Economists favor Obama by huge margins

Academic economists overwhelmingly favor Obama to win:

The detailed responses are bad news for Mr McCain (the full data are available here). Eighty per cent of respondents and no fewer than 71% of those who do not cleave to either main party say Mr Obama has a better grasp of economics. Even among Republicans Mr Obama has the edge: 46% versus 23% say Mr Obama has the better grasp of the subject.

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A candidate’s economic expertise may matter rather less if he surrounds himself with clever advisers. Unfortunately for Mr McCain, 81% of all respondents reckon Mr Obama is more likely to do that; among unaffiliated respondents, 71% say so.

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On our one-to-five scale, economists on average give Mr Obama’s economic programme a 3.3 and Mr McCain’s a 2.2. Mr Obama, says Jonathan Parker, a non-aligned professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, “is a pragmatist not an ideologue. I expect Clintonian economic policies.” If, that is, crushing federal debt does not derail his taxing and spending plans.

On his plans to fix the financial crisis, Mr Obama averages 3.1, a point higher than Mr McCain. Still, some said they didn’t quite know what they were rating—reasonably enough, since neither candidate has produced clear plans of his own.

Where the candidates’ positions are more clearly articulated, Mr Obama scores better on nearly every issue: promoting fiscal discipline, energy policy, reducing the number of people without health insurance, controlling health-care costs, reforming financial regulation and boosting long-run economic growth. Twice as many economists think Mr McCain’s plan would be bad or very bad for long-run growth as Mr Obama’s. Given how much focus Mr McCain has put on his plan’s benefits for growth, this last is quite a repudiation.

Mr McCain gets his highest mark, an average of 3.5 and a clear advantage over Mr Obama, for his position on free trade and globalisation. If Mr Obama “would wake up on free trade”, one respondent says, “I could get behind the plans much more.” Perhaps surprisingly, the economists rated trade low in priority compared with the other issues listed. Only 53% say it is important or very important. Neither candidate scored at all well on dealing with the burgeoning cost of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security.

The economists also prefer Mr Obama’s tax plans. Republicans and respondents who do not identify with either political party see Mr McCain’s tax policies as more efficient but less equitable. But the former prefer Mr McCain’s plans—43% of Republicans say they are good or very good—and the latter Mr Obama’s. Of non-affiliated respondents, 31% say Mr Obama’s are good or very good.

Either way, according to the economists, it would be difficult to do much worse than George Bush. The respondents give Mr Bush a dismal average of 1.7 on our five-point scale for his economic management. Eighty-two per cent thought Mr Bush’s record was bad or very bad; only 1% thought it was very good.

The Democrats were overwhelmingly negative, but nearly every respondent viewed Mr Bush’s record unfavourably. Half of Republican respondents thought Mr Bush deserves only a 2. “The minimum rating of one severely overestimates the quality of Bush’s economic policies,” says one non-aligned economist.

A nice thing to mention on the campaign trail. Plus the fact that McCain is advised by a bunch of financial lobbyists, while Obama is endorsed by economists 2:1 over McCain.

Stats on sliding Evangelicalism

I'm just not hopeful enough to conclude that the new book by Christine Wicker, The Fall of the Evangelical Church, is anything but hyperbolic and premature in its proclamation. However, she does have some neat stats on her website which support her thesis, which I'll copy the text of below the fold.

I was talking to my dad the other day about how the Southern Baptists always over-report their membership b/c if you're ever baptized in their church, you're on the books as a "member" for life.

In addition, the stats I've compiled on atheism, the new Paul and Zuckerman article and the recent Pew Poll reports are handy references.

A preview of statistics showing the evangelical slide
06/13/2008

The 25 percent of Americans who say they are evangelicals don’t go to church as evangelicals are expected to, don’t act as evangelicals are expected to, and don’t believe as evangelicals are expected to.

So are they evangelicals? No. Not in any way that would justify their dominance in national discussions of ethical and moral values.

Other Christians (67 percent of the population) outnumber traditionalist evangelicals (12.7) by more than five to one, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Study )

HOW MANY EVANGELICALS ARE THERE?

The most commonly heard statistic about evangelicals is that they are 25 percent of the country, one out of four Americans. That stat comes from what Americans say about their religious practice, which is notoriously unreliable.

In fact, traditionalist evangelicals are 7 percent of the population or 1 out of 14 Americans. Only 7 percent of self-identified evangelicals believe the most central tenets of so-called Bible-based belief and fewer than 7 percent are in church on a given Sunday.

A look at the National Association of Evangelicals and Southern Baptists, the two biggest evangelical groups, shows how inflated the commonly quoted figures are.

The NAE claims to have 30 million members. I counted. It actually has 7.6 million, at most, and perhaps half that actually attend church.

Southern Baptists claim to have 16 million members, but more than five million of those don’t live in the towns where their churches are located.

Five million are actually in church on average and about 4 million attend Sunday school/bible studies (which is how Baptist insiders gauge the health of a church.)

ARE THEY GROWING?

*The percentage of Americans who are evangelicals has been dropping since 1900 when they constituted 42 percent of the population.

*About a thousand evangelicals leave the faith every day.

*The proportion of young American adults who are evangelicals has declined from 22 percent in the 1970s to 20 percent in 2002.

*The percentage of young adult evangelicals who are Biblical literalists (about 55 percent) and has not increased since 1984.

*Most evangelical teens leave church after high school. Southern Baptists lose 88 percent. The Church of Christ loses up to 80 percent. Only 12 percent ever return. Other evangelicals estimate up to 94 percent leave within two years after finishing high school.

*In the country’s most successful churches, 1 out of 4 evangelicals is dissatisfied with the spiritual nourishment and growth provided in their churches. Many are considering leaving.

And that’s not the worst of it, the most dissatisfied are core members who give the most time and money to the church. Without them, the churches could not survive.

Southern Baptists are by far the largest evangelical denomination and the largest group of Protestants in the country. The following statistics came from them.

* Their rate of growth has been falling since the 1950s. (SBC researcher Thom Rainer has put out a graph that shows a diagonal line going straight down.) This means they haven’t resurged at all. They’ve grown but less each year. Try to sell that kind of performance on Wall Street.

* Southern Baptists say they more than 16 million members, but more than five million of them (some say 8 million) don’t live in the towns where their churches are located.

*Five million are actually in church on average I got those figures because they estimate that one out eight people in church is unsaved and about 4 million attend Sunday school/bible studies (which is how Baptist insiders gauge the health of a church.)

*Total baptisms have fallen for seven years out of eight. Last year they fell more than 5 percent.

*Half of the denomination’s 43,000 churches baptize 3 or fewer persons a year.

* Baptisms are falling in every age group except children under five.

