# Beaten by France regarding atheism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 25, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682 "2011-04-25T17:37:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/21 "2011-04-25T19:35:26Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > So now we know that **Der Trihs** was wrong in saying that more education, especially science, would lead to less religion. No; we just know that you can find an article full of outright lies about how rational religion is and about how religious scientists are. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If we did compare countries based on how atheistic they are, the ‘gold medal’ would surely go to those countries that have made all religion illegal. More nonsense. Declaring religion illegal doesn’t make it nonexistent. ---
**Author:** ![Marquez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@Marquez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marquez)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/22 "2011-04-25T19:41:07Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > 1. Surrender to Germany a few times. > 2. Add snails, horse, and extra cheese to our diets. > 3. Hold nationwide riots or strikes several times per year. Good one. ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/23 "2011-04-25T19:52:13Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > I would like to make the case that the 63% who didn’t claim to be atheist would most likely when asked about god or religion say something like “Oh I don’t know, I think there’s probably _something_…” rather than “I believe that Jesus is my personal savior” Do you even know what atheism means? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/24 "2011-04-25T19:52:25Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If we want some actual data about how education affects religious belief we can get it [here](http://www.religionomics.com/archives/archive/38/rationality-and-the-religious-mind). Read your own cite, young man: > [@](#): > > Professors, scientists, and other highly educated Americans are less religious than the general population, Their 1969 table of “religious disposition by academic field” also shows that even the most religious group of them all includes 25% of avowed atheists plus 11% who oppose religion altogether, whereas they state the percentage of open atheists in the general population hovers around 7%. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/25 "2011-04-25T19:56:32Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If we did compare countries based on how atheistic they are, the ‘gold medal’ would surely go to those countries that have made all religion illegal. Sure, if our judging criteria includes the bias that religion can only be victimized, as opposed to made irrelevant. I guess one way to hasten the end of _organized_ religion is to gradually do away with any laws or policies that favour it, like tax-exempt status or the ability to shield molesting priests from prosecution. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/26 "2011-04-25T19:58:07Z")
Though France is an exception, a liberal democracy with a state religion seems to be a good way of fostering atheism. My daughter teaches at a public school in southern Germany, and the kids get trooped off to Mass every morning - and as far as she can tell, don’t think about religion again. If we made some religion the national one, enforced by the federal government, the Tea Partiers would turn atheist over night. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/27 "2011-04-25T20:05:11Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > It polled whether people “believe in a divine entity” yet many people neither believe in a divine entity nor are atheists. What excluded middle am I overlooking? Agnostics? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/28 "2011-04-25T20:07:49Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > What excluded middle am I overlooking? Agnostics? Buddhists, maybe? And where do people who buy into new-age mystiticsm and wicca and such fall? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/29 "2011-04-25T20:11:33Z")
[QUOTE=Miller] What excluded middle am I overlooking? Agnostics? [/QUOTE] Folks who believe in stuff like Shinto or animists would fall into that middle as well. And the new-age crowd and Wiccans, as Bryan Ekers pointed out. My WAG is that there are more people who fall roughly in the middle ground between fervent theists and atheists than at either end of the spectrum. -XT ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/30 "2011-04-25T20:11:47Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > So. Assuming a nation would want atheism to spread, what would be the most effective way? A nation can’t “want” anything. But Soviet, Chinese or North Korean style communism would be effective. ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/31 "2011-04-25T20:14:24Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > My point is that you cherry picked your examples. I happen to agree with you, but you are trying to establish a correlation you should at least be fair about it. That is completely untrue. I did not cherry pick my examples. I picked two stats that are obviously strongly linked to education and social problems, then I checked to see which countries performed worst and returned the result. I also checked to see how France, Sweden and Belgium measured up. I thought that was the intellectually honest thing to do and I still think so. ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/32 "2011-04-25T20:25:29Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Hardly. First of all, contrary to how you described it in your OP, the poll youlinked to says nothing regarding atheism. (Or gold medals for that matter.) It polled whether people “believe in a divine entity” yet many people neither believe in a divine entity nor are atheists. More to the point, to poll the percentage of people in a country who have property A and the percentage who have property B and compare country-by-country tells us nothing about individual relationship between properties A and B; any high school statistics student could tell you that. If we want some actual data about how education affects religious belief we can get it [here](http://www.religionomics.com/archives/archive/38/rationality-and-the-religious-mind). > > > [@](#): > > > > \*The distorting force of the received wisdom is underscored by the body of stylized facts that it has spawned. For example: that religion must inevitably decline as science and technology advance; that individuals become less religious and more skeptical of faith-based claims as they acquire more education, particularly more familiarity with science; and that membership in deviant religious “cults” is usually the consequence of indoctrination (leading to aberrant values) or abnormal psychology (due to trauma, neurosis, or unmet needs). Most people know these statements to be true, even though decades of research have proved them false (Hadden 1987, Stark and Bainbridge 1985, Greeley 1989). > > > > We argue below that the traditional view of religion as nonrational, not to mention irrational, emerged from a 19th century scholarly tradition largely devoid of empirical support and tainted by prejudice, ignorance, and antireligious sentiment. The relevant data suggest that most religious behavior is, in fact, associated with good mental health, is sensitive to perceived costs and benefits, and is compatible with scientific training. > > > > The data on religion and science are particularly striking. Despite continuing talk about the secularizing effects of education and academia, our analysis of data from the 1972 through 1996 General Social Surveys find that most highly educated Americans, including most professors and scientists, are as religious as other Americans. Moreover, the college faculty most acquainted with “hard” scientific knowledge – physicists, chemists, biologists, and mathematicians – are by every measure substantially more religious than their counterparts in the social sciences and humanities.\* > > So now we know that **Der Trihs** was wrong in saying that more education, especially science, would lead to less religion. Huh. I wonder if the guy writing that is religious. Or if the site you got it from is connected to religion and thus has a vested interest (also known as: bias). The site is called “religionomics”, that is probably a clue. The other clue would be that the statement is demonstrably false. The correlation between lack of education and religion, or education and lack of religion, is easily supported by statistics. You simply find out what education someone has and then find out whether they’re religious. You do this a bunch of times and find out. And people have. And they did find out. Over and over again. Whether religionomics or the founder of religionomics (who also happens to be the author of the linked material at religionomics) wants to believe it or not. And you don’t seem to believe that the statement of religionomics is true either. If you believed that there WAS no statistical difference, why would you argue that statistical differences were insignificant? > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If we did compare countries based on how atheistic they are, the ‘gold medal’ would surely go to those countries that have made all religion illegal. > > However most of those countries have either ceased to exist (Soviet Union, Yugoslavia) or changed their policy (China, Cuba, Vietnam). The only nation still holding to that policy that I’m aware of is North Korea, not generally known for great science education or great social policy. The gold medal does not go to whoever treats religious people worst, but to whatever country has the largest percentage of people who don’t believe in god(s). > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > However, if we let that slide and decided to reshape the United States with the goal of imitating France, I suppose the logical steps would be: > > 1. Surrender to Germany a few times. > 2. Add snails, horse, and extra cheese to our diets. > 3. Hold nationwide riots or strikes several times per year. Let me answer this by a list of your three arguments: 1. The statistics are wrong… 2. And even if they are right they don’t mean anything! 3. France is totally lame anyway… You sir, do not make a strong case. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/33 "2011-04-25T20:25:48Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Read your own cite, young man: > > ``` > * Professors, scientists, and other highly educated Americans are less religious than the general population,* > > ``` > > Their 1969 table of “religious disposition by academic field” also shows that even the most religious group of them all includes 25% of avowed atheists plus 11% who oppose religion altogether, whereas they state the percentage of open atheists in the general population hovers around 7%. I have read my own cite, and as a result I know that you’re trying to misrepresent what my cite says by clipping half a sentence out of context and removing relevant information. The first half-sentence that you quoted comes from the abstract. Here it is in its proper context. > [@](#): > > Scholars have long viewed religion as the irrational product of primitive minds and prescientific times. Economic perspectives were deemed irrelevant to the study of religion, and the secularization thesis, positing religious decline in the face of scientific advancement, dominated religious research. But a growing body of evidence challenges these traditional assumptions. The data suggest that religious involvement is associated with normal mental health, is sensitive to perceived costs and benefits, and is compatible with graduate education and scientific training. Professors, scientists, and other highly educated Americans are less religious than the general population, but these differences are comparable to the religious differences associated with gender, race, and other demographic traits. Within academia, religious faculty are far more common in the “hard” sciences than in the humanities or social sciences. The paper looks in depth at the religiosity of college professors and graduate students and corrects for the data from them based on race and gender. > [@](#): > > At the bottom of table 3, below the solid line, we have reported results from a second set of probit regressions which compare graduate-schooled respondents to the general public. This second set of regressions includes the same demographic control variables as the first. We have suppressed the control variable coefficients, however, because they are identical (within 0.01) to those in the first set of probits. (This is as it should be, since both sets of regressions employ common data in which the vast majority of respondents are neither professor/scientists nor graduate-schooled.) Thus, the table’s bottom panel lists only the probability changes associated with a 0 to 1 changes in the “graduate-schooled” variable. Specifically, this coefficient is 0.05 for the church attendance regression, indicating that after controlling for demographic traits, the probability of regular church attendance is about 5% greater for graduate-schooled respondents than other respondents. > > The “professor/scientist” and “graduate-schooled” coefficients in table 3, thus, show how much irreligiosity remains attributable to being a professor/scientist or graduate-schooled respondent, and to see how the magnitude of these effects compare to those of other predictors. The results for professors and scientists must be viewed tentatively since their numbers are so small relative to the entire GSS. On the other hand, the number of graduate-schooled respondents is substantially larger, and both sets of results turn out to be fairly similar. With the controls in place, professors and scientists appear no less likely than other people to attend church regularly and only marginally less likely to pray regularly or describe themselves as “strong” members of their religion. Graduate-schooled respondents appear