

How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion - icpmacdo
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/526111/how-the-internet-is-taking-away-americas-religion/

======
gwern
Really weak result. One factor over a short time period in a single country
without throwing in the dozens of other variables? This is exactly the sort of
result you expect to go away in subsequent time periods. (Also, the OP's
confusion about correlation/causation in the hilarious bit about logistic
regression certainly doesn't increase my confidence in this result.)

~~~
Alex3917
I agree, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were true right now. The
Internet is undoubtedly the greatest tool that has ever been created for
spreading religion, but in the short term it probably just magnifies whatever
the larger social/religious fads are, e.g. new atheism.

~~~
mullingitover
It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying
superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something
that is very destructive to religious belief.

~~~
baldfat
> something that is very destructive to religious belief

I think history's greatest logical thinkers would beg to differ with you. The
history books are always trying to be rewritten by someone BUT religious
thought has driven this critical thinking and logic for millennial. Also
explain why more people are Christians now then ever? Percentage and
Numbers???

~~~
jamesaguilar
Because there are more people now than ever. Are you trying to make a parody?

~~~
baldfat
Read the word percentage

~~~
jamesaguilar
Oh, that part is just factually inaccurate, at least as far as I could find in
a brief search. The only reason it's even staying flat is because it's
stealing from other religions. The overall amount of religious people is
shrinking, especially in affluent/educated countries.

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dang
I changed the url from [1] to the article it cites, which is more substantive.
But should we link to the actual paper [2] instead?

1\.
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/21/303375...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/21/303375159/americas-
less-religious-study-puts-some-blame-on-the-internet)

2\. [http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5534](http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5534)

~~~
raldi
No, it's confusing enough already that this post is filled with obsolete NPR
and NPR-quoting comments. (Though I appreciate that your change wasn't done
invisibly!)

I think it would be better to let someone submit the paper separately, or for
us all to just upvote your comment.

~~~
dang
People say this a lot, but it isn't clear to me how this would work. Would you
like to discuss it? Email to hn@ycombinator.com is probably best so we don't
disrupt the thread.

Edit: Oops, version conflict. I was talking about a bit you edited out (about
multiple links).

~~~
raldi
Annoying, isn't it? :)

~~~
dang
I know much better than to play Reddit with you.

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keerthiko
Allen was my professor at Olin. In a facebook comment to when another prof
posted an article about this "study" he did (which was purely for
computational statistics purposes, not to really make a theological
statement), his response:

"I'm so proud. Structure of all responses to my paper: (1) New study says
Internet is a tool of Satan, (2) correlation does not imply causation, so this
paper is stupid, (3) here, on the basis of no evidence at all, is the real
cause of religious disaffiliation."

The way the internet has contorted the original study to make sensationalist
commentary is pretty hilarious.

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icpmacdo
I think that there is much more of a culture of admitting to things these days
that would be more socially unacceptable than even back in the 90's. I also
think that they are low balling it saying "Downey predicts the most likely
changes between now and 2040 are that the percentage of people without a
religious preference reach 25 percent. " I expect that number to be reasonably
higher in the united states, it would be very interesting if it was 25% of the
worlds population with out a preference in 2040.

~~~
jmspring
I think there will be regions where it will be much higher (the south, bible
belt, etc), but there are parts of this country where it will also be much
lower (New England/the west coast). If immigration is opened up at the farm
labor/blue collar end of the skill spectrum, there will likely be an up tick
in religious observance in areas that might otherwise trend downward
(California).

~~~
jaredsohn
I think you switched lower/higher around (the GP was talking about people
_without_ religious observance.)

~~~
jmspring
You are correct. My brain was thinking those _with_ observance. Early
morning/tired posting victim. Thanks

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ds9
It is intuitive that exposure to a wider range of ideas than found in one's
home area undermines religious faith, but interesting to have this confirmed.
Anecdotally I have noticed signs of this worldwide.

The phrasing "blame on the internet" (along with college, apparently) implies
a bias for religion over more agnostic views, but I guess this is NPR
reporting the religionists' interpretation rather than NPR's.

~~~
JackFr
What's intuitive to you could also be called confirmation bias. And I don't
believe this article really proves it at all.

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sjwright
The more fascinating question is why the widespread availability of knowledge
and information hasn't done a _better_ job of overcoming provincial
superstitions.

~~~
sjwright
To the downvoters: what did you find objectionable about my contribution?

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bdcravens
Would issues of faith - by definition, those things you can't see or prove -
require homogeneity? Pinpricks of doubt would likely erode such delicate
beliefs. In a connected world, where you can interact with those who don't
look like you or have your experience, it seems those pinpricks would be
easier to come across.

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danbruc
_But what of the other 50 percent? In the data, the only factor that
correlates with this is date of birth—people born later are less likely to
have a religious affiliation. But as Downey points out, year of birth cannot
be a causal factor. “So about half of the observed change remains
unexplained,” he says._

Increasing year of birth means increasing human knowledge. While it was
convincing a long time ago to have a god for thunder, for fire, for love and a
thousand other things, we learned that thunder works without any god. And now
people learn that the universe works without any god at all, i.e. monotheistic
religions are no longer as convincing as they used to be.

~~~
pradocchia
_Increasing year of birth means increasing human knowledge._

What, since the 1990s? No, don't be silly. There may have been a bump due to
improved _access_ to basic human knowledge. Is this what you mean?

~~~
danbruc
Good point, raw increase in human knowledge is probably not a good
explanation. But it is almost a quarter of a century since 1990, the rate at
which new knowledge is obtained is constantly increasing, the Internet made
access to this knowledge easier than ever before, people have - I guess - more
time available to spend on such topics, the Internet enabled discussions in a
way not possible before, ... Therefore a better explanation is probably easier
access to knowledge than raw increase in knowledge.

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baldfat
Myth: Less people go to church now then in the past.

Really weak since more people go to church now then they did in 1994! :) The
numbers show that more people attend church percentage wise then ever in
history of America. Don't even look at World Wide church attendance because it
might make your mind explode on how much Christianity has grown.

It is always shocking how people report the death of religion without the
numbers. I think people who are religious are the origins of this myth.

Look at this one look at USA
[http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html](http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/fastfacts/fast_facts.html)

Worldwide (Based on CIA world facts and few others
[http://fastestgrowingreligion.com/numbers.html](http://fastestgrowingreligion.com/numbers.html)

~~~
Retric
Your ignoring population growth. As there is around 50 million more people in
the us now than there was in 1994.

"In 1990, 20.4% of the population attended an Orthodox Christian church on any
given weekend. In 2000, that percentage dropped to 18.7% and to 17.7% by 2004.
Olson explains that while church attendance numbers have stayed about the same
from 1990 to 2004, the U.S. population has grown by 18.1% — more than 48
million people. "So even though the number of attendees is the same, our
churches are not keeping up with population growth," he says."
[http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-
articles/139575-...](http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-
articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-
america.html?p=2)

[http://fastestgrowingreligion.com/numbers.html](http://fastestgrowingreligion.com/numbers.html).
Global Christian growth rate 1.36% is below the population groth rate of 1.41
%. Which is a sign of a slow death, Islam at 2.13% on the other hand is well
above that.

~~~
daveqr
"The numbers show that more people attend church percentage wise then ever in
history of America."

~~~
Retric
More people lie about attending church which is the only way you can get the
40% figgure. But actual attendance has not been keeping up with population
growth.

"Q: How many people go to church each Sunday? A: For years, the Gallup
Research Organization has come up with a consistent figure — 40 percent of all
Americans, or roughly 118 million people, who said they attended worship on
the previous weekend. Recently, sociologists of religion have questioned that
figure, saying Americans tend to exaggerate how often they attend. By actually
counting the number of people who showed up at representative sample of
churches, two researchers, Kirk Hadaway and Penny Marler found that only 20.4
percent of the population, or half the Gallup figure, attended church each
weekend. As added proof for the accuracy of this smaller percentage of
churchgoers, if 20.4% of Americans (approximately 63 million in 2010) attended
the nation's 350,000 congregations weekly then the average attendance would be
180 people per congregation which is almost exactly the figure that numerous
research studies have found."

~~~
baldfat
This is a study of dishonesty more then attendance. You can't go and just ask,
"Do you go to church every weekend. People will lie. Also read the table of
church growth over the past 40 years on the page you just quoted. Christianity
falling is just as much a "Known Truth" as much as above 50% divorce rate of
first time marriages.

Care with studies. Most Christians "just know" Christianity is falling away
and pay big money to people who predict the death of the faith (George Barna
AKA father of Christians divorce rate is the same or higher then non-Christian
divorce rate though the one issue is his numbers were all a lie). The truth is
that it has grown in mind blowing numbers and really hasn't slowed down except
in Mainline denominations and Catholic Churches. The vast majority of stats
are if people were honest to the question did they go to church. The surprise
is most people are dishonest that they attend church weekly. Case in point
East Sunday attendance is huge compared to normal weekly attendance.

I think people are just being blind to the meteoric rise of Christianity in
the past 100 years. In 1910 more then half the Christians in the world were
European.

Here is a good academic study. [http://www.gordonconwell.edu/resources/Center-
for-the-Study-...](http://www.gordonconwell.edu/resources/Center-for-the-
Study-of-Global-Christianity.cfm/)

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pastProlog
When my mother went to Catholic schools in the US in the late 1940s and 1950s,
every teacher was a member of a religious order.

When I went to Catholic schools from the late 1970s to the 1980s, about half
the teachers were in religious orders, half lay people.

My cousin goes to Catholic schools right now. None of his teachers thus far
have been religious, all have been lay people.

Such a shift in the past half century, along with other trends, is bound to
affect religious devotion.

The Internet probably has an effect. I think the effect it has is one of
degree. Years ago, people seemed to be divided into fundamentalists, and those
who might doubt, say, that Joshua made the sun stand still in order to prevent
sundown so that the Israelis could defeat the Amorites, or that the pope as
Vicar of Christ speaks infallibly on matters of faith, and so forth. On say
Reddit's /r/atheism there are so many secular people, that doubting people
become complete atheists as opposed to moderate or liberal Christians. Those
who doubt stop believing things completely, whereas in the old days they may
have stuck around and been part of a church's liberal/moderate wing.

There also seems to be a counter-trend where those who stay in the church
become even more fundamentalist. Michael Harrington wrote about this in "The
Politics at God's Funeral". It creates a cyclical effect - as the moderates
leave, the fundamentalists make the churches more and more fundamental and
fanatic, driving out the moderates still left, which gives the fundamentalists
even more power and the church drives out those moderates still left and so
on.

~~~
sjwright
> as the moderates leave, the fundamentalists make the churches more and more
> fundamental and fanatic, driving out the moderates still left, which gives
> the fundamentalists even more power and the church drives out those
> moderates still left and so on.

That's a fascinating point. The question is, as this circular process reaches
a new equilibrium, what are we left with?

~~~
prawn
In some cases, maybe a secretive minority willing to die for the incredible
belief in their cause and not enough moderates to criticise their behaviour?

Bit like what you can see with friends who push their partying too hard. They
alienate more conservative friends but find agreeable social partners
elsewhere, gradually re-filling their social circle with other hard partiers.
Over time, perhaps what was normal seems boring and the behaviour gets worse?

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notastartup
I remember reading a piece about how Catholic church is trying to ban people
from using condom and thought it was pretty ridiculous that they were against
safety. A fellow Android developer was catholic and started a long rant about
how condoms promote infidelity and adultery -_- and he literally sat in front
of the screen for hours writing a huge rebuttal to what I have said.

Another time I advised him against purchasing mutual funds because as a
Economics/Finance major, we learned that mutual funds have many lot of
questionable hidden costs and their market performance aren't the most sound
vehicle for investing one's salary but he basically told me that he trusts the
sales person because he is also Catholic. He was newly wed, living with his
parents, had a baby on the way, and made the same salary as me which wasn't
much. I didn't feel bad though.

What I got from this is that even with the face of evidence and hard facts,
some people are just that attached to religion, an old artifact for a time
when science and logic were persecuted and laughed at, it was just shocking to
see it continue so rigidly.

~~~
joeclark77
So... did he make money on the mutual funds? If so, joke's on you, right?
Evidence and hard facts seem to support his position on the other issue, now,
don't they?

~~~
notastartup
I think he's divorced now so it probably doesn't matter.

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donkeyd
This reminds me of the graph correlating a decrease in the number of pirates
to global warming.

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gwawr
Correllation != Causation

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crag
“Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.”

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betterunix
Could be the Internet, could be the phase-out of TEL...

(For the uninitiated, yes, this is trolling.)

