Godless money

Dole is losing to Kay Hagan in NC, and thus is using fear of us mean evil atheists to scare people away from her opponent. I just didn't know that there was such a thing as "godless money" lol.

Seed Magazine endorsed Obama. No surprise there.

A new article in Newsweek discusses belief in the paranormal and supernatural as a coping mechanism.

Hitchens debated the guy who wrote, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist".

Religiosity redux

Without fail, I bring you another social analysis on the demographics of religion domestically and globally...well, okay, I'm linking to someone else's work, but still!

We are an outlier:

(from Pew Report's "Global Attitudes Project", published 9/17/08)

In the above graph, national religiosity is plotted against wealth. The inverse correlation between religiosity and prosperity among various countries is interesting and does exist. The US is a notable outlier, though. You could argue that economic freedom and religious freedom usually both produce more prosperity and more religiosity, but besides here in the US, that doesn't seem to hold true.

A GLOBAL survey recently conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that the wealthier you are, the less likely you are to be religious.

The survey, done as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, covers a wide swath of economic matters, including global trade and immigration (pewglobal.org).

Pew found that there is “a strong relationship between a country’s religiosity and its economic status.” The poorer a country, the more “religion remains central to the lives of individuals, while secular perspectives are more common in richer nations.”

The United States is the “most notable” exception. Other exceptions are oil-rich, mostly Muslim nations like Kuwait.

There is no simple interpretation of the findings. Perhaps as “people get less religious, they get wealthier,” wrote Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog (washingtonmonthly.com). “Or perhaps the other way around. Or perhaps there’s something else behind both trends.”

Mr. Drum concludes that it’s “probably a bit of all three.”

There seems to be a balance between religion as a positive force in increasing productivity by fostering attitudes like responsibility and self-reliance, versus religion as a negative force because it sucks up so much money from the private sector.

The authors turn next to the assessment of how differences in religiosity affect economic growth. For given religious beliefs, increases in church attendance tend to reduce economic growth. In contrast, for given church attendance, increases in some religious beliefs -- notably heaven, hell, and an afterlife -- tend to increase economic growth. In other words, economic growth depends mainly on the extent of believing relative to belonging. The authors also find some indication that the fear of hell is more potent for economic growth than the prospect of heaven. Their statistical analysis allows them to argue that these estimates reflect causal influences from religion to economic growth and not the reverse.

Barro and McCleary suggest that higher rates of religious beliefs stimulate growth because they help to sustain aspects of individual behavior that enhance productivity. They believe that higher church attendance depresses growth because it signifies a greater use of resources by the religion sector. However, that suppression of growth is tempered by the extent to which church attendance leads to greater religious beliefs, which in turn encourages economic growth.

The inverse relationship even holds within states of the US (also here, bottom graph). The South is notorious for its teen pregnancy rates, poverty, obesity, murder rates, etc., all being the highest in any region of the country. Its religiosity is also higher than any region in the country.

As Charles points out, the same inverse correlation exists between education level and religiosity as wealth and religiosity, since higher education is causative of higher wealth. It's important not to confuse correlation with causation, but it's also important not to dismiss correlation because in studying it you will usually discover underlying causes.

As far back as June 2006 I commented on Gregory Paul's study in Nov 2005 that purported to show that increased religiosity is correlated with many negative sociological variables. A discussion over on the GC message board got started on this very paper just this past week and I jumped into the fray with the following observations (most of which I've reiterated here on this site before). I like to read about sociological studies and religion. The good news is that globally, godlessness is on the rise:

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.

Ditto here at home in the US:

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.

From Barna:

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).

From CUNY's ARIS survey:

the greatest increase in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight percent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001

If this trend continues, younger Americans are going to grow more secular with time and as older Americans die off, the US will no longer be so religious because younger Americans are so much less religious than their forebears. The trends are already pointing that way.

Some people would argue that religion really is the opiate of the poor masses, and that economic standing best explains all the other negatives. That sounds more plausible to me. Poverty = less education = more religion. It is just hilarious, because the very moral failures that the "values voters" here in the South decry the loudest they exemplify the most (divorce, teen pregnancy, gun violence...) and they propose religion as a panacea, when the existence of their own abundant religiosity proves it to be otherwise.

But, until secular Americans start to learn how to organize and become a political force as the religious learned long ago, we'll continue to be underrepresented in Congress and undervalued as a slice of the electorate.

Pretty random thing

A student that I had last year, who I genuinely like, came by randomly Friday and asked me, "What do evolutionists think happens after we die?"

After I corrected his notion that all believers in sound biology are necessarily non-believers in an afterlife, I used the frequent parallel between "before you were born" and "after you die" to try to explain what it means to lose consciousness.

By coincidence, Sunday, I read this article in SciAm: "Never Say Die - Why We Can't Imagine Death".

Today, I saw this and giggled.

Nice diagram

Via PZ:

Religulous, randomness

I am quite anxious to see Bill Maher's "Religulous", coming out 10/3/08, according to Wikipedia. Here's the trailer via YouTube:

Lionsgate has registered a domain, disbliefnet.com, and God is it a funny spoof of beliefnet.com.

Speaking of funny spoofs of religion, and in the vein of "Every sperm is sacred", my second favorite Monty Python clip, The Onion has a hilarious article on Hothouse Effects:

On a complete tangent, the John McCain official flip-flop list that I mentioned before now has a new URL and a new graphic. It's great!

On another complete tangent, our health care system's failure is documented. Again.

Borat's sequel

Sort of.  Of course, Borat is supposedly dead, but Cohen is doing another similar theme:  use a movie to expose the ignorance and prejudices of Americans, while putting them in uncomfortable settings.  It's based on his Brüno character.  In one scene, the joke's on a bunch of rednecks. It's precious! A bunch of Arkansas hillbillies buy tickets to see a cage match, but the guys strip down to the underwear and make out!  Bwahahahaha

I can't wait to see it.

It reminded one person of the prank by Top Gear, when they painted "Man Love Rocks" and "Country & Western is Rubbish" on their cars and drove through Jesusville, Alabama.

The pranks that people play on religious biases can be funny or naughty.  When it comes to naughty, no one ups the Church Whipper (NSFW:  1, 2, 3).  When it comes to funny, at the last GC meeting I learned that they actually manufacture little feet to replace on your Darwin Fish if some asshole acted on Jesus' love and tore the feet off it.  While I don't have one, I was thinking I should buy some Darwin Fish replacement feet and put them on the innocent Jesus fish of a bunch of cars at a church during a service.  It would be harmless and humorous.

Gimme that ol' time religion

I know this is old, but it's hilarious:

Feynman on doubt and uncertainty

Voltaire once said:

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

I found a great video of Richard Feynman talking about living with uncertainty:

For those of you who can't watch video or have slow connections, here's the transcript:

Richard Feynman: You see, one thing, is I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing then to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and there are many things I don't know anything about; such as whether it means anything to ask, "Why we're here?" and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and then if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a strange universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

I'm tempted to go a step beyond Feynman here and say that not only is it possible, or okay, to live with doubt and uncertainty, but that it is a given. The only question is whether or not we place those doubts and uncertainties below a thin layer of a faith claim. When people say, "I know God exists and created the universe," they know no such thing. They believe it and have faith in it, but they don't have warrant to have "justified true belief," which is the definition of knowledge. And so no religion gives knowledge, they simply give a measure of certitude, proportional to how much a person decides they'll put "faith", or unjustified belief, in something.

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.

New evidence casts further doubt on Jesus as unique messiah

Although I don't bite as hard on the full Jesus-as-myth-only hypothesis as some do, I definitely reject claims of an inerrant historicity of the NT (and the OT, for that matter). There are many scholarly takes on the resurrection myth, which I reject as anything but myth, given the illogic of the idea of the doctrine of the Incarnation, among other things. Now, some of the further left ideas about Jesus being but one of many pagan agri-god resurrected saviors seem a bridge too far, but new evidence on an ancient (1st BCE) tablet definitely gives more context to the time in which Jesus lives, and deflates air out of the argument that his story is unique:

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.

When he read “Gabriel’s Revelation,” he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus’ day as an important explanation of that era’s messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

In Mr. Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was “hayeh,” or “live.” Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

...

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.

“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”

More on this as it becomes available.

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.
...
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).
...
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.
_____

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.

Correlations between reading and politics, religion

It's never as simple as we want it to be.

I want more people to read, and I complain about reading in America. Then, on the other hand, I wish that people read less of the same ol', same ol' religious stuff and tried a solid philosophical treatise on morality or metaphysics. It really seems that a lot of what people read is fluff and at least partially ahistorical, given Americans' preferences for religious reading. The trend is moving at least in part away from these books, so that's encouraging...

That said, there is evidence that people who are nonreligious and those who are politically liberal read more than those who are religious and political conservatives.

People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.

There was even some political variety evident, with Democrats and liberals typically reading slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives.

The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories.

Can we infer causation from correlation? I don't think so.

One of the reasons I reject IQ comparisons between theists and atheists is the point that if you can find me even a few people with very high IQs who are theists (or atheists), then any "argument" based on studies that show a disparity in IQ between the two person groups is flawed: even if on average, smart people are believers, or disbelievers, it would be cum hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Although I don't imply causation from correlation with reading, I do think it's worth thinking about why the correlation exists. Before I'm accused of meanness or prejudice, I pointed out that the anti-intellectualism on display in many Evangelical churches is not to be taken as a logical connection between religion and anti-intellectualism. That said, I think that part of being religious is taking doubt and skepticism seriously, and I think that this requires a lot of reading outside of one's own "comfort zone(s)" and world view(s). Here, there is real evidence that certain forms and brands of religion, especially those that equivocate on faith as certitude, discourage reading materials that may "incur doubt" or "lead one astray" or some similar sentiment. Perhaps there is truth in it.

After all, if, as I think to be the case, religions are all based on ahistorical myths and/or false premises about the nature of god(s) and revelation, then a serious analysis of religion done by smart skeptics will poke holes in anyone's certitudes. And if the religion one adheres to carries a threat of everlasting torment if said adherent doubts or loses faith, then it is logical for its religious leaders to exhort followers to avoid reading treatises on atheism/skepticism. Hell, just look at what Paul said about wisdom and philosophy, and his warnings of those with "false teachings" and such. So, is it prudent, then, to "flee" from reading materials whose conclusions you know to be in opposition to the religion you espouse?

Perhaps it is.

Maybe believers are right for sticking to reading materials that don't "endanger" their souls. I guess Calvinists don't worry about such subtleties.

I wonder, if the Bible and religious books were filtered out of reading surveys, what the results would look like. Until I have some data, I'm just speculating and pissing in the wind...

I did like the statistics that show the most popular books on college campuses, and the correlation with SAT scores at those schools has to mean something. But what conclusions can be drawn between one's reading habits and one's IQ or religious preference? Not too much. I know that I and a lot of other nonbelievers spend what is probably a surprisingly large amount of time reading "religious materials" and/or scriptures. Obviously, we do so in large part due to education and arguments' sake, rather than edification.

Monty Python: "O Lord Please Don't Burn Us..."

There are many very funny Monthy Python clips available online. Everyone has their favorites. My own all-time favorite is from The Meaning of Life: Part II -- Growth and Learning, at about 2:12, with the song, "O Lord, Please Don't Burn Us..." (lyrics)

Brooks on "Neural Buddhism"

Interesting editorial by David Brooks about how science will be forcing a cultural revolution when it comes to religion. In his view, traditional belief in the Bible will continue to erode (as it has been) in the newer generations, while he thinks a sort of Buddhist approach to God will be embraced. Unfortunately, as with so many opinion pieces, his lacks any attempt whatsoever to provide evidence that this is occurring. I present mine in the form of statistics and trends.

