African-American religion

In My Humble Opinion
21

First of all, let’s remember which claim we’re addressing. We are talking about your adamant claim that religious conversions are rare. We are not talking about whether the majority of believers experience conversions or not. We are not talking about whether the percentage of conversions exceeds 50%, or even 25%. Rather, we are addressing your specific claim that “People switching religions from what their parents practice is actually pretty rare” (emphasis added). It isn’t, and your own cite demonstrates this.

First, let’s look at your cite. No offense, but it’s pretty obvious that you didn’t take a good close look at those numbers. Your own cite says that 71.8% of Southern Baptists, for example, remain within that denomination. This means that nearly 29.2% of them decide to adopt different religious beliefs. 29.2% is admittedly less than a 50% majority, but it’s hardly “rare.”

You get comparable results for other denominations. For example, by your own statistics, the United Methodists and the Presbyterians change their beliefs with greater frequency. Heck, among interdenominational Christians, the actual conversion rate is 52.9%! In fact, the lowest conversion rate occurred among Mormons, and even then, fully 9.2% of them abandoned the teachings of their parents – a relatively small number, but far from rare!

Moreover, this study would still underestimate the frequency with which people adopt beliefs that differ from the ones with which they grew up. There are multiple varieties of Presbyterianism, for example, yet this study treats them as a monolithic block. Similarly, there are a great many interdenominational churches with varied beliefs, yet this study fails to account for people switching from one church to another. Heck, it doesn’t even account for people who choose to remain within a given denomination, yet whose beliefs have nevertheless changed.

As I said, I doubt that you can find any strictly scientific data for the frequency with which people change their beliefs. One thing is for sure though – the data which you cited doesn’t prove your point. Quite the contrary; it demonstrates that these conversions are NOT rare – and that’s even without accounting for the fact that it doubtlessly undermeasures the number of these conversions.

22

Eh. If it weren’t them, it would have been someone else. I had quite a few people battling to free me from my backward nonsense (thanks dad and hubby).

I’m afraid I’m not impressed with your reason for finding traditional Islam less crazy than the Nation of Islam. They both seem to me to be religions based on other religions but totally switched up and flipped. They both just made up tons of shit and it doesn’t matter to me that traditional Islam shit is older than NOI bullshit. “The historic record corresponds” with some things is just vague smoke that I can’t grasp. The fact that “Islam is closer to the Bible” doesn’t make it less crazy to me either. Maybe makes it more crazy.

For instance, you mention Yakub. As nutty as that story is (and it’s chock full o’ nuts) I admired that they made at least some effort to pretend they give a damn about science*. Him grafting white folks over hundreds of years sounds less crazy to me than God making the Universe in 6 days, or Adam from a clump of clay or Eve from Adam’s rib or talking snakes or whatever else.

So yeah, I just think they are equally crazy. Difference is I can at least point to one thing the NOI did for me, which pushes me to give them a tiny amount of support when they are bashed harder than Islam (no problem with them being bashed in general. That’s cool with me.)

To Tamerlane: I mean the Farrakhan NOI.

ETA: I cannot stress enough that the story is obviously nonsense with zero basis in anything close to science. But still…the fact that they even attempt to pretend to dabble in science makes them a smidge less crazy than other religions, IMO.
To Sampiro: That is interesting! I never knew that.

23

You’re quibbling over one word. Sorry I said rare, would you prefer uncommon? That more often then not, people stick with their religious upbringing? Is the fact that you think skeptics and perhaps atheists “present all sorts of damning claims” (I’m not one, by the way) really working you up that much?

As far as cites, I will point out wikipedia’s page on religiosity, and you can look at the papers offered or disregard it. It looks like there is some environmental and some genetic influence, although Koenig et al seem to go towards the former as their research progresses. Otherwise, if you want to quibble over what constitutes a significant amount. That cite is not intended to be definitive. You can definitely not find “indisputable” statistical data because such a thing does not by definition exist.

Now, I believe this was about religion amongst African Americans?

24

Yeah, perhaps there was some guy in 70 AD who thought that that Christianity thing was crazy bullshit, and thought that Zoroastrianism made more sense because it was given by the ancients. I admit that Joseph Smith seeing the scripture through a hat (yes, I learned about Mormonism from South Park) seems weirder than non-fundamentalist Christian scripture, because I see it as intended to be more mythical. Maybe this isn’t the most consistent position and I should look into it. Otherwise, I give shorter shift to a religion if it’s more “culty” and especially if it’s a bit negative. Farrakhan is still a scumbag, as is Miscavige, and it makes their followers seem less credible to follow them.

25

Well, yes, it was. And here’s what you said:

So what I (and presumably JThunder as well) am wondering about is how exactly you know that most folks “rarely think about their religious life”. There’s only one person on the planet whose thoughts you know entirely, and that’s yourself. Perhaps you could accurately testify that you’ve rarely thought about your own religious life, but how could you know enough to make that statement for anyone else, much less for humanity at large? Isn’t mind-reading one of those things that the scientifically-oriented generally don’t believe in?

(Any discussion about how often people switch religions is really off the topic. There’s no justification for saying that someone who practices his or her parents’ religion has never thought about religion.)

26

Fella, you’re the one who used that word, treating it as though it meant “not in the majority.” I’m pointing out that this is NOT what that word means. That’s common sense, not “quibbling.”

Moreover, “uncommon” is hardly appropriate either. As I already pointed out, your own statistics show that conversions among Protestant denominations occur anywhere from about 20% to 50% – probably higher, for reasons that I already emphasized. Even in the Mormon church (which was incorrectly identified as Protetant), the figures cited were nearly 10%. Under no circumstances would such figures be considered “uncommon” either.

Fella, you don’t get to make a ridiculously exaggerated claim and then accuse your critics of “quibbling” when its inaccuracy is pointed out – ESPECIALLY since you insisted that your claim was (ahem) “scientific.”

Moreover, as ITR Champion correctly stated, even if we were to grant your insistent claim that changes of religious belief are “rare,” that still doesn’t justify the claim “rarely think about their religious life but instead just blindly follow tradition.” In the absence of some world-spanning brain-reading instrument, how can you possibly defend this claim? (Before you ask, remember that just a few posts ago, you used the phrase “Your anecdote is not data indeed.” Remember that, then measure your words carefully.)

27

Again, irrelevant. We can fully acknowledge the possibility of an environmental or genetic influence. That does absolutely nothing to justify your claim that changes in religious belief are rare (or even “uncommon”). Nor does it justify your claim that people rarely consider their own religious beliefs. You’re shifting the goalposts and you know it.

28

Insistent means dwelling upon, persistent, etc. I said it once and acknowledged it was hyperbole. You seem content to make a big deal about one word. Looks like the insistent one is you.

It was a restructured paraphrase. I was using the word given, and wasn’t literally serious here.

You need a magical device in order to evaluate opinions? I find self-report surveys are much more accessible. Again, see above. You seem to think that I’m religion-bashing or something. There’s plenty of that elsewhere here, I won’t get into that.

Heritable behaviors put a strong hurdle in front of someone to change their opinion. It means that more often than not they will take after their genes/upbringing and are less likely to change. Again, you can worry about what “rare” means, or you can see that there’s a tendency, even if my one word was misused.

29

That is also untrue. Here is your actual response. While your subsequent posting did not specifically contain the word “rare,” you continued to insist on the correctness of your claim. In fact, you went far beyond that. You dismissed my objections are being “anecdotal” and declared that your own claim was established (ahem) “scientifically.” Not once, in your entire response, did you say that you were speaking hyperbolically.

But even if you had said so, it’s still hugely inaccurate to say that a 30% conversion rate (for example) means that conversions are “rare” or even “uncommon.” That’s not hyperbole, that’s gross exaggeration. So much for speaking scientifically, eh?

Face it, fella. You were caught making a gross and unsubstantiated exaggeration. When called on this matter, you introduced some statistics that defend a far weaker claim – and when that failed, you pulled up some irrelevant claims about possible environmental and genetic component. I can be patient when it comes to mere error, but in this case, you have no leg to stand on and you know it.

30

You’ve obviously made up your mind, fella, and are not going to believe that my argument is the same, fella, and has been since before you made it into an argument, fella. Enjoy your ire, I just can’t care.

Fella.

31

Other points worth noting:

The Exodus story—the story of the deliverance of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt—had a natural appeal to the African-American slaves.

Much of the Abolitionist movement was explicitly Christian. Christianity wasn’t just associated with slaveowners.
If the OP (or anyone else) really wants to investigate the issue in depth, there are resources out there. I did a little googling, and here are just the first few articles that turned up:
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthetl/perspectives/twelve.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr2.html

32

And that is where you are wrong. I fully understand that you have refused to back down from your position, even when your own statistics prove you wrong. You may shift strategies in defending that position, ultimately offering irrelevant citations, but your contention remains the same. In fact, if you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that this was one of my primary objections to your line of argumentation. (Does the word “insist” ring a bell, for example?)

Look, you found yourself defending a foolish and unsubstantiated position. I’m sure that most of us are guilty of that now and then. A wise man is willing to acknowledge error though, whereas a foolish man defends the indefensible to the death.

33

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but African-Americans are almost an allegory to the original spread of Christianity:

  • Appeal to the dispossessed by promises of divine justice
  • Give a sense of community to those who have little or none
  • Appeal to a mostly illiterate base (the enslaved and the generation after slavery) with stories tailored to their own desires
  • Music (may sound trivial but I’ve always thought it was a major factor in the appeal of Christianity)
  • A sense of mysticism and empowerment
  • Tangible proof of what powerless people can accomplish (e.g. lovely churches in poor areas, ministers who are courted by people in the white community, etc.)

All of these have parallels to the spread of Christianity in the first and second century.