"Profiles of the Godless": CFI's survey of nonbelievers

Two studies on nonbelievers were recently completed. A few days ago, the Center for Inquiry published “Profiles of the Godless: Results from a Survey of the Nonreligious.” They describe the survey, conducted by the Center with Associate Professor Luke Galen of Grand Valley State University, as “[t]he most comprehensive survey of the nonreligious to date, gathering data from nearly 6,000 respondents.” The results appear in a compact and readable summary in the latest issue of Free Inquiry magazine (click on the PDF link at the site above).

This questionnaire nicely complements the online survey conducted by Tom Arcaro at Atheist Nexus last fall, which he has reported on over the past several months. The Arcaro online survey analyzes the respondents demographically, draws from large samples from several countries, and focuses on the different pressures against coming out as an atheist, though it also touches upon self-identification. The CFI/Galen study, on the other hand, pays somewhat less attention to demographic differences, samples from a majority US population, and focuses on self-identification and psychological characteristics. Both have sampling issues but provide interesting insights. I’ll discuss the CFI survey in this post and the Arcaro poll shortly.

A strength of the CFI study is that it focuses on differences within the nonreligious community itself. The nonreligious segment of the population is growing and increasingly visible, Galen notes; however, “self-described religious believers constitute the vast majority of the American population, and so more attention has been paid by social scientists and survey researchers to distinctions such as religious denomination (say, evangelicals vs. mainline) or political leanings than to characteristics descriptive of a nonreligious orientation.” As CFI’s description puts it: “In general-population surveys, meaningful differences between distinct types of nonbelievers (atheists, humanists, agnostics, etc.) have often been neglected, with the broad category encompassing the nonreligious only included with the implication that they merely represent the ‘absence of religion’.” A more nuanced portrait of nonbelievers is quite welcome, as is a comparison with the religious, especially as nonbelievers are often dismissed with stereotypes, “e.g. that they are “‘angry loners’ or ‘asocial’.”

A pilot study was used to test the survey design prior to the larger survey of the nonreligious. The questionnaire was distributed to all of the subscribers of the Center For Inquiry’s Michigan branch e-mail and group newsletter as well as two good-sized local churches (responses n=333 and n=325 respectively), the latter in order to “provide some range on survey instrument items such as belief in God as well as to support the testing of hypotheses regarding characteristics distinguishing between religious and nonreligious individuals.”

The two samples of course differed in terms of beliefs, with almost all of the churchgoers reporting strong belief and the CFI-list sample exhibiting a range of beliefs, with about half self-described atheists and the rest divided among a variety of other labels. Despite some demographic differences, the two groups turned out to be quite similar in terms of “mental well-being.” One key dimension on which they did differ was “openness to experience,” with the nonreligious being “more intellectually oriented and unconventional.” “Even controlling for the large differences between religious and nonreligious individuals in regard to education, gender, marriage, and child-rearing,” Galen reports, “openness still was the strongest predictor of both lower religious belief and membership in CFI/Michigan as opposed to the churches.” In contrast, religious people were higher on “agreeableness” – “a quality of being amiable or nonconfrontational as opposed to skeptical of others.”

The larger study looked only at nonbelievers, sending an email request to CFI’s international membership, from which snowball samples emerged, with ultimately 5,831respondents, primarily in the US. The researchers were interested in demographic characteristics, psychological characteristics, and variation in self-labeling among the larger group. While Galen acknowledges that this is not a representative sample of nonbelievers but of more organizationally-active individuals, he notes that the demographic characteristics of respondents were consistent with those found in previous research: high education, mostly male, older, higher income (more about which in the later post).

When he talks about differences among nonbelievers, it’s initially a bit confusing. For example, he suggests that “meaningful differences between distinct types of nonbelievers (say, secular humanist vs. atheist) have been neglected.” This “vs.” is misleading in that these are, as Galen is clearly aware, not mutually exclusive or in opposition. Figure 1 at the bottom of page 42 is extremely confusing when you first see it, as what it describes is not explained for two more pages.

Here’s what they did:

Respondents were allowed to endorse multiple religious and philosophical views or labels (such as 'spiritual', 'agnostic', and 'humanistic'), but they were also asked to choose the single term that best described themselves. This self- identification term served as a basis for categorization. Despite the option of selecting among a dozen labels such as ‘deist’ or ‘polytheist’, the overwhelming majority of respondents were divided amongst four preferred labels: 57 percent atheist, 24 percent humanist, 10 percent agnostic, and 2 percent spiritual.

You can read the fuller description in the article, but the study found that while many selected non-atheist labels when allowed several choices, when forced to choose a “master label” people often jettisoned these other terms to master-label themselves as atheists, while the atheist label, chosen in the nonrestrictive phase by 77% of the respondents, was retained as a master-label by 57%:

Contrast the attrition from ‘spiritual’, ‘agnostic,’ and ‘humanist’ when reverting to a single label with the three-quarters who included ‘atheist’ as one of their multiple self-identifications; 57 percent of the latter retained ‘atheist’ as their as sole label. In other words, those respondents who included ‘atheist’ among other labels were most likely to end up retaining it when choosing one self-identification. Thus, atheist appears to be more of a ‘bridge-burning’ term; those who define themselves as atheists are less likely to shed that term or to dilute it with other labels. This indicates that although humanist is one of many hats that nonreligious individuals wear, when push comes to shove most of these individuals are ‘really’ atheists.

Ah! Now Fig. 1 becomes perfectly clear.

Galen continues:

This raises the question: are there individuals who are for all metaphysical intents and purposes either atheists or agnostics but do not label themselves as such? What characteristics distinguish those who otherwise metaphysically agree in unbelief but choose to describe themselves differently?

This is a bit more involved. Using the responses to philosophical questions, they created a category of “de facto atheists/agnostics.” Next they cross-referenced this with the master-labels, creating a category of “atheist/agnostic deniers” – those who were de facto atheists/agnostics but didn’t self-identify as such (using, e.g., “humanist” or “spiritual”).

They then compared the “deniers” and the “admitters,” finding some differences. The most marked, Galen suggests, was age:

Those nonbelievers who chose to self-label as ‘spiritual’ and ‘humanist’ were older (average of fifty-three and fifty-one, respectively) than those choosing ‘agnostic’ and ‘atheist’ (forty-nine and forty-seven, respectively). This would seem to indicate a cohort effect, such that the term atheist is becoming more common despite a shared de facto philosophical outlook with self-labeled humanists.

I’ll discuss the matter further in the later post, but I’ll say now that this raised an eyebrow. Galen doesn’t describe statistical significance, but these ages are not far apart, and it seems a real stretch to me to suggest that they represent any kind of cohort effect. While I do believe the atheist self-identification is expanding (and Arcaro has something to say about this), this doesn't appear sufficient to support that claim.

Galen then goes on to describe psychological differences across the differently self-identified groups: spiritual, agnostic, atheist, humanist. I won’t discuss these findings in detail, but he provides a nice chart on page 44 (again, before the material is covered :)). Most interestingly, they found that “mental well-being” among nonbelievers was the mirror image of that among the religious:

Those nonbelievers most confident in their nonbelief tended to be the most emotionally healthy, relative to the ‘fence sitters’ who reported more negative emotions. Similarly, life satisfaction was lower among the spirituals relative to the other three belief labels. Therefore, having uncertainty regarding one’s religious views appears to be associated with relatively greater emotional instability.

This is a useful study, and I hope to see many more like it in the (near) future. I was left, though, with several questions, some of which were addressed by Arcaro (and some, like multivariate analysis, not – at least yet). I’ll discuss a few of these in the upcoming post and more later on.

Still chuckling

...at Dawn Pitkin.

...

...

(OK, so technically she's too old, but it still makes me laugh.)

Lubna Hussein and rights action

So, where was I…?

Ah, as I mentioned in the mermaid-fatwa post, I came across the site ProgressiveIslam.Org in the course of searching for more information about and means of aiding Lubna Hussein.

As discussed on a recent Pharyngula thread, Hussein, arrested by the Public Order Police, is facing trial under the Sudanese General Discipline Law for - as it’s been translated - “sensational dressing up” in the form of wearing pants. (The trial appears now to be scheduled for August 4th, a few days from now.) This class of law is of course an affront to anyone who cares about human rights and freedoms, and those challenging it in their countries should receive all of the support we can give them.

I was somewhat disappointed to find that it was difficult to find ways to help concretely. I did find these three organizations/sites, with which I’m not really familiar, which seem to be following the case.

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information

Women living under muslim laws

ProgressiveIslam.Org

The second, if you follow the link on their page, provides contact information (including email addresses) for protest missives. I’m sure more publicity won’t hurt, either.

A few thoughts on the matter:

1. Ideas don’t have rights – people do. This isn’t perhaps the most relevant point to be made in this specific case, but it does need to be made. (I also just like linking to the Center for Inquiry’s work on this front.)

2. The notion that this is a case of an isolated Islamic society whose culture(s) have developed in some vacuum, now requiring some benevolent foreign intervention in order to progress, is ridiculous. They are not at some stage of a teleological process awaiting the gentle nudge or violent shove of their benighted “Western” brethren to move them along. The cultures in question have been part of the rapacious world political and capitalist system for centuries, and imperial intervention has played a major role in shaping them.

3. Further, the more we understand, the more complex things appear. It is dangerous to paint people, especially women, as helpless victims in need of rescue by the powerful.* Often, those who appear initially as voiceless and powerless victims come to be recognized, as in this case, as brave fighters. Lubna Hussein is a reporter who has long been an outspoken critic of the government. Reports say she’s resigned from her job at the UN so that her status as a UN employee will not shield her, rejected a compromise put forth by the head of the reporters’ union which would require her to promise not to dress that way again, and refused a presidential pardon. She has sent invitations to her flogging. She is brilliantly and successfully publicizing her case as part of an effort to get these laws scrapped.

Neither are the law and its enforcement merely an archaic survival of a backward religious culture or mindless reaction to “modernization” and “Western values.” Its enforcement appears to be expanding at present as a means of controlling and silencing political opponents, especially women. It is very much bound up with the larger political context.

4. People who develop some sudden interest in women’s oppression or human rights (which, incidentally, just happen to be tropes of value in their broader political campaign - e.g., with respect to immigration or military intervention - or in their material or power interests) are not to be trusted. In fact, anyone claiming to speak or work on behalf of oppressed groups should be viewed with great skepticism.

5. Those who question or oppose interventionist policies, existing or proposed, do so for a number of reasons, from moral to pragmatic. Labeling them as accomodationists and “cultural relativists” or defenders of Islam when they have made no arguments of the sort is dishonest. (Which is by no means to say that a cultural-relativist perspective has no place in social analysis, and certainly not that an ethnocentric approach is desirable. My way is to take a critical historical approach to all cultures and cultural change, forming my beliefs and responses on the basis of values and understanding I’ve developed through that process.)

It happens that sometimes little or no action may be called for from certain groups – there may in some cases be little productive we can do other than offer verbal support, which should not be undervalued - but there is no stark choice between action and inaction. There are various courses of action available in response to rights issues, and these can be discussed and debated by reasonable people. Empty, menacing internet tough talk is worse than useless.

6. The very concept of human rights as broadly understood and practiced today is inherently problematic and needs to change. It should be replaced by a vision of human rights that does not construct depoliticized victims but rather promotes engagement with people who are suffering and fighting, respecting them as complex and active human beings with their own goals. It needs to move away from a legalistic and statist conception that considers governments the ultimate granters and guarantors of rights and toward one that encourages people to work together to construct and maintain their rights on the ground. I’ll have much more to say about this in the future.

*I haven't had the opportunity to read it, but among the popular works that caught my eye is Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream.

Thanks, PZ!

My deepest gratitude to PZ Myers of Pharyngula for linking to my fledgling blog! A post about a mermaid fatwa seems a completely appropriate introduction to the site.

And thanks to everyone else for visiting! Hope you stay a while, take a look around, and stop back soon!

Remind anyone of anything?

So I've been putting together a short post on Lubna Hussein and responses to the situation I've found on this thread and elsewhere, and one of the posts offering the best information was here at ProgressiveIslam.Org.

Checking out the site, I couldn't help but notice this delicious post - "Fatwa on eating mermaids" - which made my day*:

I am a bit of a collector of what the 16th Century Humanist and Protestant Reformer, Sebastian Castellio described as the follies and vanities of theology. A rich source of ludicrous religious injunctions from Islam may be had at the "Islam Questions and Answers" site run by the Saudi shaykh, Muhammad Salih an-Munajid.

Now just when you thought it could not get any more absurd, the worthy shakyh discusses the permissibility of eating mermaids. He pontificates, inter alia:

"Many of the fuqaha’ mentioned mermaids and differed on the ruling concerning them. Some of them said that they are permissible (to eat) because of the general meaning of the evidence which says that whatever is in the sea is permissible. This is the view of the Shaafa’is and Hanbalis, and is the view of most of the Maalikis and of Ibn Hazm and others. And some of them regarded it as haraam because it is not a kind of fish. This is the view of the Hanafis and of al-Layth ibn Sa’d. "

The shaykh concludes:

"The correct view is that nothing is excluded from that, and that all the sea creatures which can only live in water are halaal, alive or dead, because of the general meaning of the verse – i.e., “Lawful to you is (the pursuit of) water game and its use for food” [al-Maa’idah 5:64]."

So, next time you sit down to a fine meal of seafood and your host dishes up roast mermaid, you can tuck in with great gusto, safe in the knowledge that mermaid is halaal.

http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/103991/mermaids

Something oddly familiar about the whole thing...

*and reminded me of a certain piscine character who shall remain unnamed.

Democracy Now! interviews Zelaya, report on Iraq vets, martial religion film

Today's Democracy Now! features an exclusive interview with Manuel Zelaya:



I have to say, I didn't understand his answer to the question about whether he, returned to office, will continue with the matter of a constitutional convention. I don't know whether he misunderstood the question or was being intentionally evasive for one reason or another - motives for dodginess on this topic could be many.

Meanwhile, there continue to be reports of dissension in the military ranks...

Speaking of militaries, the following DN! segment - "The Hell of War Comes Home: Newspaper Series Documents Murder, Suicide, Kidnappings by Iraq Vets" - concerned US soldiers from Colorado Springs who fought in Iraq. Everything about it was horrifying and depressing.

And speaking of militaries and Colorado Springs, I learned recently that Constantine's Sword is now available on YouTube:

The AP, NYT, Haiti, Honduras, and lies

OK, so I can combine two stories: an issue related to the Chomsky talk I mentioned in a recent post (which I’ve since discovered can be watched more easily perhaps here, although you miss the live introduction by Amy Goodman) and contemporary events in Honduras. Both involve media manipulation and misinformation.

I’ve been complaining of how the wire services in particular have been covering the situation in Honduras for weeks now. In truth, I’ve been complaining about their coverage of this part of the world for months. A year and a half ago, when Bolivia’s constitutional convention passed a draft constitution to send to the public for a vote (it passed earlier this year – see here, with some great pictures), the AP reports repeatedly contained the claim that the draft eliminated presidential term limits. (Reuters got it right in this instance.) The document was available to anyone online, and clearly limited presidents to two terms. I emailed AP about the error, and never heard back from them; nor, to the best of my knowledge, was this error, significant to how the document and its promoters would be seen internationally, corrected. I investigated at the time, and found several other recorded examples of AP misreporting, possibly innocent and obviously not so innocent.

One event Chomsky brought up and whose coverage he criticized in his NYC talk last month was the kidnapping of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. It happens that I recently read an article about the AP’s coverage of a series of issues at Media Freedom Intl., sponsored by Project Censored and the media Freedom Foundation. In the piece - “A Study of Bias in the Associated Press” - the authors describe the organization of the AP and analyze through the examination of several issues whether “story selection bias was widespread within US newspapers and if bias was evident within the AP system itself.”

One of the cases discussed is AP coverage of the ousting of Aristide:

On February 29, 2004 AP widely reported that President Aristide was ousted by Haitian rebels and that the United States provided an escort to take Aristide out of the country to a safe asylum. Within 24 hours an entirely different story emerged that placed the US at the center of a forced regime change. Instead of the US being the supportive facilitator of Aristide’s safety, independent news sources though Pacifica radio news were reporting that Aristide was kidnapped by US forces.

AP quickly changed their story. On March 1, 2004 an AP report by Deb Riechman said, “White House officials said Aristide left willingly and that the United States aided his safe departure. But in a telephone interview with the Associated Press, Aristide said: ‘No. I was forced to leave.’ ‘They were telling me that if I don’t leave they would start shooting and be killing in a matter of time,’ Aristide said during the interview, which was interrupted at times by static. It was unclear whether Aristide meant that rebels or U.S. agents would begin shooting. Asked to identify the ‘agents,’ Aristide said: ‘White American, white military.’ “They came at night … There were too many. I couldn’t count them,’ he added.”

Another account on March 1, 2004 by AP writer Clive Bacchus stated that “Aristide said he was being held prisoner at the presidential palace in Bangui, Central African Republic, according to Randall Robinson, former president of TransAfrica, a Washington-based group that monitors US policy toward Africa and the Caribbean and supported Aristide. ‘About 20 American soldiers, in full battle gear with automatic weapons, came to the residence … took them to the airport, at gunpoint, put them on a plane,’ said Robinson, who currently lives on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. ‘He said three times before he hung up ‘Tell the world it was a coup, it was a coup.’“

The last AP report of Aristide exclaiming he was kidnapped by the US in a State Department coup was on June 27, 2004. Since then there have been 60 news stories by the AP with Aristide mentioned in the articles. Of these stories none mentioned Aristide’s claim that he was kidnapped by the United States military. None mention the US backing of the coup. There have been no articles examining claims that the US government sent 20,000 M-16s to the Dominican Republic, many of which ended up in the hands of the Haitian rebels, nor about how the US blocked arms sales to Haiti during Aristide’s presidency. Nor has AP covered that Aristide was elected in 2000 by 92 percent of the vote in an election declared free and fair by the Organization of American States.

Continuing stories about Haiti on AP’s wire since June of 2004 say Aristide was ousted by rebel forces with no mention US involvement. AP’s bias in favor of the State Department’s version of the Aristide’s removal is a deliberate re-writing of history and a documented case of AP-sanctioned forgetting.

Here’s the story as told by author Randall Robinson.

(also discussed in his book, An Unbroken Agony:)



Not only has the recent Honduran coup been compared to the Haitian precedent – though with a different response – the coverage has shaped up quite similarly. In these cases, as we’ve seen most recently with reporting, and I use the term loosely, on Honduras, there’s simply no innocent explanation. There is no way so many important elements of the situation could be ignored, and nonsensical and unsubstantiated accusations – not to mention outright lies - repeated, without some degree of bad faith. The pattern, as I have no doubt a later analysis of all of the coverage following Honduras’ return to democracy will show, is too clear to excuse as the result of apathy, lack of resources, or incompetence. This is as true of the New York Times’ own stories as it is of those they pick up from the AP. This evening’s, for example, reports that Micheletti is showing signs of accepting Zelaya’s return to (limited) power...

But the nation is so polarized over the possible return that Mr. Micheletti is reaching out to other regional leaders for help in building support for such a deal, especially among the country’s elite, the officials said.

The elite, of course, is the only group of interest here. If a significant portion of the elite opposes it, that’s evidence enough of “national polarization.”

The officials said Mr. Micheletti warned President Arias that he had not been able to persuade other parts of the Honduran government, or the leaders of the Honduran business community, to go along with the proposal.

And of course they take his word for it. Why the hell should it be considered, let alone of central interest, what the “leaders of the Honduran business community” think? Zelaya is the democratically-elected president of the country. This whole report just shows how very deep the problems go (at least this one, like another recent piece in a different paper, doesn’t premise the claim of national polarization on conversations at the Tegucigalpa Country Club, so I guess we should be thankful for that).

Diplomats close to the negotiations said there was broad opposition to Mr. Zelaya’s return, led by some of the most powerful political and business leaders in Honduras.

Those leaders have felt misunderstood — some would say betrayed — by the international community’s condemnation of last month’s ouster of Mr. Zelaya, whom they accuse of illegally trying to change the Constitution to extend his time in power.

They’ve been doing that since before the coup, and the corporate media has been all too happy to parrot the accusation, which doesn’t even make sense. The oligarchs feel betrayed because they aren’t getting their way? Cry me a river.

The corporate media are a joke. A joke.

In related and more encouraging news, Al Giordano of Narco News has just arrived in Honduras, from where he’ll be reporting.

HONDURAS UPDATE 7-29-09

Several quick updates:

Zelaya has set up camp at the Nicaraguan border, hoping of course to return soon. Meanwhile, repression continues within the country, expecially in the border regions, as reported at Narco News.

Xiomara Zelaya, the president's wife, is one of the people prevented from reaching him. She was interviewed the other day on Democracy Now!.

A speaking tour has been organized by NALACC to several US cities beginning today in Washington, DC, through August 8th. (Leading the delegation is Dr. Juan Almendares, an extremely nice man I met briefly at the AAAS meeting last year.)

Several days ago, a preliminary report was released by an international human rights monitoring coalition describing the violations that have occurred since the coup. Here's a short report by Greg Grandin and the original in Spanish. The full report is to be released tomorrow.

Yesterday, the US Department of State revoked the diplomatic visas of four coup officials. They're more isolated than ever.

Women in Afghanistan, some revolutionary

I remember receiving a string of solidarity requests from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on anarchist lists back in 1999 or 2000. They described conditions for women there, and I printed them out and would read them to people in horror, shocked that there appeared to be so little knowledge of or interest in the situation here in the US.

This video segment was recently sent me by Brave New Films:



There's still little concern with the real struggles of women in Afghanistan; worse, they've continued to be cynically used for imperialist aims while conditions deteriorate. But they fight on. Please pass on word about the film and support the Afghan Women's Mission if you can.

Leonard Peltier parole hearing today

As I understand it, it may take a few weeks for the parole board to reach its decision, but those involved seem optimistic.

Incident at Oglala is a film I've had in my tiny collection for a while now:

Noam Chomsky NYC Speech on BookTV

Noam Chomsky appears on C-Span2's BookTV* this weekend**, giving a talk sponsored by the Brecht Forum at the Riverside Church in New York last month. For some reason, their YouTube channel has just a small fragment of Chomsky's speech (and none of Amy Goodman's introduction), and even that can't be embedded - not that I can see why anyone would want to - but the entire thing can be watched here.

In terms of content, it seems largely a compilation of his talks and writings over many years, which is fitting as the occasion is the 40th anniversary of American Power and the New Mandarins.



Though it feels a bit disjointed at moments, Chomsky touches on many important points, and I plan to post one or two related items shortly.

The best part, I believe, is the end - the last 30 minutes or so. In this section (*SPOILER ALERT* :)) he talks about democratic worker and community control and the need to rediscover and revive these alternative ideas and futures that the powerful have done their best to make us forget. He argues that of all of the crises that beset us today, perhaps the most serious is the democratic deficit.

*A post about their airing of a Chomsky speech may seem an odd moment to do this, but there's something I'd like to mention that's been bothering me about BookTV for some time now. I've been receiving the weekend schedule for years, and it's always seemed in general heavily weighted toward conservatives, including denialists of all stripes. (Not to mention its rather martial and male-dominated flavor.) During the previous administration I didn't find this especially surprising, but I kind of expected a shift, for that ideological lock to loosen, under the new administration. So far, I haven't seen any perceptible change. I don't know who is reponsible for selecting the talks that are featured, but there definitely appears to be something going on there.

**Oh, by the way this weekend with also feature a talk by Peter Laufer about his new book, The Dangerous World of Butterflies: The Startling Subculture of Criminals, Collectors, and Conservationists.



I haven't yet read it, but I did see him interviewed on The Daily Show recently and thought it sounded fascinating.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Peter Laufer
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

Interlude

More Yes Men Videos

Here they are:

(Oh, the Yes Men have also introduced the Fix the World Challenge.)

The Yes Men Fix the World tomorrow on HBO

Damn! Scooped! OK, not really scooped, but while I was putting together videos for my post, Democracy Now! interviewed Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, The Yes Men, abut their film - The Yes Men Fix the World - whick, OK, has been out for a while and premieres on HBO tomorrow, Monday the 27th. I guess all that's left for me now is to provide the DN! interview and, in my next post, a few related vids. The post after that will be more questioning and critical concerning an issue related to the film.

A review of...well, a comment about Unscientific America

[It may seem odd to take time away from weightier issues to talk about this silly blip of a book, much less a single comment about the silly blip of a book on an equally silly blog. I’m doing so for two reasons. First, the actions of the Catholic Church (though not, of course, all individual Catholics) in promoting and supporting the criminal coup in Honduras, adding another link in its long chain of misdeeds in Latin America, and its role in promoting a bill passed by the Honduran congress to ban Emergency Contraception, vetoed by Zelaya in May.* This has me riled about organized religion at the moment. Second, because this comment, by Jean Kazez, so well encapsulated the problems with Mooney and Kirshenbaum and their approach.]

“Well look,” Kazez says,

either the NAs [the so-called “New Atheists”] have an impact on the general population, or they don’t. If they don’t, why do they bother writing books and chatting with each other on blogs? Surely it’s not just for the pleasure of talking to each other. So all parties ought to agree that they do have an impact on the general population.

This is a bit confused and/or disingenuous. “Have an impact” on the general population in what specific way(s)? Of course, it’s unlikely that Dawkins and Myers are affecting people’s choice of house paint. If we’re talking about effects, we should be very clear about the specific effects we have in mind, not to mention the fact that “the general population” consists of a wide variety of people – this needs to be broken down if we’re to talk about actions and effects intelligently (for example, “religious folk” below, now replacing “the general population” for some reason, needs to be defined).

So take the NAs who both bash religion and teach science–folks like Dawkins and Myers.

Again, we need to be clear about what “bash religion” and “teach science” mean in the context under discussion. Moreover, we need to take into account that, however defined, these might not be the only two activities in which these individuals (who specifically beyond one or two, and what characteristics specifically define them as “NAs,” are still unclear) are engaged.

How does the general population react? Well, there are the fence-sitters who might buy into both the bashing and the science. But what about the religious folk? How do they react to the coupling of science and religion-bashing? We all have experiences to draw upon. We don’t react well to a message with coupled with something we find insulting. So at the very least, C&S have very plausible hypothesis.

No. They – and you - have at best incipient conjecture based on a simplistic understanding of human psychology, itself grounded only in anecdote. A hypothesis, in contrast, would be based on an understanding on the relevant historical and sociological evidence, its terms would be clear, and it would specify the social mechanisms through which the (specific) actions of one group affected the (specific) attitudes or actions of another. And it would still be a hypothesis, which means it would set up a research program which could lead to its being found incorrect.

It just happens to be one [sic] they haven’t proven true by amassing empirical evidence.

Indeed!

But should we hold that against them? Should they try to get some NSF money and do a study before they make the conjecture that religion-bashing scientists probably alienate science students? Er, I’d think not.

And this is where I get angry. Yes, Jean, we should hold their failure to do that against them. That’s exactly what they should do if they wish to make claims about the social world and have them accepted or even taken seriously. As someone who has received NSF money for social research on a theoretically-related subject (and I can tell you, having gone through that tedious process, that a proposal that doesn’t do what I’ve described above would be laughed out of it), I very much resent Mooney and Kirshenbaum making claims that they’ve neither investigated themselves nor based on secondary literature on the social dynamics involved. (Here’s Austin Dacey on the subject a little while ago. Have they undertaken this research?)

Claims about the social world are – and should be! - evaluated on the same broad terms as those in the natural sciences: Are they based on logic and evidence? How was that evidence obtained and what is its quality? Have important aspects been fully considered and alternative explanations dealt with adequately? Like the great C. Wright Mills, I don’t care if people consider the social sciences as a “true science” or “social studies.” Nor do I believe that only professional social scientists can or should write about the social world (indeed, many of the most thoroughly-researched and illuminating articles and books I’ve read have been by journalists). I do, however, object to the idea that claims about history or social change can simply be plucked out of the air if they suit one’s prejudices and do not have to be subjected to rigorous questioning or defended. History and the social sciences are longstanding disciplines with developed methods by which empirical evidence is collected and analyzed.

In this sense, they don’t differ in methodological essence from the natural/physical sciences. Indeed, as Bricmont and Sokal point out in this piece I’ve mentioned recently (p. 6), science doesn’t differ fundamentally from the rational way of proceeding in any area of life; it simply systematizes the methods used and constructs research institutions in which human fallibility in knowledge acquisition is minimized to the greatest extent possible.

This fact is touched upon by the many individuals – none social scientists to the best of my knowledge – who have been asking Mooney and Kirshenbaum to provide evidentiary support or simply to define their terms (like “scientific literacy” – what the book is ostensibly about), to elucidate the mechanisms through which they believe change has occurred, is occurring, and might occur, and to address objections or alternatives to the historical and explanatory frameworks they’re proposing.

It is astounding that Mooney and Kirshenbaum have simply ignored the numerous requests for evidence to substantiate their claims, claims that form the basis of their verbal attack on particular individuals. These requests have come from PZ Myers (here, here, here, here, and here), Ophelia Benson, Jerry Coyne, Peter Beattie, a vast number of other commenters, and even many if not all of those who reviewed the book relatively favorably. (They’ve also ignored repeated attempts to get them to understand that people have more than one goal here, but that’s an inherently-related topic for another time...)

This is particularly inexcusable as Mooney and Kirshenbaum have been bloggers for some stretch. I watched a year ago in utter exasperation as they ignored comments asking them to do all of these things, basically countering, if at all, with “I don’t think I care for your tone.” Blogs offer a remarkable opportunity for writers to present their ideas-in-formation to others and to gain feedback, and Mooney and Kirshenbaum had an intelligent and knowledgeable readership who, had they engaged with people meaningfully rather than treating the blog as a self-promotion platform, could have helped them to compose a solid work with well-developed and substantiated arguments. Of course, this would not have been unassailable – nor should any book be – but it would have been vastly better than what they have produced.

In fact, we’d all be hopelessly crippled if we didn’t let ourselves make and live by such conjectures.

This is simply ridiculous. Not only would we not be hopelessly crippled by not living by unsubstantiated conjecture, we should never live by it. You may be interested in this:




(a bit of which here) Coming up with ideas – and theirs is not original by any means – is merely a first step in the process of developing knowledge.

So there’s nothing wild and woolly about what C&S are saying.

It’s vague, substanceless conjecture based on nothing more than personal taste and a belief that they are right and hold the moral high ground.

Now, it’s another matter what they think the solution is.

You can’t talk about solutions with any confidence until you’ve clearly defined the problem and its causes. And then, the solutions you propose have to take into account existing conditions and practical issues. Proposing tentative solutions to their commenter base would have helped Mooney and Kirshenbaum to develop solutions and useful ideas for practical implementation. They missed that boat. (Or, rather, the boat waited for them at the pier for days, sounding its horn while other passengers trundled back to shore to offer to carry their bags on-board, while they insisted, inexplicably, on remaining on dry land.)

I think they go too far when they tell scientists to teach that religion and science are compatible (in chap. 8 of the their book). They simplify that issue far too much. Far better to advise that scientist educators to just teach science, and just put religion on the back burner.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean religion ought not be discussed by anyone. It just might not be the best thing for our best science educators to be religion bashers.

“It just might be” is meaningless. Is that the case? How do you know? I’m quite tired of this kind of assertion, which is essentially the same I’ve seen used by various religionists and purveyors of all manner of New Age woo (lately, the panexperientialists). It’s exactly the sort of thinking reasonable people should avoid.

I think this is far from an outrageous thing to say–in fact it’s not even terribly exciting (with apologies to C&S).

Whether a claim appears exciting, outrageous, wild, prosaic, or any other subjective assessment is really irrelevant to its validity. The only way this can be established is through evidence – through clearly stating the claim and all of its elements and checking it through systematic empirical observation and analysis.

The funny thing about this situation – which hasn’t been lost on others – is how easily Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s own lack of respect for empirical research and evidence and their reaction to questioning along these lines melds with their argument that a certain class of beliefs in the public sphere should be immune from this requirement and that requests to describe them coherently, explain the method(s) by which they were arrived at, or support them with evidence are unconscionably rude and unacceptable in public discourse. Weak.

*I remember a cartoon from years ago, when many restaurants had small smoking sections. It was titled something like “a restaurant owner’s view of physics,” and showed people at a table smoking and above them the smoke remaining within a seemingly walled-off space, never drifting over to the diners at nearby tables. I was reminded of it when reading one of Mooney’s comments about how “Crackergate” attacked the wrong target, and people should be focusing their energy instead [!] on contraception or stem-cell research. As if all of the beliefs involved weren’t promoted by the same monster of an institution. As if each incoherent, unsubstantiated belief must only be addressed individually, in piecemeal fashion, letting stand the larger architecture of uncritical thinking and intrusion of incoherent, unsubstantiated beliefs into the public sphere. This view is simply absurd. If you accord respect or deference to one form of unsubstantiated belief about reality, you accord it to all unsubstantiated belief, and therefore to the rejection of the reasoned, critical, and evidence-based approach to reality that is science. You therefore forfeit any claim to oppose those particular unsubstantiated beliefs you personally find problematic.