Here at the University of Chicago, two of our bigwig academics, Gary Becker and Richard Posner, run a tony website called The Becker-Posner Blog. There’s a lot of brainpower here: Becker is an economist who has garnered a Nobel Prize, and Posner is a legal scholar and jurist (a judge on the regional U.S. Court of Appeals) who has written more than 40 books.
I was a bit astounded, then, to read Posner’s post of June 28: “Why are Americans more religious than Western Europeans?” This is of course a question that has preoccupied many of us atheists, and the answer isn’t clear. My own feeling, adumbrated on this website and in my paper in Evolution, is that America is a more socially dysfunctional country than most countries of Western Europe, and there is a strong positive correlation between social dysfunctionality (and income inequality, also higher in the U.S.) and religiosity. This is not mere speculation, for I document my theory with facts gathered by sociologists.
In contrast, Posner sees America’s religiosity as a result of competition:
Committed to a single set of rituals and beliefs, an established church is bound to lose the support of many people, who however may find only limited alternatives if competing churches are at a significant competitive disadvantage because of the established church’s governmental backing.
Although the United States had quasi-established churches in New England at the founding of the nation, the First Amendment to the Constitution (1787) forbade the federal government to establish a church, and the state establishments soon crumbled as well. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) was eventually interpreted to forbid states to establish churches, and the Supreme Court continues to enforce a high degree of “separation” between church(es) and state even today, despite the nation’s increased religiosity. As a result, there is vigorous competition among religious sects in the United States, notably including competition in observances and doctrines. As a result of this greatly increased religious variety (compared to Europe, which has long had, and continues to have, established churches in most of its countries), there is a much greater likelihood of a given individual’s finding a religious sect that is to his liking in the United States than in Europe.
He gives some other reasons, too, including the greater mobility of Americans than Europeans, presuming that joining a church is a way to establish roots in a new community.
Well, perhaps there is some credibility to the competition theory, but presumably other evidence could be adduced. Do other countries that allow similar religious freedom also show higher religiosity? I have no idea.
What I do know is that there are data from many countries showing that indices of societal dysfunction, and income inequality, are highly correlated with religiosity, presumably because societies in which people feel uncared for are societies that make people religious. If the government or your society don’t care for you, you to to the Father in Heaven. Income inequality is particularly important, not only among different nations but also within the U.S.: religiosity in America is correlated with fluctuations in income inequality, and the latter seem to be causal because time-series analysis shows that higher religiosity follows increases in income inequality, but not the other way around.
In other words, I see Posner’s analysis as rather superficial, driven largely by his economic interests and seemingly uninformed by other relevant facts from sociology.
And his analysis of why Americans are more creationist than Europeans is equally superficial:
It does seem also that Americans are more credulous on average than Europeans—less matter of fact, less inclined to accept the authority of science (notably in regard to evolution, and geological phenomena related to evolution, such as the age of the earth), more superstitious. But it is unclear whether this is cause or consequence of the greater religiosity of Americans compared to Europeans. What seems more clearly causal is Americans’ individualism and spirit of independence.
Umm. . . .I think there is plenty of evidence, including statements by religious people themselves, that they reject evolution because it contravenes the tenets of their faith. If it were just Americans’ “spirit of independence,” then why among different countries is religious belief so strongly and negatively correlated with acceptance of evolution? (This is again documented in my Evolution paper.) Does Posner really think that Americans are more religious as a consequence of being so independent and individualistic that they reject science? Is he unaware that children imbibe their Jesus with their mothers’ milk, well before they are offered Darwinian comestibles?
Reblogged this on emmageraln.
I find the hypothesis that income inequality causes religiosity rather implausible. Poverty and social dysfunction, yes, but not mere inequality. It also seems to be inconsistent with the evidence that income inequality has grown in recent decades but religiosity has declined.
Why not mere inequality? If one is surrounding by money-grabbing bankers flying around in private jets, one is likely to feel decidedly disadvantaged even if one is better off in purely numerical terms than, say, most people in central Africa.
Extreme income inequality is a form of social dysfunction.
I don’t think many people are surrounded by money-grubbing bankers flying around in private jets, and I don’t see any evidence that Americans in general feel more disadvantaged now than they did 20 or 30 years ago.
You refer above to “evidence that income inequality has grown” in recent years, but then you also state that you “don’t see any evidence that Americans in general feel more disadvantaged now than they did 20 or 30 years ago.”
I wonder if you think Americans aren’t aware of the growing income inequality or do you think they don’t care – that they don’t feel more disadvantaged even though they are?
I don’t know why you think being aware of growth in income inequality means feeling more disadvantaged. I think most people tend to focus more on changes in their own lives than on comparisons between themselves and the very rich. And by most objective measures that I have seen, living standards in general have risen substantially. If rising income inequality causes people to become more religious, why has religiosity declined?
It is a multifactorial problem on a differentiated population. IIRC each US generation has kept their religiosity, while in the youngest generation fewer are undecided and more non-believers.
“..living standards in general have risen substantially..”
If this refers to U.S. and to the last 3 decades, I would be grateful to see the evidence. I simply do not believe that.
If this refers to U.S. and to the last 3 decades, I would be grateful to see the evidence.
Housing is better, transportation is better, food and drink is better, health care is better, leisure and entertainment are better, communications are better, life expectancy has increased, educational level has increased, retirement age is lower… It is hard to think of a class of products and services that have not improved significantly over the past three or four decades.
This is a tricky question. How does one even compare the world of 1980, when one could not buy an iPhone or participate in an online blog at ANY price with the world we live in today? So simply looking at median incomes will be in some ways deceptive.
Nevertheless, a few minutes of research shows that over the last sixty years, there is no point for any income group where the median household income is lower in one decade compared to the last (at least up to 2007… that might not be true post-recession). See, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Income_Distribution_1947-2007.svg
It is also obvious from this graph that the bottom is mostly treading water while the top is rocketing off into the stratosphere. So the inequality aspect is there and glaring, but I don’t think anyone has suffered an overall decline. There might be more insecurity, but that doesn’t show up in figures about actual household income.
Looking at another measure of standard living, life expectancy. That too is monotonic over the last 80 years at least, for both sexes and both blacks and whites as shown by this graph:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html
Clearly, inequality can been see here too, but the trend is nonetheless upwards for everyone.
Look at another measure, per-capita number of vehicles on the road. Taken from:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
In 1970, the per-capita number of registered vehicles was 0.36, today it is 0.88. Since cars were invented, there is no time when the per-capita number of vehicles has declined except for a decline in 2009 from the recession (and that was from 0.9 peak in 2000 to 0.88), and even the post-recession low is higher than the 1990 (0.77) or 1980 (0.71) figures.
I expect you will find the same across the board. The U.S., despite our obvious problems, continues to have a fairly high standard of living:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_the_United_States
So I think if we are going to look for an economic explanation, it will have to involve inequalities and anxieties that arise from the nature of our society and economy not from mere absence of material wealth and attendant well being.