slightly more likely to be strong members and regular attenders. Professor/scientists and graduate-schooled respondents are somewhat less likely to pray regularly, believe in an afterlife, and feel near God, though most of these effects are statistically insignificant and the corresponding impact of gender, race, and other demographic variables tend to be greater. We find only two areas – outright rejection of religion and rejection of the Bible – where the estimated impact of high education or a scientific/college career overshadows the impact of gender. The next paragraph should also be mentioned: > [@](#): > > Although these last two effects provide some support for the incompatibility thesis, they remain subject to an important proviso. Retrospective data collected by Thalheimer (1973: 184) indicate that college faculty tend not become less religious as a consequence of their scientific training, but are instead less religious before entry into college or graduate school. Wuthnow (1985: 191) likewise reports that his panel study of Berkeley students found that “religious nonconventionality … leads subsequently to higher academic performance and identification with the intellectual role … but the data show no tendency for high academic performance or intellectualism to result in subsequent shifts toward religious nonconventionalism.” Thus, a selection effect seems to be at work, leading students with low levels of religious belief toward academic careers and higher education. But the actual, professional training and subsequent career work seems to leave initial levels of religiosity intact. So, in short, the article comes down firmly against the claim that education in general or science education in particular causes people to become less religious. If you post small parts of the article out of context you can make it look otherwise, but that won’t work against those of us who have read the entire article. ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/34 "2011-04-25T20:29:11Z")
> [@kidchameleon](#): > > Do you even know what atheism means? I think so. I think it means not believing in deities, and that it comes from the Greek atheos meaning “without god(s)”, ‘a’ meaning without and theos of course meaning god(s). Does somthing in my previous posts seem to indicate something different or do you have an alternative meaning? ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/35 "2011-04-25T20:35:14Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > I think so. I think it means not believing in deities, and that it comes from the Greek atheos meaning “without god(s)”, ‘a’ meaning without and theos of course meaning god(s). Does somthing in my previous posts seem to indicate something different or do you have an alternative meaning? Well, “Oh I don’t know, I think there’s probably _something_…” isn’t what an athiest would say. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/36 "2011-04-25T20:36:41Z")
That’s more an agnostic way to look at it. Or, maybe 'Oh, I don’t know, I think there probably isn’t _something_…" 😛 -XT ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/37 "2011-04-25T20:39:22Z")
I’m not interested in the spin they try to give the stats, I directly looked up the polls results in the annex. The plain fact is that, contrary to what you’re trying to peddle, there are much more atheists in high academia (or at least were in 1969 - I wonder what the numbers would look like today…) then in the general population, period. Whether it’s due to losing religion after graduating or religious people opting to remain uneducated in the first place is irrelevant to the debate, except perhaps if your argument is that religiosity is self-selecting for willful ignorance, or can only thrive in the poorer tiers of society who can’t afford high level education. Neither looks particularly good an argument in favour of religion. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/38 "2011-04-25T20:43:36Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If we want some actual data about how education affects religious belief we can get it [here](http://www.religionomics.com/archives/archive/38/rationality-and-the-religious-mind). Browsing the article linked to there, it does have some interesting conclusions. First, after controlling for gender, race, and other factors that are correlated with religiosity, the authors of the study still find a significant correlation: > [@ITR's study](#): > > We find only two areas – outright rejection of religion and rejection of the Bible – where the estimated impact of high education or a scientific/college career overshadows the impact of gender. To me, those seem like the most important areas. The authors have an important proviso, though: studying science doesn’t make you an atheist, though: rather, being an atheist makes you good at science: > [@ITR's study](#): > > Wuthnow (1985: 191) likewise reports that his panel study of Berkeley students found that “religious nonconventionality … leads subsequently to higher academic performance and identification with the intellectual role … but the data show no tendency for high academic performance or intellectualism to result in subsequent shifts toward religious nonconventionalism.” Which to me actually sounds worse for theism than Der Trihs’ original hypothesis. And of course there is always [the famous Nature study](http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html) that the most prestigious scientists (at least by one measure, membership in the National Academy of Sciences) have the highest rates of disbelief. FWIW. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/39 "2011-04-25T21:16:36Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > Secular Humanism is pretty passive (we should probably reconsider that) culturally. > > So. Assuming a nation would want atheism to spread, what would be the most effective way? DON’T DO ANYTHING! As long as I’m not hurting anybody, my faith or lack thereof is none of the government’s business. Even if you hate religion in all its forms, it’s a far greater offense if the state tells you what to believe or not to believe. Also, people are more likely maintain their faith as an act of defiance if a nation tries to suppress its practice. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2011, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682/40 "2011-04-25T21:20:22Z")
> [@NDP](#): > > DON’T DO ANYTHING! > > As long as I’m not hurting anybody, my faith or lack thereof is none of the government’s business. Even if you hate religion in all its forms, it’s a far greater offense if the state tells you what to believe or not to believe. Except, again, that’s not what the OP asked; **Stoneburg** asked how to do it, not whether you thought it was a good idea. > [@NDP](#): > > Also, people are more likely maintain their faith as an act of defiance if a nation tries to suppress its practice. “Suppression” isn’t the only way to convince people to not do or believe something. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beaten-by-france-regarding-atheism/579682.md?page=3)