you show some. I couldn't find any via search sites.
There were also a ton in Mensa magazines I seem to remember.
Obviously this is a generalization, so there are a few outlying oddities.
Faith is irrational, by definition (Pascal's wager notwithstanding).
Many people believe in many irrational things (the perfection of their children, the ability of their team to win this game) and decent people don't challenge them on it.
It only becomes an issue when irrationally-held beliefs come into conflict with rationality that reasonable people get upset.
Sort of like, your freedom to swing you fist ends at the end of my nose, your freedom to believe in whatever you want stops when it affects me.
(edit - well, of course you are always free to believe whatever you want. But my tolerance of it may be reduced.)
Supporting this idea is the fact that while Catholics in the US make up a fairly large portion of the population, the vast majority of the real religious craziness comes from the many varieties of protestantism.
I was hoping, rather, to caution against believing anything without first examining the arguments simply because of "star appeal". Y'know, "a celebrity said it it must be true...."
One wouldn't believe scientific theories from the pulpit without thinking, so why shouldn't one be a little skeptical hearing metaphysics from a scientist?
Or at least, that's my opinion, speaking as a layman.
I know people filter ideas based upon the authority figures that approve it, but that kind of lazy evaluation should only be applied by people who do not really care and the thoughts of such people do not really matter as it is at most something they mention in conversation.
Those who do care should judge the idea on it's own merits conducting whatever research is necessary rather than calling to authority to beg for answers.
Of course, this means I agree with you! His ideas should be treated like any layman's, it's just that so should everyone else's.
Thinking is thinking.
As an example, Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' which is a term describing a gene equivalent for social traits. 'Memetics' often ends looking at religion for various reasons (availablitlity of data for one). His focus (obsession) with religion is not incidental. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Memetic_accounts_of_religi...
If one religion was > another, you'd see a lot more proof one way or another. But there isn't, which is why 100 years from now Scientology will be on the same level as mormonism , a quirky religion that has some quirky beliefs. And 1000 years from now Scientology will be on the same level as Christianity.
What Southern colonies are you thinking of though?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed
The South didn't get nearly as many immigrants as the North until recently, so the great waves of immigration later on weren't as influential.
It may be a dumb map. But I think you might be able to draw correlation even if you take all countries into account.
Beyond that though, wow. I'm amazed that a poor article on something so far from Hacker News got upvoted so many times.
The correlation is -.80: that's amazing especially in contrast with where the U.S. stands.
Still, I agree that I'd love to see this data with every country included. But I highly doubt it would change the correlation that much.
Saudi is most definitely an outlier. But that is to be expected. They are an unusual case. They are a physical religious hub (like Rome but more) because of the Haj & other reasons. And they did not reach current GDP levels by conventional means.
And where does Israel fall?
I think you might be surprised. Both Judaism & Islam are relatively easy to gauge because of the lifestyle demands they make. Most Jews considered 'religious' would probably observe, kosher (what you can eat), Sabath (No driving, electricity on Saturday), attend synagogue weekly, pray daily, etc. The percentage of Jews that adhere to these is probably around the 20% - 30%. A further 20% - 30% probably adhere to some of these. Not sure about Muslim population. Both are probably becoming more religious over time. Anyway, I think at 25k GDP pp, you could place it above the line, but not too far.
The correlation within Israel, probably works.
In Finland the current trend has been that about 20-30k more people resign from tradiotional Lutheran church every year than they get new members (even though it might not tell about their faith). And from the whole population (about 5M), a million say that they don't belong to any religion, myself included.
Meaningful conclusions might be drawn from the data if the actual distributions of income and educational level were mapped against religious tendency, rather than per-capita and percentage. I would speculate that the US would be less distinct.
I am a Christian, and know many who aren't slack-jawed yokels. Although, there seem to be a propensity of religious followers in the world who either lack critical thinking skills or simply fail to apply them to their beliefs (the 'accept at face value and stop thinking' crowd).
The whole "they're daft" argument applies just as well to believers in astrology, Jedi, Wicca, and other variants of the flying spaghetti monster, yet the "religious" percentage excludes those.
That's a problem because standard religious folks are less likely to believe in those things. As a result, if you just count "standard" religion, you undercount supernatural believers and the error increases as the percentage of standard religious believers decreases.
I am not sure if there could be any more powerful mind control then the marketing machine we live in day-in and day-out.
Personally, I feel gay people are born gay. This is something people are born into and either can embrace or be unhappy forever trying to be hetrosexual when they are not. As a Christian I personally embrace these people who cannot change. That is what Jesus did, he went out to people who were abused because they were different or hated because of what they did (tax collectors) and embraced them and brought them in.
For many people it hard to come around and see that it is not a choice.
Just a few months ago I was helping with a religious program and met a guy who is as gay as gay can get but he is married and has children. The marriage is very unhappy. I feel he should have embraced being gay before he got married and had children. But too late. People really need to be who they are and not something else.
Personally I am scared of normalizing being Gay or Lesbian to children. I have kids, they are confused enough without having to deal with the birds and the bee's being that people go to the sperm bank because there lover doesn't have male reproductive organs or because there lover doesn't have womb, therefore they need a surrogate. This type of birds and the bee's happens on a limited scale, we should leave it at that and not weave into our daily lives.
Every religion injects fear in you. And every religion now is a form of socio-economic collusion.
On the contrary: really religious people continuously make experience of confidence, so there's no room left for fear.
Religious people in the US out-breed non-religious people at a higher rate than is possible elsewhere. If you look at the demographics, blue state urban liberals will be an endangered species in a few decades. They barely have children. Compare Hillary's only child to Pallin's brood.
My point is that Europe was religious, but it was taught by great immortal men, that religioun is actually a scam. America or the Middle East has not had such lessons. Hence they remain religious for no one has managed to shake their world view like it was done in Europe.