***** They don't seem to phrase the questions is consistent ways and what is clear is how sensitive people are to how the question is worded (due to the vague relationship between religion as cultural group vs actual belief in a set of ideas) so I would be quite guarded about meta-analyses.
noelplum99 Probably insufficient to draw any broad conclusions about Anti-theism then. Which is a shame because, as you say, it has some interesting features.
I think an interesting modification to the questions would be splitting the 2nd question into two separate ones, or keeping that question and adding: 1) Do you think that YOUR religion does more harm than good? and 2) Do you think that OTHER religions do more harm than good. I think that that would show the level of bias people have for their own religion and reveal their perspective of other religions. Some people could be answering that question with only their own religion in mind, whereas others may be answering it will all religions in mind. Dividing the question like this solves this issue and generates more useful, interesting data.
Ok, Jim. I took a deep breath and watched one of your videos with a title that implied it would be religion-bashing. But you were actually pretty fair and did a really good job discussing all the nuances. In the US, there are a lot of people who believe in the God concept, but don't belong to any religion, except maybe they'd identify as a nominal Christian. But they don't read or believe in the Bible, belong to any church, much less attend services. Anyway, i'm glad I watched because I enjoyed the video. Now I might go back and watch all those I intentionally missed.
I suspect, though I may be wrong, that the answers would be different if they asked the harm or good questions about each of the monotheistic religions, or simply asked Christians for example "do you think Christianity does more harm than good". I mean they might think their religion does more good, but that the bad that's perceived to be done in the name of Islam, or Judaism makes for an overall net loss.
I think the explanation for the low result for question 2 in the 18-24 band is mainly down to a couple of factors. The life experience one that you mentioned coupled with pretty poor Religious Education that tends to be mostly Christian biased with little taught about other religions and no real studies into critically questioning said religious beliefs. It's mostly just spoon fed to you with little discussion. At least that's what I remember from my own schooling from more than a decade ago (and I consider myself to have attended a pretty good secular comprehensive school, so goodness knows what the Faith schools spoonfeed their students)
I think that's a tricky question. I'm not sure I could answer it easily off the cuff. I'd be tempted to say that religion has done more good than harm overall, but that going forward it might be a bit more open to question. Difficult to answer and probably skewed in some way because of the different ways we might interpret or define religion. I bet it means a variety of things to the various people questioned and so differently influenced each of their answers. Interesting video.
It is a shame that the question about religion causing harm didn't specify which religion/s they thought of as harmful. I would imagine those who are of a specific religious background, would accuse other/s of being harmful.
Interestingly enough I sympathise with UKIP and I am an atheist. In fact UKIP is a party I am very tempted to vote for. My other sympathies are with the Dems and the Tories, which interestingly enough are less religious than Labour.
Great video! I think the reason for UKIP being largely atheist is just because of "libertarian culture". Libertarians, even in the USA are often not religious and I think atheism might be a reason for becoming a libertarian in the USA, because libertarians value freedom from religion and the constitution a lot.
An O. Nymous Quite possibly. UKIP are probably the most libertarian party, with the Lib Dems 2nd. What I find more odd is that UKIP also has the lowest percentage for 'very religious'.
Ashley Newman Unfortunately yes, there are some less than savoury things about the party, that being said their environmental policies arn't actually that bad. In fact I would go as far as to say they are better than the Green party.
Ashley Newman Yes, they denounce climate change as it presents a dilemma for the concept of a free market, which is central to UKIP's libertarianism. If we want businesses to care about climate change, so say libertarians, we should vote with our wallets individually and use economical pressure to drive those choices, or set up our own business that cares about climate change. Policy UKIP calls it. The rest of us probably just call it delusion.
***** The greens are not as good as people think they are. To me on the science side of stuff green party and ukip are just as bad as each other. UKIP with climate change denial and Green anti GM and pro alternative medicine. Was going to vote green in the election but a little research has put me off
From a devils advocates point of view, I wonder if religious people (both religious & somewhat religious) look at the pro-active nature of current religious entities to acts of harm as an indicator of it's overall harm. ie: The inaction &/or covert actions of protecting Catholic priests from prosecution of paedophilia, open discrimination of some groups of people from religiously controlled charities, political religious opposition to laws that relax discrimination of homosexuals etc. I can see religious people disagreeing with the way their (& other) religious entities deal with social issues currently. ie: there are more Christians in the US, UK & Australia in favour of gay marriage than against yet it is the religiously based political entities & religiously motivated politicians that are outwardly opposing it. There are far more Catholics outraged at the Vatican's handling of paedophile priests, than are indifferent. I would be interested in a survey that asks their view of Harm Vs Good on 3 other levels; 1 Religious entities 2 Religiously motivated politics 3 Religious people It would be very beneficial to see what the religious think about their religion's leadership & influence. I know many devout Catholics (some of them nuns) that believe the Vatican has lost their way entirely.
