Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
This plot, which appeared in an article in the Washington Post, is taken from a survey by the Harvard Crimson (the student newspaper) of that university’s incoming freshmen (first-year students)Note that agnostics predominate over all other faiths, and, combined with atheists, show that 37.9% of all entering students are nonbelievers. I’m sure that’s atypical compared to other schools, but it’s still heartening, and once again shows the increasing secularization of America.
Here are some date from a recent Pew poll, which shows only 13% of “millennials” can be classified as nonbelievers:As the Post notes:
Harvard’s combined number of atheists and agnostics among its incoming class exceeds the number of Catholics and Protestants, as Pew Research Center’s Conrad Hackett noted. The number appears to be a striking contrast with the rest of the U.S. millennial population, those from ages 18 to 34.
but adds:
The Crimson’s poll and Pew’s survey are not perfect comparisons since they appear to ask about religious identification differently. Pew provides the opportunity for respondents to say they are not religious. The Crimson doesn’t appear to have a category for those who don’t identify with religion at all, except for the categories of atheists and agnostics.
In other words, if the Crimson asked about religious affiliation another way, students might respond differently.
Either way, the Crimson’s poll suggests a decline in number of Protestants and Catholics and a rise of atheists and agnostics in the three years of available data. For the class of 2017, the number of Protestants and Catholics were 42.4 percent, compared to 37 percent for the class of 2018 and 34.1 percent for the class of 2019.
There’s one other statistic in the Crimson survey that surprised me, and it’s one that I think can’t be changed much by how the question is asked:
As someone who grew up in the free-for-all Sixties, that 62% figure surprised me. Either I have a false impression garnered from my youth, young folks have become less interested in sex, or Harvard first-years are less licentious than other students. Or they could simply be lying.
The Kinsey Institute, and other sources, estimate from 2005 data that by age 17, 46% of men and 49% of women have had sexual intercourse, and those figures rise at age 18 to 62% and 70% respectively. This appears to be fairly constant, as the mean age of intercourse remains at about age 17 for both men and women. Ergo, if the survey above is accurate, those entering Harvard are less sexually experience than their peers.
Data aren’t given about whether the nonbelievers differ in their sexual proclivity from the religious.
________
UPDATE: The Crimson also compares some of these statistics to those from students at its big rival, Yale University. Yalies questioned by the Crimson didn’t give information about their faith, but they did say something about sex. As the Crimson reports, with a barely-concealed note of pride:
Though the majority of respondents at Harvard and Yale said they had not had sex before coming to college, Harvard respondents are slightly more experienced in bed.
About 38 percent of surveyed Harvard freshmen said they had sex before college, compared to 34 percent of surveyed Yale freshmen.
But Yale freshmen are still hopeful—54 percent of respondents said they anticipated having sex while at Yale, and 81 percent of them said they anticipated having a romantic relationship while there.
I guess today is gonna be all about religion, though there’s science in the offing.
When I saw this the new xkcd cartoon (sent by reader jsp), I didn’t really understand it. But then Grania told me this:
It’s making a mockery (rather gently) of this sentimental schlock that has been shared around the Christian world for decades as something “comforting”.
Here’s the sentimental schlock:
And the cartoon, which is much better. It’s called “Footprints”. I love the duckling bit:
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that, at least in the U.S., and certainly in Canada, the government defers far more to religious beliefs than to philosophical ones. There are Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (but no philosophical ones); when there was a military draft you could get a conscientious objector exemption if you were religious, but not if your objections were philosophical or moral (I got exempted because chaplains testified that my objections to war were quasi-religious); and many states will exculpate you if you injure your children by refusing to get them medical care on religious grounds, but not if you do exactly the same thing on philosophical grounds.
Further, as the following figure from CNN shows, 48 of the 50 US states allow exemption from required school vaccination on religious grounds, but only 20 states on philosophical grounds alone:
Now I understand why the First Amendment guarantees people the right to practice their beliefs without interference, even if those beliefs, as in the case of Kim Davis, keep her from doing part of her job. But why religion and not philosophy?
After all, one can argue that philosophical beliefs have a stronger claim on legal recognition, or at least on public “respect,” than do religious beliefs. First, most people get their religion via accidents of birth. If you’re born in Utah, you’re likely to be a Mormon, a Muslim if born in Saudi Arabia, and a Christian if born in Mississippi. That, of course, means those beliefs weren’t arrived at by reason but by cultural inheritance.
Further, in many cases (but not all), people arrive at philosophical positions through introspection, doubt, and questioning. That is, they pick a philosophy by considering alternatives. This is rarely the case for religion, as John Loftus emphasizes in his writings on the “outsider test for faith“. Secular systems of ethics, for example, are often accepted only after a long process of reason and cogitation, as opposed to religious ethics, which are often taken on faith because they supposedly derive from God’s will or from scripture. (Of course whatever views you adopt in the end are all determined by your genes and environment, but what I’m arguing here is that there’s no reason to privilege religion over philosophy.)
