Cross posted from Rational Resistance:
Yes, it's that time again. The Pew Forum released its annual survey of rational thinking and Vermont and New Hampshire, combined in the totals because of our small population, came out in first place.
Well, okay, if you want to get technical about it, that wasn't the way the Pew people viewed the survey. The way Pew asks the questions: Which of the 50 states has the most religious population? Since there are many ways to define “religious,” there is no single answer to this question. But to give a sense of how the states stack up, the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life used polling data to rank them on four measures: the importance of religion in people's lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer and absolute certainty of belief in God. Mississippi stands out on all four, and several other Southern states also rank very high on the measures.
Although the Vermont/New Hampshire combo ranked at the bottom of the scale in the importance of religion in people's lives and certainty of belief in god, we were one from the bottom in church attendance (above Alaska, which may be assisted by the difficulty of transportation) and fourth from the bottom in frequency of prayer.
Still, those of us who favor rationality and evidence-based thought can take pleasure in Vermont's stellar performance. Keep up the good work, Vermonters!
that religious belief and irrationality are considered pretty much the same thing by so much of the left. In my work on climate, many of the most inspired and inspiring colleagues are in churches, synagogues, and mosques. I find them more open than most Americans to the idea that there’s some goal to life other than material accumulation. I’d never think to disparage people in this way for not having religious beliefs–most of the people I’m closest too fall into Jack’s preferred category. But for others of us, it just feels weird to be told we’re a priori irrational. Also, it seems like very stupid politics.
between the Red/Blue syndrome, the history of slavery and the placement of the Mason/Dixon line??
Odd mix of bedfellows-OH, and I guess also GLBT? Rights…
Could it be simply a graph representative of relative intolerance?
A friend of mine has a sigline that basically says, “Generally someone who comes up to enthusiastically tell you about their religious views has no real interest in hearing about yours in return”
are Vermont and New Hampshire linked ?
You know, if you look at the graph as it is, it’s almost sorta shaped like Vermont.
That religion is irrational. It motivated many of the best societal changes of the 20th century, and was also instrumental in the ending of slavery in the 19th. Telling someone that something you can’t prove or disprove is “wrong” (or “right”) is irrational. Keeping your options open is “rational.”
Your self-anointed intellectual superiority is misplaced. You think you have no “irrational” faith? How about faith that people who have less money are better than people who have more? How about faith that government bureaucrats in human services are magically different from those in law enforcement and the military, and won’t abuse their power? How about faith that if we taxed the “rich” to the point that their income was equal to yours (the definition of “not-rich”) that society would be better? How about faith that if you eat the right foods (whatever those happen to be this year), you will have (nearly) eternal life?
Humans are built to draw patterns from limited information, and to use those patterns to filter information. We may see patterns where none exist…this is not irrational, unless we persist in using the patterns after they’ve been proven to fail. Your prejudice against religious people is appalling; but it’s not “irrational”, if the only ones you’ve ever been exposed to are idiots. I’m sure that if someone on this blog were to stereotype a racial, sexual or gender category in the same way you have, you’d immediately see how limited and foolish the opinion was. Your implied disparagement of religious people is equally limited and foolish.
‘Why in God’s name are Vermont and New Hampshire linked ?”
Good question. Perhaps because we are siblings, “thick end to thin end, thin end to thick end,” as Frost said, with a river between us. But other than that and now this religion thing there is no resemblance, as NH is so petty and VT is so much more outside the USA.
…from this staunch atheist.
I remember reading your “End of Nature”, and from time to time you made spiritual references (I can’t remember, I think it was Episcopal?), and I found it endearing that it was a source for your activism and environmentalism. Being super sensitive to religious belief (not in the sense of polite, mind you, more so that I take notice of it more than others might be inclined to when assessing information), it seemed much more of a “personal God” scenario than anything else. If more religious people thought that way, I’d still be an atheist, of course, I’d just be a bit more friendly to it.
That said, I agree with both Jack and Cahomhin… religious belief is an irrational belief, but that in itself is not pejorative.
I’d like to see a world eventually where humanity didn’t feel the need to cling to the mythos for fulfillment. However, considering all the good that you have done, Bill, I hardly think that one of your sources of inspiration is being disparaged here, as a lot of good has obviously come out of it. Happy New Year.
I enjoyed reading all the responses to my original comment. I think that Julie has pinned it down well…there is no sense measuring religion on an axis of “Rationality”, as the 2 thought modes have no intersection.
The believer, unlike what Twain said, has some facts and perceptions that have caused her to believe that there is some higher power than exists is sensible to us on earth. Those who have no similar experiences have no reason to believe. The validity of subjective experience is not really open to question. As I tried to point out, calling such beliefs “right” and “wrong” is invalid reasoning; it’s like measuring weight in light-years — using the wrong scale.
Thus, using a chart that says that VT-NH is less religious to prove that we’re less “irrational” (the clear point of Jack’s original post) is invalidly reasoned. Furthermore, as you can see from a few of the responses, people don’t take it well to be labeled irrational (although some embrace it!). It seems clear that some repliers, while not picking out a specific religion, would group all religious people together into a category worthy of scorn.
We need to separate beliefs that lead to a personal moral code from the kind of person (George II, for example) who justifies absurdities by saying that “God told me to do it.” Of course these actions can be analyzed and then approved or condemned based on rational thought processes. In a very poor way (forgive me, my wife’s in the hospital, I was a little on edge) I wanted to point out that all of the bloggers here have similar ethical systems that drive their political prescriptions…and the prescriptions are often defended in the same tone and language that the “irrational” religious use.
Example: There’s a fundamental ethos here that preserving nature is extremely important. Many here have famously recommended drastic changes in our way of life in service to that ethos. The belief is not rational or irrational. The recommendations are subject to rational analysis (Will it work? What side effects? etc.). If I challenge your belief (“Why is nature worth preserving?”) and called you irrational if you used language that was spiritually oriented, I’m sure you would be either put off or offended. In the same way, if I were to demonstrate that an action you’ve prescribed might be harmful to a set of people, and you said to me, “Well, that’s tough, Earth is more important than some individuals’ lives.” we’d be in an ethical/moral discussion not subject to rational debate. It gets me nowhere, however, to condemn this “faith”; we have to establish a broader context in which to have the discussion.
Happy New Year, all!
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Two rapid fire(four hundred before reloading ),hands free communion wafer dispenser manufacturers are now fighting it out in court
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Jack, thanks. I think you’re right. I do not have the stats either. Yet, on average, NH is (or was) much more that way than Vermont. Of the two, NH was way more conservative, with the Manchester Union Leader running things. But now NH is a blue state and is really just a bulge of Mass. up to about Concord, so it is probably about the same.
The two issues that keep me from wanting churches to get out of expressing opposition to political policy are racism and war. Many churches led the way on combatting institutionalized racism — no not all, it was only recently that the Baptists apologized for using the Bible to justify slavery. But many.
And religious people from Catholics to Quakers opposed the Vietnam war, and organized against it — not just marches, but teach-ins and draft counseling for young men who wanted to be recognized as conscientious objectors, and underground railroads to Canada. The Berrigan brothers, both priests at the time, were two of the most radical practitioners of nonviolent protest against the war in the country. My own mentor from two decades ago, a Quaker woman, told me she was one of two recognized visitors at every federal prison in the U.S., where she visited especially those who were jailed for protesting the draft and the war.
Does it piss me off when religious people use misguided interpretations of their founding documents to interfere with my “unalienable” civil rights? You bet. Do I think that’s irrational? Sure. Most of the time it’s indefensible, logically, even using the founding documents they relate to as holy scripture.
And I also thank whatever powers that may be that so many people of faith try to make the world better in ways that i understand and that seem consistent with the messages of their own faiths.
NanuqFC
Faith declares what the senses do not see, but not the contrary of what they see. ~ Blaise Pascal (mathematician, physicist, philosopher, 1623-1662)