Category: surveys

Saturday: Hili dialogue

June 22, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to CaturSaturday, June 22, 2024, cat shabbos (no turning on lights!) and National Onion Rings Day. I’d eat these instead of fries any day, but most places don’t give you very many rings in an order. This video will tell you where to get the best fast-food onion rings. (Spoiler: it’s Culver’s.)

It’s also National Chocolate Eclair Day, World Rainforest Day, Father’s Day in Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and Jersey, and Windrush Day in the UK (look it up).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 22 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*GLORY BE!  The Supreme Court has made another decision, but a sensible one—with an 8-1 vote.  Domestic abusers can be denied guns!

An 8-1 Supreme Court upheld a federal law that forbids domestic abusers from possessing guns, ruling Friday that the Second Amendment permits temporarily disarming people found to pose a threat to others.

The case was the first major test of the conservative majority’s new approach to gun rights, laid out in a 2022 opinion declaring that weapons regulations can pass muster only if they are analogous to those familiar to Americans of the founding era some 250 years ago. While some lower courts have since demanded strict analogues of 18th-century laws for modern regulations to survive constitutional scrutiny, Friday’s decision showed the justices willing to give more leeway for legislators to address gun violence today.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that while gun laws must be consistent with historical examples, it was a mistake to conclude that weapons regulations must be “trapped in amber.” For centuries, he wrote, English and American law had permitted disarming people judged as threats to public safety.

“The Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791,” Roberts wrote.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the 2022 opinion expanding Second Amendment protections, dissented. “Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue,” he said.

. . . The ruling reverses a federal appeals court in New Orleans that invalidated a 1994 federal law denying firearms to people under domestic-violence restraining orders. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reasoned that such measures were unknown in the founding era.

Yep, Thomas is an originalist, so naturally he’s the sole dissenter. But I’m heartened with Roberts’s opinion that we don’t have to go all the way back to the Founding Times to adjudicate gun rights.  I think Roberts really wants the Court to be less policitized and more sensible, but people like Thomas and Alito won’t let that happen. (I heard last night on the news that Sotomayor noted that the chances of someone living with a domestic abuser having a gun, and being killed, is five times higher than if the abuser doesn’t have a gun.

*Once again I’ll steal three items from Nellie Bowles’s weeky news summary at The Free Press. This week’s column is called “TGIF: Cheap fakes.”

→ Hell yeah, Congress: The Senate just overwhelmingly approved new pro–nuclear power legislation on Tuesday, with a vote of 88–2. Who are the two? Just two senators who hate the idea of copious clean nuclear energy and want us to stay on dirty coal so that the Extinction Rebellion kids can keep protesting by gluing their hands to our commuter thoroughfares. Logical. Simple. Yes, the two holdouts are Senators Ed Markey, and—you guessed it—Bernie Sanders. But let’s focus on the bright side: our Senate just did something bipartisan, functional, and pro-progress. We love to see it.

The bill does a number of things, like streamlining the permit process, cutting costs for developers, and opening to new technology like small modular nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, protesting climate change or something, Just Stop Oil folks this week are spraying Stonehenge with orange powder. And honestly, it looks cool. Painting Stonehenge is not a bad idea. Especially if you want some angry Anglo-Saxon deity (oh my god it’s my dad! He wants to read Beowulf to you, and for you to get your elbows off the table!) to haunt you and your descendants.

And OMG:

→ Candace Owens comes out against World War II: Candace Owens, a star conservative commentator now building her own media company, argues that it was a mistake for the U.S. to enter World War II. When a journalist asks to confirm this, saying: “So, you think that America shouldn’t have gone into that second world war?” Candace replies: “Yeah, and that is a radical statement. People don’t know how to deal with that because we’ve all been so brainwashed by the school system to believe that ‘Look how great things are. . . . ’ This whole idea of international liberalism—now it’s not just about your problems, it’s about solving the world’s problems. Let’s make sure that in Pakistan there’s a trans flag waving. No.” So, England should have fallen to the Nazis. Because otherwise we get The Trans Flag. This is where the new right is at. They believe World War II was a mistake; the Nazis would have been fine controlling Europe, which is none of our business anyway; and when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor we should have said, “Thank you! Hawaii always seemed gay to us too! Men wearing necklaces made of flowers?!” Thanks for bravely saying what no one else will dare to, Candace.