*From 1980 to 2005, baptisms among the critical 18 to 34 age group fell 40 percent, from 100,000 to 60,000.

*Only 7 percent of those baptized have grown up without church or in a non-Christian family. At the same time, Americans who say they have no institutional affiliation is growing faster than any other spiritual group. (I have figures.) That means the pool that SBC is least able to tap is growing hugely.

*Total membership went down by 40,000 from 2006 to 2007.

*Members are less dedicated. In 1991, 85 percent of Southern Baptists attended worship and Sunday School. In 2006, the number was down to 68 percent.

* Southern Baptists are establishing churches at half the rate they did in the 1950s. That’s very bad news because a new church attracts new members at twice the rate a three-year-old church does and three times the rate of a 15-year-old church.

DO THEY ACT AS EVANGELICALS ARE THOUGHT TO ACT?

*From sexual behavior to abortion, from divorce to drug taking, the behavior of self-identified evangelicals is almost identical to the rest of the country.

DO THEY BELIEVE AS TRADITIONAL EVANGELICALS ARE THOUGHT TO BELIEVE?

When evangelical pollster George Barna asked nine questions of faith that characterize evangelical belief, he found that only 7 percent of the country qualified. When he went to cities, he couldn’t find one city where one out of four people were evangelicals.

The other 18 percent of Americans who are so often characterized as evangelicals are “self-identified” evangelicals. When pollsters ask them more than their religious affiliation, that number starts to drop. Because this is a very mixed group.

What does this mean politically?

It tells us why only 20 percent of self-identified evangelicals say they are members of the Religious Right. (Because it’s the truth.)

It tells us why James Dobson said he would sit out the election if McCain was the Republican nominee, and then when his bluff was called, decided that he would reconsider. (Because he isn’t the kingmaker he styles himself to be.)

It tells us why abortion is still legal and gay rights are being extended more each year. After more than 20 years of fighting these issues, Religious Right evangelicals haven’t been able to legislate their core issues. They can swing an election but they don’t have enough people to make unpopular laws.

It tells us that McCain must keep his 7 percent base awake and afraid enough to vote but he won’t court them too much for fear of alienating the rest of America, including the 18 percent evangelical swing vote that has been lumped with the Religious Right. Obama has a good chance at that swing vote, which is made up of nominal evangelicals, cultural conservatives and increasingly progressive “emergent church” evangelicals.

He does indeed. McCain has problems there, although people like Dobson will go wherever they still have control.

Paul and Zuckerman on global trends in religiosity

Having written a few articles on social analysis of religion here at home and abroad, I felt vindicated reading the new article in Edge by Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman about global religiosity trends. Their conclusions mirrored my own from sampling polls: the growth in nonreligion at home and abroad is a literal explosion. I am going to post the full text of the article below, but first point out some conclusions they made that I had observed a while back:

1. The greatest increase in both global and domestic religious self-identification for the past 50 years falls into the category, "no religion", link
   
2. Megachurches are not evidence of growth, but consolidation, link
   
3. The growth of Islam in Europe -- forming "Eurabia" -- is overrated, link
   
4. The growth of religion in third world countries does not balance out the contraction of religion in the West, link
   

The reason (4) is important is pure economics: the G8 countries may only have 14% of the world's population, but they have 65% of its GDP and 72% of its military expenditures. Therefore, the growing secularization that is occurring in these countries will have far greater influence over world demographics than, for example, the Islamization of Sudan.

In addition, a new Pew Poll reconfirms the numbers on the growth of nonreligion in the US (all data here):

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.
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Like the other major groups, people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion (16.1%) also exhibit remarkable internal diversity. Although one-quarter of this group consists of those who describe themselves as either atheist or agnostic (1.6% and 2.4% of the adult population overall, respectively), the majority of the unaffiliated population (12.1% of the adult population overall) is made up of people who simply describe their religion as "nothing in particular." This group, in turn, is fairly evenly divided between the "secular unaffiliated," that is, those who say that religion is not important in their lives (6.3% of the adult population), and the "religious unaffiliated," that is, those who say that religion is either somewhat important or very important in their lives (5.8% of the overall adult population).
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one need only look at the biggest gainer in this religious competition -- the unaffiliated group. People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin. At the same time, however, a substantial number of people (nearly 4% of the overall adult population) say that as children they were unaffiliated with any particular religion but have since come to identify with a religious group. This means that more than half of people who were unaffiliated with any particular religion as a child now say that they are associated with a religious group. In short, the Landscape Survey shows that the unaffiliated population has grown despite having one of the lowest retention rates of all "religious" groups.

That's amazing.

On to the article by Paul and Zuckerman:

WHY THE GODS ARE NOT WINNING
by Gregory Paul & Phil Zuckerman

GREGORY PAUL is an independent researcher on subjects dealing with paleontology, evolution, religion and society. Books include Predatory Dinosaurs of the World and Dinosaurs of the Air.

PHIL ZUCKERMAN is a sociologist at Pitzer, and the author of Invitation to the Sociology of Religion, Du Bois on Religion, and Sex and Religion.

Abstract:
Disbelief now rivals the great faiths in numbers and influence. Never before has religion faced such enormous levels of disbelief, or faced a hazard as powerful as that posed by modernity. How is organized religion going to regain the true, choice-based initiative when only one of them is growing, and it is doing so with reproductive activity rather than by convincing the masses to join in, when no major faith is proving able to grow as they break out of their ancestral lands via mass conversion, and when securely prosperous democracies appear immune to mass devotion? The religious industry simply lacks a reliable stratagem for defeating disbelief in the 21st century.
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A myth is gaining ground. The myth seems plausible enough. The proposition is that after God died in the secular 20th century, He is back in a big way as people around the world again find faith. In 2006 Foreign Policy ran two articles that made similar, yet distinctive claims. In the spring Phillip Longman's "The Return of the Patriarchy" contended that secular folk are reproducing themselves, or failing to reproduce themselves, out of existence as the believers swiftly reproduce via a "process similar to survival of the fittest." In the summer FP followed up with "Why God is Winning" by Samuel Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, who pronounced that the Big Three— Christianity, Islam and Hinduism—are back on the global march as secularism fades into irrelevance. In the fall Foreign Affairs joined the chorus when Walter Russell Mead's God's Country? gave the impression that conservative theism continues to rise in a United States jolted back to the spiritual by 9/11. In American Fascists Chris Hedges warns that hard-core Dominionists are accumulating the power to convert the nation into a fundamentalist theocracy.

