Religion may not survive the internet

[Sleeping in EQ]

Are you a Gellner-ite of sorts? A follower; a sympathizer? If so, for me, it explains a lot—even, perhaps, your board name.

In my world there are no manner of -ites! However, much of what Gellner wrote resonates with me. Emerson, Benjamin, Gellner--I gravitate to scholars who took the academy to task.

In eight years on these boards, there have been only two or three people who mentioned a connection between my board name and my philosophy. The connection is intentional.

[byu71]

In my world there are no manner of -ites! However, much of what Gellner wrote resonates with me. Emerson, Benjamin, Gellner--I gravitate to scholars who took the academy to task.

In eight years on these boards, there have been only two or three people who mentioned a connection between my board name and my philosophy. The connection is intentional.

When you become a HP, everyone will understand the connection.

[ERCougar]

Do you feel the need to get acceptance from the religious community. In other words if they patted you on the back and said, we appreciate you just the way you are, do you think you would still have the angst you seem to carry?

I don't mean to pick on you because you're not the only person to point this out, but what makes you think SU 'carries angst'? An obsession with BYU? Sure. With the church? I'm not seeing it. He seems pretty content.

[byu71]

I don't mean to pick on you because you're not the only person to point this out, but what makes you think SU 'carries angst'? An obsession with BYU? Sure. With the church? I'm not seeing it. He seems pretty content.

No worries. I don't consider you picking on me, you are just making an observation contrary to mine.

I obviously don't know him well enough or his background to "know" whether he is or not. It just seems to me he continually attacks religion and the LDS faith in particular. Again, as I see it, it goes beyond convincing someone else or converting them to his way of thinking, but seems to be more of a self affirmation. There seems to be an element of anger there.

For the record I am pretty content, but the fact fellow BYU fans don't agree with me on the HC still bugs me and I look for every opportunity to needle them on the subject.

[SeattleUte]

I don't mean to pick on you because you're not the only person to point this out, but what makes you think SU 'carries angst'? An obsession with BYU? Sure. With the church? I'm not seeing it. He seems pretty content.

Right now my primary angst is that the Utes have acheived my lifelong dream of Pac 12 admission, and they aren't cutting the mustard.

[tooblue]

In my world there are no manner of -ites! However, much of what Gellner wrote resonates with me. Emerson, Benjamin, Gellner--I gravitate to scholars who took the academy to task.

In eight years on these boards, there have been only two or three people who mentioned a connection between my board name and my philosophy. The connection is intentional.

Just curious, with no ulterior motive to label you in any way as an "ite" of any kind. I read "Words and Things." It does not resonate with me—I agree with very little of what Gellner wrote. But, based upon your many posts over the years I can see why it resonates with you.

[DrumNFeather]

Right now my primary angst is that the Utes have acheived my lifelong dream of Pac 12 admission, and they aren't cutting the mustard.

Agree. Having a seat at the table wore off pretty fast.

[tooblue]

Agree. Having a seat at the table wore off pretty fast.

Did you really believe Utah would cut the mustard in the PAC 12 ... that's almost as bad—no, wait, much worse—as holding out hope that Lance Armstrong didn't use performing enhancing drugs.

[Applejack]

Agree. Having a seat at the table wore off pretty fast.

Not true. I'm still just happy to be here. Call me easily satisfied, but other than 1994/2004/2008, the last two years have been the most enjoyable years I've had as a Ute football fan. Every week I look at the schedule and say "Wow, another great game this week." Good times.

[Uncle Ted]

More Knowledge, Less Belief in Religion?

Religious belief is associated with less knowledge as well as lower intelligence

A recent review of studies found that religious belief is inversely associated with intelligence. That is, more intelligent people are generally less likely to be religious. The reasons for this are not fully understood, although some of the main theories were discussed in Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic’s article. Dr Chamorro-Premuzic also made the intriguing suggestion that the relationship between religiosity and intelligence might be mediated by the personality trait known as openness to experience. A related possibility is that greater knowledge about religion and the world in general might play some role in explaining why more intelligent people tend to be less religious.

To summarise briefly, a recent review of 63 studies showed that there is a moderate negative relationship between intelligence and religiosity (Zuckerman, Silberman, & Hall, 2013). The review found that religious beliefs, such as belief in God, are somewhat more strongly related to lower intelligence than religious behavior, such as church attendance. The authors estimated that the average difference in IQ points between believers and nonbelievers ranged from 6.2 for non-college samples to 7.8 for college samples. This difference is roughly half a standard deviation in size, so this represents a reasonably substantial effect rather than something trivial.

Studies like this are correlational in nature, so it is not possible to decide for sure what is causing the relationship. That is, we do not know whether intelligence causes people to be less religious, whether religion dampens a person’s intelligence, or whether there is some third variable underlying both. Dr Chamorro-Premuzic proposed that an underlying factor that might link intelligence and religiosity could be the personality trait openness to experience. This trait refers to the breadth and complexity of a person’s mental life. Openness to experience is positively correlated with general intelligence. Additionally, studies have found that non-religious people tend to be higher in openness to experience than the religious (Galen & Kloet, 2011), and that greater openness to experience is associated with more disbelief in God (Shenhav, Rand, & Greene, 2011). (I have written about this in a previous post here.)


Openness to experience, along with intelligence, is also associated with greater general knowledge of the world. This may be because people who are high in openness to experience are intellectually curious and therefore motivated to learn new things about the world. I think this is interesting because a Pew Forum survey on the religious knowledge of Americans found that atheists and agnostics[1] had substantially more knowledge of religion than Christians on average. (A summary of the survey results can be viewed here, while the full report is here. You can take the quiz yourself here.) In fact, atheists and agnostics scored higher on religious knowledge than any other group surveyed, including those who were “nothing in particular”[2], although Jews and Mormons also scored higher than the remaining groups interestingly enough. A breakdown of the results showed that Mormons had the most knowledge about Christianity, although atheists/agnostics and Jews knew more about Christianity than mainstream Christians on average. Atheists/agnostics, closely followed by Jews, had the most knowledge of world religions, such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Atheists/agnostics and Jews tend to be more educated than the other groups, and more education is associated with greater religious knowledge. However, even after taking education into account, atheists/agnostics and Jews still maintained their knowledge advantage over Christians generally. The Pew survey also included a short test of general knowledge for comparative purposes. Atheists and agnostics also scored higher on this test than any other group, although Jews were again a close second, Mormons did somewhat less well, and other Christians were even further behind. Additionally, those who did well on the test of religious knowledge also tended to score well on general knowledge too, suggesting that those who know a lot about religion tend to be more knowledgeable in general.

The Pew survey report did not offer an explanation of why atheists/agnostics showed greater religious knowledge than most religious people. A number of possible explanations come to mind. As noted previously, people who are not religious tend to be more intelligent than the religious, and there is a positive association between intelligence and knowledge. An additional consideration is that atheists/agnostics, being higher in openness to experience, may have more interest in acquiring knowledge in general than the religious. This raises a question about the direction of causality. Does rejection of religion motivate people to gain more knowledge or does gaining knowledge lead to rejection of religion? Arguments can be made for each of these, although the actual answer might involve a combination of both, or even some third factor.
[…]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ef-in-religion


If the internet raises one's knowledge of the world then this study might explain why religion is taking a big hit.

[YOhio]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ef-in-religion


If the internet raises one's knowledge of the world then this study might explain why religion is taking a big hit.

This was predicted in the Book of Mormon.

[Moliere]

This was predicted prophesied in the Book of Mormon.

FIFY

[snowcat]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ef-in-religion


If the internet raises one's knowledge of the world then this study might explain why religion is taking a big hit.

Meh, the internet is mostly the various incarnations of the selfie.

[Topper]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...ef-in-religion


If the internet raises one's knowledge of the world then this study might explain why religion is taking a big hit.

Interesting.

The test is mostly amazingly easy. I imagine the only tricky question for those here is the one about the First Great Awakening. That information may not be as obvious. But asides from that, I imagine the remainder is straightforward.

[Topper]

This was predicted in the Book of Mormon.

One interesting aspect about the First Great Awakening from J. Edwards is that his emphasis of a personal experience is certainly a key point of JS's perspective. Now, IIRC, JS was part of the Second Great Awakening but it appears he took something from that in his deliberations.