“Housing is better, transportation is better, food and drink is better, health care is better, leisure and entertainment are better, communications are better, life expectancy has increased, educational level has increased, retirement age is lower”
For most Americans housing is worse, transportation is worse, food is more expensive, health care is worse, life expectancy has remained flat, and the retirement age is higher.
Not sure where you’re getting your facts from, but it’s not from reality.
“Not sure where you’re getting your facts from”
I’m guessing The Cato Institute.
For most Americans housing is worse, transportation is worse, food is more expensive, health care is worse, life expectancy has remained flat, and the retirement age is higher.
I’d love to know what evidence you think supports these claims. I think every one of them is incorrect.
Census data shows that housing has improved substantially over the past 30 or 40 years. Houses are bigger, have more rooms, better appliances, better heating and cooling, better plumbing and wiring, and so on.
Transportation is vastly better. Cars are much more reliable, much safer, much more efficient, require much less maintenance, and have all sorts of features that either didn’t exist at all 30 years ago (e.g., GPS navigation) or were confined to expensive, high-end models (fuel injection, ABS brakes, cruise control, power seats, etc). Air travel is much cheaper; there are many more flights and routes; planes are safer, quieter, more comfortable and have better entertainment systems; researching flights and fares, buying tickets, selecting seats, and checking in are all much easier, thanks to the internet.
The quality and variety of food and beverages has increased substantially, thanks to technological advances in agriculture, shipping, inventory management, and the growth of international travel and cultural exchange.
Health care is also vastly better. A huge range of new drugs, new surgical techniques, and new diagnostic tests have been developed over the past 30 years.
Life expectancy has increased by more than 5 years since 1980.
Median income in U.S. according to one set
of statistics (admittedly in Wikepedia, and admittedly not the only criterion):
2010 $47,022
1973 $46,109
This Gary would refer to as “..living standards in general have risen substantially…” Given the increasing inequity, if you knocked the top 5% of earners out of that, likely it would even have been a decrease. But perhaps having an Iphone gives us something to do in the traffic jam on the way to the emergency, going there because we have no decent health care.
Minor corrections to my own statements just above, but which do not affect the point being made:
The difference becoming negative because of increasing inequality is not likely. I imagine using medians rather than averages brings up some controversies. And the stats are from
http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php,
not wiki.
peter,
Median real household income, from the U.S. Census Bureau:
1973: $45,465
2010: $49,445
Household size has declined, so growth in the median household income per household member is even higher.
But there are good reasons to think that income data dramatically understates the true growth in standard of living. One reason is that income, particularly among poorer households, tends to be underreported. Another is that income data omits many non-cash government and non-government benefits such as health insurance, pension plans, housing subsidies and food stamps. A third reason is that it is widely believed among economists that the official measures used to adjust for inflation tend to overstate inflation and thus understate growth in real incomes. Even a small overestimate in the annual rate of inflation can produce a huge understatement of real income growth when the error is compounded over decades.
This is why consumption-based measures of standard of living tend to give a much more accurate picture of true changes in people’s material well-being over time. And by any representative set of consumption measures, Americans in general, in all income categories, are much richer now than they were 30 or 40 years ago.
I think Americans feel that they are more beholden to, and are more viewed as “human resources” and “human capital” (as opposed to flesh-and-blood human beings) by private corporate tyrannies than they were 30 years ago.
Because an explanation tying income inequality to religiosity is not readily apparent to you does not make the link implausible. An explanation can be elusive, and yet reams of observational data over changing time periods demonstrating a correlation just cannot be dismissed. Furthermore the minutiae of the data is such that the case for causality is very compelling.
Secondly, I think many posters here do not understand the implication of inequality. I speculate a mindset fluffed thusly where there are sickeningly rich folks, and normal happy folk, and the destitute with no work ethic in an otherwise benign state of affairs…and that’s life! Of course, this is BULLSHIT. Inequality is highly corrosive to society. All other things being equal (high GDP industrialized nations), inequality is a root cause of social dysfunction. Joseph Stiglitz, probably the world’s most eminent economist, has superb essays for the lay person at Vanity Fair. Then head over to Youtube for a TED presentation by Richard Wilkinson. That’ll be a good start. There are countless books and articles by Stiglitz, Wilkinson & Pickett, Paul Krugman, John Cassidy, Emmanuel Suez & Thomas Picketty, and James Surowiecki that will rapidly cure you of economic illiteracy. Inequality is in fact social dysfunction.
Assertions offered without evidence, such as “inequality is in fact social dysfunction,” aren’t worth much. In fact, the assertion as stated doesn’t make much sense to me. Why should inequality per se be considered “social dysfunction” at all?
I think the overwhelmingly dominant economic cause of social dysfunction is not inequality but *poverty*. So minimizing poverty is far more important than minimizing inequality.
It’s plausible to me that really extreme inequality *could* be a significant cause of social dysfunction even with low levels of poverty. But I don’t think current levels of inequality even begin to approach that extreme level. I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary.
His idea that the joining a church helps establish roots. Is the Bible Belt more migratory than other states? California has always been a destination state but it is less religious than the BB.
Also, do Europeans who start a living in the USA, when confronted with this overwhelming choice of sects, suddenly become religious? I have a hard time believing (hah!) that.
I’m willing to accept that people who have had a religious upbringing may hop around between churches, but them being (and staying) religious in the first place must have other causes.
I have noticed that foreign citizens use the church or temple as a meeting place for their comrades.
I had noticed several church buildings up for sale near my neighborhood and now they are being occupied by Africans. I misread one sign the first time thinking it had “Gehenna” in the church name but on second look it was “Ghana”.
Canada and Australia serve as useful controls in this kind of speculation. They never had established churches, they are relatively new countries, and they are much less religious than the United States.
I wonder how Posner would explain that?
Coincidentally, Canada and Australia are less dysfunctional than the United States. 🙂
My own guess is that Americans are just more stupid than people in other first world countries but I’d never say that in public. I wouldn’t want to offend the people who support America’s creationist leaders like Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bauchmann, and Bobby Jindal.
@Larry: Hang on! If we apply the ‘competition argument, whereby more competition between churches makes you more religious, then the competition between so many TV stations also should make the American public so much more educated and well-informed.
It’s a serious error to believe that the media/reporters are more intelligent than the US public. IME they are less so, and far too many ‘work’ by copying off the others.
Hahaha. What goes to air is what gets by the Programming Executives – so basically what we see in the USA is what tickles the fancy of a handful of hicks or what those dodos believe the “dumb public” will watch. It’s a situation which can only guarantee that TV programming gets worse over the years. Even PBS has succumbed to the Dark Side.
