Educated tend to be more religious

Delirium

This article popped up in my twitter feed today and thought I'd share it with the forum.

People tend to become less religious as they become more educated, right? Not necessarily, according to a new study.

After analyzing data from a large national survey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist Philip Schwadel found that people actually tend to become more religious - by some definitions, at least - as they further their education.

“It all falls down to what you consider to be religious,” said Schwadel, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “If it’s simply attending religious services, then no. Highly educated people are not less religious; in fact, they’re more religious.”

“But if it’s saying the Bible is the literal word of God and saying that only one religion is the true religion, then they are less religious,” he continued.

Schwadel used data from the highly regarded General Social Survey, a cumulative and nationally representative survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago biannually since 1972.

Social scientists rely heavily on the “gold standard” General Social Survey, which provides cumulative data collected regularly between 1972 and 2010.

His study will be published in an upcoming edition of the journal Review of Religious Research.

Schwadel found that with each additional year of education:

– The likelihood of attending religious services increased 15%.

– The likelihood of reading the Bible at least occasionally increased by 9%.

– The likelihood of switching to a mainline Protestant denomination - Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian USA or United Methodist - increased by 13%.

Respondents to the General Social Survey were asked whether they believe in God without any doubts; with various levels of doubt; whether they have a different concept of God or a higher power; or whether they didn’t believe in any such thing, Schwadel said.

“With more years of education, you aren’t relatively more likely to say, ‘I don’t believe in God,’” he said. “But you are relatively more likely to say, ‘I believe in a higher power.’”

The findings makes sense to D. Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College in Massachusetts and author of “Faith in the Halls of Power,” about the growing evangelical Christian elite.

“The more educated a person is in their faith, the more cosmopolitan they are in their religious outlook,” he said. “They’re worldly in the very best sense of the term. They rub shoulders with people of different kinds of faiths every day and as a result they have different visions of what it means to express your faith in the public square.”

“They’re more open-minded, but here’s the thing: They’re no less faithful.”

But a leading voice for atheists says the study’s finding about education increasing certain measures of religiosity may be less straightforward than it appears.

“There are plenty of people who go to church who are not believers,” said Ed Buckner, former president of the group American Atheists. “They go for all sorts of reasons. I don’t mean that they’re all frauds and deceptive, (but) they go for social reasons or (because) that’s what’s expected of them by their families or their peers. Sometimes they go so they can sell more insurance.”

“But there are a lot of atheists in the pews, or at least people who are not committed to and probably haven’t even thought about and examined carefully the religious views that are being expressed in that church.”

The finding that highly educated people gravitated toward mainline Christian denominations suggested class dynamics at work, Buckner argued.

As people become more educated, he said, they move into the middle and upper middle class. “And as they do so,” he said, ”they move into more establishment situations regarding the society, which means they join the churches that are the churches of the elite, or at least of the middle class.”

But Schwadel said respondents were discussing their actual beliefs, not just churchgoing habits.

“What it all says to me is that religion matters to people of all education levels in the United States,” he said. “It’s just that, depending on your level of education, you behave and believe differently.”

So why the widespread perception that intellectuals are less religious, even largely irreligious?

Academics are at least moderately less religious than the general public, Schwadel said.

“When we see these trends, we tend to exaggerate them,” he said. “Most people see a trend and they think everyone’s like that.”

Lindsay thinks there’s more to it than that.

“There has been a concentrated effort by a cohort of very smart people who treat religion as the panacea for the simple-minded,” he said.

Bucker disputes that.

“Do we think that anybody who doesn’t agree with us is an idiot or a fool? Well, some of us do think that,” he said of atheists. “But I don’t think it’s systematically true of everybody in the movement.

“… I mean, I do think they’re wrong. Anybody who believes that there is a sky god out there who is going to do anything good or evil for us, basically anyone who thinks the universe cares about us, is making a mistake,” he continued. “In the words of Richard Dawkins, they’ve been deluded.”

But some people’s religious beliefs are “deeply held and carefully considered,” Buckner said. “And I also realize that some atheists’ lack of religious beliefs are pretty superficial and they haven’t thought things through.

“I have a lot more respect for a religious person who has really considered this, thought it through, read some books that disagree with their point of view and still accepts that position than I do for somebody who just unthinkingly rejects any particular point of view.”

Lindsay said the study could help break down some of society’s religious barriers.

“It’s a problem of perceptions because it fuels the idea that there’s some kind of deeply entrenched culture war where smart people are opposed to religious people, when in fact it’s far more complicated than that,” he said. “And in fact, the old divisions between deeply religious and irreligious probably don’t apply.”

Source

It seems to say that people attend church more, but take less and less of the religious stuff literally.

Turtwig

While the resulting are interesting all one can say is further study is needed.



(I'm not sure if there even is a majority consensus one way or the other yet.)

Otacon

Article wrote:

“But if it’s saying the Bible is the literal word of God and saying that only one religion is the true religion, then they are less religious,” he continued.

Is this not the important bit?

Boulevardier

Otacon, I agree. People whose beliefs are led by reason, perhaps with a dash of intuition, do not all become atheists.

Many do, but many others become protestant Christians, pantheists, or adopt Eastern religions or, as in my case, tend towards deism.

In any case the losers, in the sense of this thread, tend to be on one hand the fundamentalists who place a blind trust in scripture, and on the other hand the ultra-traditionalists who choose to believe in things like transubstantiation and papal infallibility.

monara

The educated should have been exposed to more thinkers than the uneducated and should be better able to make up their own minds on religion and other matters. Many of the great philosophers were deeply religious, believing in the soul and an afterlife. And being nice to people, regardless of their beliefs, if any, is an important part of all religions.:)

Galvasean

monara wrote: »

And being nice to people, regardless of their beliefs, if any, is an important part of all religions.:)

ALL religions?

Dades

monara wrote: »

And being nice to people, regardless of their beliefs, if any, is an important part of all religions.:)

Yes, you can tell that just by looking at all the news. Thank goodness nearly 90% of the world are religious - otherwise the planet would be in a terrible state.

oldrnwisr

There are studies on both sides of this question, these two were the ones that sprang to mind when I read the link.

Zuckerman, P., 2009, Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions, Sociology Compass (6) 949-971.

Social Values, Science and Technology. Special Eurobarometer 2005.

Still though, Malty is right, there's no consensus on the issue one way or the other and I think that it's silly to make judgements on this study, particularly when the author seems to be just presenting statistics and making simplistic conclusions with no thought given to causal relationships.

There are however, a few flaws in the study which are interesting.

– The likelihood of reading the Bible at least occasionally increased by 9%.

So what? I read the bible more now as an atheist than I ever did as a catholic. There are plenty of atheists who have said that reading the bible was a factor in becoming an atheist.

“With more years of education, you aren’t relatively more likely to say, ‘I don’t believe in God,’” he said. “But you are relatively more likely to say, ‘I believe in a higher power.’”

So people are moving away from belief in God to some weaker concept of a higher power and yet this douchebag still concudes that religiosity is increasing.

– The likelihood of switching to a mainline Protestant denomination - Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian USA or United Methodist - increased by 13%.

Switching from what though? This would only mean something if the people doing the switching were atheist before, not if they were Evangelicals or Pentecostal or Catholic.

This study is about as useful as (fill in appropriate cliched joke) but you know it's still going to be displayed in size 36 gold font on the front page of Conservapedia and everyother nutbar website out there.

Newaglish

monara wrote: »

And being nice to people, regardless of their beliefs, if any, is an important part of all religions.:)

I raise you one Westboro Baptist Church.

Penn

oldrnwisr wrote: »

This study is about as useful as (fill in appropriate cliched joke) but you know it's still going to be displayed in size 36 gold font on the front page of Conservapedia and everyother nutbar website out there.

This study is about as useful as RELIGION but you know it's still going to be displayed in size 36 gold font on the front page of Conservapedia and everyother nutbar website out there.

mikhail

monara wrote: »

And being nice to people, regardless of their beliefs, if any, is an important part of all religions.:)

Tell that to gay people.

Delirium

Barrington wrote: »

This study is about as useful as RELIGION but you know it's still going to be displayed in size 36 gold font on the front page of Conservapedia and everyother nutbar website out there.

You ain't wrong considering it was via Dav Quinn that I found the article.

Turtwig

koth wrote: »

You ain't wrong considering it was via Dav Quinn that I found the article.

My reaction when I read that:

oldrnwisr

monara wrote: »

The educated should have been exposed to more thinkers than the uneducated and should be better able to make up their own minds on religion and other matters.

So you're saying that people are able to better make up their own minds by listening to what other people have to say about religion or philosophy?

In that case you may find this interesting:

The Courtier's Reply

monara wrote: »

Many of the great philosophers were deeply religious, believing in the soul and an afterlife.

And? So? Therefore?

monara wrote: »

And being nice to people, regardless of their beliefs, if any, is an important part of all religions.:)

Unless you happen to be gay, female, irreligious or a member of a different religion that is.

irishh_bob

i see no reason why the educated should be less religous , if your successfull , fortunate and content with your career , life etc , chances are you might atribute this to some higher power ,( not all educated people are students of richard dawkins , stephen hawkins or alex cox , experts on the cosmos etc ) on the other hand , those people who have been cursed with rotten luck throughout thier life and are ( generally speaking ) unhappy bunnys , theese people might be more sceptical about someone up stairs looking out for them

im no more or less educated than when i was still a mass goer , my life however was devastated and from that point , i couldnt buy into the idea of being protected by any kind of supernatural being

Dades

I hate to call a spade a spade, but you don't use crutches when your legs work.

