Religious Belief, Education, Intelligence, and Poverty

A new ranking of the most religious states in America shows only 13 states are less religious than Washington.

Is there any benefit enjoyed by landing on either side of the spectrum, of being more (or less) religious?

As it turns out, there is.

Poor people and poorly-educated people are much more likely to hold religious beliefs and believe in a personal god than those who earn more and have been well-educated. Put another way, religious people are poor and stupid (though to hold this as a universal maxim would be silly…in reality, the statement is but an accurate generalization).

“Several research studies have been published on the statistical relationship between religiosity and educational level, or religiosity and IQ. Michael Shermer, in How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, describes a large survey of randomly chosen Americans that he and his colleague Frank Sulloway carried out. Among their many interesting results was the discovery that religiosity is indeed negatively correlated with education (more highly educated people are less likely to be religious).” (Dawkins 102)

It’s not only education that is inversely correlated with religiosity; intelligence itself is also negatively correlated (which backs up my rather damning charge that “religious people are … stupid”:

“On the subject of religion and IQ, the only meta-analysis known to me was published by Paul Bell in Mensa Magazine in 2002 (Mensa is the society of individuals with a high IQ …). Bell concluded: ‘Of 43 studies carried out since 1927 on the relationship between religious belief and one’s intelligence and/or educational level, all but four found an inverse connection. That is, the higher one’s intelligence or education level, the less one is likely to be religious or hold ‘beliefs’ of any kind.” (Dawkins 103)

Clear signs that economic development is inversely correlated with religiosity are to be found in the new Pew survey. Specifically, it found that the most religious state in the Union is Mississippi, “with 82 percent of its residents saying that religion is important in their lives.” Mississippi also comes up last in another metric: GDP per capita. Unsurprisingly, Utah, which ranks 2nd nationally in Worship Attendance, comes in at 49th in GDP per capita. More compelling is the story on the other end: irreligiosity and wealth are highly correlated. New Hampshire, Vermont, and Alaska score the lowest levels of religiosity nationally, and all three rank in the top half in GDP Per Capita (with New Hampshire and Alaska both scoring in the top quartile). I’ve gone ahead and placed the state rankings of religiosity (2009) and GDP per capita from 2008 next to one another, and found that, on average, states’ per capita GDP ranking falls only 9 places away from its religiosity ranking, showing a correlation much higher than if we were to assign states random rankings. If we were to give the states random rankings in each, we would find that they would average a distance of 16 places apart. The strong correlation points to the existence of a powerful cause, because the correlation is so much higher than the expected result (if the result expected was ‘random’). The field of statistics doesn’t allow us to name the cause simply by noting a correlation; the identity of the cause as well as the nature of its workings is an answer we can only deduce.

I’ll take a stab at it.

During the primitive stages of humanity (let’s use 1776 as a somewhat arbitrary start-date for the modern era) there were a lack of compelling and widely-available explanations for the often complex and elegant occurrences found in nature. Myriad primitive theories were created in order to explain that which defied explanation. Some of these far-fetched theories included demons, spirits, and gods. These archaic explanations, having no proof whatsoever to support their existence, have been largely discredited and replaced by more elegant theories such as evolution by natural selection and those proposed by the natural sciences, which are concordant with observed nature and rely on evidence instead of primitive, baseless deduction. Modern scientific knowledge has only been around for a few hundred years, and widespread mandatory education has only been instituted in the last hundred. As a consequence of the relatively nascent development of both scientific breakthroughs and widespread education, it’s natural that primitive explanations are still common among the uneducated. As education becomes more ubiquitous, and as superstition loses its lustre, quantitative metrics will show a decline in religiosity commensurate with the increased level of education (which itself is largely dependent on economic development). It stands to reason, then, that once the entire planet’s population is relatively developed (to perhaps 1970′s-American standards of living), supernatural explanations for nature’s existence will have hit the tipping point of minority status, and will see their decline quicken. In a postmodern era (2300 CE onward, perhaps), Religion will be confined to a be a chimera of philosophy, community, and morality, and will have definitively given up its self-styled eminence in explaining the natural world.

How Religious Is Your State? – The Pew Forum On Religion And Public Life

Washington in bottom third of states on religious beliefs – PSBJ

List of U.S. states by GDP per capita – Wikipedia

Prehistoric

“One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion…”

Page 64

Greekthink

“As he sat in a cafe with friends in the chic Kolonaki area on a recent afternoon, Antonis, 33, who disclosed only his first name, proudly announced that he refused to pay taxes.