Perhaps David thinks it's a framing issue? He never bothers to substantiate claims like:

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Science has been doing that for decades and decades now. And I think, in large part, it's simply due to the way that science causes you to think and ask for evidence for claims and try to develop logical connections. Research has also pointed to psychological factors involved in the rejection of science in favor of creationism. I don't think it's simply a "liberal education = anti-religion" thing, although there are things to think through there. However, I've warned before against making another "failed prophecy" that science will wipe out religion, while at the same time recognizing:

f people agree that the scientific method establishes knowledge, and that faith is not knowledge, then the bifurcation of science and religion is a deep and meaningful issue. If faith has not suffered, it has certainly adapted as knowledge has been established to contradict the teachings and interpretations of the Bible. Admittedly, theists may always claim that the contradiction lies in the interpretation of their Scriptures, and not in the Scriptures themselves, but the effect of marginalization of faith via scientific progress is a real phenomenon that I think modern theists are quite well-aware of.

Next, David tip-toes up to the line of BS:

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

Not once does he bother explaining what, if anything, resembles supernaturalism in scientific research. Not once does he bother substantiating the idea that brain researchers are moving away from reductionist explanations, towards any form of spirituality whatsoever. Instead, he seems to make the same non sequiturs we've seen before from scientific findings claiming support for religious ideas. But there's biology, then there's bullshit. In fact, the more we look at morality and other previously-philosophy-only topics, the more simplified science makes them. Now, am I claiming here that some scientists and atheists don't admit that science does not yet (and maybe never will) have tools to "establish" things like qualia and morality as scientific theories? No. I've said so myself. But Brooks doesn't show us anything, anywhere, that resembles a "science is leading us away from naturalism and towards Buddhism" shred of evidence.

Obama & the counter-enlightenment

I really liked Michael Moore's endorsement of Obama. Money quote:

over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

In other news, a new site that I've been following, Secular Philosophy, has a few gems so far, but mostly boring tidbits. Here's a new gem by Massimo Pagliucci:

Ecrasez l’Infame
21, April 2008 , 09:03

by Massimo Pigliucci

The Pope has left New York, and I celebrated the event the other night by going to see Voltaire’s “Candide” (in the fantastic musical adaptation by Leonard Bernstein). Considering that the French Enlightenment philosopher was famous as a harsh critic of organized religion, and that Pope Ratzinger has had the balls of claiming that “the Enlightenment is of Christian origin,” there seemed to be a delicious irony to the weekend.

“When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.” (Voltaire)

Indeed, Voltaire -- who was a deist, not an atheist -- got so pissed at religious authorities that he began to sign his letters “Ecrasez l’Infame” (let us crush the infamous), referring to the Church of Rome, currently guided by Ratzinger. As is well known, the latter was until a few years ago the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition, the very same folks that brought us the burning of Giordano Bruno and the trial of Galileo (though they also inspired the immortal Monty Python skit claiming that “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” [Daniel's edit: youtube link here]).

“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” (Voltaire)

Ratzinger is a conservative Pope by the standards of the last half century or so, who utters much nonsense, as when he defended the “importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work.” In other words, to believe blindly is much more commendable than actually rolling up one’s sleeves and doing something to improve humanity’s lot.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Voltaire)

Pope Benedict made a big show during his visit in the US of looking contrite about the prolonged scandal centering on sexual abuses perpetrated by members of his clergy. But I wonder how many Americans know that he also wrote a letter to Catholic bishops on the subject, claiming that any Church investigation on this and similar matters is to be considered a pontifical secret, and that anyone revealing any detail of it will be excommunicated (which, if you are a Catholic, means eternal damnation in Hell). Sounds to me like his “Holiness” has something to hide.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” (Voltaire)

Ratzinger has made a major point of his efforts to combat “relativism” and “secularism,” terms that he curiously seems to use almost interchangeably. The Pope has complained of a “dictatorship of relativism,” which is actually an oxymoron, given that relativism is the (bad) idea that all opinions are of equal weight, the very opposite of a dictatorship (the Pope, incidentally, is technically a dictator within his own State).