If you look hard enough, you’ll find plenty of religious oddities in both countries though. In the 2000s, Australia mandated for all schools to have chaplains, for instance… so basically they just gave evangelical Christians a big wedge into public schools.
I’d say that Canada and Australia are very low population, spread out countries too. Perhaps there’s just a limit to the amount of trouble any one church or religion can get into in such places.
The claim that Canada and Australia never had established churches is flat-out false.
“An international survey, made by the private, not-for profit German think-tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, found that “Australia is one of the least religious nations in the western world, coming in 17th out of 21 [countries] surveyed” and that “Nearly three out of four Australians say they are either not at all religious or that religion does not play a central role in their lives.”[253] A survey of 1,718 Australians by the Christian Research Association at the end of 2009 suggested that the number of people attending religious services per month in Australia has dropped from 23 per cent in 1993 to 16 per cent in 2009, and while 60 per cent of 15 to 29-year-old respondents in 1993 identified with Christian denominations, 33 per cent did in 2009.[254]” [Wp]
“The Revd William Grant Broughton, who succeeded Scott in 1829, was consecrated the first (and only) “Bishop of Australia” in 1836.” [Wp]
It’s a disparate picture, but it doesn’t seem like there was much in the way of establishment. Even the usual colonial tactics of converting the natives failed.
I can’t speak for Canada but Australia has certainly never had an established church, in fact our constitution has a clause in it about religion very similar to the US non-establishment clause. Unfortunately it has been interpreted very differently by our courts, to allow far more religious nonsense in public life, but we have no state sanctioned religion.
As far as I can tell, Canada (as a country – since the BN act) has never had one either, given the traditional protestant/catholic split.
(That said, the constitution does claim that stuff comes from some unspecified god or other.)
It wasn’t until the 1980s that they completely split off from UK, and the UK has an established church. In addition, Canada at least has government-run religious schools.
England, not the UK, has an established church.
Amuricuns are certainly more provincial, inwardly-oriented, self-regarding, and willfully non-curious, compared to numerous other Western countries.
If that’s true, it’s probably because the U.S. is by far the largest and most powerful Western country. Americans simply have much less incentive to learn about other countries than citizens of other countries have to learn about America.
The link between societal dysfunction and religiosity is pretty well supported.
Posner’s idea, on the other hand, is a just-so story with no evidence that actually supports it (and some that contradicts it, as pointed out above by Larry Moran).
As it stands, it seems to me that not only does social dysfunction breed religiosity, but the current brand of religiosity in the US actively preserves social dysfunction. So we’re in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. The only real way to reduce the influence of religion is to move from the status quo to a more just and secure society. But the only way to do that is reduce the influence of religion.
At least, that’s how it looks in the current political scheme. Maybe the only real solution is to wait for the old guard to die off, as it does seem as if the newer generations are moving in the right direction, on the whole.
“Posner’s idea, on the other hand, is a just-so story with no evidence that actually supports it . . . .”
Could his “just-so story” position be an occupational hazard of being (having been) a judge? Re: Scalia.
Some religion is perpetuated simply by socialization and enculturation. But persistence in religion even to the point of willingness to endure severe cognitive dissonance breeds social dysfunction.
While I think the actual data is behind Dr. Coyne’s idea, I might suggest that while it may not increase religiosity, perhaps competition between churches does cause an increase in religious extremism. After all, each individual church is essentially a little entertainment business that exists to continue propagating itself, and as TV has shown us, there is a market for people who have shocking opinions. Of course, that’s just a random musing… no telling if that actually would be how it works.
So, an evolutionaary arms race?
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“Why is America so much more religious than Europe?”
Fear. It’s the one word that describes the USA. It explains much about the culture.
I agree with this. The USA is a 1st world nation with a 2nd/3rd world provision of social welfare support. The best medical treatment in the world is to be had in the USA & yet an average American unfortunate enough to have a chronic illness requiring constant treatment has the additional worry of going broke. That’s fear.
Then the average European probably has that same fear. There is little evidence that the absence of universal health insurance is a major cause of economic insecurity. Medical bills are typically only one component, and not necessarily the biggest one, of health-related bankruptcies. Health insurance won’t pay your mortgage or credit card bill when you’re too sick to work.
I’ve never heard that medical-related bankruptcies are as prevalent in, say, France, as in the US. Have any evidence for that?
Australians do not go bankrupt due to medical bills, they may suffer financially from being too ill to work, sickness benefits do not provide for a luxurious lifestyle, but no-one goes bankrupt due to medical bills. I never heard of such a thing till the internet and reading US blogs.
Yes, Joe has a $400,000 house with a mortgage. Suddenly he has an unexpected $395,000 bill from the hospital for fixing his ingrown toenail. No one will lend him the money to pay up. So he goes bankrupt and loses his house. As you say, the major component of his bankruptcy is his mortagage, not the lack of health insurance in the U.S.
This is just devastatingly convincing, isn’t it?
I’ve never heard that medical-related bankruptcies are as prevalent in, say, France, as in the US.
They may not be as prevalent, but the risk of bankruptcy or other serious economic loss due to illness is not limited to the U.S. But even in the U.S., medical bills do not seem to be a major cause of bankruptcy.
This is just devastatingly convincing, isn’t it?
It’s not convincing at all, because it’s a silly scenario. The more likely scenario is that Joe loses income because he’s too ill to work and can no longer pay his normal living expenses — rent or mortgage, car payment, groceries, etc. Universal health insurance isn’t going to help much with that. As I said, there is little evidence that lack of health insurance is a major cause of economic insecurity.
No?
This is a couple of years old, but not that much has changed.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/06/04/us-healthcare-bankruptcy-idUSTRE5530Y020090604
Did you even read your own citation?
Quote:
“More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts … For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection.”
You’re not rebutting my point that health insurance has little effect on economic security. You’re supporting it.
How does the fact that our health insurance system is terrible make your case?
How does the fact that our health insurance system is terrible make your case?
I don’t think our health insurance system is terrible, but the point is that even if we did have universal health insurance — like Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. — on the basis of the study you cite it wouldn’t do much to reduce economic insecurity.
And thus, to the extent that religiosity is caused by economic insecurity, universal health insurance wouldn’t do much to reduce religiosity.
Two clever quotes from Gary:
“There is little evidence that the absence of universal health insurance is a major cause of economic insecurity. ”
” More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts ”
Is he hoping we won’t notice that “universal” occurs in the 1st but not the 2nd?
No, I was hoping you would realize that a study that concluded that “health insurance offers little protection” against bankruptcy is evidence that universal health insurance won’t do much to reduce bankruptcy.
REPLYING TO GARY W’S JULY 19, 12:16 (This may not show up in quite the right place):
I am going to assume that most readers here, if not Gary, are somewhat aware of the vast differences between UNIVERSAL health care as practised in just about the entire remainder of the western world, and just plain healthcare policies, as carried out by the mostly voracious U.S. insurance industry. Nothing more is needed to reply to him on this.
I am going to assume that most readers here, if not Gary, are somewhat aware of the vast differences between UNIVERSAL health care as practised in just about the entire remainder of the western world, and just plain healthcare policies, as carried out by the mostly voracious U.S. insurance industry.
What “just plain healthcare policies” are you referring to? I don’t know why you’re having so much trouble grasping the point: The evidence indicates that if health insurance coverage were extended from the current 85% of the U.S. population to 100% of the population, it would have little effect on the rate of bankruptcy. Health insurance simply doesn’t have much effect on the risk of going broke.
Perhaps what you’re now trying to claim is that the quality of health care provided under private health insurance in the U.S. is inferior to the quality of health care provided by the health care systems of other countries. I’d really like to know what evidence you think you have to support that claim, since the evidence I have seen suggests that U.S. private health insurance generally provides much BETTER coverage than the health care systems of other countries. In Canada and Britain, for example, long waits for non-emergency surgery are common. Also, many drugs and therapies that are covered by American private insurance plans are simply not available in Britain and Canada, because their health care systems have decided that they’re too expensive.
Michael Moore documented the differences between health care in the United States and that in several other countries, including Canada, England, France, and Cuba. The individuals he interviewed in those countries, many expatriates from the United States, were very enthusiastic about what is derisively referred to as “socialised medicine” here. http://www.amazon.com/Sicko-Special-Michael-Moore/dp/B000UNYJXQ/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1342749757&sr=1-2&keywords=Sicko
I think the idea that Michael Moore is a reliable and impartial source of information about health care is ludicrous.
There is a documentary about our dysfunctional health care system called “The Vampires of Daylight!!”, and sub-titled “Driving a stake through the heart of the health insurance corporations.” http://thevampiresofdaylight.com It is mostly interviews with people who have had up close and personal experiences with health care in the United States.
In reply to Gary W:
Did you not notice the part where the bankruptcy is caused by medical debt? The very thing that comprehensive health insurance would prevent?
Lousy insurance that doesn’t cover the bills is not to be compared with proper insurance (which ACA goes a long way towards mandating) that does.
Not that I expect this little comment to change your mind. You’ve demonstrated a remarkable ability to ignore the fact that you’ve been proven wrong, one which I doubt I have the ability to handicap.
Did you not notice the part where the bankruptcy is caused by medical debt? The very thing that comprehensive health insurance would prevent?
No, I didn’t notice that because it’s not there. For the third time, the study found that “health insurance offers little protection” against bankruptcy. So extending health insurance to the 15% of the population that doesn’t already have it would do very little to reduce the rate of bankruptcy.
That is, more or less, Coyne’s hypothesis.
The Netherlands never had an established church in the sense of England, Sweden or Denmark, and has lots of protestant churches with very varying beliefs. This amount of comptetion between churches has not led to an extremely high level of religiosity. Moreover, England, despite having an established church as well as a number of competitors, is not very religious either.
As a typical American, Posner forgets social democracy in shaping people’s sense of security in life, and consequent attitude to religion.
Or at least social medicine, see Michael Fisher’s comment or Hans Rosling’s data on social wellbeing (correlates with Gini index, democracy and social medicine).
In explaining the high religiosity of Americans, I wouldn’t completely write off the mere idiosyncracies of history. I do think, however, the social and economic insecurity is a pretty strong factor.
“But it is unclear whether this is cause or consequence of the greater religiosity of Americans compared to Europeans.”
And therein lies the fallacy of this thinking. Religiosity, rejection of evolutionary science and acceptance of all things superstitious stem from the very same source: IGNORANCE.
But, when you combine ignorance with prevalent social conditions such as drug addition, mental and emotional instability (10% of our population are certified psychotics) and the like, increased Talibanista-style religiosity is all but a foregone conclusion.
Why is this so hard to grasp for so many to grasp
?
No it’s not ignorance. Ignorance is curable by information. But these people reject evolution, remain religious, remain superstitious despite being given information. The cause is much more tragic (innate inability for critical thinking) or much more sinister (a helpless mind so thoroughly infected by the faith virus complex).
You’re absolutely correct, of course. That’s what I refer to as “ignorance.”
This is a complex subject with no easy answers but I would like to throw another consideration into the mix. We, on this side of the Pond, tend to forget just how young a country America is and that the pioneer mentality is almost a matter of living memory. I am in my latish sixties and have relatives and friends in the US of a similar age. My great grandfather on my father’s side was born in 1862 and died in 1953. I remember him. People of a similar age in parts of the States will have had great grandparents who were Homesteaders or may have participated in Indian Wars or have lived through the restructuring of the South after the Civil War. I can appreciate, although hardly understand, the closeness to God such people will ahve felt isolated in small settlements in an often hostile terrain. I know one gentleman in Oklahoma who is in his late 70’s whose grandfather moved to the Cimmaron Strip in 1910 or thereabouts. I think folk memory will longer for a couple of generations yet.
And why does exactly what you say not apply to Canada and Australia? They are ‘newer’.
One response would be that it does: but the populations of Canada and Australia in, say, 1900 were so small compared to the population of the US that there aren’t enough old-timers around to have much effect on folk memory. I don’t know the exact figures, but substantially less than a quarter of current Australian families would have been established here one hundred years ago or more.
I may have told you this little story before, but in this context it bears repeating: years ago, my Ango-Hungarian friends Anni and Rudi were visiting New York. I was taking them around everywhere and having a terrific time.
Down in the court district, always a favorite of mine since I was then working for lawyers and spent a lot of time in and out of our beautiful courthouses, somehow the subject of David Koresh came up. (Probably because Waco was in the news then.) We were, I remember, standing on the Supreme Court steps right then, as I was musing upon psychotic self-defined religious cults in America.
“Do you have these crazy people in England?” I asked.
“No,” Anni said crispy. “We sent them all over to you!”
Well, I think there’s more than a grain of truth in that. Weren’t many of the early settlers from Europe the ones that had the most extreme religious views and couldn’t tolerate a society that enforced secularism (a response to a history of interfaith conflict)? Wasn’t there a lot of strife between religions in the early/proto-USA?
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Far less strife I suspect than in the contemporary european kingdoms. It was a problem that was not allowed to develop since Madison and others introduced the first 10 amendments to the constitution and good religious people have been fighting ever since to prevent the state from endorsing an official religion.
Mostly irrelevant to this thread, but the “little story” reminds me of one I have about a person (well known to me—this is true!) from England, staying in a U.S. motel on a Saturday night, which was opposite a so-called “Redemption Center”. On Sunday morning, she noticed the few people who entered seemed to leave awfully quickly for having attended any kind of service designed to help them plead with jebus to redeem them. Later the motel clerk was able to set her straight about the terminology related to bottle recycling.
