* Michael Shermer ~ The Seven Strongest Predictors of Belief in God

Michael Shermer was once a fundamentalist Christian, but is now an agnostic and an advocate for humanist philosophy.

Many say their own faith is based in reason, but others' beliefs are grounded in emotion, writes Michael Shermer in Why Darwin Matters.

Who believes in God?

by Michael Shermer
February 3, 2007

Why do you believe in God? I have been asking people this question for most of my adult life. In 1998, Frank Sulloway and I presented the query in a more official format – along with the question 'Why do you think other people believe in God?' – in a survey given to 10,000 Americans. ...

When Sulloway and I noticed the difference between why people believe in God and why they think other people believe in God, we decided to undertake an extensive analysis of all the written answers people provided in our survey. In addition, we inquired about family demographics, religious background, personality characteristics, and other factors that contribute to religious belief and skepticism. We discovered that the seven strongest predictors of belief in God are:"

1. being raised in a religious manner
2. parents' religiosity
3. lower levels of education
4. being female
5. a large family
6. lack of conflict with parents
7. being younger

In this survey Shermer and Sulloway also asked for the reasons people give for their own beliefs versus the reasons they attribute to other people's beliefs. Their findings were that people consider their own beliefs as being rationally motivated whereas they see the beliefs of others as being emotionally driven.

More of Michael Shermer:

Wikipedia

Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine

eSkeptic

* Iraq Study Group Report Released ~ Bush Whacked

We all know what the US news media is saying about the Iraq Study Group report, released today, and related stories. But what is the rest of the world saying about today's news in the US? A few resources for this, below.

AUSTRALIA ABC.net.au
Headline: Iraq Survey Group report released

FRANCE International Herald Tribune - Americas
Headline: Bush resists idea of troop withdrawal

GERMANY Spiegel-Online
Headline: America Faces Up to the Iraq Disaster

GREAT BRITAIN 10 Downing Street
Headline: PM sees "strong way forward" for Iraq

INDIA India Times
Headline: US underreported Iraq violence

IRAN Tehran Times
Headline: Iraq Study Group urges direct talks between U.S. and Iran

IRELAND Irish Independent
Headline: Bush at odds with Blair over Iraq

ISRAEL Haaretz
Headline: Blair says Iraq war and Middle East conflict connected

PHILIPPINES The INQ7 Network
Headline: Iraq Study Group finds Bush war policies wrong

* Significant Growth of 'Faithless' in America from 8% to 14.1%

SURVEY INDICATES MORE AMERICANS "WITHOUT FAITH"


Growth in the segment of the adult population "identifying with no religion" is significant. "In 1990, 14.3 million or roughly 8% identified with this category. The new ARIS count now shows that the non-believer population has grown to 29.4 million, roughly 14.1% of the American community. The ARIS team notes that the 1990 figure "may be downwardly biased due to a slight change in the working of the key survey question in 2001. In seeking a more accurate measure of identification, the clause 'if any' was added this year to the question, 'What religion do you identify with?'"

"The study introduction quotes an observation by anthropologist of religion Diana L. Eck (A New Religious America: How a 'Christian County' Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation, Harper - San Francisco, 2001) who observed, "We the people of the United States now form the most profusely religious nation on earth." "Often lost amidst the mesmerizing tapestry of faith groups that comprise the American population," notes ARIS, "is also a vast and growing population of those without faith. They adhere to no creed nor choose to affiliate with any religious community. These are the seculars, the unchurched, the people who profess no faith in any religion."

"In addition, 'the present survey has detected a wide and possibly growing swath of secularism among Americans. The magnitude and role of this large secular segment of the American population is frequently ignored by scholars and politicians alike...'"

Graduate Center Survey of Religion in America Complements U.S. Census

"Fifty-two percent of adults in America are Protestant, 24.5% are Catholic, and 14.1% adhere to no religion, according to the latest American Religious Identification Survey, 2001 ("ARIS 2001") just released by The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Those giving their religion as Jewish are 1.3% and those as Muslim or Islamic are 0.5%."

City University of New York

* Study: Atheists Most Discriminated Minority

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
~ George H. W. Bush on the campaign trail in 1988.

It is obnoxious to hear Christians whine with outrage over what they perceive to be a 'war on their Christmas season' while nonbelievers are looked down upon all year round and historically.

Study: Atheists Most Discriminated Minority
April 15, 2006

University of Minnesota study of 2006: (Would you want your daughter to marry an Atheist?)

University of Minnesota researchers conducted a telephone survey of over 2,000 households in early 2006. They found that:

"...Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in 'sharing their vision of American society.' Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry."