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” (Voltaire)

In a rare display of philosophical ignorance, Benedict actually attributed modern relativism to Kant, because the latter questioned the absolute powers of reason. But there is a huge difference between acknowledging the limits of human reason and rejecting reason altogether. Indeed, Kant is famous for having attempted to establish morality on reason rather than faith, despite being a rather strict Christian himself. Ratzinger has said idiotic things like “Christianity [is] the religion according to reason,” while at the same time rejecting Kant’s project of bringing back reason in our moral discourse.

I’m just glad that I spent my time enjoying Candide rather than going to pay homage to Ratzinger at Yankee Stadium. Ecrasez l’Infame indeed.

Fantastic. It kills me when xians claim the Enlightenment as their own. Now, the Counter-enlightenment? Sure. As Ed Brayton has written,

This nation was founded by and is based entirely upon the Constitution. If it was really founded on "Christian principles", then it shouldn't be too difficult to point to specific provisions in the Constitution and point to their analogs in the Bible. I doubt you can. I can point to provision after provision in the Constitution and trace them directly to the writings of John Locke and the Baron de Montesquieu, among other Enlightenment thinkers. Separation of powers? Checks and balances? The notion of unalienable rights? Religious freedom? These things are utterly non-existent in the Bible, and were throughout the history of Christian thought as well. They come from Enlightenment philosophy, not from Christianity.

If you can show me how any of these things are "Christian principles" from the Bible, I will stand corrected and apologize. Otherwise, what I would embrace, if I were you, are the concepts and freedoms afforded us in the Constitution, all of which were paid for with the blood of patriots, none "given" as some sort of free gift from God. It is their blood paying for those very things that enable you to worship and vote as you please. The Enlightenment thinkers were almost universally proponents of the freedom of belief and expression, both of which are clearly anti-Christian in nature. God doesn't give you those freedoms.

Sagan once wrote that science was a candle to the darkness of human ignorance. How many candles are burning today, and how much ignorant darkness surround them? Unfortunately, the science & engineering indicators show us that the darkness still outweighs the light.

On morality and hope vs. godlessness

A sometime-reader and commenter of this blog sent me some questions over the weekend via email. I tried to send them twice to him, but I don't know if he's receiving them. Since they were good topics for conversation, I figured I'd paste my response in here.

As best I can remember, I first heard from Jamie Bonnett back in April 2007, randomly, as he looked up the Friel-Tabash debate and found my email as a result. He works for everynation.org as a campus minister at UNCG -- I don't know anything about the ministry, but I read an interesting critique of the organization by Richard Bartholomew at talk2action in which it was compared to Maranatha Campus Ministries. He first wrote me in a somewhat-confrontational manner, challenging me to present arguments for God's nonexistence; but from there, our e-dialog took on a more friendly and conversational tone.

The very first thing that he wrote me, that I can tell, was:

Could you please share with me your argument/s for disproving God and Religion, as well as why your position is right. Thank you.

That really reminds me of this video. One of the other first things he asked me in our email dialog last spring was where I "place my hope":

What is it that you actually put you hope in? Is it people, science, knowledge? Has it ever failed?

This is a very common mode of thought towards atheism, and it's something I've tried to address recently in talking about the failings of atheism to address some of the real things upon which religions are based: transcendent human experiences, generosity, community...&c. I said:

...one of the things I liked the most with this new article was the focus on the issue of morality and its relationship to empiricism/scientism/science. The question of the evolutionary history and evolutionary purposes of morality are certainly fair game for science. However, jettisoning ethical philosophy because it is non-empirical or pretending that science is sufficient to deal with morality (scientism) are just plain irrational. A few good points were made that help to temper the red-hot passion for the elimination of religion; as Edward Slingerland said:

• Religion is not going away anytime soon (or maybe ever)


