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Why Is America So Religious?
- Hexstream 18y agoBecause it's a quite convenient tool for (practical, not magical) mind-control.
- tptacek 18y agoYeah, let's all use your comment to vote on whether we think religion is ever abused for "mind control".
- gscott 18y agoThe most mind control I have ever seen is on TV. It used to be every time my kids would see a commercial they would ask for whatever the commercial was promoting (they are a little older now and don't do that as often). I am not sure if there could be any more powerful mind control then the marketing machine we live in day-in and day-out.
- Hexstream 18y agoWhat about the case of a religious message broadcast on TV in support of a political cause?
- gscott 18y agoIt is in a mix of other ideas. It is not like the religious message is being broadcast 24/7 and nothing else. It is not like it is even a religious message at all. You can be an athiest but decide that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Personally, I feel gay people are born gay. This is something people are born into and either can embrace or be unhappy forever trying to be hetrosexual when they are not. As a Christian I personally embrace these people who cannot change. That is what Jesus did, he went out to people who were abused because they were different or hated because of what they did (tax collectors) and embraced them and brought them in. For many people it hard to come around and see that it is not a choice. Just a few months ago I was helping with a religious program and met a guy who is as gay as gay can get but he is married and has children. The marriage is very unhappy. I feel he should have embraced being gay before he got married and had children. But too late. People really need to be who they are and not something else. Personally I am scared of normalizing being Gay or Lesbian to children. I have kids, they are confused enough without having to deal with the birds and the bee's being that people go to the sperm bank because there lover doesn't have male reproductive organs or because there lover doesn't have womb, therefore they need a surrogate. This type of birds and the bee's happens on a limited scale, we should leave it at that and not weave into our daily lives.
- swombat 18y agoIQ bias.
- yan 18y agoIt's frustrating that almost any comment to be made on this will be offensive to someone
- cpr 18y agoI just love how the implicit subtext is that anyone with faith is a loony redneck. "How could they possibly believe this stuff?" Well, I'm a Harvard/Columbia-educated old-time hacker (53 now), been through several start-ups, have run my own software "lifestyle" company for nearly 20 years, and I'm also an enthusiastic Roman Catholic. (Gasp, the horror.) I believe I can give a good defense of my faith to anyone whose mind isn't already completely closed, but this wouldn't be the place to do it... Maybe over a beer late some night.
- yan 18y agoI'd love to have a friendly conversation with someone like you, who my arguments (probably) won't necessarily offend. Whenever any conversation trails to religion, just by its nature, will undermine everything the other person believes in and bound to get someone upset.
- swombat 18y agoI've had many great conversations about religion with christian friends, which didn't get either of us upset.
- tptacek 18y agoPlenty of smart hackers are Christian (to pick a specific example), including Ruby's Matz, SQLite's Richard Hipp, and Perl's Larry Wall. Two of the smartest people in security (I won't name them, because I don't think they're "out") are practicing Christians. I'm a nonpracticing Catholic, but I don't rank in the list above. I think the "militant atheism" meme is a product of pop culture and a misplaced projection of anger at our current political regime. I also think that few "devout" atheists think that Barack Obama is a looney because he's a practicing Christian, so I think this has more to do with culture than with religion.
- jamesbritt 18y ago" ... think that Barack Obama is a looney because he's a practicing Christian ..." Many people deride Sarah Palin for assorted religious beliefs (such as the co-existence of people and dinosaurs) yet there is next to no deriding of Obama for believing that there lived a man who could bring the dead back to life, and who was himself killed and then rose from the dead. How and where do people draw the line for acceptable bizarre beliefs?
- wheels 18y agoWhat a dumb chart. It obviously left out data that wouldn't make its point: Canada, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Italy, ...
- netcan 18y agoUAE/Saudi might be more wierd points (wierd circumstances after all). I don't think Israel, Italy & Canada would be as strikingly off map as the US. It may be a dumb map. But I think you might be able to draw correlation even if you take all countries into account.
- cubix 18y agoAs a Canadian, I would be awfully surprised to see Canada up there with the US. Note that religion hasn't been a factor in Canadian elections for several decades.
- wheels 18y agoTo be clear, I don't suspect those countries would be on par with the US, merely that they would be outlying points showing a less perfect distribution. Beyond that though, wow. I'm amazed that a poor article on something so far from Hacker News got upvoted so many times.
- KWD 18y agoWhich is why I want to move to Canada.
- robg 18y agoMissing data points doesn't argue against the main point: The correlation is -.80: that's amazing especially in contrast with where the U.S. stands. Still, I agree that I'd love to see this data with every country included. But I highly doubt it would change the correlation that much.
- enra 18y agoPersonal faith is of course important and fine, but I never didn't kind of get the stories, the three desert dogmas and why some of the beliefs should have such a special role and strong impact on our societies. In Finland the current trend has been that about 20-30k more people resign from tradiotional Lutheran church every year than they get new members (even though it might not tell about their faith). And from the whole population (about 5M), a million say that they don't belong to any religion, myself included.
- vaksel 18y agoBecause of traditional values. The country was settled by religious people fleeing prosecution in England. And now the religion gets passed down the generations, so a son follows the same religion as his mother etc. Which is why you can probably find that there are a lot more people becoming atheist compared to those who switch from one religion to the next. Because in all cases religion is more or less the same you worship some deity w/o any proof they exist. If one religion was > another, you'd see a lot more proof one way or another. But there isn't, which is why 100 years from now Scientology will be on the same level as mormonism , a quirky religion that has some quirky beliefs. And 1000 years from now Scientology will be on the same level as Christianity.
- robg 18y agoYou briefly touch on my favored interpretation: The very religious and the non-religious were the ones who left England for a better life, and both because of religious persecution. Lo and behold, that extreme polarity is still what we have today.
- rsheridan6 18y agoThe odd thing is that the New England colonies were founded by religious weirdos, while the South was founded by normal English people, but it's the South that's especially religious now.
- robg 18y agoHistorically, the American migration has initiated from the Northeast and East (original colonies/states then Ellis Island). Those immigrants that didn't find a home progressively moved (over generations) further and further away - South and West (Mormons). Of course, the Civil War complicates things, as do Western immigrants. What Southern colonies are you thinking of though?
- rsheridan6 18y agoI was thinking of Jamestown, which was founded independently of the New England colonies at about the same time. Jamestown had different types of Englishmen from different regions of England with different religious beliefs went than the ones who went to New England. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed The South didn't get nearly as many immigrants as the North until recently, so the great waves of immigration later on weren't as influential.
- mishmax 18y agoWhere is Saudi Arabia on this chart? SA is both wealthy and religious. It seems like another outlier. And where does Israel fall? Maybe there's some selection bias in the data shown.
- netcan 18y agoWhere is Saudi Arabia? Saudi is most definitely an outlier. But that is to be expected. They are an unusual case. They are a physical religious hub (like Rome but more) because of the Haj & other reasons. And they did not reach current GDP levels by conventional means. And where does Israel fall? I think you might be surprised. Both Judaism & Islam are relatively easy to gauge because of the lifestyle demands they make. Most Jews considered 'religious' would probably observe, kosher (what you can eat), Sabath (No driving, electricity on Saturday), attend synagogue weekly, pray daily, etc. The percentage of Jews that adhere to these is probably around the 20% - 30%. A further 20% - 30% probably adhere to some of these. Not sure about Muslim population. Both are probably becoming more religious over time. Anyway, I think at 25k GDP pp, you could place it above the line, but not too far. The correlation within Israel, probably works.
- hugh 18y agoIn "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins puts forth an argument something along the lines that the US is the most religious of the rich countries since it, unlike most European countries, never had an official state religion. Over time, faiths like the Church of England (and on another level the Catholic Church) became dull bureaucratic institutions which nobody really took seriously, whereas in America there arose a tradition that if you don't quite take your own church's beliefs seriously you can start up a new, slightly different, church down the road. Supporting this idea is the fact that while Catholics in the US make up a fairly large portion of the population, the vast majority of the real religious craziness comes from the many varieties of protestantism.
- Chocobean 18y agoAllow me to humbly suggest that Mr. Dawkins is a biologist, not a sociologist or an economist, so his ponderings on the metaphysics, such as his ideas on the religious state of our religious states, while interesting, should be regarded as that of any layman's opinion.
- helveticaman 18y agoI disagree; an evolutionary biologist who knows his game theory may wel know more about how the mind works than an economist (a student of "the dismal science") or a sociologist (don't get me started). Just because Dawkins is not an accredited expert at the subject he discusses doesn't mean his arguments are false.
- Chocobean 18y agooh nono, I didnt say that this argument would be false, for starters because I haven't read the book and heard the argument to begin with. I was hoping, rather, to caution against believing anything without first examining the arguments simply because of "star appeal". Y'know, "a celebrity said it it must be true...." One wouldn't believe scientific theories from the pulpit without thinking, so why shouldn't one be a little skeptical hearing metaphysics from a scientist?
- ComputerGuru 18y agoWhy is this a problem?
- Ardit20 18y agoTo be taught something, to brutally paraphrase Schopenhauer, is like a patch on ones skin, to learn it by your own accord it becomes your own skin, indistinguishable from other parts of your body. My point is that Europe was religious, but it was taught by great immortal men, that religioun is actually a scam. America or the Middle East has not had such lessons. Hence they remain religious for no one has managed to shake their world view like it was done in Europe.
- kingkongrevenge 18y agoReligious people have more children. Family formation has historically been much more affordable in the US than in Europe and Japan, and most of the rest of the world. So desire and culture has been the primary constraint on an individual's choice to have one or another child, whereas in other places the constraints have been more financial. Religious people in the US out-breed non-religious people at a higher rate than is possible elsewhere. If you look at the demographics, blue state urban liberals will be an endangered species in a few decades. They barely have children. Compare Hillary's only child to Pallin's brood.
- gills 18y agoDoes this article seem like a troll (haven't we seen it here before?). Meaningful conclusions might be drawn from the data if the actual distributions of income and educational level were mapped against religious tendency, rather than per-capita and percentage. I would speculate that the US would be less distinct. I am a Christian, and know many who aren't slack-jawed yokels. Although, there seem to be a propensity of religious followers in the world who either lack critical thinking skills or simply fail to apply them to their beliefs (the 'accept at face value and stop thinking' crowd).
- known 18y agoDue to FEAR. Every religion injects fear in you. And every religion now is a form of socio-economic collusion.
- lst 18y ago> Every religion injects fear in you. On the contrary: really religious people continuously make experience of confidence, so there's no room left for fear.
- lst 18y agoOne big difference between the US and Europe is the French Revolution: it has been disastrous to religion in Europe (especially in France), and simply didn't happen in the US.
- biohacker42 18y agoThank God, we can have this discussion here, this dead horse just has not been beaten enough over at reddit.
- anamax 18y agoThe results come from the definition of religion and the conclusions use a different one. The whole "they're daft" argument applies just as well to believers in astrology, Jedi, Wicca, and other variants of the flying spaghetti monster, yet the "religious" percentage excludes those. That's a problem because standard religious folks are less likely to believe in those things. As a result, if you just count "standard" religion, you undercount supernatural believers and the error increases as the percentage of standard religious believers decreases.