Lead researcher, Penny Edgell, noted that Atheists:

"...offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years....It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common 'core' of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that 'core' has historically been religious....Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong. Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good'."

It would appear that Atheists have a major public relations job ahead of them.

ABC News
Who's Counting: Distrusting Atheists

THE ULTIMATE OUTSIDERS? NEW REPORT CASTS ATHEISTS AS "OTHERS" BEYOND MORALITY AND COMMUNITY IN AMERICA

"Respondents had various interpretations of what atheists are like and what the label means," investigators found in discussions following the initial interviews. Perceptions fell into two categories.

"Some people view atheists as problematic because they associate them with illegality, such as drug use and prostitution -- that is, with immoral people who threaten respectable community from the lower end of the social hierarchy." Presumably, this might be rooted in the claim that only religion can provide an authentic moral compass, and that without a deity (and the presumed punishment in an afterlife), people have little to lose by engaging in certain immoral, sinful behaviors.

gapingvoid.com
"Others saw atheists as rampant materialists and cultural elitists that threaten common values from above -- the ostentatiously wealthy who make a lifestyle out of consumption or the cultural elites who think they know better than everyone else." In both cases, atheists are perceived as "self interested individuals who are not concerned with a common good."

Tolerance towards Atheists:

Although adults in North America exhibit reasonable tolerance towards persons belonging to different Christian denominations and other organized religions, this acceptance does not necessarily extend to Atheists.

This is a serious concern to many Atheists and other non-Christians -- a problem which has every likelihood of becoming more intense in the future, because of the rapid change in the religious makeup of the U.S. Polling data from the 2001 ARIS study has revealed that the percentage of American adults who do not follow any organized religion has almost doubled from 1990 to 2001 -- from 8% to 14% of the adult population. Many of the latter are Atheists, Agnostics, Non-believers, Secularists, Humanists, etc. Many American adults -- 81% of whom identify with a specific religion -- seem unwilling to extend elementary freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly to this growing minority of fellow Americans.

The good news ...(or bad, depending upon your point of view, heh) ...
"The Secular Coalition for America is the new (first one ever!) Washington-based lobbying organization for atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheistic Americans. Our mission is to increase the visibility and respectability of nontheistic viewpoints in the United States and to protect and strengthen the secular character of our government as the best guarantee of freedom for all."

* Studies Find Prayer Ineffective

Reverend Fun Website

John Templeton Foundation
Supporting Science ~ Investing in the Big Questions

*Largest Study of Third-Party Prayer Suggests Such Prayer Not Effective in Reducing Complications Following Heart Surgery (PDF), Mechal Weiss, Boston, MA, April 2006

* * *
STUDY FINDS HEART PATIENTS NOT HELPED BY PRAYER

AP - In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications. . . The work, which followed about 1,800 patients at six medical centers, was financed by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research into science and religion. It will appear in the American Heart Journal (April 2006).

Undernews/AP/CNN/Health

Press Release
Harvard Medical School
Office of Public Affairs

Furthermore, we would have no need for hospitals if positive, healing effects resulted from prayer.
* * *
Does God Answer Prayer?
April 2006
by Brian Bolton

Brief history of studies on the efficacy of prayer, "Four large-sample experimental investigations of Christian intercessory prayer, conducted by evangelical Christians for the purpose of demonstrating god's power, produced indisputably negative results. The few instances of statistical significance were due to chance or admitted research malpractice."

Freedom From Religion Foundation

*Study Investigators

Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts
Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota
St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida
Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C
Mind/Body Medical Institute, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Prayers never bring anything. . . . They may bring solace to the sap, the bigot, the ignorant, the aboriginal, and the lazy--but to the enlightened it is the same as asking Santa Claus to bring you something for Xmas.

~ W.C. Fields, cited by Warren Allen Smith in Who's Who in Hell

* Studies Conclude More Incarcerated "Faithful" than "Faithless"

Morality cannot be equated with religion ~ just the opposite.

"The 2001 ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) found that 13% of the US population was non-religious. One holding your assumption might expect that 13% or more of the population of US prisons would also be non-religious. Yet the opposite is true. For example, in The New Criminology," Max D. Schlapp and Edward E. Smith state that the ratio of convicts without religious training is about 1/10th of 1%. Another example is the work by W.T. Root, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, who found that in a survey of 1,916 prisoners, Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and Free-Thinkers were absent from penitentiaries, or nearly so. A third example, during a 10 year examination of inmates at Sing-Sing, it was found that of those executed for murder, 65% were Catholic, 26% were Protestants, 6% were Jewish, 2% were Pagan and less than 1/3 of 1% were non-religious. Being non-religious would appear to have an inverse relationship with being a criminal."