FruitLover

monara wrote: »

Many of the great philosophers were deeply religious, believing in the soul and an afterlife

Several of them were also habitual drug users. Is that something we should take into account?

monara

oldrnwisr wrote: »

So you're saying that people are able to better make up their own minds by listening to what other people have to say about religion or philosophy?

Yes, by considering what other people believe and why. It is useful to open our minds to others before we decide to close them to all.
In that case you may find this interesting:

The Courtier's Reply



And? So? Therefore?

So, let's open our minds to consider what others believe. No therefore..We are seeking the truth for ourselves in a matter of faith, not seeking to prove anything for anyone else.



Unless you happen to be gay, female, irreligious or a member of a different religion that is.

Here I must stand corrected. I should have said true religion in my original quote. Many who claim to be Christian are anything but. In many cases they are homophobic maniacs who use a religious sign to advance their own prejudices. One of my favourite pagan thinkers is Marcus Aurelius whose Meditations are worth a read: he said all men should be nice to one another but said it more elegantly than many others.

Turtwig

True religion? Or religion you happen to agree with?

oldrnwisr

monara wrote: »

Yes, by considering what other people believe and why. It is useful to open our minds to others before we decide to close them to all.

I agree with looking at what others believe but not the why. That's why I posted the link to the Courtier's Reply. It doesn't matter what some theologian or philosopher has pronounced following a study of some religion. It matters what the actual claims of that religion are particularly IMO with a view to soteriology and eschatology. I haven't closed my mind to anything, I'm just still waiting for any religion to meet it's burden of proof regarding the claims that it makes.

monara wrote: »

So, let's open our minds to consider what others believe. No therefore..We are seeking the truth for ourselves in a matter of faith, not seeking to prove anything for anyone else.

Your original point was that historically some of the great philosophers have been deeply religious as if that should mean something. I'm just asking why should it mean something. This should explain my point more.

monara wrote: »

Here I must stand corrected. I should have said true religion in my original quote. Many who claim to be Christian are anything but. In many cases they are homophobic maniacs who use a religious sign to advance their own prejudices. One of my favourite pagan thinkers is Marcus Aurelius whose Meditations are worth a read: he said all men should be nice to one another but said it more elegantly than many others.

True religion?? Care to elaborate? It seems like your heading towards a No True Scotsman argument, but I hope not.

monara

oldrnwisr wrote: »

I agree with looking at what others believe but not the why. That's why I posted the link to the Courtier's Reply. It doesn't matter what some theologian or philosopher has pronounced following a study of some religion. It matters what the actual claims of that religion are particularly IMO with a view to soteriology and eschatology. I haven't closed my mind to anything, I'm just still waiting for any religion to meet it's burden of proof regarding the claims that it makes.



Your original point was that historically some of the great philosophers have been deeply religious as if that should mean something. I'm just asking why should it mean something. This should explain my point more.



True religion?? Care to elaborate? It seems like your heading towards a No True Scotsman argument, but I hope not.

Faith is never a matter of proof. So, wait.

If you cannot see the point of understanding others' quest for faith, and their reasons, why are you replying to the thread? I'm not being rude, just curious.

True religion? I'm sorry. I thought you had been searching for truth. And you still don't know what true religion means?

oldrnwisr

monara wrote: »

Faith is never a matter of proof. So, wait.

If you cannot see the point of understanding others' quest for faith, and their reasons, why are you replying to the thread? I'm not being rude, just curious.

True religion? I'm sorry. I thought you had been searching for truth. And you still don't know what true religion means?

Yes but faith is not a path to knowledge or truth. I am searching for truth as you suggested but the way that I would phrase it is to say that what is actually true is important to me. I don't care whether christianity or some other religion is good for you or provides comfort or peace or whatever. I care whether or not the claims to knowledge it makes are true and as I have already said, I haven't found a single religion which meets this burden of proof.

True religion even by the criteria in your own post is an oxymoron. Anything which relies on faith to support its claims has no chance of approaching truth.

Galvasean

FruitLover wrote: »

Several of them were also habitual drug users. Is that something we should take into account?

Yes

monara wrote: »

. One of my favourite pagan thinkers is Marcus Aurelius whose Meditations are worth a read: he said all men should be nice to one another but said it more elegantly than many others.

I'm still on a quest to avenge his death...