The actual situation, as is usual in human affairs, much more complex and nuanced, and therefore much more fascinating. Let's start by considering the analytical superficiality that mars the twin articles in Foreign Policy. While Longman proposes that rapid reproduction is the primary agent behind the resurgence of patriarchal faith, Shah and Toft think it is mainly a matter democratic choice in which younger generations reject their parent's secularism. In reality all these claims are well off base. Religion is in serious trouble. The status of faith is especially dire in the west, where the churches face an unprecedented crisis that threatens the existence of organized faith as a viable entity, and there is surprisingly little that can be done to change the circumstances.

Shah and Toft cite the World Christian Encyclopedia as supporting a planetary revival because its shows that "at the beginning of the 21st century, a greater portion of the world's population adhered to [Christianity, Islam and Hinduism] in 2000 than a century earlier." They point to a table in the WCE that shows that the largest Christian and largest nonChristian faiths, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam and Hinduism, rose from half to nearly two thirds of the world in the 1900s. But that it is a peculiar choice of sects. If every Mohammedan and Hindu sect large and small is tallied, shouldn't every Orthodox, Coptic and so on be too? Another look at the WCE table shows that all Christians, Muslims and Hindus combined edging up a much more modest 60 to 66% (but see below correction) since the reign of Queen Victoria.

What scheme of thought did soar in the 20th century? Although Shah and Toft cite the WCE when it appears to aid their thesis, they seem to have missed key passages near the beginning of the work. The evangelical authors of the WCE lament that no Christian "in 1900 expected the massive defections from Christianity that subsequently took place in Western Europe due to secularism…. and in the Americas due to materialism…. The number of nonreligionists…. throughout the 20th century has skyrocketed from 3.2 million in 1900, to 697 million in 1970, and on to 918 million in AD 2000…. Equally startling has been the meteoritic growth of secularism…. Two immense quasi-religious systems have emerged at the expense of the world's religions: agnosticism…. and atheism…. From a miniscule presence in 1900, a mere 0.2% of the globe, these systems…. are today expanding at the extraordinary rate of 8.5 million new converts each year, and are likely to reach one billion adherents soon. A large percentage of their members are the children, grandchildren or the great-great-grandchildren of persons who in their lifetimes were practicing Christians" (italics added). (The WCE probably understates today's nonreligious. They have Christians constituting 68-94% of nations where surveys indicate that a quarter to half or more are not religious, and they may overestimate Chinese Christians by a factor of two. In that case the nonreligious probably soared past the billion mark already, and the three great faiths total 64% at most.)

Far from providing unambiguous evidence of the rise of faith, the devout compliers of the WCE document what they characterize as the spectacular ballooning of secularism by a few hundred-fold! It has no historical match. It dwarfs the widely heralded Mormon climb to 12 million during the same time, even the growth within Protestantism of Pentecostals from nearly nothing to half a billion does not equal it.

Yet Longman, and especially Shah and Toft, left readers with the impression that Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are each regaining the international initiative against secularism. Again we can turn to the WCE, whose results are presented in the pie charts (with the above adjustment, and with the proviso that the stats are inevitably approximations).



Since 1900 Christians have made up about a third of the global population, and are edging downwards. No growth there. Hindus are coasting at a seventh the total, no significant increase there either even though India adds more people each year than any other nation. The WCE predicts no proportional increase for these faiths by 2050. The flourishing revival of two megareligions whether by democracy, edification, or fecundity is therefore a mirage. Having shrunk by a quarter in the 20th century, Buddhism is predicted to shrink almost as much over the next half century. Once rivaling Christianity, paganism – whether it be ancient or modern as per New Ageism and Scientology — has over all contracted by well over half and is expected to continue to dwindle.

One Great Faith has risen from one eighth to one fifth of the globe in a hundred years, and is projected to rise to one quarter by 2050. Islam. But education and the vote have little to do with it. Generally impoverished and poorly educated, most Muslims live in nations where democracy is minimalist or absent. Nor are many infidels converting to Allah. Longman was correct on one point; Islam is growing because Muslims are literally having lots of unprotected sex. The absence of a grand revival of Christ, Allah and Vishnu worship via democratic free choice brings us to a point, as important as it is little appreciated — the chronic inability of religion to recruit new adherents on a consistent, global basis.

It is well documented that Christianity has withered dramatically in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The failure of the faith in the west is regularly denounced by Popes and Protestant leaders. Churches are being converted into libraries, laundromats and pubs. Those who disbelieve in deities typically make up large portions of the population, according to some surveys they make up the majority of citizens in Scandinavia, France and Japan. Evolution is accepted by the majority in all secular nations, up to four in five in some.

In his paper "Christianity in Britain, R. I. P." Steve Bruce explains that the recent rise of pagans is not nearly sufficiently to make up for the implosion of the churches, which are in danger of dwindling past the demographic and organizational point of no return. A commission of the Church of England agreed, proposing that little attended Sabbath services be dropped, and concluding that the advent of modern lifestyles "coincides with the demise of Christendom." The church commissioned Making Sense of Generation Y study advised the clergy to "avoid panic." Perhaps that response would be appropriate considering the absence of quantitative evidence of a significant Christian revival in any secularized democracy. God belief is not dead in these nonreligious democracies, but it is on life support. The ardent hopes of C. S. Lewis and John Paul II to reChristianize Europe have abjectly failed.

EuroMuslims may become a theological plurality by outnumbering active Christians in a few decades, but that does not mean much in the context of a shrinking Christian minority. In most western nations Muslims are less than one percent to under three. The only exceptions are the Netherlands at five percent, and France at ten, and the native French have the highest birth rate in western Europe.

The mass loss of popular faith in the Eurocultures is often waved away as an isolated aberration in a world still infatuated with the gods. After all, who cares what the "old Europe" of France and Sweden is up to? This is a big mistake. Such a thing has never been seen before in history. And where it has happened is critical to the future of faith. Aside from constituting proof of principle that religion is dangerously vulnerable to modernity, that secularism and disbelief do best in nations that are the most democratic, educated and prosperous directly falsifies the Shah and Toft thesis that these factors are the allies of religiosity.

But hasn't the loss of faith in old Europe been matched by a great revival in new Europe? In his account of his voyage along the Siberian Lena River, Jeffrey Taylor in River of No Reprieve observed that the locals remain atheistic, and the religious minority seems more nationalistic than devout. This premise is applicable to former KGV officer Putin's embrace of the Russian Orthodox church, which had tight connections with the Czarist secret police. Just a quarter of Russians absolutely believe in God, the portion who say that religion is important in their lives are down in the teens, and irreligion may be continuing to rise in very atheistic eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Even in Poland, the one eastern bloc nation in which religion played an important role in overturning atheistic communism, just one third consider religion to be very important in their lives, and faith is declining towards the old European norm. It turns out that the "new" Europe is not turning out particularly godly.