Finally, philosophical views are often held just as tenaciously, and considered just as integral a part of a person’s “worldview”, as are religious beliefs. Think of pacifists and animal-rights activists.
It seems to me, then, that most government accommodations to religion could also be extended to philosophy. Now I’m not saying that they should: whether Kim Davis opposed gay marriage because she was a Christian or because that violated some philosophical view (NOT LIKELY in any case), she should be forced to do her job. Likewise, all children should be vaccinated before attending public school, regardless of their philosophical or religious views. (Medical exemptions, as in the case of immunodeficiency, are of course fine.)
But there is one difference—something Lawrence Krauss touched on his his New Yorker piece. I’d rather have those with philosophical views try to impose them on me through government than those with religious views. For, at least in principle, philosophy is open to rational debate, while religion, as Lawrence noted, is not.
Readers should weigh in below, as I really would like to know why religion is put on a pedestal in the U.S. while equally sincere philosophical views are not.
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that Lawrence Krauss had published a piece called “All scientists should be militant atheists“—and in The New Yorker, a venue not known for antagonism to religion. It’s amazing! Not only that, but look again at the shrill and strident title.
But Krauss is right, and I’m pleased to see that his message is also largely the message of Faith vs. Fact: that the unsubstantiated and untestable claims of religion—claims regularly imposed on nonbelievers through the law—are at direct odds with the empirically-based and testable claims of science. Not only that, but, compared to other forms of belief (much less science itself) America has institutionalized an unwarranted respect for religion. This has gotten to the point where people like Kim Davis are allowed to practice illegal discrimination as part of their job, so long as that discrimination is based on religious belief and is not too onerous for the employer.
Krauss’s essay is a Professor Ceiling Cat Required Reading™, so go have a look (it’s a short piece). I’ll give just two excepts that underscore the difference between science and religion (I’m regularly asked, in an accusatory tone, why science isn’t a form of “faith”; you can see my answer here). The bolding in the excerpts below is mine:
In science, of course, the very word “sacred” is profane. No ideas, religious or otherwise, get a free pass. The notion that some idea or concept is beyond question or attack is anathema to the entire scientific undertaking. This commitment to open questioning is deeply tied to the fact that science is an atheistic enterprise. “My practice as a scientist is atheistic,” the biologist J.B.S. Haldane wrote, in 1934. “That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career.” It’s ironic, really, that so many people are fixated on the relationship between science and religion: basically, there isn’t one. In my more than thirty years as a practicing physicist, I have never heard the word “God” mentioned in a scientific meeting. Belief or nonbelief in God is irrelevant to our understanding of the workings of nature—just as it’s irrelevant to the question of whether or not citizens are obligated to follow the law.
Because science holds that no idea is sacred, it’s inevitable that it draws people away from religion. The more we learn about the workings of the universe, the more purposeless it seems. Scientists have an obligation not to lie about the natural world. Even so, to avoid offense, they sometimes misleadingly imply that today’s discoveries exist in easy harmony with preëxisting religious doctrines, or remain silent rather than pointing out contradictions between science and religious doctrine. It’s a strange inconsistency, since scientists often happily disagree with other kinds of beliefs. Astronomers have no problem ridiculing the claims of astrologists, even though a significant fraction of the public believes these claims. Doctors have no problem condemning the actions of anti-vaccine activists who endanger children. And yet, for reasons of decorum, many scientists worry that ridiculing certain religious claims alienates the public from science. When they do so, they are being condescending at best and hypocritical at worst.
The first line of the second paragraph, which I’ve emphasized in bold, is a key “admission”. Accommodationists regularly like to pretend that there’s no conflict between science and religion: that one can be a science-friendly believer or a religious scientist without any problem.. People who need their blanket of superstition, but want to be modern and progressive, will pretend that the ways that science and religion discern “truth” are perfectly harmonious. But they’re not, for, as I like to say, in religion faith is a virtue, while in science it’s a vice. The same goes for doubt: a virtue in science, a bug in religion. The result: we know infinitely more about the cosmos through science than we did five hundred years ago, but we know nothing more about the divine (a part of the cosmos) than did the ancient Greeks. Indeed, we still don’t know if there’s anything divine.
So why should scientists be militant atheists? Krauss explains it eloquently at the end of his piece (my emphasis again):
Ultimately, when we hesitate to openly question beliefs because we don’t want to risk offense, questioning itself becomes taboo. It is here that the imperative for scientists to speak out seems to me to be most urgent. As a result of speaking out on issues of science and religion, I have heard from many young people about the shame and ostracism they experience after merely questioning their family’s faith. Sometimes, they find themselves denied rights and privileges because their actions confront the faith of others. Scientists need to be prepared to demonstrate by example that questioning perceived truth, especially “sacred truth,” is an essential part of living in a free country.