People are slowly but surely considering 'religion' as a bad thing. That is, even if someone actually is religious by definition, they would not consider themselves as such. You'll get those strange answers like: no, im not religious, I have a relationship with jesus (which weirds me out, having a relationship with a zombie, but I guess whatever float their boat). So I dont really hang on that statistic as much as I would have in the past.
The question of "religion" doing more harm or good is interesting but I doubt that the answers say much more about beliefs than what people think the word means. Here in the US, at least, most people "of faith" say that they are not religious. When they hear the word religion, they think of dogmatic ritual behavior or some such; many fundamentalists vehemently deny being religious. If the question was about belief and/or faith in gods, the answers would, I think, be much more in line with what one expects.
Hi Jim, If you haven't already read "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt, I'd highly recommend it. It provides an interesting defense to the claim that religion does more good than harm from the perspective of moral psychology. The book isn't exclusively, or even mostly, a defense of the claim that religion does more good than harm, but it does provide a defense. I in fact think you would find the entire book interesting, but that's the bit relevant to this video. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it if you have read it.
4:10 Actually, I thought the interesting part here was that, except near death, older people are less religious than younger people. That's quite the opposite of the stereotype.
I'd really like to know how much the term "religion" or "religious" affects these polls. I mean how many times have you heard a christian say that Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship. And what's more that Atheism/evolution(ism) *is* a religion. So these guys would certainly say they are *not* religious and that religion *does* cause more harm than good.
I still wish people weren't so wishy washy with their views. I get the feeling I give this thing a lot more thought that most people, it feels almost careless to me to have such a shallow view. On the internet people seem to be a lot more opinionated and give a lot more time to religion in general.
11:40 The fact that as many as 1 in 5, 4, or 3 people surveyed "don't know" whether atheists are as likely to be "moral" is concerning. But perhaps it's the loaded term "moral" in the question. Morality in what context? Christian? A better question would have used a clearer term, perhaps "ethical", or "law-abiding" or "helpful" or "good neighbours".
Much as with the last survey, the stats around Muslim and Jewish opinions need to be taken with a pillar of salt. The margin of error on those sub-populations is enormous because the sample size is tiny.
mwtbones That is very true but it must be pointed out that this is far from the first survey to show that muslims (in the UK) take their religion far more seriously than other faiths and tend to display much higher levels of certitude. I dont recall seeing the 'more harm than good' question asked elsewhere but as these other questions correlate well to other surveys my suspicion is that this would too.
noelplum99 Sure, the general trend is backed up by other surveys. It's just a bit dodgy to read a lot into the specific numbers. If my stats aren't failing me entirely the 95% confidence margin of error on the Muslim sub-pop is something like 12-13% there. Interesting sidenote, while Muslims may be generally more inclined to believe religion does good they also appear to be more inclined to consider that they are driven to do good by their religion. The survey that came to mind was this one from the Hitchens-Blair debate thing: www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/News/ipsos-global-advisor-views-on-globalisation-and-faith.pdf
A couple of those stats were definitely unexpected (for me, at least). Especially the one about devoutly religious people thinking that atheists are more likely to be moral than religious people.
SiriusMined last time you got your hands on a shrink ray you allowed it to slip outta your hands and it pointed at your crotch. The results were bad for all of us present. I never heard a dude scream so loudly once ya want into the bathroom for a look see, Just the therapy bills were enormous
SiriusMined lolol..you sir are spreading canards. I'll have you know that when I wake up with morning wood I am forced to pole vault outta bed. So digest that info smart guy!
Let us be clear 'Islamophobia' is the wrong word deliberately pushed to equivocate between the unacceptable abuse of Muslims and acceptable criticism of Islam. It should be Muslim abuse and I would ask people to not accept 'Islamophobia' as an appropriate word for this.
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Interesting. Are there enough of these for any kind of meta-analysis?
How about justifying the 'sinfulness' of 'harm', or is that too much meta-analysis?
*****
They don't seem to phrase the questions is consistent ways and what is clear is how sensitive people are to how the question is worded (due to the vague relationship between religion as cultural group vs actual belief in a set of ideas) so I would be quite guarded about meta-analyses.
Trey Jadlow 'too much meta-analysis'. Reminds me of spinal tap. 'Too much fuckin' perspective'. X
Yeah, I know. Nevermind that thinkin' stuff....makes the head hurt! :)
noelplum99
Probably insufficient to draw any broad conclusions about Anti-theism then. Which is a shame because, as you say, it has some interesting features.
I think an interesting modification to the questions would be splitting the 2nd question into two separate ones, or keeping that question and adding: 1) Do you think that YOUR religion does more harm than good? and 2) Do you think that OTHER religions do more harm than good. I think that that would show the level of bias people have for their own religion and reveal their perspective of other religions. Some people could be answering that question with only their own religion in mind, whereas others may be answering it will all religions in mind. Dividing the question like this solves this issue and generates more useful, interesting data.
Ok, Jim. I took a deep breath and watched one of your videos with a title that implied it would be religion-bashing. But you were actually pretty fair and did a really good job discussing all the nuances.
In the US, there are a lot of people who believe in the God concept, but don't belong to any religion, except maybe they'd identify as a nominal Christian. But they don't read or believe in the Bible, belong to any church, much less attend services.
Anyway, i'm glad I watched because I enjoyed the video. Now I might go back and watch all those I intentionally missed.
I suspect, though I may be wrong, that the answers would be different if they asked the harm or good questions about each of the monotheistic religions, or simply asked Christians for example "do you think Christianity does more harm than good". I mean they might think their religion does more good, but that the bad that's perceived to be done in the name of Islam, or Judaism makes for an overall net loss.
Thank you for this upload. I think you've done some real good here.
Very interesting. Thanks again, Noel.
I think the explanation for the low result for question 2 in the 18-24 band is mainly down to a couple of factors. The life experience one that you mentioned coupled with pretty poor Religious Education that tends to be mostly Christian biased with little taught about other religions and no real studies into critically questioning said religious beliefs. It's mostly just spoon fed to you with little discussion. At least that's what I remember from my own schooling from more than a decade ago (and I consider myself to have attended a pretty good secular comprehensive school, so goodness knows what the Faith schools spoonfeed their students)
Speaking of the theocracy of England. Do you notice that people over time more and more want to get rid of the religious part of the government?
I think that's a tricky question. I'm not sure I could answer it easily off the cuff. I'd be tempted to say that religion has done more good than harm overall, but that going forward it might be a bit more open to question. Difficult to answer and probably skewed in some way because of the different ways we might interpret or define religion. I bet it means a variety of things to the various people questioned and so differently influenced each of their answers.
Interesting video.
That's deep.... Philtrum.
It is a shame that the question about religion causing harm didn't specify which religion/s they thought of as harmful. I would imagine those who are of a specific religious background, would accuse other/s of being harmful.
I'm not surprised that many of the religious think religion does more harm than good; they just think it's other religions that are doing the harm.
Interestingly enough I sympathise with UKIP and I am an atheist. In fact UKIP is a party I am very tempted to vote for. My other sympathies are with the Dems and the Tories, which interestingly enough are less religious than Labour.
that was really interesting.
Great video! I think the reason for UKIP being largely atheist is just because of "libertarian culture". Libertarians, even in the USA are often not religious and I think atheism might be a reason for becoming a libertarian in the USA, because libertarians value freedom from religion and the constitution a lot.
An O. Nymous Quite possibly. UKIP are probably the most libertarian party, with the Lib Dems 2nd. What I find more odd is that UKIP also has the lowest percentage for 'very religious'.
***** What even more odd is that they are the party who are anti-climate change and want to keep "traditional" marriage (their words not mine).
Ashley Newman Unfortunately yes, there are some less than savoury things about the party, that being said their environmental policies arn't actually that bad. In fact I would go as far as to say they are better than the Green party.
Ashley Newman Yes, they denounce climate change as it presents a dilemma for the concept of a free market, which is central to UKIP's libertarianism. If we want businesses to care about climate change, so say libertarians, we should vote with our wallets individually and use economical pressure to drive those choices, or set up our own business that cares about climate change.
Policy UKIP calls it. The rest of us probably just call it delusion.
***** The greens are not as good as people think they are.
To me on the science side of stuff green party and ukip are just as bad as each other. UKIP with climate change denial and Green anti GM and pro alternative medicine. Was going to vote green in the election but a little research has put me off
From a devils advocates point of view, I wonder if religious people (both religious & somewhat religious) look at the pro-active nature of current religious entities to acts of harm as an indicator of it's overall harm.
ie: The inaction &/or covert actions of protecting Catholic priests from prosecution of paedophilia, open discrimination of some groups of people from religiously controlled charities, political religious opposition to laws that relax discrimination of homosexuals etc.
I can see religious people disagreeing with the way their (& other) religious entities deal with social issues currently. ie: there are more Christians in the US, UK & Australia in favour of gay marriage than against yet it is the religiously based political entities & religiously motivated politicians that are outwardly opposing it. There are far more Catholics outraged at the Vatican's handling of paedophile priests, than are indifferent.
I would be interested in a survey that asks their view of Harm Vs Good on 3 other levels;
1 Religious entities
2 Religiously motivated politics
3 Religious people
It would be very beneficial to see what the religious think about their religion's leadership & influence. I know many devout Catholics (some of them nuns) that believe the Vatican has lost their way entirely.
I love these stat videos!
People are slowly but surely considering 'religion' as a bad thing. That is, even if someone actually is religious by definition, they would not consider themselves as such. You'll get those strange answers like: no, im not religious, I have a relationship with jesus (which weirds me out, having a relationship with a zombie, but I guess whatever float their boat).
So I dont really hang on that statistic as much as I would have in the past.
I'm curious what the results would be if this survey was given in the US.
The question of "religion" doing more harm or good is interesting but I doubt that the answers say much more about beliefs than what people think the word means. Here in the US, at least, most people "of faith" say that they are not religious. When they hear the word religion, they think of dogmatic ritual behavior or some such; many fundamentalists vehemently deny being religious.
If the question was about belief and/or faith in gods, the answers would, I think, be much more in line with what one expects.
Hi Jim,
If you haven't already read "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt, I'd highly recommend it. It provides an interesting defense to the claim that religion does more good than harm from the perspective of moral psychology. The book isn't exclusively, or even mostly, a defense of the claim that religion does more good than harm, but it does provide a defense. I in fact think you would find the entire book interesting, but that's the bit relevant to this video. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it if you have read it.
4:10 Actually, I thought the interesting part here was that, except near death, older people are less religious than younger people. That's quite the opposite of the stereotype.
I'd really like to know how much the term "religion" or "religious" affects these polls. I mean how many times have you heard a christian say that Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship. And what's more that Atheism/evolution(ism) *is* a religion. So these guys would certainly say they are *not* religious and that religion *does* cause more harm than good.
I still wish people weren't so wishy washy with their views. I get the feeling I give this thing a lot more thought that most people, it feels almost careless to me to have such a shallow view.
On the internet people seem to be a lot more opinionated and give a lot more time to religion in general.
11:40 The fact that as many as 1 in 5, 4, or 3 people surveyed "don't know" whether atheists are as likely to be "moral" is concerning. But perhaps it's the loaded term "moral" in the question. Morality in what context? Christian?
A better question would have used a clearer term, perhaps "ethical", or "law-abiding" or "helpful" or "good neighbours".
Much as with the last survey, the stats around Muslim and Jewish opinions need to be taken with a pillar of salt. The margin of error on those sub-populations is enormous because the sample size is tiny.
mwtbones
That is very true but it must be pointed out that this is far from the first survey to show that muslims (in the UK) take their religion far more seriously than other faiths and tend to display much higher levels of certitude. I dont recall seeing the 'more harm than good' question asked elsewhere but as these other questions correlate well to other surveys my suspicion is that this would too.
noelplum99
Sure, the general trend is backed up by other surveys. It's just a bit dodgy to read a lot into the specific numbers. If my stats aren't failing me entirely the 95% confidence margin of error on the Muslim sub-pop is something like 12-13% there.
Interesting sidenote, while Muslims may be generally more inclined to believe religion does good they also appear to be more inclined to consider that they are driven to do good by their religion. The survey that came to mind was this one from the Hitchens-Blair debate thing: www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/News/ipsos-global-advisor-views-on-globalisation-and-faith.pdf
I've had a few Bishops sitting in my upper chamber
A couple of those stats were definitely unexpected (for me, at least). Especially the one about devoutly religious people thinking that atheists are more likely to be moral than religious people.
I have terrible trouble with bishops in my upper chamber :/
Religion gives me gas.
damn, I'd hoped you had a shrink ray...
SiriusMined last time you got your hands on a shrink ray you allowed it to slip outta your hands and it pointed at your crotch. The results were bad for all of us present. I never heard a dude scream so loudly once ya want into the bathroom for a look see, Just the therapy bills were enormous
Rogue Moon
LOL.
Well, I needed to use the shrink ray to get myself down to your size. I didn't want you to feel bad.
SiriusMined lolol..you sir are spreading canards. I'll have you know that when I wake up with morning wood I am forced to pole vault outta bed. So digest that info smart guy!
Many of the religious think it does more harm than good. Doesn't say much for their imaginary friend does it!?
Let us be clear 'Islamophobia' is the wrong word deliberately pushed to equivocate between the unacceptable abuse of Muslims and acceptable criticism of Islam. It should be Muslim abuse and I would ask people to not accept 'Islamophobia' as an appropriate word for this.
OMG YOU SHRUNK