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.)
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.
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.
Source/citation/justification? Seems just as easy to make the opposing argument, that mass media technologies are being perfected to the point where it'll soon be possible to use highly optimized Skinner boxes for disseminating propaganda, something like Zynga plus Fox News. The victims would be voluntarily opting in to their own brainwashing.
That's a hoot! There hasn't been as much tribalism and sloganeering in US politics as there is now since before the Civil War. Children graduating high school these days are barely literate and absolutely incapable of identifying a logical syllogism or evaluating an argument. Jon Stewart's joke news show is most of the country's prime source of information and analysis. Maybe there's a fantastic revolution of "critical thinking" happening in the third world somewhere, but certainly not in the US or western Europe.
+10000000. I totally agree with you. But, I don't know what to do about it. We've tried public and private schools, but I think a lot of the problem is our culture. Hard work and studying are not rewarded; group mind-think and standardization have taken the place of a good combination of rote memory learning and essay writing/debating.
What if we were to establish schools the same way they existed in the 1800s with the same rigor? Small, mixed classes, all in a single room, hopefully taught by the very well-educated.
I'd like to find a way to do homeschooling that wouldn't require my wife to be a full-time teacher. One possibility is something like a network of families where each one is responsible for a particular subject or a particular day of the week, and they take turns. Or something like Art Robinson's curriculum (http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com) where the children are basically self-teaching, and you can do other work as long as you're around to keep the schedule/discipline. It's tough, though. I wish I could trust the Catholic schools, at least, to stick to a classical education, but they're shaped more by the culture than by tradition these days.
> 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???
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.
I disagree. Ease of retrieval of information is one thing, signal to noise ratio is also important. For every 'superstition' being destroyed on the Internet there are (e.g.) a plethora of people reposting the discredited "NASA space pen" meme, smugly ending discussions with "correlation does not imply causation, so you're wrong" and other thought-terminating cliches, and enthusiastically engaging in echo-chamber communities that only seek to reinforce existing biases.
Good information has always taken work to obtain. The Internet cannot compensate for intellectual laziness, it can only magnify the effectiveness of the efforts of those willing to exercise discernment and look at things with a critical eye.
Yep. I'd add delusion to your list of echo-chamber-friendly conditions. Faith/Religion are one case people like to yell about, but you have plenty of nibiru/reptilian/fema-camp/bill-gates-is-a-eugenicist people who are ready to believe whatever the internet tells them, all the while believing everyone else is guilty of intellectual laziness.
I can agree that there are some cases of misinformation that have been propagated by the internet, but to claim it is a simple wash is pretty far-fetched.
I'm critical of atheism, because it is itself a religious belief and those that believe and evangelize it refuse to recognize it as a religion in and of itself.
I live in the U.S. where the country was built by those that wanted freedom of religion.
Religion is defined as, 'The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.'
Notice the word "especially". Scientology is based on the idea of what some might call aliens having superhuman powers. In atheism, a number of superhuman powers, i.e. things that humans cannot do, are ascribed to science- even though there is nothing that disallows that God could be involved in everything from the big bang to evolution, somehow the Big Bang and Evolution take on a life of their own, without full understanding of them.
Darwin takes the place of a prophet, although Darwin himself was not an atheist [1] and said, "Science has nothing to do with Christ, except insofar as the habit of scientific research makes a man cautious in admitting evidence."
Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't. They put up billboards, organize, take donations, have musical rallies at military bases with atheist songs, and pass out literature like evangelical religions. And they are as intolerant and unaccepting as well. I find them quite obnoxious, but atheism is a religion, therefore according to our freedom of religion, it must be allowed, but it should be allowed along with the free practice of any other religion in any place, at any time, in any public place.
"Faith and science can co-exist, but atheism has a belief that they can't."
Of course they can co-exist, and atheism has nothing to say against religion: religion, by definition, is non-falsifiable, so atheism can not negate it.
Atheism is, nevertheless, very sceptical about the actual existence of a supreme being. It can't prove its non-existence, but still considers it as veeeery improbable. As "there are a million reasons which explain why we believe in god which are much more probable than the fact that god exists".