I see a direct link, in short, between the ethics that guide science and those that guide civic life. Cosmology, my specialty, may appear to be far removed from Kim Davis’s refusal to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, but in fact the same values apply in both realms. Whenever scientific claims are presented as unquestionable, they undermine science. Similarly, when religious actions or claims about sanctity can be made with impunity in our society, we undermine the very basis of modern secular democracy. We owe it to ourselves and to our children not to give a free pass to governments—totalitarian, theocratic, or democratic—that endorse, encourage, enforce, or otherwise legitimize the suppression of open questioning in order to protect ideas that are considered “sacred.” Five hundred years of science have liberated humanity from the shackles of enforced ignorance. We should celebrate this openly and enthusiastically, regardless of whom it may offend.
If that is what causes someone to be called a militant atheist, then no scientist should be ashamed of the label.
It can’t be stated more clearly than that. Kudos to Krauss for not only saying—as Jeff Tayler has been doing every Sunday in Salon—that we should loudly and openly decry the claims of religion and its intrusion into democracy, but also for pointing out why science draws people away from religion. That’s an inconvenient truth that will anger the accommodationists at the National Center for Science Education and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But tough luck for them, for science is indeed a powerful solvent for religion.
On the evening news yesterday, I watched the moment that Kim Davis was released from jail and faced her adoring public. A large crowd had gathered, waving crosses and signs of support while cheering loudly as she exited the jail. Here’s a video; the bit I saw starts 28 seconds in:
When I saw the crosses waving and the cheers erupting when Davis said, “I just want to give God the glory; His people have rallied and you are a strong people!”, I suddenly felt that I was living in an alien world: a world in which most people frenetically believe things that are palpably false, and then go nuts when those things are questioned. It’s a world in which doubt about comforting superstitions is seen as an unforgivable sin. At that moment, I realized that the title of Dawkins’s book, often criticized as “strident,” was absolutely accurate: The God Delusion.
There’s a new contributor today, but before highlighting his photos I’ll put up a singleton sent by regular Stephen Barnard:
I see lots of the exotic European Collared Doves here, but this is the first Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) I’ve seen on Aubrey Spring Ranch. Over the past three years or so the European doves, which are larger and more aggressive than the native Mourning Doves, have been taking over.
And some photos from reader Tom Hennessy with notes (the photos arrived Aug. 25). I’ll call this selection “Six ways of looking at a heron,” and give my own Stevens-esque take. Here are Tom’s notes (indented):
Last week my wife and I visited Duck, NC which is on a barrier island (the outer banks) between the Atlantic ocean and Currituck Sound. The sound is the home to a number of bird species, and while we were on the sound in the evening to photograph some gorgeous sunsets, we saw a number of Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias). Initially, they were in silhouette with the sun behind them, but eventually I got some photographs of them lit by the setting sun. These are very graceful birds, and I was thrilled to get a number of shots of them. I used a Canon 6D with a 100 t0 400 mm lens for most of the heron photos.
At the sight of a heron
Blue in the blue light by the blue water
Even the bards of felinity
Would cry out in wonder.
Among the salty marshes of Duck Island
The only thing moving
Was the beak of the heron.
A crab and a mussel
Are one.
A heron and a crab and a mussel
Are one.
I do not know which to prefer,
The anticipation of noms
Or the nomming itself,
The heron scanning the water
Or gulping a fish.
O thin men of Carolina
Why do you imagine the buttered crab?
Do you not see how the willowy heron
Stalks the marshes?
The waters are placid, The heron must be fishing.
Finally, a sunset, photographed by reader Karen Bartelt over Badlands National Park:
In the new Jesus and Mo strip, the artist reveals that “Mo has big news!”. The strip’s title is “Stir,” and the explanation is “It’s the best method He could come up with at the time.”
I have to say that I don’t fully get this one. But in many things I’m clueless, so perhaps readers can explain.
Inexorably, as both school and fall approach in tandem, the weather cools. Yesterday it rained all day, flooding many of the streets of Chicago. That is all, for we are in the Big Hiatus at the University between Labor Day and the beginning of October, when classes start. Meanwhile
Hili: Now everything is clear.
A: What do you mean?
Hili: This sparrow is an invasive species.
When I asked what this dialogue was supposed to mean, because I didn’t get it, Malgorzata gave me three interpretations:
Well, you are in a good company. I asked Andrzej and his answer was: “She is very territorial”.
Sarah’s [Malgorzata’s friend] idea was, “I think Hili is looking for an excuse to kill the sparrow, which she wants to do anyway, and so now she can do what she wants and be virtuous at the same time. As it is an invasive species and a pest, people should thank her for her deed and certainly not criticize it.”
I have no idea at all except that we have many more starlings than sparrows and Hili might think that starlings are her neighbours and a sparrow is an intruder. But I know it’s a feeble explanation.
In Polish:
Hili: Wszystko się wyjaśniło.
Ja: To znaczy?
Hili: Ten wróbel to gatunek inwazyjny.
Heather’s is a fine piece, and, as she is wont to do, it’s nicely illustrated with photos and charts. I’ll let you read her piece for yourself, but I wanted to swipe two nice flowcharts that she used as illustrations. I LOVE flowcharts like these, as they’re among the most amusing and effective forms of sarcasm:
As the Post notes:
