You’ll have to ask Gallup.
Not sure what poll Una Persson was looking at but I found this:
Make what you will of what “Highly Religious” means. To me it means people who accept the dogma of their faith more fully. When that dogma includes things like the Bible is the “literal” word of god and infallibly true you get into proof issues (e.g. the Earth being 6,000 years old).
I doubt “Less Religious” would include people who accept the Bible (or whatever) as the literal truth.
Again, as already noted, liberals are not immune to quirks or believing things that are not true. Just like women are not immune from resorting to violence.
Thing is who is more prone to it and why.
Guess it is whether you can believe 6 impossible things before breakfast or merely 5. 
I have also read studies attempting to prove the superiority of conservatives. What really matters is who is doing the study, how the terms are defined, and so on.
One thing that does seem to be true, although I cannot easily document it, is that when income is held constant, those with more education tend to be liberals. When education is held constant, those with more income tend to be conservatives.
This makes intuitive sense. A person with an unmarketable PhD in a low wage job will be likely to view capitalism with resentment, and be at least a left liberal Democrat, if not a Green, or perhaps a member of a Marxist party. A high school dropout who manages to acquire several convenience stores will probably view the government with suspicion, and be a right wing Republican, a Rush Limbaugh fan, and so on.
“most liberals feel the need to make statistical and rational arguments (even to the point of being grotesquely counterintuitive) to make their points.”
http://micmn.com/science-says-conservative-brains-are-wired-against-tier-5-unemployment-extension/10057/
A number of years ago I read in The New York Times that liberals and conservatives are equally prone to seek confirmation of their beliefs, and to avoid political messages and even facts that discredit those beliefs.
Liberals are particularly prone to reject information that suggests bad things about homosexuals and blacks.
Liberals seem to be avidly following the Roman Catholic priestly pedophile scandal. This is because many are secular, and do not like the Roman Catholic Church.
However, they have not been drawing conclusions from the fact that about 85 percent of the victims of these pedophile priests have been boys. Because I do not believe that 85 percent of Roman Catholic priests are homosexuals, and because I do not believe that a heterosexual would enjoy sex with a boy, I conclude that homosexuals are more likely to be child abusers than heterosexuals.
Liberals are also prone to believe, with hardly any evidence at all, that “race is a social construct.” Any rational lover of statistics should realize that the various racial groups differ considerably in terms of average intelligence, criminal behavior, and so on, everywhere in the world, and that they always have.
Conservatives seem to be more tolerant than liberals. They disregard the overwhelming scientific evidence in favor of global warming. Nevertheless, they have not tried to suppress this evidence. Liberals have made it dangerous for one to publicly agree with The Bell Curve.
Ha ha, well, that’s the point, isn’t it? What IS the difference between 6 and 5, in this context?
I guess my problem with the conclusion is that “religion” is really just one of many unsupported things that people believe. I really don’t think liberals are any less likely to believe these kinds of things, they are just maybe slightly different kinds. I mean, I know plenty of liberals who are church-going Christians, practicing Jews, pagans, etc. But beyond the sphere of “religion,” I know liberals who believe all kinds of other pseudoscientific stuff, like crystals, Reiki, Astrology, homeopathy, and that kind of thing. So I think it’s way too limited to use a belief in “religion” as your yardstick for being more willing to believe stuff that ain’t true.
Pedophiles that belong to the Roman Catholic Church are only a small sample size when compared to the overall population of pedophiles. Add to that the fact that the customs of Catholicism give Priests more access to boys than to girls. We can’t draw any conclusions from this.
Even if true, those claims are not relevant. Basic human rights are not dependent upon intelligence, but racists will use such data to try to justify discrimination. Members of Mensa may be much smarter than me, but that doesn’t give them the right to enslave me.
Wait…are you serious here with all this?
Because I’m not going to put in the time if you’re joking…
I have a hard time understanding how the right’s denialism and unfounded accusations of scientific fraud speak in their favour too, or why such accusations aren’t considered attempts at suppression.
And while I’m not sure what ‘The Bell Curve’ is (an attempt to categorize social trends by race, isn’t it?), who has been placed in danger by believing in it? What sort of danger?
I don’t know of any solid polling evidence on this score, but based on personal observation (including Dope threads), liberals and conservatives are about equally prone to believe in pseudoscientific woo and loony conspiracy theories, albeit often for different reasons*.
All this “my cingulate gyrus is bigger than yours” silliness doesn’t account for pervasive credulousness and inability to engage in critical thinking that exists across the political spectrum.
*for the Left, it’s often related to fears that “Big Corporations Are Under My Bed”, and for the Right, “Big Government Is Under My Bed”.
I am quite serious.
The basic argument of The Bell Curve is that intelligence is primarily detetermined by genes, that it is the most important factor in determining success, and racial differences in intelligence are innate.
When Lawrence Summers stated that men tend to have more mathematical aptitude than women he was forced to step down as President of Harvard.
When Nobel Laureate James D. Watson said, “[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—whereas all the testing says not really,” the Board of Trustees at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended Watson’s administrative responsibilities.
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
Did you read Una Persson’s post?
“…conservatives are more likely to be strongly religious (according to Gallup, at least)…”
Yes, there are liberals who are religious.
[/QUOTE]
Just as an anecdote…most of my family is VERY religious (Catholic). They are nearly all liberal democrats. My dad is not very religious, and he’s a staunchly conservative Republican. I’m an agnostic (an atheist by the definitions of this board) and I’m considered a ‘conservative’ around these parts.
I think what this demonstrates is that, at least in my own anecdotal experience, being religious really has little to do with being either liberal or conservative. Perhaps more conservatives gravitate to religion, or perhaps more religious people gravitate to being conservatives, but a lot of folks who vote democrat and consider themselves to be liberal have fervent beliefs in a religion. You might want to consider that the stereotypical ‘liberal’ is a white northerner…but, in fact, they are simply the stereotype. A lot of liberal democrats are minorities, and a lot of minorities are quite religious. Like, for instance my family.
Just food for thought. Personally, I think this entire subject is ridiculous, and just a different way to try and justify ones world view and political leanings based on some psudo-science. I mean, everyone knows that it’s moderates who are the most ‘evolved’…
-XT
This is off topic but you need a different example because your belief in this regard is wrong.
Pedophiles who go after the same sex (e.g. male-male) are not homosexual. They are pedophiles.
This is not my assessment but the assessment of mental health professionals and it is not semantics or splitting hairs. Male-male pedophiles are not homosexual.
This has been discussed (recently in fact) around here before.
First off Una Persson was the one who threw out religion. I was merely responding to her (which is fine by me but I am merely pointing out I was not trying to use it as an example).
Second, anecdotes are all well and fine but I have already noted, repeatedly, that this is not about individuals but the larger groups as a whole. Any individual can buck a given trend and many will. It remains however that there is a statistical regularity, a distinct correlation if you prefer, here (unless you think Gallup messed up their poll).
Why did I say Vinyl Turnip? I meant Whack-a-Mole. Sorry about that. 
Lots of people are asked to step down when they say things that make their organization look bad. It has nothing to do with where one lies on the political spectrum.
I still fail to see how declaring scientists to be frauds - publically and repeatedly - because their findings aren’t what you want to hear isn’t an attempt to suppress those findings. If suppression isn’t the goal, what is it? It’s not as if there’s a scientific debate here in which the Republicans (not conservatives, there’s nothing conservative about lying, is there?) are presenting an alternate theory which also fits the facts, the Republicans just fling poo. Why is this?
That is a liberal dogma, like saying that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire, or that race is only a social construct. I’ve got no use for dogmas, whether they are liberal or conservative.
I am a heterosexual man. I would never try to coerce an underage female into having sex with me. I would not try to seduce one. I like to think that I would not succumb if one tried to seduce me. I would be tempted. I would not be tempted by a underage boy. I don’t care if he is feminine, beautiful, and takes all the initiative. I would want nothing to do with him.
A man who enjoys sex with boys is a homosexual or a bisexual. It is just exactly that simple.
And while I’m at it . . .
And conservatives, being less secular, aren’t terribly concerned about sexual predation in what’s likely their own religious organization precisely because they’re religious, is that it?
Neither do I, but I also do not believe it’s a 1:1 priest:victim relationship. I don’t think you understand what that 85% statistic means, and I do not think you understand the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia.
I would conclude that since most child abusers abuse their own children, the majority of child abusers are heterosexual like me. I’m willing to be proven wrong, though, despite my liberal tendency to reject bad news about homosexuals.
I object to the statement “most pedophiles are homosexual” for two reasons:
(1) I haven’t seen definitive evidence that pedophiles, as a group, molest male same sex victims more often. The customs of Catholicism allow priests better access to boys than to girls, so it could simply be a matter of opportunity.
(2) Even if that statement is true, and technically correct from a semantic standpoint, it has the dangerous potential to create the wrong impression in people’s minds.
To clarify what I mean, and to try to lay bare the inherent limitations of language to convey concepts, I’m going to invent two fanciful new words. Please bear with me.
A “Snarg” is an adult homosexual who we know has a history of having sex with other adults of the same gender.
A “Flarg” is an adult heterosexual who has a history of having sex with adults of the opposite gender.
Just because most pedophiles have same sex victims, doesn’t mean that the Snarg across the street is more likely to be a pedophile than the Flarg across the street! It shouldn’t be used as an excuse to deny Snargs the chance to be teachers, or to be boy scout leaders. But the statement at the top of my post could be maliciously used to unjustly discriminate against Snargs. Homosexual pedophiles should not be conflated with Snargs because they’re not the same thing.