The Data Does Not Lie
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Gregory S. Paul
Many a religious moderate and liberal are fuming.
They are peeved because "mainline" religion is waning even more rapidly
in America than is the religious right they believe is ruining organized
supernaturalism, while atheism makes major gains as a segment of the
population to the distress of theists in general (
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/atheism-on-the-upswing-in-america/2011/09/20/gIQAFch2hK_blog.html>www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/atheism-on-the-upswing-in-america/2011/09/20/gIQAFch2hK_blog.html).
Theomoderates and liberals like Chris Hedges are further upset with how
they are being disrespected by both religious fundamentalists from one
end, and the "new" or more correctly assertive atheists from the other.
According to centrist religious supernaturalists whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever, not only are
they not the ones
not
responsible for the ills of modern societies, they are part of the
levelheaded solution. In their opinion it seems eminently logical that
the proposition that middle of the road moderate as well as liberal
religion is more beneficial than either of the contentious extremes of
fundamentalist theism on the one hand or assertive atheism on the other.
Surely it is the common sense center that best understands how to run
the societal show, not those extremist zealots on either side. Right?
And it is not just theists who subscribe to the notion that moderate
faith being is fine. A number of nontheists go for it as well. Among
them Chris Mooney who opposes serious criticism of center-left
denominations and doctrines by the likes of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens
and myself. In this view it is the religious right alone that should be
targeted by atheists, who should pander to the supernaturalist middle so
they can be engaged as allies in the grand struggle with
theoconservatism.
A godly advocate of the moderate religion is the best thesis is Johns
Hopkins's William Egginton, who slanders assertive atheists as
fundamentalists despite the term applying to theists who strictly adhere
to their particular scriptures—it makes no more sense than does
labeling antisupernaturalists who strongly oppose belief in ghosts and
speaking to the dead as fundamentalists. But there is a funny thing
about his recently published
In Defense of Religious Moderation.
It is anti-scientific. Looking through his thin book of opinions one is
hard pressed to find data and analysis that actually supports the belief
that supernaturalism is OK as long as it is not fundamentalist. It was a
very big mistake.
Then again, no one else has actually tested the issue. Including me
who should have known better. It is certainly possible to do so, their
being sufficient evidence on hand (I published the basic stats in the
below
EP paper). If the temperate faith is good if not the best
hypothesis holds up, then the larger the portion of the population that
is moderately pious then the more successful the society should be. At
the least conditions should not worsen the more theomods there are.
Societies that are either more fundamentalist or atheist should be worse
off. If the fundamentalists are right then the most theocon societies
should be doing the best while more moderately religious and atheistic
populations suffer. And if ungodly irreligion has the advantage then it
alone should be associated with the best socioeconomic conditions while
the two alternatives correlate with the opposite. So which of the
alternatives is right?
It's a matter of statistics and analysis. And the results are not at all ambiguous. In my technical paper in
Evolutionary Psychology (
www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf)
I constructed the first and still the most comprehensive comparison of
overall societal conditions in the prosperous democracies yet compiled,
the Successful Societies Scale (see
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/is-religion-good-for-society/2011/10/17/gIQA9HutrL_blog.html
for a less technical discussion). It is a compilation of about two
dozen major indicators of societal and economic health, all scored and
tallied up for each country on a 0-10 scale, with 0 being the very worst
and 10 the very best.
It has become fairly well known that the correlation between the SSS and overall religiosity in the
EP
paper shows a very strong trend in which less religious supernaturalism
is associated with markedly better socioeconomic conditions. This is
visually obvious in the plot, and is statistically confirmed by the
Pearson correlation value of 0.705 that is so strong it qualifies as a
statistician's dream. This is true because the most religious and
Christian 1st world country, the US, scores below an embarrassingly low
3, so far down that its 1st world status is marginal. The most atheistic
democracies score the highest, 7 and even an 8, with the religiously
intermediate countries scoring between 4 and 7. One could hardly ask for
a better real world result. The outcome means that no highly religious
nation has ever been as successful as the most atheistic democracies,
and as I explain in the
EP paper there are core reasons why this will always be true.
That religion is a societal negative is no longer particularly
controversial in sociological circles, it having been verified by a
rapidly growing body of studies comparing both nations at large, and the
situation within the US (
gregspaul.webs.com/sciletter0415.pdf). This includes a new paper by Luke Galen in
Mental Health, Religion and Culture
that debunks the common wisdom that religious individuals tend to do
better than their atheist counterparts. But what about different wings
of religion? Do they produce different results as different theists
claim?
In the
EP paper levels of fundamentalist religiosity in 1st
world countries were correlated with the SSS. Because fundamentalism is
founded on strict acceptance of scripture as written I used Bible
literalism as the basic measure of theoconservatism. The results showed
that higher levels of fundamentalism are strongly associated with higher
levels of socioeconomic dysfunction. This too can be seen visually in
the plot, and is statistically verified by the strong correlation of
-0.549. Within the US the most theocon regions tend to have the highest
rates of dysfunction. This is not surprising for multiple reasons.
Fundamentalism is both a reactionary response to modernity whose old
style responses to societal problems (reliance on scriptures in which
lethal violence is ordained by the god figure, violent punishment of
children, rejection of gun control, opposition to comprehensive sex
education) is combined with an embrace of the radical laissez-faire
capitalism (opposition to universal health care and welfare, job
insecurity and union bashing, plutocracy enhancing policies) that is the
socially Darwinist recipe for degrading societal conditions for the
majority—it is one of the great ironies of modern times that the
theocons who denounce Darwinian science are the strongest advocates of
Darwinian economics (
www.opednews.com/articles/Can-We-Please-Stop-Pretend-by-Gregory-Paul-110830-388.html).
At the same time, the superior societal conditions produced by the
progressive secular policies the religious right loves to hate suppress
the popularity of religion right as well as left.
I also compared levels of popular atheism with the SSS in the
EP
paper. If Egginton et al. are correct about the "extremes" being
similarly bad, then the more atheism there is in a nation then the worse
off the citizens should be, as they are with more fundamentalism. But
the data shows the opposite. More atheism is strongly correlated with
better conditions, the Pearson correlation of 0.547 soundly verifying
the atheist advantage.
It did not occur to yours truly to see how moderate religion performs in the
EP
study. That was an oversight. When I noted that Egginton's views are
not scientific on a Baltimore radio program he continued to contend that
moderate religion is a societal positive but failed to back up the
claim. Instead he made a vague assertion that societal conditions are
improving in the US, which although generally true does not mean that
religious moderation is behind the change for the better. I then
realized no one had run the statistics, and became most curious what
they would reveal. To arrive at the number of moderates as well as
liberals I subtracted the Bible literalists from the total religious in
each nation examined—as you can see in the plot the US has among the
largest portion of religious moderates, something that does not portend
well for the religious moderation hypotheses. Before I began the
analysis I was pretty confident that moderate faith would not correlate
with superior circumstances, but I vaguely imagined it would not be all
that bad either.
That's why it is always important to run the stats to see what is actually going down.
What should give the religion in moderation is preferable to either
fundamentalism or atheism crowd a sharp sociological whack upside their
collective heads is that more moderate to liberal religion not only does
not correlate with better conditions, nor is it even neutral, but it
too strongly correlates with inferior conditions, the Pearson
correlation being -0.566. Middle of the road religion is actually about
as strongly associated with adverse circumstances as is
theoconservatism. Praise be to scientific statistical analysis for
uncovering the cold quantitative truth.
The same general pattern applies over time. Many indicators of
societal dysfunction have indeed been getting better over the few
decades, a major exception being a shorting of lifespans in parts of the
Bible Belt. Over the same period of time atheism has been on the rise
as religious activities including the more moderate expressions have
withered. Longitudinal evidence that moderate faith is helping make
things better is at best scarce.
Surprised? After all, theomods and theolibs favor the modern
progressive policies that make societies better. But the results are in
accord with the phenomenon of unintended consequences, one in which
theists who help enact effective secular policies do not realize that
the improving conditions that result cannot help but depress the kind of
religiosity they prefer. If anything moderate denominations have proven
more vulnerable to decline in the face of modernity than the more
ardently reactionary theocons, which may explain why the negative
correlation with superior conditions is stronger for the middle of the
roaders than the right wingers. This too is supported by the stats—the
Pearson correlation between higher national income disparity and more
moderate religiosity is a really strong 0.726, higher than the still
impressive 0.666 for fundamentalism.
So Egginton and company are just plain wrong. Even though religious
moderation is not societally toxic the way theoconservatism is, it
cannot survive the onset of secure prosperity that is invariably toxic
to mass religious supernaturalism. No matter what its flavor, religion
can never be the solution the way that democratic atheism can and is.
I will now predict how the theomods and libs will respond to the
presentation of the evidence. Very few will admit they are wrong and
become atheists. I say few because some that will get the reality of the
situation and change their minds thereby joining the atheist
groundswell. But most will not get it. They will attempt to construct
new, denial based justifications for why it is OK for societies to be
theistically centrist. Specifically, they will contend that since it has
not been shown that theomoderation and theoliberalism are direct
contributors to the grave problems of society, there is nothing wrong
with the majority remaining pious as long as they are reasonable about
it. These good folks will really, really, miss the point. Showing the
center-left religion is not as bad as the conservative variety is like
showing that living in Brazil is better than living in Somalia—true, but
so what when there are Swedens and Germanys. And even more to the
point, whether or not faith-based moderation is good or bad is
irrelevant when the best socioeconomic circumstances kill off the faith.
It just won't work. The fact is that in much of the west strong
majorities no longer ask what would Jesus do, or pay much mind to any
religion, and they are doing more than just fine thank you. You cannot
run a civilization without language. Nor without the materialism that is
the reason civilizations exists in the first place. But you can run a
civilization without religion. And because the best run societies are
the most atheistic, that means the best way to make cultures more
atheistic is by running them as well as possible (see minutes
41:00-48:00 & 54:00-57:00 in
richarddawkins.net/article,4561,Why-Evolution-Is-True,Jerry-Coyne-AAI-2009-RDFRS-Josh-Timonenwhyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/greg-paul-the-science-of-religion-2.) There is no pressing need for any supernaturalism no matter how sensible its adherents may claim it is.
Far from the ungodly extreme creating problems like the
fundamentalist extreme, the denial of the gods alone has produced the
goods. It follows that only advocates of atheism have the national
statistics to back up their position. That means that theists
conservative to liberal must put up or shut up. Moderate
supernaturalists who proclaim their proscience worldview while
denouncing the fundamentalists' superstitious rejection of intellectual
modernity should be especially willing to produce the sociological beef
before continuing to propound upon their currently speculative opinions.
The Eggintons and Hedges have to show us an example of a highly
religious nation that is doing as well in the major social indicators as
the most atheist democracies. Or how about a 1st world country where
overall conditions are improving as temperate religion rises? Then you
have a case to discuss. If you can't—and you can't—then you are
operating all too near the level of the fundamentalists you decry for
their obtuse antiscientism (I have been challenging those who think
religion is a societal positive to publish comprehensive technical
studies to that effect since my first paper on the issue in 2005,
Moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf,
so far nothing has shown up and I am not holding my sociological
breath). Continuing to make assertions in the face of contradictory data
is irresponsible unless convincing countervailing evidence is produced.
It is not the assertive atheists who are acting like fundamentalists
because we have the data on our side. It is the pious moderates who
denounce assertive atheists as fundamentalists, despite the absence of
the scriptures that fundamentalism rests upon, who are acting like
fundamentalists by brushing aside inconvenient scientific facts. And
this is one reason why assertive atheists are so critical of the
theological moderates. The refusal of atheists to accept the
unsubstantiated opinion that moderate religion is the best or even a
viable societal option is not some sort of fundamentalist obstinacy, it
is the only logical scientific conclusion. Nor is it any more or less
extreme that denying the reality of ghosts of the geocentric theory. So
why should atheists buy into the myth of supernaturalistic moderation?
Seriously, you folks don't have anything to back up your claims, so why
are you beating the dead horse of centrist superstition?
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Published: 2/7/2012
Categories:
Secularism
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