• Humans' rights & morality are just as unscientific in nature as God: I've written reams (much of it rambling and repetitive, I'm sure, of what others have already said on the topic) on trying to get my head around morality, and I don't know if I've succeeded or not. Judge for yourself: 1, 2
  

Irrespective of the difficulty in approaching morality from a scientific viewpoint, we have no choice but to analyze morality with the tools of reason and logic available to us. If we can find some way to explain morality as a "bet fit model" that simply shows us a way to live that ends up benefiting all of us to the greatest extent possible, then that's fine for me. It doesn't have to be metaphysically ultimate, as I used to wish. If ethics can just be objectively good, I'll be happy.

Lots of scientists are apparently starting to realize this second point by Slingerland, and embrace some forms of "spirituality" in order to explain issues like human meaning & morality given the vacuum left in those areas by science. As to the first point, it seems that Dawkins and all these other guys are still dreaming: religion will be with us as long as art and poetry and beauty will be -- a way to capture the human forms of transcendence and abstractions/ideals we're capable of seeing, but rarely attaining. Religion is beautiful when it's like that, like the dream we don't want to wake up from.

I think this dovetails beautifully with Jamie's questions then as now. What I responded to a few days back was Jamie's email inquiry:

Hey man, I just responded to your response to my post and it got me thinking. The other day I stumbled upon a Christian/Atheist debate on youtube and I had some questions. I immediately thought of emailing you to get your point of view.

There was talk of the resurrection being myth, Jesus never really existing, science disproving God, etc. but it failed to answer two questions that I always end up having. 1. If there is no God, no creator, just a "blind watchmaker," what do you (or what is the popular atheistic answer you have heard) think the purpose of life is? I have heard Richard Dawkins answer on it and to be honest with you, it was rather depressing and hopeless. What is comforting about a belief in God is that scripture says He made us with a purpose, we are made to do something. Not to mention the fact that after we die it is not the "end." I value your point of view on things and was wondering your thoughts on this one.

Also, what about morality. Now I have heard so many people ask atheists "if there is no God than where do morals come from?" If they are just instinctual, why, if we just came about blindly? Again I have heard answers but nothing that struck me as possible.

Here is my response, some of which I lifted from a dialog with Dan Marvin I had a few months back on facebook:

Jamie,

Those are rather long and complicated questions that are better sorted out conversationally, but here's a snippet:

ON LIFE'S VALUE/PURPOSE:

I think that for a long while there, especially when I was writing regularly at Debunking Christianity and arguing incessantly with people like Triablogue and (please forive me) CalvinDude, I was really struggling with my own set of beliefs. I knew I had lost faith in the idea of an all-good and all-powerful God, but I wasn't sure what that meant, or how I was going to set about replacing my old beliefs with new ones, or what those new ones were.

What about meaning and value? What about morality and virtue? I would sometimes stare out of my window and feel the urge to finish my graduate degree completely gone. I began to think about things from a cosmic perspective -- how damned insignificant our dreams and hopes are, in the scheme of things. I flirted with existentialism and tried to find meaning in a godless universe:

My own burden at the moment is in maintaining rationalism -- a commitment to reason, and optimism -- a commitment not to only see things as better, but to be better and in so doing, this purpose makes "all well".

I soon realized I was depressed...

In "coming down" and finding a bit of rational and emotional equilibrium, I think I've realized that there is definitely a real cost to atheism -- when you can no longer believe in cosmic significance, you lose a bit of your natural desire to see yourself as cosmically valuable: see here.

I don't know if ex-believers ever really come to peace with the "great schism" any more than devout believers do. The ones I envy are those people in the middle; the people whose apathy and lack of curiosity and intellectual drive confers upon them a sort of "ignorant bliss" from which they can merrily go about life either believing or disbelieving but not spending a great deal of emotional/mental capital on either one. I always try to be honest, and in doing so, I must point out that we've waded out here into two areas that are very difficult to talk about "scientifically": 1) qualia, 2) the fact-value distinction.

1) The relationship of qualia to physicalism is vexing and takes up more pages of philosophy than I care to even begin to read, much the less explain here. Whether or not our perceptions and experiences relate to fixed brain states is not likely to ever be proven one way or another scientifically. Long story short, our first-person experiences probably don't reduce very well to reductionist explanations, but there is absolutely no explanatory value to saying, "therefore, a magical, invisible soul explains all this!"

2) The feelings that I feel when I look at my wife are indeed the end result of a cascade of neurological, physical, biological responses that were *caused* by the input of her image into my visual cortex. What you seem to dislike about that is that you feel it cheapens the experiences or value of marriage.

When we say something like, "that's all they are," we're making a value judgment. It's akin to you denying that a bullet through the gut is sufficient to explain your pain by saying, "it's just a tiny piece of lead, but I feel far too much for that to account for it."

Your pain is "more" than *just* bullet and its physical consequences, because your conscious experience of it leads to you assign it a great deal of (negative) value. In just the same way, my feelings for my wife are "more" than *just* a bunch of neurotransmitters, but only in VALUE. That doesn't mean that these physical things are not the *causes* and physical basis of what we come to assign *value* to. You admit yourself that you must wade off into mystical thinking ("...I don't have any empirical evidence here...") in order to ask me the question you asked.

ON MORALITY:

Irrespective of the difficulty in approaching morality from a scientific viewpoint, we have no choice but to analyze morality with the tools of reason and logic available to us. If we can find some way to explain morality as a "bet fit model" that simply shows us a way to live that ends up benefiting all of us to the greatest extent possible, then that's fine for me. It doesn't have to be metaphysically ultimate, as I used to wish. If ethics can just be objectively good, I'll be happy.

1) Even if it's true that science doesn't supply any "oughts," that doesn't mean that we can invent them from religious mythology. The Euthyphro Dilemma shows the problem with trying to tie moral properties to God's commands.

I think enough philosophers have spilled enough ink already to see the major problem -- either morality transcends the question of God's own existence (and thus God's nature as well, and whatever would dictate said nature), or it doesn't and it is contingent upon some aspect of God's existence. This latter clause is the horn Divine Command Theorists are impaled on, and the former clause destroys the argument that God is necessary for, or ontologically serves as, the "foundation" of morality. It's pretty simple to me -- either / or.

2) Science and common sense/logic supply analytical tools to evaluate what is the best thing to do in most situations -- that which serves "the greatest good for the greatest number" is always an easy benchmark. Infidelity and lying are examples of how we have to act at times against our baser instincts (of harm avoidance/self-preservation that make us want to lie, and impulse fulfillment that makes us want to be sexually promiscuous) in order to preserve important higher-order social structures that benefit us all in the long run. Ditto with crime: committing murder or theft leads to rips in the fabric of society; society supplies us with more "high end" goods than it is worth trading for "low end" momentary impulse satisfaction. So in a way, there need not be anything more to morality than that it just so happens that what is "best" = what we "ought" to do and therefore utilitarian ethics is self-contained and very consonant with science and logical analysis.

Here's my simple rationale: If you can justify acting morally using nothing but some pretty safe assumptions and solid logical relations, then you're fine. If not, then maybe you ought to abandon whatever aspect of morality you can't justify (I think of lots of religion-related "moral oughts" -- like sex before marriage, etc.).

I've tried to "argue" about this stuff by writing on my site before, largely in response to another Christian's dialog online.

Also check out this article by Pinker in the NYT Magazine, and some other recent articles along the same vein. Also, Marc Hauser was on POI about this very topic on 4/4/08 (.mp3).

That's all for now!

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the real reason people hold on to religion and shun atheism isn't because they really believe a lot of the old myths and superstition, but because they fear they won't know how to live. Morality and meaning, value and virtue -- these are the substance and impetus of our lives. When those things seem so inextricable from religion (although they're not), it serves as a real impediment to ever waking up from the delusions and fairy tales of religion.