Meanwhile, who’s Candace Owens’ new best friend, coming on the show to commiserate? None other than Briahna Joy Gray, the former press secretary for Bernie Sanders. It was inevitable they would find each other. All my favorites eventually do.

→ We must ban women from museums, out of respect: Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum has recently shelved some items away from public view in line with new policies that prioritize “cultural safety.” Hmm, what does that mean? Well, one such item is a mask made by the Igbo people of Nigeria that is not available for viewing in person or online and has been given the label must not be seen by women. I’m totally serious. See, the culture in which it was created forbade women from seeing it. It was used in male-only masquerade rituals. And that must be respected! Interesting. Well, there’s a lot of art made by devout Catholics for Catholic churches now in big museums. I don’t know if those artists would approve of, let’s say, gays on a fun date popping by to see that art after brunch. Should we hide it from the gays? I would argue most art in most museums was made by people who would be pretty pissed off by me looking at it, which is why I honor those cultures by never going to museums.

*After nine months, the University of Southern California (USC) dropped its inquiry into the nefarious behavior of a professor who called Hamas what they are: “murderers.”

In the weeks after Hamas attacked Israel in October, a confrontation between a Jewish USC professor and a group of pro-Palestinian students went viral and triggered a storm of controversy on campus.

Economics professor John Strauss told students — who were calling for a ceasefire and commemorating Palestinians slain in the war — “Hamas are murderers,” adding, “That’s all they are. Every one should be killed, and I hope they all are killed.”

Video of Strauss’ remarks spread rapidly online and led to a petition calling for the professor’s termination. More than 10 students also filed complaints against Strauss, accusing him of engaging in discrimination, harassment and fostering an unsafe environment.

This week, that long-running inquiry came to an end.

USC administrators informed Strauss on Tuesday that the case against him was closed, the complaints by students would be dismissed and that he will face no formal discipline, according to the professor and his attorney.

“I’m relieved,” Strauss said in a phone interview. “As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been fully exonerated and they’re not doing anything to punish me, and it’s over.”

His lawyer, Samantha Harris, said she was “frustrated that it took seven months to reach an obvious conclusion” that Strauss did not engage in harassment or discrimination.

“I’m nonetheless pleased that they reached the correct result,” Harris said.

Strauss meant HAMAS, not Palestinians, but this is free speech, not harassment.  Here’s the incident for which Strauss was put on administrative leave:

*Speaking of dropping charges, the Manhattan D.A. has decided to drop charges against 46 pro-Palestinian protestors arrested for criminal trespass after barricading themselves in an academic building.  (h/t Mayaan)

Dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters arrested in April after occupying and barricading a building at Columbia University in New York City had all criminal charges against them dropped on Thursday, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing.

The hearing at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse came seven weeks after Columbia administrators called in hundreds of armed and heavily armored police officers to the university’s campus in a high-profile law-enforcement response that was broadcast live on national news channels.

Police arrested 46 protesters who had barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall, and cleared a weeks-old tent encampment on a nearby Columbia lawn that has inspired similar pro-Palestinian protests at universities around the world. At least nine of the 46 protesters arrested sustained injuries beyond minor scrapes and bruises, according to medical records, photographs shared by protesters, and interviews.

All 46 protesters, who were arrested on the night of April 30 about 20 hours after taking over the academic building, were initially charged with trespass in the third degree, a misdemeanor.

Stephen Millan, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told the court on Thursday his office would not prosecute 30 protesters who were Columbia students at the time of the arrest, nor two who were Columbia employees, citing prosecutorial discretion and lack of evidence. A case against another student was dismissed earlier in the month.

What about the others?

Millan said protesters wore masks and covered surveillance cameras, and there was insufficient evidence to show that any individual defendant damaged property or injured anyone. No police officers were injured during the arrests, the prosecutor noted. None of the arrested students had any prior criminal history, and all were facing disciplinary proceedings, including suspensions and expulsions, by Columbia.

The district attorney’s office proposed the 13 accept an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal, a provision in New York law that if accepted means the case against a defendant will be dropped and sealed in six months if they are not arrested for another offense in the interim.

All 13 rejected the offer through their lawyers, who are seeking to have those cases dismissed. The 13 are due to return to court on July 25, by which date prosecutors must decide if they are willing to proceed to a trial over the trespass charges. Another arrested protester accepted the offer earlier in June.
One other guy is going to get prosecuted because he “is charged with criminal mischief and arson for setting an Israeli flag alight prior to the takeover and for damaging a police surveillance camera in jail.”  If I were the 13 offered the adjournment-in-contemplation-of-dismissal deal, I’d take it.  But this is what I mean by lack of disciplinary action being taken against pro-Palestinian protestors: a judicial lassitude that only heartens protesters to further break the law. Time after time—and this has happened with those arrested for a sit-in at the University of Chicago—prosecutors drop charges.  Now I don’t know if the Chicago students will face university discipline, but I sure hope the Columbia students do. (Chances are they won’t.)

*Over at the Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan, for some reason, declares that he has a problem with IVF (in vitro fertilization). That surprised me, so I read on. . .

So why do I find myself balking at some aspects of in vitro fertilization, or IVF?

The subject is fresh again. Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled in February that IVF was illegal under a 1872 state law that allowed parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child. The Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution opposing IVF last week, after which the Senate Democrats tried and failed to advance a bill protecting IVF access. The Democrats are politically smart on this: IVF remains hugely popular — on right and left, and it’s a better wedge issue than even abortion. Last month, a Pew survey found 70 percent support for the view that having access to IVF is a good thing; and even 60 percent of pro-lifers support access to IVF. It is, after all, an attempt to bring new life into the world, rather than to destroy it. Last week, Gallup found that 82 percent support the morality of IVF.

So why has it always made me queasy? It is not because I believe, as the Catholic Church teaches, that every child must be conceived through the sexual intercourse of a married couple, and that anything else is a violation of God’s law:

.. .The Alabama ruling focuses on the critical fact that in order to maximize the chances of just one successful human baby, you need to create multiple embryos to beat the high odds of reproductive failure. And once you’ve succeeded in implanting one future baby, you are inevitably left with the “spare” embryos, which you can then choose to freeze for future use, or donate to someone else, or — in the delicate language deployed in most medical descriptions — “discard”.

Money quote from the decision:

The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the Act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children — that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed. Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.

The law banning abortion, in other words, also directly bans IVF for the exact same reasons. An embryo is an embryo; and all embryos are human persons, however they were conceived. I suppose you can bash the justices for this kind of judicial activism. But what choice did they have, given the law they were interpreting?

. . .A typical procedure might yield just one viable embryo from, say, 12 in vitro; or it might, in very rare cases, yield 12. But in almost every case, a handful of human embryos is left over.

And that’s the rub for me. In many cases, you’re creating new lives only to destroy them as waste. In many others, you don’t destroy them; you merely use them to beat the odds. They are quite simply a means to an end, violating a basic norm of inviolable human dignity. And these “means” are your own offspring. IVF literally requires a mother to play Sophie’s Choice several times over.

In the end, Sullivan considers IVF “wrong” because it involves the discarding of “future human beings.”  What he means is frozen embryos:  frozen, fertilized eggs that have grown in a Petri dish for about a week before they’re frozen.  They are not sentient, have no nervous system, and could become human beings only if they’re implanted in a woman. And because that won’t happen, Sullivan will deny all woman the right to have a child through IVF. He says the decision wasn’t easy for him, and I believe it. But would he make that decision if he weren’t a Catholic?

Of course I disagree with him, but if you think that a small ball of non-sentient cells has the same moral rights as a living human being, then you must believe in a soul; otherwise you’d find killing a fertilized redwood seed equivalent to cutting down a giant redwood. In other words, you’d have to labor under the delusions of religion. I, for one, would rather see a person be produced via IVF (and yes, with frozen embryos on the side) than have would-be and loving parents go childless.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Szaron are coming inside. . . well, at least Szaron appears to be:

A: Are you coming in or not?
Hili: We are considering it.
In Polish:
Ja: Wchodzicie, czy nie?
Hili: Rozważamy to.

*******************

From Cat Memes:

From Things With Faces:

From The English Language Police (a great group for pedants):

From Masih: another woman dragged away by the Iranian morality police for not properly covering her hair. Can this regime persist forever?

From Pinkah: The Atlantic goes after Harvard’s dean Bobo, who wants to censor faculty (article archived here):

From Malgorzata, who says, “a very-difficult-to-watch short interview will one of the female hostages – exchanged a few months ago for murderers”:

It this kosher? I suppose it is if you’re half asleep.

From Barry. who says “That buffalo isn’t fooling around.” Indeed, but I hope the big cat survived.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a girl gassed to death upon arrival at Auschwitz. She was thirteen.

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, still on hols.  In the first one, remember that Matthew is biased, but 100 pounds seems a bit chintzy!

Great magic!

Deconstruction of a Twitter fracas involving Ibram Kendi

October 31, 2021 • 9:15 am
The tweet by Ibram X. Kendi quoted by Hashmi and Greenwald below was later removed by Kendi.  You can see the article on The Hill to which Kendi refers here, and the original survey is here.

 

Now clearly Kendi removed it (though he denies it; see below) because it appears to show that lying about your race if you’re white improves your chances of being accepted in college. I can see no other reason for the removal, especially given the pushback he got from people like Greenwald.

However, the original survey of 1250 college students doesn’t have a control group: the percentage of students who didn’t fake minority status and still got admitted to college. You could sort of have a control by looking at the percentage of students who got into college in each of the four categories: Black, Native American, Latino, and Asian/Pacific islander. If there were huge disparities in the acceptance figures among these liars—say that those who pretended to be Black or Hispanic got in much more easily than those who pretended to be Asian/Pacific islander. Even that has problems, but would show that claiming you’re of oppressed minority status makes a difference in admission, facilitating it in the expected direction (Blacks and Hispanics are favored over Asians). But I can’t find that data.

Absent the control percentage, of students who didn’t lie and got in, you can’t make an airtight case for the advantage of lying.  I suspect, however, that fewer than 3/4 of applicants get into college. (But even that’s problematic, because the survey didn’t specify that the students got into the college of their choice, just got into a college.) All you can say is that there is a reason students lie about their ethnicity (the most common reason given was to get financial aid), and that nearly every college in the U.S. is looking for good minority students, exercising affirmative action to take them. (I am, by the way, in favor of a form of such affirmative action.)

The other thing to ponder when “deconstructing” these tweets is why Greenwald says there are “numerous obvious falsehoods” in what Kendi said.  I couldn’t see any immediately, but the second tweet below clarifies things a bit:

What Griswold means is that if one-sixth of white applicants lie about being Native Americans, and 77% of those get in, then one expects (if these results are general) about 12.8% of the truly white students in a college would be classified as Native Americans. (The true figure, of course, will be lower than this because not all students in a college are white). Still, I don’t know of any college, except perhaps ones in the Southwest, where even 5% of students are classified as Native Americans.

What this comes down to is that the data in the surveys cited by Kendi are surely bogus. That doesn’t mean that Kendi screwed up big time, because this line of reasoning takes time, and he may simply have tweeted out what he read as the headlines or bullet points in the survey or The Hill article.

Where he messed up was simply posting the tweet, probably because the data seem to go against his thesis that there is structural racism everywhere, which would predict that members of minorities don’t get preferential admission to college or financial aid. If they didn’t (and of course they do), there would be no motivation for white students to lie. In other words, the data (though they may be faulty) appear at first glance to falsify Kendi’s main thesis: there is inequity everywhere, and if you see it it reflects “structural racism” acting at the present. Everyone involved in colleges knows that this is not true for the admissions process, at least for black and Hispanic students.

In the end, though, Kendi probably did the only thing he could do: delete the tweet, for the man is loath to admit he’s wrong.  But he screwed up again when he started defending his original tweet, saying stuff like this:

Again, what we need here is a control group: a group of similar white students who didn’t lie about their ethnicity, and whether their admission rates were substantially lower than 81% (the admission figure quoted in the survey for students who lied). If there is such a difference, then Kendi is wrong.  But I suspect that lying does help one get into college or get financial aid, and students realize it (remember, over a third of  the sample lied about their ethnicity).  And if that is true, then the “tortured line of thinking” is not tortured at all.  If there is an advantage of lying, then it’s not just that you “think” you have an advantage. (That’s why Kendi deleted his original tweet.)