>>there is a much greater likelihood of a given individual’s finding a religious sect that is to his liking in the United States than in Europe
This analysis is lazy and stupid. Clearly they did not even reflect on the fact that religion is not even a choice, you get infected by whatever religion your parents have or else by whatever religion the infectious evangelist you happen to have been in contact with. “Liking” your religion is all justification after the fact.
And btw, there are numerous counter-examples of countries with state religion (no competition) and high religiosity.
Considering that the authors are at the University of Chicago, it is unsurprising that they treat everything as a commodity freely traded in an open market. I suppose the working assumption is that switching religions is a costless transaction.
Hmmm… I’m not familiar with the University of Chicago insinuation here…
Presumably a reference to the Chicago School of economic thought.
and sub.
I originally thought these “sub” posts were a way to get subscribed to the thread and get notifications, but this post appears to disprove that hypothesis.
You were right the first time. “And sub” is useful if you forget the check box on the original comment.
I doubt that there’s a simple answer. I offer the thought that population density in people per square mile (as others have said) is part of it, but population clustering (number of clustered habitations surrounded by empty space) is too.
I think that the east coast tends to have higher population density and more towns than the centre of the USA (does anyone have numbers to back up my supposition?). The west cost also has a higher density and clustering.
In the middle you have relatively isolated communities with strong social networks (pioneer style). Strong social networks reinforce the characteristics and beliefs of people in those networks… so if you don’t believe in the Almighty you are way out on your own and under great pressure to conform.
In my part of the world we debate whether the population of 10,000 is too big to still be called a village. The USA has many ‘cities’ with fewer residents that. Just saying.
You calling us a bunch of hicks?
“If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I think we can agree that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”
Douglas Adams.
I apologise for the vague reference but in support of Jerry’s position I’m sure I read of a recent report that broke American religiosity down into separate states and in doing so found that the states with the highest religiosity also tended to have the highest levels of societal dysfunction, poverty, rich and poor gap etc etc. Again, I apologise as I have no idea where I read about the report so can’t link to it (perhaps someone else can?) but considering the US is such a big place I do think that investigating the similarities and disparities between different states may help shed some light on the (rather curious in my view) question of high religiosity.
Good catch. Not a report, but a study of biologist Harry Roy, WEIT commenter is what I got.
Enjoy!
Thank you! That was exactly what I was referring to. I didn’t realise it was actually from Jerry’s blog but I definitely recognise the map. Thanks very much for the clarification 🙂
Maybe some european states simply have a much better educational system? Educators in the US have been saying for over 60 years that things are going down the crapper. Perhaps the US does alright despite a generally poor public education due to the sheer size of the population, but that can’t go on indefinitely.
Not too long ago, the US had the best system of higher education in the world, anchored by the various state universities. We are in the process of discarding that advantage by the public universities becoming hard to distinguish, relative to their charges to students, from the private universities. As an example, my alma mater, UC Berkeley is becoming hard to distinguish from Stanford relative to costs. This was not true when I was a student a million years ago.
You find $11,000 and $40,000 difficult to distinguish? The fact of the matter is that the largest cost for public university students is housing, not university fees.
When I attended the University of Wisconsin back in the Dark Ages, tuition was $150 for a semester. More recently, my son graduated from a UW System University many, many thousands of dollars in debt. It would have been far more expensive if he hadn’t been able to live at home. Canadian Universities were a better value for us, even as “foreigners”, and our daughter took a degree there as a result.
America is more religious than Europe because Americans are more religious than Europeans. Besides a large population of blacks and Hispanics, America is also a home to ex-Europeans who didn’t succeed in their home country and left to find a better life in America.
Now, the majority of people who were successful in Europe had a little need to emigrate their countries. The reason why they were successful was probably because they were on average more intelligent (and probably healthier, better educated, more attractive and less religious). America got the worse of Europe; this would also explain why Americans are fatter than Europeans.
Things in America only changed when it began to receive “the best of Europe” during the past century (the Jews, for example).
America is more religious than Europe because its people are more likely to be genetically predisposed to be religious.
But you are completely dismissing the weeding out as in the Great American Story. =D
Actually, there is some truth in that it took initiative and sometimes innate resources (and luck) to migrate.
More generally, the predisposition to religion is another possible factor, but it isn’t well researched. The insecurity/dysfunctionality vs religiosity is.
Don’t confuse correlation for causation. People are religious AND poor because in most cases they are not adequately intelligent to know any better.
“perhaps there is some credibility to the competition theory,”
Some of the founding fathers offered that as an argument for their peers to support freedom of religion, so it’s not a new idea.
Here are the top 10 states in income inequality:
10. Massachusetts
9. Illinois
8. Georgia
7. Florida
6. Mississippi
5. Alabama
4. Louisiana
3. Texas
2. Connecticut
1. New York
I don’t see much correlation between this list and religiosity. Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut and New York are not exactly famous for being religious. What gives these low-religiosity states a high level of income inequality is not that they have a lot of very poor people (they don’t) but that they have a lot of rich people. In contrast, the high-religiosity states on the list (Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, etc.) do have a lot of poor people. This again suggests that what matters for the level of religiosity is *poverty* (and the associated social dysfunction), not mere inequality. This is also consistent with the evidence of declining religiosity at the national level in the face of rising inequality at the national level. Most of that rise in inequality has been a matter of more wealth at the top, not more poverty at the bottom.
Very interesting points you make there. I’m from the UK and the growing gap between rich and poor has long been highlighted and yet religiosity has remained in decline. This also supports your argument. So perhaps income inequality isn’t that much of an influence. In which case I’m happy to retract my earlier reference to it as it seems that other factors such as poverty, societal dysfunction etc are far more important variables.
Isn’t religiosity just a form of societal dysfunction?
I thought Posner regarded everything as being due to competition
“It does seem also that Americans are more credulous on average than Europeans—less matter of fact, less inclined to accept the authority of science”
It’s a bit odd to say that they are more credulous, and then say that they are less likely to believe scientists.
From the Free Online dictionary: “Disposed to believe too readily; gullible”. Therefore more inclined to believe what they want to believe, regardless of empirical evidence.
American history (though much mythologized and rewritten with each generation) has some answers. East Coast school children are proudly taught that the original 13 colonies were a haven for religious extremists (the “Pilgrim Fathers”, Puritans, Shakers, Quakers, etc.). Additional Protestant groups (white and black) developed in the South and Midwest as those frontiers expanded; some of these existed only in one or two states and others became mainstream sects. Then there are the Mormons, the Southwest with its Mexican Catholic influence, New Orleans Voodoo, and several waves of immigration that brought even more religious diversity. Everywhere you look in the U.S., there are small religious enclaves that are uniquely American, and many of them have made significant contributions to American folk music, language idioms, etc. This is a process that began with the founding of the country and continues to this day. I’m not defending any of it, only saying that it’s impossible to be an American and not be aware of at least some of this, and to feel its influence – even if your reaction is to reject it all.
American willful ignorance and superstition aren’t limited to the evolution question, or to the science/religion issue in general. Politicians have always taken advantage of American magical thinking. They subsidized the 19th century railroads and much of Western expansion with “rain follows the plough”. People STILL believe that if they just bring in the cows, lush range grasses will magically appear, even in the desert or on bare rock. It doesn’t matter that we have two hundred years of evidence to the contrary – this myth persists and is heavily subsidized at every level.
A rejection of “eddycayshun” also seems to be left over from the frontier days, especially in the mountain West where the boom/bust, greed-is-good mentality still reigns. If public education wasn’t mandatory, how many American families would send their children to school? I’ve lived in two states where the percentage of adults who are completely illiterate (can’t write their names) is about 25%, and another unknown percentage are functionally illiterate and struggle with reading on the job etc.
As for the relationship between income and religion, remember that a great many hardcore evangelicals are college educated and comfortably middle-class.
It seems universal health care and education figure in good measure with a decline in religiosity. Phil Zuckermen alluded to this in his research in the Scandinavian countries. Remove some of the immediate existential concerns from people’s lives, which governments are quite capable of doing, [and could be robustly argued should be doing] particularly the children, such as health and education, and people seem far less worried about disparity in incomes.
Well, maybe it’s a superficial idea, but I can’t say it isn’t one I haven’t thought of, based on someone I’m acquainted with. She was raised RC, rejected that, but instead of rejecting the whole concept, she embarked on a quest to find a religion she could follow, including Hindu, etc, and it gave me to wonder whether she might have just dumped all thought of religion if she’d been in a place where it was either the RC’s or nothing.
So, as a possibly useful statistic in this argument, what are the numbers on % of religious folk in the US who have switched religion. Not just changed from one Methodist church to another when they move, but a wholesale switch. If that % plus the % atheists in the US gets close to the average % atheist in Europe, that might arguably provide support for the contention.
According to the Pew Forum, about half of all Americans change their religion, leaving their religion of childhood, and many of them do it more than once.
As a very young, and rich country, US hasn’t yet experienced the problems with church and state.
However, the practical effect/benefits are that people selling-preaching magic make a lot of money. Deepak Chopra as an example, Repub party, Catholic hierarchies, Pastors, etc..
The competition answer does have some weight. After all, psychologically speaking, it’s likely that Mormonism and Christianity, among other religions, initially attracted disgruntled adherents from other religions, contributing greatly to their growth (the Romans in particular were interested in sampling a variety of eastern religions).
But as a true “marketplace of religion”, the explanation falters somewhat. Let’s be clear: what we are talking about are different forms of Christianity. If people were soberly choosing the religion that suits them best, then why wouldn’t more of them pick Hinduism or Islam? After all, Hinduism is apparently good enough for millions of Indians. Islam is good enough for millions of Indonesians and Egyptians. Instead, people are choosing mere gradients of the same thing in the fine doctrinal grain of scripture. In other words, they are choosing between such minor points as the place of women within the church, or the ability to speak in tongues, or the act of communion. Some people might go so far as to deny the existence of eternal punishment in hell, but it usually doesn’t get too radical.
Maybe the capacity to switch between different doctrines keeps the faithful relatively mollified, but I think that we’re only talking about a small percentage of people who, in a crisis of faith, abandon their denomination or sect for another. That kind of thing is probably determined more by circumstances: where were you born, or where do you live. On the other hand, I think that the “social dysfunction” explanation has a lot more explanatory power.
In his book God is Dead: Secularization in the West, British sociologist Steve Bruce argues that there are two main reasons why secularization has been slower in the U.S. than in Europe and the other English-speaking countries:
1. High levels of immigration of religious migrants.
2. A much more decentralized and populist political system. This has allowed religious communities to more successfully preserve their values and resist secularizing influences. In the U.S., there are many more elected public offices, so religious communities can pack local government, including powerful institutions like town councils, school boards and the judiciary, with people who reflect their values. There is also a vast array of Christian schools, Christian universities, Christian radio and TV channels, Christian newspapers and magazines, Christian businesses, Christian social services, Christian vacation resorts, Christian theme parks, etc. In Europe, government, education, law and media tend to be much more centralized and much more subject to influence by secular national elites.
Two problems with that argument jump out. The first, as some other commenters have pointed out, is us Australians.
The second is the argument that Europeans are more inclined to lie down and accept the authority of science. um … GM food anyone? Huge ‘Frakenfood’ kerfuffle in Europe, where the public really didn’t trust the scientists, whereas the technology was allowed to be used and integrated into the food chain with relatively little fuss in the US.
Why is Australia a problem for the argument? From what I understand, Australian government, political culture, education, law, media etc. much more closely resemble those of Britain than the U.S. The country has a high proportion of immigrants, but until recently the vast majority of them were from Britain and other relatively secular European countries. When I was in Australia the culture felt very British to me.
I don’t understand your second point at all. You say that Europeans are more willing to defer to scientific authority, but then cite public controversy over GM foods, which as you say has been much more intense in Europe than in the U.S.
Wow that is the most historically ignorant commentary I have ever seen. They don’t even consider these social factors:
Missionaries carrying fundamentalism to rural communities via traveling tent circuses, I mean revivals, which were almost the only entertainment the locals had in the sparsely-populated Midwest in the 19th Century.
Slavery forced Christianity on millions of people whose only relief from backbreaking work was their weekly “meeting.” In an environment where friends and family could be split up at any moment the church became extremely important. A psychological bonus was the parallel story of enslavement and subsequent jubilee in the Bible, which gave hope and consolation to people who had nothing.
Protestant religion being imposed on school children, making the local Catholic churches feel they had to open schools to protect the immigrant kids (especially Irish) from prejudice, persecution and heresy.
Immigrants who didn’t learn English were able to stay connected to their community through their church with its native language. I grew up in a city that had churches that spoke almost every Eastern European language. When your church is your connection to the old country you will be more religious than the people you left behind in the old country. People who are second- and third-generation would still be “active” in their church and presumably more religious as well. (According to a Serbian friend, the main activity in the Serbian Orthodox church was bowling)
Prevalence of congregationalist style denominations, in which the congregation is hired by the elders of the church depending on whether they say what the elders want to hear. Naturally, the elders want to hear that their brand of insanity is better than everybody else’s. These churches can splinter off indefinitely as a charismatic pastor can set up his own cult if half the congregation decides they don’t like him. (Case in point: http://www.wlox.com/story/18947337/mid-south-woman-accused-of-hitting-pastor-in-the-head-with-a-bible)
Legality of crazyass cults means they can grow to be a “religion” like Mormonism, but like any cult, they have more mind control tactics, which leads to more “religiosity,” if you can call brainwashing religiosity.
Plausible points.
I find it curious that Judge Posner is increasingly portrayed in the media, also over here in Europe, as one of the leading legal lights of the US, and as one of the most “enlightened” conservative judges. This may be true in relative terms, for all I know, but if true, it does not reflect too well on the American legal landscape.
The real question Judge Posner should have asked:
“Why is America, the elder daughter of the Enlightenment, divorcing herself from the Age of Reason?”
Only loosely related to the topic, but still I’m reasonably confident that our peerless leader will appreciate it:
http://www.gocomics.com/frankandernest/2012/07/17/
*groan*
Yes, the theory seems flimsy to me… I think the issue is vast, and it seems, while income inequality and education play a part, there are probably other factors influencing America’s religiosity. It baffles me too.
I think comment #4 on Canada is correct. Canada is close enough in culture and land, and the difference in religiosity is quite puzzling. I know someone said something about Canada being less populated (but the many religious places in the US are sparsely populated, i.e. the Mid-West) or too “recent” of a country (we had settlers at the same time, it just wasn’t called Canada at the time).
People here don’t believe me when I tell them that some people are ostracized in the US for being openly atheists. That’s why I keep in touch with the community here; I want to make sure this intolerance to skepticism doesn’t infect the north.
Canada never had slavery or an influx of Irish immigrants
Strictly speaking, neither of those statements is correct.
But in this context, the point about slavery is essentially correct.
On the other hand, the lack of slavery at points further north on the continent undoubtedly had more to do with the impracticality of slavery there, than any ‘moral superiority’.
Big influx of Irish into mostly Quebec in the 1840s and 50s. They were largely accepted into the Francophone Catholic society, somehow it was less threatening than mainly Protestant English Canada. Lots of Johnsons and Blackburns and Kennedys and many other Irish names in Quebec to this day.
Irish labourers built the Rideau Canal in the 1830s.
Becker & Posner: ‘But it is unclear whether this is cause or consequence of the greater religiosity of Americans compared to Europeans. What seems more clearly causal is Americans’ individualism and spirit of independence.’
This little recitation of an American myth strikes me as mere chauvinistic wishful thinking. The Americans I know do not seem more ‘individualistic’ or ‘independent’ than many people of other nationalities I know. And what is individualistic or independent about joining some religious group – particularly when, as it seems, there are strong social pressures to join a church in many parts of the States, and sanctions (not necessarily overt) if you don’t?
Becker and Posner should, as scholars, back up their assertions and not reach for easy myths.
What’s individualistic or independent about being the brainwashed victim of a crazy fanatical denomination?
Because it’s MY crazy denomination, chosen by me. In a sense, suicide is individualistic and independent.
My understanding of Posner has been of an (amateur) economist in the mould of Milton Freidman/Gregory Mankiw… the type that have never heard of a tax they liked. They are lucid enough to acknowledge John Maynard Keynes work is a bedrock of economics, and that the traditional Chicago school of economics has taken a sound beating among economics cognoscenti. They may also be sober enough to know high inequality (with exceptions) makes for a less efficient market system and comes attached with undesirable social outcomes. That much cannot be disputed. The rest of their intellect is afflicted by something much more damaging to the human condition than a low I.Q.: a predilection for conservatism. It reeks of David Brooks of the Times. They have polished their writing skills and can dot their i’s and cross their t’s. But something about conservatism inhibits the mind to escape entrenched mores of society. It discourages one from compensating for a host of cognitive and perception pitfalls. Mental effort instead is channeled to build tall walls of compartmentalization. Compelling contrary evidence is easily sidelined or devalued. Everything leads to mollifying an emotional state in the service of a baseline norm – tribal affiliation, traditions, and ideology. Posner’s views, as ridiculous as they are, ought to astound no one. Given religion is essentially one’s own big superstition, the logical gymnastics Posner goes through are funny. There is something almost pathological about a mind in which there is no space to wedge the idea that God, religion, voodoo, and a witch on a broomstick are all somewhat synonymous. Hilarity ensues when you posit tortured free market competition explanations for a dearth of stupid iron age superstitions in a modern society.
France: no established church since 1905; low religiosity.
Saudi Arabia: no comment.
Two thoughts from a foreign graduate student at Berkeley in the 1960s:
1. I always wondered about which way the causal relationship went between US religiosity and the fact that US citizens could not escape continual political rhetoric about `godless communism’. Atheism
was the enemy then!
2. I always wondered about a possible connection between what seemed to me a general literal mindedness and creationism. I couldn’t help thinking that an anglican vicar would have had an education full of the study of poetry (distinct from verse), the essence of which is non-literal communication. I wondered if a southern preacher would have had a similar education?
In connection with point 2, I have an 19th century book by an Irish academic at a catholic university who strongly makes the point about the non-literal communication of the bible. 19th century accommodationism. His starting point was that the evidence for a very old Earth was undeniable.
I think our religiosity preceded the Cold War, but it is clear that the Cold War added fuel to that fire. It was during the Cold War that we put “In God We Trust” on our money and “One nation under God” in the Pledge. Religious people had been trying to do that for ages and met with resistance, but no one wanted to be associated with “godless communism” so it finally happened during the 1950’s.
I think there is some truth to your second point also. Much religion in America is decentralized and entrepreneurial, with the result that a large number of churches are headed by preachers with a truly pitiful amount of education. Obviously this is not always the case, but it is often enough the case that I feel sure it plays a part in the general dumbing down of the whole enterprise. The sect I grew up in had no official ordination process for preachers. Anyone who could convince a local church that they had the ability could be hired to be a preacher. Some had college education, some studied theology or some such, a great many simply went to a “preaching school” for a few months, and some had no training whatsoever, they just absorbed the spiel and had some charisma. I shudder, thinking back, on the ignorant men that, as a child, were put in front as authorities on life.
Correction: Apparently “In God We Trust” was on the coins since 1864. So much for that idea. But it was on paper money only since 1957. “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. So at least I got that right.
And it wasn’t until the 1950s that “In God We Trust” became the official motto; until then, “E pluribus Unum” was our unofficial motto. So we went from celebrating inclusiveness to celebrating divisiveness.
Ironically, it was added in 1864 partly a slap at bible-bangers. “You want more God in government? Here, we’ll put his name on filthy lucre.”
Jerry – Sorry, nothing to do with this post, but I’ve just read a fascinating book by Jim Holt that I’d be interested to hear your take on. It’s called ‘Why does the world exist?’ and it does what it says on the tin (he doesn’t provide a definitive answer of course).
Why isn’t this discussion more about whether the departments at U. Chicago housing “…an economist …and …. a legal scholar and jurist…” have something of a reputation problem. That they are way off-base on this topic seems little disputed here (and elsewhere, I hope). Perhaps it will be necessary for that renowned institution, high in my affections, to bundle the law school and the economics department into a separate faculty, including also theology of course, called the Faculty of Woology.
I have been under the impression that a large amount of religiosity in the US was cultivated during the post WWII cold war with the USSR. There was a lot of emphasis placed on how the communists were godless compared to the democratic US, and being a “god-fearing American” was closely knit together with American identity. This also bound religion more tightly with the state, resulting in such nonsense as putting god on the money and editing god into the pledge of allegiance. Being afraid of nuclear annihilation, Americans rallied around religion, and religion began to take advantage of federal state power to increase its influence.
I have no hard statistics to back this up, however. I am not quite up to the task of finding out how rates of religiosity changed pre and post WWII. I welcome correction.
This does seem fairly sensible to me, but again it would be a problem to understand how that did not apply to Canada as well, and perhaps also Australia.
On the latter point, I don’t suppose too many Australians in the old days took much comfort from “On The Beach” (IIRC, Nevil Schute’s old and probably somewhat scientifically inaccurate book). There, the Australians got an extra few months before being wiped out by radiation sickness from H-bombs, ‘joining’ the rest of humanity.
Good point. I am not sure why America in particular responded with such pointed religious fervor while other countries did not. Perhaps our conflict with the USSR was more direct, making US cites more likely for destruction in the event of an actual nuclear war. It is hard to determine if American fear was greater that other countries. I cannot say what made the US stay on its religious path of government for so long while similar countries never took it up as strongly.
If politics gets its way we will have a theocracy then Posner’s hypothesis affords us some hope. The result will be that we will have a fat and flabby god who is unable to compete. This would be a great extinction I could look forward to.
Post war America invented lots of ways to sell questionable products (TV, door to door, pyramid selling). Your proliferation of independent churches took advantage of these techniques. The established churches in most of europe kept a much lower profile. Notable exceptions were Ireland, Spain and Portugal. They have now joined the european mainstream as well.
…actually, Asimov had an essay somewhat suggesting something on those lines.
That essay is very good, but nothing at all about religion in it as far as I can see.
Show an economist a social problem and he’ll devise an economic explanation for it.
“We’re # 1!” Maybe ’cause so many religious groups floated over here to “avoid persecution” back home, infecting the populace here with their nonsense.
I don’t really understand why a different constitutional setup in the late 18th century affected levels of religiosity more in the 20th and 21st than in the 19th (when the US, western Europe, Oz and Canada all had similar levels of godbotheriness). But I am neither an economist nor a jurist, so what do I know of sociology?
Our government IS funding one specific religion, but where no one can see.
Karen Severson, Hope Rippey and other violent offenders were released early because they are white, female, and “Born Again” while incarcerated. Research “Prison Fellowship Ministries”, they are in hundreds of prisons under different sects and subsidized with tax dollars. They only help Christian prisoners and have been sued for this because of the tax subsidize.
They were started by Nixon aid Chuck Colson…the guy who wanted to plant bombs around where the Vietnam protesters would gather…and he was a good Christian at the time, just thought he had that right because God spoke to him personally. Many have wrote that Colson still uses his dirty tricks only for a different cause. They now have an army of internet stalkers entering forums to harass people who speak out about the injustice of these violent offenders being released early. And probably use tax dollars to pay them.
Hope Rippey was involved with the kidnapping torture and murder (by burning alive) of 12-year-old Shanda Sharer. Sentenced to 50 years, served only 14 after entering one of the Christian run programs. Her partner in this crime, Melinda Loveless attempted an early release one year after Hope and no one knows who paid for her lawyer.
Karen Severson lured her best friend Missy Avila to a secluded location than beat and drowned her with friend Laura Doyle. Karen received 15 to life but only served 15 years. Thanks to her “Born Again” ministry connections.
Using the prisons as a recruiting farm at taxpayer’s expense. I like most have no argument against rehabilitation but these people will ignore even the least violent offender if they do not join their cult. They especially search out high profile violent offenders and once converted will use all their resources to release them, and help them afterwards. They believe that if they save the worst of the worst they will receive a better status in the lords eyes…actually a very selfish thought process. They will put much effort into degrading the victim as well to give their inmate a “just cause” for the crime.
Christians my ass…
Religion is also a convenient scapegoat: “It wasn’t me – it was God’s will,” as Florida murderer George Zimmerman explains in this article:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/18/545791/george-zimmerman-says-he-regrets-nothing/?mobile=nc
One thing that I’ve found fascinating in recent years is the research indicating that American church attendance is actually highly exaggerated.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/12/god-church-attendance-/1#.UAg7iWlrMhw
The analysis is pretty fascinating, though I think his interpretation of why people exaggerate their attendance is far too charitable.
I find myself wondering if this is the case for all sorts of other questions regarding religion and belief. At the end of the article, in mentions that 65% of Americans say that religion is ‘very important to their lives’.
America is a nation of relatively high religiosity as far as self identification goes. But the more cynical side of me can’t help but think of all the religious people I’ve encountered who are…well…not very religious in any real, meaningful sense.
WordPress is being disagreeable this afternoon. Apologies is this is a double comment.
One thing that I’ve found fascinating in recent years is the research indicating that American church attendance is actually highly exaggerated.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/12/god-church-attendance-/1#.UAg7iWlrMhw
The analysis is pretty fascinating, though I think his interpretation of why people exaggerate their attendance is far too charitable.
I find myself wondering if this is the case for all sorts of other questions regarding religion and belief. At the end of the article, in mentions that 65% of Americans say that religion is ‘very important to their lives’.
America is a nation of relatively high religiosity as far as self identification goes. But the more cynical side of me can’t help but think of all the religious people I’ve encountered who are…well…not very religious in any real, meaningful sense.
It isn’t just religion that people are losing faith in: See PEW STUDY FINDS STEEP DECLINES IN FAITH IN POLITICS & CAPITALISM
http://sweetandsoursocialism.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/pew-study-finds-steep-declines-in-faith-in-politicians-and-capitalism-spiegel-online/
The three are rather tied up with one another these days, at least here in the USandA.
If I correctly recall, Max Weber rhetorically asked, “Is God a capitalist?”.
Did he or anyone ever seriously attempt to answer that question? I’m particularly interested in the rational justifications of those who have presumed to answer “Yes.”
In the early 70s Marjoe Gortner, an evangelist since he was 3, made a documentary about the Pentecostal evangelical “movement.” He had lost his religion, and wanted to expose it once and for all so he wouldn’t be tempted to fall back on it just for the bucks of it. There is footage of other evangelists preaching the gospel of wealth and avarice, but all in the name of God and Jesus. I don’t remember if any of the evangelists specifically said God was a capitalist, but they sure acted as if that was what life was all about. The pie in the sky was for the sheep they were fleecing: The here and now wealth was for them. http://www.amazon.com/Marjoe-Thoth-Gortner/dp/B000CCW2VG/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1342827199&sr=1-1&keywords=marjoe
It is well established that the average American is far more ignorant than our European counterparts. Ignorance is fertile ground for irrational propaganda to flourish.