The Central Kingdom has never been especially religious, became atheistic under communism, and is striving for world dominance via materialistic consumerism. The finding by the Shanghai university poll that religious Chinese lifted from 100 million in the 1960s to 300 million resulted in headlines along the lines of "Poll Finds Surge of Religion Among Chinese." But the 300 million figure is far below the 600 million religious estimated by the World Christian Encyclopedia, and is less than a third of the adult population. Nor should monotheists be particularly comforted. The survey uncovered 40 million Christians, about half the inflated estimate in the WCE, and just 4% of the adult population. Most religious Chinese are Buddhists and Taoists, or worship the likes of the God of Fortune, the Black Dragon and the Dragon King. By the way, The Economist says women are using religion as a way to battle traditional Chinese patriarchy. If the survey is correct that over two thirds of Chinese are not religious then they may approach a billion in China alone, expanding the global total even further.

Mass devotion remains strong in most of the 2nd and 3rd world, but even there there is theistic concern. South of our border a quarter to over half the population describe religion as only somewhat important in their lives. Rather than becoming more patriarchal as democracy and education expand, Mexico is liberalizing as progressive forces successfully push laws favoring abortion and gay rights to the vexation of the Roman and evangelical churches. There is even trouble for Islam in its own realm. A third of Turks think religion is not highly important in their lives, and Iranian urban youth have been highly secularized in reaction to the inept corruption of the Mullahs. In Asia 40% of the citizens of booming South Korea don't believe in God, and only a quarter (most evangelical Christians) identify themselves as strongly religious.

Doesn't America, the one western nation where two thirds absolutely believe in God, and nine in ten think there is some form of higher power, show that religion can thrive in an advanced democracy? Not necessarily.

A decade and a half of sampling finds conservative (thought to be about two thirds to four fifths of the total of) evangelicals and born-agains consistently stuck between a quarter and a third of the population. The majority that considers religion very important in their lives dropped from over two thirds in the 1960s to a bare majority in 1970s and 1980s, and appeared to edge up in the Clinton era. But instead of rising post 9/11 as many predicted, it is slipping again.

Those who feel the opposite about religion doubled between the 1960s and 1970s, have been fairly stable since then, but have been edging up in recent years. American opinion on the issue of human evolution from animals has been rock steady, about half agreeing, about half disagreeing, for a quarter century. What has changed is how people view the Bible. In the 1970s nearly four in ten took the testaments literally, just a little over one in ten thought it was a mixture of history, fables, and legends, a three to one ratio in favor of the Biblical view. Since then a persistent trend has seen literalism decline to between a quarter and a third of the population, and skeptics have doubled to nearly one in five. If the trend continues the fableists will equal and then surpass the literalists in a couple of decades.



Even the megachurch phenomenon is illusory. A spiritual cross of sports stadiums with theme parks, hi-tech churches are a desperate effort to pull in and satisfy a mass-media jaded audience for whom the old sit in the pews and listen to the standard sermon and sing some old time hymns does not cut it anymore. Rather than boosting church membership, megachurches are merely consolidating it.

From a high of three quarters of the population in the 1930s to 1960s, a gradual, persistent decline has set in, leaving some clerics distressed at the growing abandonment of small churches as the big ones gobble up what is left of the rest. Weekly religious service attendance rose only briefly in the months after 9/11—evidence that the event failed to stem national secularization – and then lost ground as the Catholic sex scandal damaged church credibility. As few as one in four or five Americans are actually in church on a typical Sunday, only a few percent of them in megachurches.

In his Foreign Affairs article Mead noted that conservative Southern Baptists constitute the largest church in the states, and they are among the most evangelical. Mead did not note that a Southern Baptist church release laments that "evangelistically, the denomination is on a path of slow but discernable deterioration." The greatest born again sect is baptizing members at the same absolute yearly rate as they did half a century ago, when the population was half as large, and in the last few years the overall trend has been downwards.

Rather than Amerofaith becoming deeply patriarchal as Longman thinks, it is increasingly feminine. Women church goers greatly outnumber men, who find church too dull. Here's the kicker. Children tend to pick up their beliefs from their fathers. So, despite a vibrant evangelical youth cohort, young Americans taken as a whole are the least religious and most culturally tolerant age group in the nation.

One group has experienced rapid growth. In the 1940s and 50s 1-2% usually responded no asked if they believe in God, up to 98% said yes. A Harris study specifically designed to arrive at the best current figure found that 9% do not believe in a creator, and 12% are not sure. The over tenfold expansion of Amerorationalism easily outpaces the Mormon and Pentecostal growth rates over the same half century.

America's disbelievers atheists now number 30 million, most well educated and higher income, and they far outnumber American Jews, Muslims and Mormons combined. There are many more disbelievers than Southern Baptists, and the god skeptics are getting more recruits than the evangelicals.

The rise of American rationalism is based on adult choice—secularists certainly not growing via rapid reproduction. The results can be seen on the bookshelves, as aggressively atheistic books such as Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell, break the mainstream publishing barrier onto the best-sellers lists. Long disparaged as neither moral or American, the growing community is beginning to assert itself as a socio-political force.


What is actually happening here and abroad is a great polarization as increasingly anxious and often desperate hard-core believers mount a vigorous counterrevolution via extreme levels of activism to the first emergence of mass apostasy in history. No major religion is expanding its share of the global population by conversion in any circumstances, much less educated democracy. Disbelief in the supernatural alone is able to achieve extraordinary rates of growth by voluntary conversion. Why?

It is to be expected that in 2nd and 3rd world nations where wealth is concentrated among an elite few and the masses are impoverished that the great majority cling to the reassurance of faith.

Nor is it all that surprising that faith has imploded in most of the west. Every single 1st world nation that is irreligious shares a set of distinctive attributes. These include handgun control, anti-corporal punishment and anti-bullying policies, rehabilitative rather than punitive incarceration, intensive sex education that emphasizes condom use, reduced socio-economic disparity via tax and welfare systems combined with comprehensive health care, increased leisure time that can be dedicated to family needs and stress reduction, and so forth.

As a result the great majority enjoy long, safe, comfortable, middle class lives that they can be confident will not be lost due to factors beyond their control. It is hard to lose one's middle class status in Europe, Canada and so forth, and modern medicine is always accessible regardless of income. Nor do these egalitarians culture emphasize the attainment of immense wealth and luxury, so most folks are reasonably satisfied with what they have got. Such circumstances dramatically reduces peoples' need to believe in supernatural forces that protect them from life's calamities, help them get what they don't have, or at least make up for them with the ultimate Club Med of heaven. One of us (Zuckerman) interviewed secular Europeans and verified that the process of secularization is casual; most hardly think about the issue of God, not finding the concept relevant to their contented lives.

The result is plain to see. Not a single advanced democracy that enjoys benign, progressive socio-economic conditions retains a high level of popular religiosity. They all go material.

It is the great anomaly, the United States, that has long perplexed sociologists. America has a large, well educated middle class that lives in comfort—so why do they still believe in a supernatural creator? Because they are afraid and insecure. Arbitrary dismissal from a long held job, loss of health insurance followed by an extended illness, excessive debt due to the struggle to live like the wealthy; before you know it a typical American family can find itself financially ruined. Overwhelming medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy.

In part to try to accumulate the wealth needed to try to prevent financial catastrophe, in part to compete in a culture of growing economic disparity with the super rich, the typical American is engaged in a Darwinian, keeping up with the Jones competition in which failure to perform to expectations further raises levels of psychological stress. It is not, therefore, surprising that most look to friendly forces from the beyond to protect them from the pitfalls of a risky American life, and if that fails compensate with a blissful eternal existence.

The effect can be more direct. For instance, the absence of universal health care encourages the utilization of faith-based medical charities. The latter, as well intentioned as they are, cannot provide the comprehensive health services that best suppress mortality at all ages. But charities extend the reach of the churches into the secular community, enhancing their ability to influence society and politics, and retain and recruit members.

Rather than religion being an integral part of the American character, the main reason the United States is the only prosperous democracy that retains a high level of religious belief and activity is because we have substandard socio-economic conditions and the highest level of disparity. The other factors widely thought to be driving forces behind mass faith—desire for the social links provided by churches, fear of societal amorality, fear of death, genetic predisposition towards religiosity, etc—are not critical simply because hundreds of millions have freely accepted being nonreligious mortals in a dozen and a half democracies. Such motives and factors can be operative only if socio-economic circumstances are sufficiently poor to sustain mass creationism and religion.

So much for the common belief that supernatural-based religiosity is the default mode inherent to the human condition. What about the hypothesis that has gained wide currency, that competition between the plethora of churches spawned by the separation of church and state is responsible for America's highly religious population? Australia and New Zealand copied the American separation between church and state in their constitutions, yet they are much more irreligious. Meanwhile the most religious advanced democracies in Europe are those where the Catholic church is, or was, dominant.

To put it starkly, the level of popular religion is not a spiritual matter, it is actually the result of social, political and especially economic conditions (please note we are discussing large scale, long term population trends, not individual cases). Mass rejection of the gods invariably blossoms in the context of the equally distributed prosperity and education found in almost all 1st world democracies. There are no exceptions on a national basis. That is why only disbelief has proven able to grow via democratic conversion in the benign environment of education and egalitarian prosperity. Mass faith prospers solely in the context of the comparatively primitive social, economic and educational disparities and poverty still characteristic of the 2nd and 3rd worlds and the US.

We can also explain why America is has become increasingly at odds with itself. On one hand the growing level of socio-economic disparity that is leaving an increasing portion of the population behind in the socially Darwinian rat-race is boosting levels of hard-line religiosity in the lower classes. On the other hand freedom from belief in the supernatural is rising among the growing segment that enjoys higher incomes and sophisticated education. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch are typical upper crust disbelievers.

The practical implications are equally breath taking. Every time a nation becomes truly advanced in terms of democratic, egalitarian education and prosperity it loses the faith. It's guaranteed. That is why perceptive theists are justifiably scared. In practical terms their only practical hope is for nations to continue to suffer from socio-economic disparity, poverty and maleducation. That strategy is, of course, neither credible nor desirable. And that is why the secular community should be more encouraged.


Skepticism of the transcendent has not swept the planet with the completeness expected by some in the 20th century. Doing so would have required the conversion to atheism of an unattainable 50 million people a year in a world where the great majority chronically lack the high level of science-oriented education, secure prosperity, and democracy that spontaneous disbelief depends upon. The expectation of global atheism was correspondingly naïve, and will remain so as billions live in, or fear living in, substandard conditions. Which should not comfort theists. Even so, theists are equally naïve when they dream that faith can retake the entire world.

Disbelief now rivals the great faiths in numbers and influence. Never before has religion faced such enormous levels of disbelief, or faced a hazard as powerful as that posed by modernity. How is organized religion going to regain the true, choice-based initiative when only one of them is growing, and it is doing so with reproductive activity rather than by convincing the masses to join in, when no major faith is proving able to grow as they break out of their ancestral lands via mass conversion, and when securely prosperous democracies appear immune to mass devotion? The religious industry simply lacks a reliable stratagem for defeating disbelief in the 21st century.

Even though liberal, pro-evolution religions are not at fault for unacceptable social policies, organized faith cannot reform itself by supporting successful secular social arrangements because these actions inadvertently suppress popular religiosity. They are caught in a classic Catch-22. And liberal churches are even less able to thrive in advanced democracies than are their more conservative counterparts, so if churches, temples and mosques become matriarchal by socio-politically liberalizing they risk secularizing themselves into further insignificance.

In Commonweal Peter Quinn contends that Stephen Gould, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris have sanitized the social philosophy of Charles Darwin, which was not sufficiently kindly and tolerant to produce "the sole and true foundation for a humanistic society, free of the primitive and dangerous irrationality of religious belief."

Aside from the above nontheists never having promoted Darwin's personal world-view as the sole fountain of societal goodness, Quinn is making the even bigger mistake—the same mistake nearly everyone is making—of believing that the contest between popular faith and secularism is an epic struggle of ideas that then determines the quality of societies. But the level and nature of popular faith is really set by economic conditions, and only secular egalitarian prosperous democracies that reject extreme social Darwinism can produce the best practical conditions.

Assuming America continues to secularize towards the 1st world norm then what can we expect? The decline in faith-based conservative ideology is predicted to allow the country to adopt the progressive policies that have been proven to work in the rest of the west, and vice-versa. Even Wal-Mart has come out in favor of universal medical coverage as bottom-line busting health care expenditures compel the corporations to turn towards the system that has done so much harm to the churches of Europe. If and when religion declines in the states Darwin's science will automatically benefit enormously as it has in ungodly Europe, but Darwinistic social policies will not fare as well as they have in Christian America.

In the end what humanity chooses to believe will be more a matter of economics than of debate, deliberately considered choice, or reproduction. The more national societies that provide financial and physical security to the population, the fewer that will be religiously devout. The more that cannot provide their citizens with these high standards the more that will hope that supernatural forces will alleviate their anxieties. It is probable that there is little that can be done by either side to alter this fundamental pattern.

I suppose I shouldn't really care one way or the other about the growth of godlessness, but to me, it's a sign of overall progress and rationality. The myths and superstitions of ancient times are slowly, slowly dying. This despite the fact that religion will probably always be around in one form or another, and thus the religions that remain will be less dogmatic and at least quasi-rational relative to today's fundamentalisms.

Largest growth in religious affiliation? Unaffiliated.

Well, this is encouraging:

Maybe one day we'll have an inversion, and about 84% of people will be nonreligious...

Although the importance of religion in our society must not be underestimated, neither must secular America, especially the trend as it applies towards younger Americans, something I've emphasized before:

The proportion of atheists and agnostics increases from 6% of Elders (ages 61+) and 9% of Boomers (ages 42-60), to 14% of Busters (23-41) and 19% of adult Mosaics (18-22).

Looking at very recent polls, around 18% of Americans do not believe in God. This trend is in line with other recent assessments of the state of atheism, and the disparity in numbers between "atheist" and "82% of people believe in God" confirms that people are still reluctant to self-identify with "the A word" despite their admission that they don't believe in God. In the largest religious self-identification survey ever undertaken, 14% of those surveyed reported "no religion" but only 0.4% explicitly as "atheist". A more recent Baylor study found only 50% of "religious nones" identify as "atheists" -- again note the disparity between non-religious persons and people willing to identify as "atheist" and/or be active in some sort of atheist organization. Another recent poll in The Nation shows that the number of nonbelievers is much higher than commonly recognized - at around 27% not believing in a God (those willing to self-identify as atheists is still much lower).

The trends are clear: although nonreligious persons are still a minority, we are a very rapidly growing one.

Regardless of the exact number, the number of atheists visible in politics is next to zero, and that is unlikely to change. Atheists are still distrusted and that prejudice won't change overnight. And that's a lot of why people are reluctant to use the label, even when they admit that they aren't theists; I really think part of it boils down to groups like the RRS. Part of it can be attributed to the corrupt and increasingly-irrelevant Religious Right and their hatred and intolerance. When atheists start to look like those people (intolerant of religion in general), we're the mirror image of Falwell and D. James Kennedy, which turns people off in droves.

And that's scary.

Real differences between Barack & HRC

If you want to get a feel for the substantive policy differences and voting record bifurcations of the two Democratic candidates, read this and this.

In the meanwhile, enjoy the newest national poll numbers showing this race is a dead heat, with Barack steadily gaining ground:

CNN Analysis: Barack beats Sen. McCain

CNN has Barack beating Sen. McCain, but HRC just tying him.

PS: Barack has won 18 of the 31 states so far. See my updated primary results.

Primary results in table form

**PS: RealClearPolitics documents the vote tallies, so I'm done updating mine, although I am still the only person (so far as I can find) making mine available as an Excel file.**

LAST UPDATED: 5/5/08 @ 5:15 AM

I don't know why this sort of workup of the primary results isn't more readily available:

Get it HERE as .pdf, HERE as .htm, HERE as .jpg, HERE as .png, and HERE as .xls (Excel '07, R-click and "save as").

My data is from CNN. Here is Barack's data and here is Hillary's.

See this post from DKos for arguments about the (non)merits of using the popular vote tally:

Point Number 1: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no candidate would ever go to Iowa or New Hampshire. They'd spend all their time in big urban areas all over the country from the outset of the campaign, racking up raw numbers. What would be the point of even visiting New Hampshire if you could camp out in Brooklyn? Concrete Example: Barack Obama would not have spent only a day and a half in California before the Feb 5 primary. He would have never gone to Idaho. Duh.

Point Number 2: If the popular vote determined the nominee, no state in its right mind would ever hold a caucus, instantly disenfranchising itself. Concrete example: Minnesota-Missouri. Minnesota gets credit for 214K votes, and Missouri gets 822K votes, but they each get 72 delegates. Is Missouri's voice 4 times more important than Minnesota's?

Point Number 3: The arbitrary distinction between who gets to vote in these primaries is nothing like the general election, where everyone registered gets to vote. In the primaries, sometimes it's just Dems, sometimes Dems and Indies, sometimes anyone. Concrete example: Texas gets a million more votes than similar overall population New York (2.8M to 1.8M), even though New York is far more Democratic, simply due to this arbitrary restriction on who can vote (NY = closed, Texas = open).

Overall point: regardless of the fact that Obama will win the popular vote, it is completely illegitimate in this race. THIS IS NOT LIKE POPULAR VOTE IN THE GENERAL ELECTION.

Also see Barack's page where delegates are tallied. This is cross-posted to my personal page.

Obama

Both Gallup and Rasmussen show Obama benefiting from Edwards' departure.

Christopher Hayes at The Nation makes the case for Obama in '08. Read it below:

The Choice

by CHRISTOPHER HAYES

[from the February 18, 2008 issue]

It's gotten to that time in the primary contest where lines are drawn, camps are solidified and conversations around dinner tables grow heated. My friend Dan recently put it this way: "You start talking about the candidates, and next thing you know someone's crying!" The excellent (and uncommitted) blogger Digby recently decided to shut down her comments section because the posts had grown so toxic. The recent uptick in acrimony is largely due to the narrowing of the field. While once the energy was spread over many camps, it is now, with the exits of Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards, concentrated on just two, leaving progressives in a fierce debate over whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would make the better nominee, and President.

According to polling data as well as my conversations with friends and colleagues, progressives are evenly split or undecided between the two. This is, to me, somewhat astonishing (about which more in a moment), but it also means that at a time when other subgroups within the Democratic coalition are leaning heavily toward one candidate or the other, progressives are at a moment of maximum leverage.

Insofar as the issues discussed during a presidential campaign are circumscribed by the taboos and pieties of the political and media establishments, they tend to be dispiriting for those of us on the left. Neither front-runner is calling for the nation to renounce its decades-old imperial posture or to end the prison-industrial complex; neither is saying that America's suburbs and car culture are not sustainable modes of living in an era of expensive oil and global warming or pointing out that the "war on drugs" has been a moral disaster and strategic failure, with casualties borne most violently and destructively by society's most marginalized and--a word you won't be hearing from either candidate--oppressed. And yet, this election is far more encouraging (dare I say hopeful?) than any in recent memory. The policy agenda for the Democratic front-runners is significantly further to the left on the war, climate change and healthcare than that of John Kerry in 2004. The ideological implosion of conservatism, the failures of the Bush Administration and, perhaps most important, the shifts in public opinion in a leftward direction on war, the economy, civil liberties and civil rights are all coming together at the same time, providing progressives with the rare and historic opportunity to elect a President with a progressive majority and an actual mandate for progressive change.

The question then becomes this: which of the two Democratic candidates is more likely to bring to fruition a new progressive majority? I believe, passionately and deeply, if occasionally waveringly, that it's Barack Obama.

Had you told me a few years ago that the left of the Democratic Party would be split between Obama and Clinton, I'd have dismissed you as crazy: Barack Obama has been a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a loyal and reliable ally in the State Senate of progressive groups. For the Chicago left, his primary campaign and his subsequent election to the US Senate was a collective rallying cry. If you've read his first book, the truly beautiful, honest and intellectually sophisticated Dreams From My Father, you have an inkling of what young Chicago progressives felt about Obama. He is one of us, and now he's in the Senate. We thought we'd elected our own Paul Wellstone. (Full disclosure: my brother is an organizer on the Obama campaign.)

That's not, alas, how things turned out. Almost immediately Obama--likely with an eye on national office--shaded himself toward the center. His rhetoric was cool, often timid, not the zealous advocacy on behalf of peace, justice and the dispossessed that had characterized Wellstone's tenure. His record places him squarely in the middle of Democratic senators, just slightly to Clinton's left on domestic issues (he voted against the bankruptcy bill, for example). As a presidential candidate, his domestic policy (with some notable exceptions on voting rights and technology policy) has been very close to that of his chief rivals, though sometimes, notably on healthcare, marginally less progressive.

But while domestic policy will ultimately be determined through a complicated and fraught interplay with legislators, foreign policy is where the President's agenda is implemented more or less unfettered. It's here where distinctions in worldview matter most--and where Obama compares most favorably to Clinton. The war is the most obvious and powerful distinction between the two: Hillary Clinton voted for and supported the most disastrous American foreign policy decision since Vietnam, and Barack Obama (at a time when it was deeply courageous to do so) spoke out against it. In this campaign, their proposals are relatively similar, but in rhetoric and posture Clinton has played hawk to Obama's dove, attacking from the right on everything from the use of first-strike nuclear weapons to negotiating with Iran's president. Her hawkishness relative to Obama's is mirrored in her circle of advisers. As my colleague Ari Berman has reported in these pages, it's a circle dominated by people who believed and believe that waging pre-emptive war on Iraq was the right thing to do. Obama's circle is made up overwhelmingly of people who thought the Iraq War was a mistake.

Clinton's fundamentally defensive conception of how to defuse the Republicans on national security (neutralizing their hawkishness with one's own) is an example of a larger problem, rooted in the fact that so many of her circle served in her husband's Administration. Their political identities were formed in the crucible of crisis, from the Gingrich insurgency to the Ken Starr inquisition. The overriding imperative was survival against massive odds, often with a hostile public, press or both. Like an animal caught in a trap that chews off its leg to wriggle away, the Clinton crew by the end of its tenure had hardly any limbs left to propel an agenda. The benefit of this experience, much touted by the Clintons, is that they know how to fight and how to survive. But the cost has been high: those who lived through those years are habituated to playing defense and fighting rear-guard actions. We know how progressives fared under Clintonism: they were the bloodied limbs left in the trap. Clintonism, in other words, is the devil we know.

Which brings us to the one we don't. A President cannot build a movement, but he can be its messenger, as was Reagan. Part of what tantalizes and frustrates about Obama is that he seems to have the potential to be such a messenger and yet shies away from speaking in ideological terms. When he invokes union organizers facing Pinkerton thugs to give us our forty-hour week, or says we are bound to one another as "our brother's keeper...our sister's keeper," he is articulating the deepest progressive values: solidarity and community and collective action. But he places more rhetorical emphasis on a politics of "unity" that, read uncharitably, seems to fetishize bipartisanship as an end in itself and reinforce lame and deceptive myths that the parties are equally responsible for the "bickering" and "divisiveness" in Washington. It appears sometimes that his diagnosis of what's wrong with politics is the way it is conducted rather than for whom.

In its totality, though, Obama's rhetoric tells a story of politics that is distinct from both the one told by Beltway devotees of bipartisanship and comity and from the progressive activists' story of a ceaseless battle between the forces of progress and those of reaction. If it differs from what I like to hear, it is also unfailingly targeted at building the coalition that is the raison d'être of Obama's candidacy. Consider this passage from Obama's stump speech:

I've learned in my life that you can stand firm in your principles while still reaching out to those who might not always agree with you. And although the Republican operatives in Washington might not be interested in hearing what we have to say, I think Republican and independent voters outside of Washington are. That's the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have in this election.

Obama makes a distinction between bad-faith, implacable enemies (lobbyists, entrenched interests, "operatives") and good-faith ideological opponents (Republicans, independents and conservatives of good conscience). He wants to court the latter and use their support to vanquish the former. This may be improbable, but it crucially allows former Republicans (Obama Republicans?) to cross over without guilt or self-loathing. They are not asked to renounce, only to join.

Obama's diagnosis of the obstacles to progress is twofold. First, that the division of the electorate into the categories created by the right's culture warriors is the primary means by which the forces of reaction resist change. Progress will be made only by rejecting or transcending those categories. In 1971 a young Pat Buchanan urged Richard Nixon to wield race as what would come to be known as a wedge issue. "This is a potential throw of the dice," he wrote, "that could...cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half." Obama seeks to stitch those halves back together.

Second, that the reason progressives have failed to achieve our goals over the past several decades is not that we didn't fight hard enough but that we didn't have a popular mandate. In other words, the fundamental obstacle is a basic political one: never having the public squarely on our side and never having the votes on the Hill. In this respect the Obama campaign is uniquely circular: his political appeal is rooted in the fact that he's so politically appealing. This means that when he loses, the loss affects him worse than it would other candidates, since it also cuts against his message. But when he wins, particularly when he wins big, as he did in Iowa and South Carolina, the win means more because it reinforces the basic argument of his campaign.

The question of who can best build popular support for a progressive governing agenda is related to, but distinct from, the question of electability. Given a certain ceiling on Clinton's appeal (due largely to years of unhinged attacks from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"), her campaign seems well prepared to run a 50 percent + 1 campaign, a rerun of 2004 but with a state or two switching columns: Florida, maybe, or Ohio. Obama is aiming for something bigger: a landmark sea-change election, with the kind of high favorability and approval ratings that can drive an agenda forward. Why should we think he can do it?

The short answer is that Obama is simply one of the most talented and appealing politicians in recent memory. Perhaps the most. Pollster.com shows a series of polls taken in the Democratic campaign. The graphs plotting national polling numbers as well as those in the first four states show a remarkably consistent pattern. Hillary Clinton starts out with either a modest or, more commonly, a massive lead, owing to her superior name recognition and the popularity of the Clinton brand. As the campaign goes forward Clinton's support either climbs slowly, plateaus or dips. But as the actual contest approaches, and voters start paying attention, Obama's support suddenly begins to grow exponentially.

In addition to persuading those who already vote, Obama has also delivered on one of the hoariest promises in politics: to bring in new voters (especially the young). It's a phenomenon that, if it were to continue with him as nominee, could completely alter the electoral math. Young people are by far the most progressive voters of any age cohort, and they overwhelmingly favor Barack Obama by stunning margins. Their enthusiasm has translated into massive increases in youth turnout in the early contests.

Finally, there's the question of coattails. In many senses there's less difference between the two presidential candidates than there is between a Senate with fifty-one Democrats and one with fifty-six. No Democratic presidential candidate is going to carry, say, Mississippi or Nebraska, but many Democrats in those states fear that the ingrained Clinton hatred would rally the GOP base and/or depress turnout, hurting down-ticket candidates. Over the past few weeks a series of prominent red-state Democrats, most notably Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, have endorsed Obama. When I asked a Democratic Congressional candidate in the Deep South who he preferred at the top of the ticket, he didn't hesitate: "Obama is absolutely the better candidate. Hillary brings a lot of sting; he takes some sting out of them."

Whoever is elected in November, progressives will probably find themselves feeling frustrated. Ultimately though, the future judgments and actions of the candidates are unknowable, obscured behind time's cloak. Who knew that the Bill Clinton of 1992 who campaigned with Nelson Mandela would later threaten to sanction South Africa when it passed a law allowing the production of low-cost generic AIDS drugs for its suffering population--or that the George W. Bush of 2000, an amiable "centrist" whose thin foreign-policy views shaded toward isolationism, would go on to become a self-justifying, delusional and messianic instrument of global war? In this sense, Bill Clinton is right: voting for and electing Barack Obama is a "roll of a dice." All elections are. But the candidacy of Barack Obama represents by far the left's best chance to, in Buchanan's immortal phrasing, take back the bigger half of the country. It's a chance we can't pass up.

Indeed.

Looks like Hillary is scared

Scared enough to smear Obama for teenage drug use. Gag.

From Andrew Sullivan's long-winded but potent argument that Hillary represents the ongoing "culture war" of the 60s and Obama really does represent change...

...to Steve Hayes' favorable overview of Obama in The Weekly Standard and Matthew Yglesias and Bloggingheads seeing it and pointing out that Republican voters are most comfortable with Obama as a Democrat (and Hillary's consistently high negatives: 55% unfavorability in Rasmussen Reports)...

she may have serious reason to be. Scared, that is.

I'm still divided over the issue of whose mandates/non-mandates plan is better. However, the longer I keep up with the goings-on, the more I like Obama and the less I like Hillary for the nomination. We'll have to wait and see. So much can change in politics so fast.

Pew Poll Finds Large Drop in God-belief in "Gen. Next"

One-in-five members of Generation Next say they have no religious affiliation or are atheist or agnostic, nearly double the proportion of young people who said that in the late 1980s. And just 4% of Gen Nexters say people in their generation view becoming more spiritual as their most important goal in life.

Check out the details here, and some analysis here.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Atheism

New God Study

A new Baylor study on religious beliefs is a bit more detailed than most. You can download the full report, American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depths and Complexity of Religion in the U.S.

Many prior studies, like the CUNY ARIS I've discussed, had very generic categories of belief, and very simple questions regarding faith in God. These sorts of studies consistently found the amount of nonreligious persons in the mid-teens. This study aimed to differentiate faith in types of God, and its results are very interesting. For one thing, although 10.8% of persons are "religious nones", only 5.2% were willing to self-identify as atheists. The researchers think that the lower score here is due to the more pointed questions which differentiate between unaffiliated religious persons (unaffiliated with a particular church or denomination) and truly nonreligious persons.

In 2004, the General Social Survey reported that 14.3 percent of the population had no religion, but by using a more detailed measure in the Baylor survey, researchers determined that only 10.8 percent of the population or approximately 10 million Americans are unaffiliated.

"We believe, and are going to argue, that it [the statistics] has more to do with how you ask about the religious connection than what it says about the commitment of the average American to their faith," said Dr. Kevin Dougherty, assistant professor of sociology and one of the Baylor Survey researchers. (Baylor U source article)

The four "God types", referred to as Type A, B, C and D, and their % belief:

Authoritarian: 31.4%
Benevolent: 25.0%
Critical: 16.0%
Distant: 23.0%

Another breakdown (interesting!) by regional majority of each type view:

NE -- 21.2% Critical
South -- 43.5% Authoritarian
West -- 30.3% Distant
Midwest -- 28.8% Benevolent

Of course, the high amount of Jewish persons and liberal Christians (both Catholic and Protestant) in the NE made me predict that Distant would win there, not Critical.

USA Today

The four visions of God outlined in the Baylor research aren't mutually exclusive. And they don't include 5.2% of Americans who say they are atheists. (Although 91.8% said they believe in God, some didn't answer or weren't sure.)

The Waco Tribune-Herald

For example, there is a strong gender differential in belief in God. Women, he said, tend toward the more engaged versions (types A and B), while men tend toward the less engaged and are more likely to be atheist.

More than half the blacks in the study said they believe in the Authoritarian God. None surveyed said they were atheist.

Lower-income and less-educated folk were more likely to worship god types A or B, while those with college degrees or earning more than $100,000 were more likely to believe in the Distant God or be atheists, the Baylor study concluded.

Getting agnostic and even atheist participation on Baylor’s religion survey didn’t seem to be a problem, he added. Although 10.8 percent did not claim any affiliation with any faith family or house of worship, only 5.2 percent of those surveyed declared themselves to be atheists.

Something else I'm not surprised about?

Chron.com

It found that about 41 percent believe Atlantis existed; 37 percent believe places can be haunted; and 52 percent believe that dreams can foretell the future. About 12 percent believe in astrology and psychics, and about 25 percent believe in UFOs.

There is, and always has been, a sort of pervasive superstitous human mindset. When people accept magical, invisible beings, (angels, demons, gods) and miracles with little or no evidence, their credulity simply extends to other regions of naïveté as well -- Atlantis being a real place, UFOlogy, Bigfoot, Loch Ness...etc. Religious belief either causes this lower bar of skeptical thinking or is a symptom thereof, but it clearly correlates with it.
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Technorati tags: Religion

"Science is the Antithesis of Faith"

I read something today that nicely follows up on some comments I've made before on the growing trend of godlessness, and especially on the link between science and faith:

Skepticism is the antithesis of faith, and a science that encourages people to question is the enemy of a religion that demands people accept. PZ

Nice.

And that's why fundamentalists of all religions pervert science to maintain their dogma.

And that's why we must all oppose fundamentalism, whether we're [progressive] believers or unbelievers.

I have some scientist friends who are in the 40% of believing scientists, [see Nature] but none of them have a problem in demarcating the line between religion and everything else--they all practice Gould's NOLM.
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Technorati tags: Philosophy, Atheism