This is not to deny that there is structural racism in various institutions or organizations. But if a more sophisticated analysis and explanation for the data show preferential college admission of minorities, then there is no structural racism in the college admissions process.  Indeed, there, at least, it’s an advantage to be a minority.  And we know this because colleges practice affirmative action.

I suspect that Kendi’s answers reflect his being flummoxed by all this. If I were Kendi, I would have simply removed the tweet. He’d still be excoriated by people who captured the screenshot, but he’s going to get into more trouble if he tries to debate. I’ve given him some material to defend himself in this post, but there’s simply no doubt that there is no “inequity” in college admissions for blacks or Hispanics.

The tweets may reflect reasons why Kendi doesn’t engage in live debates.

Pew survey of American Democrats and their views on Biden as an “old white male”: some good news and some puzzling news

April 22, 2020 • 8:45 am

This new article by Pew Research reports a survey of American Democrats, asking them if they were bothered by the fact that the Democratic Presidential nominee (Biden of course) is “a white man in his 70s.” The results are pretty much as you expect—most people don’t care that much (especially given his opponent!), but there’s one surprising result. Click on the screenshot to read the short report:

First, as the figure below shows (it also displays the question posed to people), the people least concerned with Biden being an “old white male” are, of course, those who originally supported Biden (79% aren’t bothered). But those who backed other candidates show more concern, except those who backed Sanders—the other old white male (79% not bothered). Those who originally favored either Warren (an old white woman) or Buttigieg (a young white gay male) were, as expected, more bothered  (26% and 43% not bothered, respectively.  Overall, 59% of total Dems aren’t that bothered about Biden’s age and race.

But the good news is that regardless of whether Dems are bothered by the OWM (old white male) syndrome, they are overwhelmingly in favor of Biden when he’s put up against Trump. 89% of all Dems disapprove of the way Trump is handling his job (8% approve!), with most of the disapproval being “strong”. The disapproval is a bit stronger among those who are worried about Biden being an OWM. But there’s no difference when it comes to voting: among all Dems surveyed, 85% intend to vote for Biden or lean towards him (4% are Trump/lean Trump!), with 10% being “neither or others”. When you divide up the Dems by whether they’re concerned about Biden’s being an OWM, there’s hardly any difference between the degree to which the two groups favor Biden:

This is heartening in that it shows that Democrats have largely come together behind one candidate, even though, as I believe—many interviewees must feel the same way—that Biden is not an overwhelmingly fantastic candidate. Still, only 85% of Dems say at this point they’ll probably vote for Biden. If too many Dems stay home because they wanted Sanders or Warren to be the nominee, we’ll be screwed.

But there is one surprising result. If you break down the Democrats by race, age, gender, ideology, and education, and ask them if they’re bothered by Biden being an OWM, here’s what you get (the red box is one I’ve added):

Men and women are about the same, and, as you might expect, the younger and more educated people are more bothered by the OWM syndrome (they are more likely, I think, to be more conscious of racial equity given the climate among liberals). The difference between postgraduates on one hand and those who had some high school education but no college on the other, is huge: 58% vs 24% respectively are bothered by the fact that Biden’s an OWM.

What surprised me was the division among races. I would have expected that minorities—African-Americans and Hispanics—would have been more bothered by OWM, for no candidate represents them, though the withdrawn candidates Cory Booker and Kamala Harris identify as black. But while 49% of white Democrats are bothered by Biden being an OWM, only 28% of blacks and 30% of Hispanics are.

It’s clear, then, that white Democrats are more bothered by OWM candidates than are blacks or Hispanics.  That’s not what I expected.

Now I can make up post facto theories (which are mine) about why this is so. For instance, you could say that blacks and Hispanics, who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are so relieved that Biden got the nomination—he polls more strongly in those communities than Buttigieg, Warren, or Sanders—that they don’t much care if he’s an OWM. Or one could say that this reflects white guilt. I’ve heard that the most woke antiracists are in fact white, but until now I had no data supporting that.

Or perhaps there’s another explanation. If you have a theory which is yours, put it in the comments below.

h/t: cesar

New Pew survey shows that Americans are rapidly becoming less Christian and more secular

October 18, 2019 • 11:10 am

The Pew Organization conducted surveys for their Religious Landscape Studies in 2007 and 2014, assessing the religiosity, non-religiosity, beliefs, and churchgoing habits of Americans. They continued these surveys last year and this year, though on a more restricted scale. Nevertheless, the new Pew Survey, whose summary you can see by clicking on the screenshot below (full pdf here), heartens me, substantiating my theory (which is not mine alone) that America is becoming less religious all the time. What surprises me, as you can see in the headline below, is that the decline in the last 12 years is so fast. 

I’ll give some salient data and graphs below. First, the take-home message from the report (my emphasis):

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.

Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009. Meanwhile, all subsets of the religiously unaffiliated population – a group also known as religious “nones” – have seen their numbers swell. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up modestly but significantly from 2% in 2009; agnostics make up 5% of U.S. adults, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009. Members of non-Christian religions also have grown modestly as a share of the adult population.

I’m lumping together the atheists, agnostics, and “nothings in particulars” as “nonbelievers,” and that group has risen 9% in 9 years. While self-described atheists are at only 4%, it’s still a statistically significant rise from 2% ten years ago, and of course we know how reluctant Americans are in telephone polls like these to say they are atheists. I suspect the real number of people who don’t accept the existence of a god is much higher. Here are two plots from the survey:

I suspect, in the graph above, that “nothing in particular” pretty much means “nonreligious”, and that’s gone up 5% in just 10 years.

As in Europe, church attendance in the U.S. is dropping pretty rapidly:

The graph below shows that the secularization results not so much from people changing their minds as they age, but that each cohort becomes successively less religious than the last. Nonbelief in America spreads over the bodies of dead believers.

There are other results as well, none of them giving hope to people who think religion in America is here to stay. The “nones” have increased from 39 million in 2009 to 68 million in 2018/2019, while Christians have dropped from 178 million to 167 million over the same period. Non-Christians (Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) have increased by only 2% over the same period—from 5% to 7%.

Women remain more religious than men, but both sexes are growing less religious. Republicans are still more Christian than are Democrats (79% versus 55% respectively), but both have dropped significantly in religiosity (Republicans were 86% Christian in 2009, Democrats 72%). 34% of Democrats are unaffiliated, while only 16% of Republicans are. As expected, the GOP could be termed “God’s Own Party.”

Finally, Black and Hispanic Democrats remain significantly more religious than White Democrats, while—the only “bad news” in the survey—there’s been no decline in the proportion of Protestants who describe themselves as “born again or evangelical” (about 60%, higher than I would have thought).

Overall, then the news is good—but only if you’re a nonbeliever.

 

h/t: cesar

What’s your meaning and purpose?

March 13, 2018 • 9:15 am

Here’s survey I’m taking to see whether a theory I have, which is mine, bears any resemblance to reality. Here are two questions I’d like readers to answer in the comments. Here we go:

If a friend asked you these questions, how would you answer them?

1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?

2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?

Now I know there are a lot of nonbelieving readers, so I don’t expect that many of the answers will involve “God.” I am not implying that either meaning or purpose must be conferred by some kind of deity—or even by forces of beings outside yourself. Further, you may consider the questions ambiguous or meaningless, in which case say so.

I got curious about this since yesterday Andrew Sullivan asserted that the last few centuries of human progress, showing big improvements in worldwide well being and material welfare, rob life of meaning, purpose, and spiritual sustenance. To claim that is to claim that people’s lives actually have those attributes. (You can also expatiate about what brings you “spiritual sustenance.”)

I’m trying to find out whether, in this audience, people really feel that there’s meaning and purpose in their lives, and, if they have some “spiritual sustenance,” where it comes from.

Sullivan also implied that atheists have no source of these attributes, so asking an audience comprising mainly the godless might be instructive.  Please humor me and answer the questions.

Thanks!