“Why should I pay?” he asked with a grin. “I don’t care about my government; I don’t care about my country,” he added. He conceded, however, that he did care about soccer and women.”

Greece Struggles to Stay Afloat as Debts Pile On – New York Times

On Afghanistan

Iraq was a war that America should have never fought. But it was a war that was winnable. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is untamed, vast, and unconquerable.

Afghanistan has successfully resisted being conquered by Alexander the Great, imperial Great Britain, the USSR, and the United States is poised to add its name to the list. The country’s resilience has nothing to do with its technology or infrastructure, but rather its geography: the population is so spread out that it cannot be easily secured by troops. Taming Afghanistan is sort of like providing security for ships through the Gulf of Aden; when you’re dealing with an area that large and security forces cannot be everywhere at once, security measures are easily thwarted.

In Iraq, the country had a valuable asset that can be used to pay for infrastructure and security: its massive oil deposits. Afghanistan also has a profitable export industry, but it’s an industry that cannot be controlled and taxed by the government. That industry is opium. The earnings from Afghanistan’s opium production flow to warlords, corrupt politicians, and militant insurgents–all of them enemies of development and progress.

The third difficulty in securing Afghanistan lies across the border with Pakistan. Pakistan’s Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and Northwest Frontier Province are largely rural and are under the de facto control of Pashtun Pakistani Taliban. This means that, if the international community were able to secure and stabilize Afghanistan, there would still be militant Taliban fighters spilling over the border from Pakistan making trouble. A more ideal solution would be for the international community to occupy both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, root out the Taliban in both places, and train locals and build infrastructure so that the areas could thrive without the Taliban. Proud Pakistani voters wouldn’t approve of that kind of operation, and their pragmatic President kowtows to his voters wishes.

All in all, the US occupation of Afghanistan looks to be a risky gamble.

HumanLight

“At the University of Southern Maine, a secular humanist organization has celebrated HumanLight, a secular alternative to Christmas and Hanukkah.”

I hate to break it to you, USM humanists, but Christmas itself is already a secular holiday. Remind me again…which religion lays claim to reindeer, Santa (and Mrs.) Claus, decorated trees, and gluttonous gift-giving?

Atheist Student Groups Flower on College Campuses – NYTimes

Hammer Time

“So, if it’s true that to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, the really useful question is, “what sort of hammer do you have?”

At big TV networks, they have a TV hammer. At a surgeon’s office, they have the scalpel hammer. A drug counselor has the talk hammer, while a judge probably has the jail hammer.

Maybe it’s time for a new hammer…

One study found that when confronted with a patient with back pain, surgeons prescribed surgery, physical therapists thought that therapy was indicated and yes, acupuncturists were sure needles were the answer. Across the entire universe of patients, the single largest indicator of treatment wasn’t symptoms or patient background, it was the background of the doctor.”

Hammer time – Seth Godin

The “Coolidge Effect”

Calvin Coolidge and his wife were being shown around a farm. Learning that a cockerel could have sex dozens of times a day, Mrs. Coolidge said to the farmer: “Perhaps you could point that out to Mr. Coolidge.” Upon being told, Mr. Coolidge asked, “Same hen every time?” “Oh no, Mr. President. A different hen each time,” the farmer replied. The President continued: “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”

The Coolidge effect is a phenomenon seen in nearly every species in which it has been tested whereby males show continuously high sexual performance given the introduction of new receptive female partners.

The Red Queen by Matt Ridley, page 299.

What Zombies, Frankenstein, Vampires, and Jesus have in common: A Venn Diagram

The White Menace

“…national studies have found that next to having a large Division I sports program, the single most highly correlated factor with alcohol and substance abuse on college campuses is the percentage of students who are white: the whiter the school, the bigger the problem. Not because there’s something wrong with white people, per se, but because privilege encourages and makes more likely all kinds of self-destructive behaviors, and allows those who enjoy the privileges to remain cavalier about their activities all the time.”

-Tim Wise, White Like Me, page 40.

Evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder.