So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)
Words have shifted a bit. In the strictest possible senses, "It's not possible to know for sure" is an agnostic position and the atheistic position would be either "I believe there is no god, whatever the evidence" or "I believe there is no god, here is the evidence". These strict uses sometimes confuse more typical uses, where "probably not, because I haven't seen sufficient evidence to make 'there is any sort of a god' more likely than other options" is called "atheist" and "shrug I dunno" falls under "agnostic".
There are lots of atheism and agnostic variations. Actually an agnostic can be also an atheist (or a theist, by the way). But here you have a nice explanation: http://atheism.wikia.com/wiki/Atheist_vs_Agnostic
As explained in the link, there are two kind of atheists: gnostic-atheists (strong-atheists) and agnostic-atheists (weak-atheists)
In my opinion, since proving the existence/non-existence of gods (and spaghetti monsters, and pink unicorns) is impossible, gnostic-atheism is untenable (in the same sense that gnostic-theism is untenable).
But, and I think this what matters for an atheist to identify as such, the fact that the non-existence of god can not be proved does not make it an important subject. It is just one of those things that can not be proved or disproved (by construction), and has no more relevance that the orbiting of a tea pot around the sun.
I want to be clear that I don't think it is in any way unreasonable to use "atheist" to mean "I don't think God is any more likely than Russell's teapot", just that this isn't always what it is used to mean and the two meanings are sometimes confused/conflated.
It is not unreasonable to think that "God is less likely than Russell's teapot", but it is definitely unreasonable to say "I am sure god does not exist" since, by definition, god is untestable.
I guess that what I am trying to say is that a "strong atheist" (with judgements based on reason), can not really assert with 100% confidence that god does not exist. He can, nevertheless, be convinced that the likelihood of its existence is for all practical purposes 0.
It is not that he "believes that god does not exist", it is more that he thinks along the lines of "why should I care about this particular teapot?"
It is that he believes that God does not exist, in that he asserts that the probability of God is substantially less than the probability of no God. In the same way that he believes that, having looked both ways and seen no car, he won't be hit by a car when he's crossing the street (though I'm not asserting any relationship between the magnitude of the respective likelihoods). There's the possibility he's wrong, and that'd be unfortunate, but it's what he believes in that it's what his understanding of the world says and it's what determines his actions. Using the word "atheist" for such people seems entirely reasonable. Most of them will agree that they are, in some senses, strictly agnostic as well - the categories needn't be mutually exclusive.
> So yes, you can accept science and religion, but accepting the later can not be based on reason (because there is no logical method to disprove the existence of god)
Reason doesn't rely on falsifiability (science does, but science is a subset of reason, not the same thing as reason.)
As an atheist, I never realized I believe in and worship Darwin as a superhuman controlling power. Thanks for pointing this out to me! I'll make sure to put a Darwinian altar in my house and pray to it daily, for giving me food to eat and keeping my family members healthy!
Also, talking about the actions of a small number of atheists, as if you're talking about all atheists, is just as ignorant as calling out all Christians for the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Well done, for confirming the prejudice of narrow mindedness that both your fellow countrymen and fellow Christians already have to deal with.
The link appears to have been edited - the current link does not mention logistic regression at all, and gives a very valid description about the relationship between correlation and causation.
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.
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).
This might be a situation where a story merge feature would come in handy.
In a "merged thread" the title could have more than one link value (but still have a canonical (by mod standard) top ranked url.) And the discussion could be merged to one thread (or version controlled in correspondence with a particular top level link.)
That's how I personally use HN too, which is why I didn't make the paper itself the primary link. Good point about it almost always being referenced in the thread.
> NPR also interviewed Downey so 'value added'
Fair, but I'm doubtful many people here listen to the audio.
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.
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.
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).
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.
The more fascinating question is why the widespread availability of knowledge and information hasn't done a better job of overcoming provincial superstitions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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://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.
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."
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.
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.
> 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?
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?
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.
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?