“Progress … is about to hit the buffers of overpopulation, the greenhouse effect, and the exhaustion of resources. However fast we run, we never seem to get anywhere. Has the industrial revolution made the average inhabitant of the world healthier, wealthier, and wiser? Yes, if he is German. No, if he is Bangladeshi. Uncannily, … evolutionary science is ready to suit the mood. The fashion in evolutionary science now is to scoff at progress; evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder.”

Aggression vs. Apprehension

“Men have evolved to live dangerously because success in competition or battle used to lead to more or better sexual conquests and [hence] more surviving children. Women who live dangerously merely put at risk those children they already have [or those they are yet to have].”

Women are incentivized to avoid risk if they want their genes to be passed on to the next generation, whereas men are incentivized to seek risk.

It’s interesting that, in humans’ pre-agrarian ancestral environment, human gender roles had completely opposite incentives with regard to risk, and yet they still were able to cooperate in order to create successive generations.

(Page 20)

Disturbing Trends In Global Population Growth

CNN reports that the world’s population is forecast to hit 7 billion in 2011, with the vast majority of its growth coming in developing and, in many cases, the poorest nations:

97 percent of global growth over the next 40 years will happen in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World Population Data Sheet. “The great bulk of today’s 1.2 billion youth — nearly 90 percent — are in developing countries,” said Carl Haub, a co-author of the report. Eight in 10 of those youth live in Africa and Asia.

High fertility rates and a young population base in the developing world will fuel most of the growth, especially in Africa, where women often give birth to six or seven children over a lifetime, the report says. The number is about two in the United States and 1.5 in Canada.

A stark contrast can be drawn between Uganda and Canada, which currently have about 34 million and 31 million residents, respectively. By 2050, Canada’s population is projected to be 42 million, while Uganda’s is expected to soar to 96 million, more than tripling.

“Even with declining fertility rates in many countries, world population is still growing at a rapid rate,” said Bill Butz, president of the bureau. “The increase from 6 billion to 7 billion is likely to take 12 years, as did the increase from 5 billion to 6 billion. Both events are unprecedented in world history.”

Population growth is the biggest problem that our generation will face. Adding bodies and at the same time increasing resource consumption per human is a recipe for disaster.

The silver lining is that, as societies develop, their birthrates go down. Developed areas like Hong Kong and Macau sport responsible fertility rates, with the number of children born per woman at less than 1. South Korea, Singapore, and Japan hover around 1.25 children per woman, and most of Europe is in the 1.25-1.6 range. Canada’s is 1.5, and the United States’ is 2.05–both under the “replacement rate” of 2.2, which would mean zero population growth.

The problem is the poorest nations, including Niger, Guinea-Bissau, and Afghanistan, where women have seven children, on average. How they can support these children, let alone educate them and provide them with quality medical care, is beyond me.

World population projected to reach 7 billion in 2011 – CNN

ASCAP Gets Murdered

Courtesy Jason Calacanis and commenters.

Matching Funds

When I give, I like to give smart.

I give to the right organizations that I’ve researched and know well, and I prefer giving when my donation is being matched.

A few weeks ago, I found one of those opportunities when a distant acquaintance/relative named David Alhadeff was raising money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. David was kind enough to offer a personal match AND a corporate match from his firm, Goldman Sachs. 3X leverage on a philanthropic donation is a situation I like, so I donated and then sent out an email to some family members who were also kind enough to donate. With one email, we increased his fundraising amount by 21% (but more importantly, The Lance Armstrong Foundation got 3X that much!)

Today, a similar opportunity has presented itself. A wealthy donor has offered to match gifts to Planned Parenthood up to $1M:

From now until June 30, a generous donor will match every online gift to Planned Parenthood dollar-for-dollar up to $1 million. This means that, for example, if you give $50, Planned Parenthood will actually get $100. With more and more people turning to Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers for care during this economic recession, now is the best time to give. Whether you can spare $5, $50, or $500, your contribution will be doubled: https://secure.ga0.org/02/match09pporg?source=match09fbc3

Planned Parenthood is a leader in women’s health, and often provides services free-of-charge to underserved and poor women (including cervical cancer screenings, breast exams, contraception, testing for STIs, et cetera), and Planned Parenthood can’t continue to provide those services without your support.

2X leverage on your donation for a good cause…what are you waiting for!?

Doctors Now Unnecessary

When you can tap the knowledge of everyone you know, on a single platform, with responses coming at you near instantaneously, who needs a specialist anymore?: