Mis-measuring American irreligion

Americans, polls report, are convinced that America is fast losing religion.

Earlier this year, Gallup found that 77 percent of Americans agree with the statement, "religion is losing its influence on American life." Some thought that was good, others bad, but most agreed it was happening.

Part of that belief, at least, is due to the Pew studies and subsequent headlines that have trumped the recent, rapid rise of the religiously unaffiliated, the "nones," in the United States. This has been one of the big stories in religion in America in the last few years.

Those reports are problematic in how they simplify the "nones," which is something I've looked at.  What it means when someone says they're not religious should be interrogated more fully that it usually is. But the studies do show a change. The question is what the change means, not whether or not there is something shifting in American religiosity.

Or maybe not. Maybe the studies aren't to be trusted.

The methodology of the studies that have reported on a rapid rise in American "nones" has recently been called into question. Perhaps, it has been suggested, American religiousness isn't changing, it is just being mis-measured.

According to Rodney Stark -- a sociologist of religion who's done important work but who has also been "out in left field" on some things -- there are serious problems with the major studies that shows a decline in American's religious affiliations. It's a serious problem that he suggests undermines the whole story of "the rise of the 'nones.'"

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Stark writes:

When I was a young sociologist at Berkeley's Survey Research Center, it was assumed that any survey that failed to interview at least 85% of those originally drawn into the sample was not to be trusted. Those who refused to take part in the survey or could not be reached were known to be different from those who did take part. Consequently, studies were expected to report their completion rates. 

Today, even the most reputable studies seldom reach more than a third of those initially selected to be surveyed and, probably for that reason, completion rates are now rarely reported. The Pew Forum researchers are to be commended for reporting their actual completion rates, which by 2012 had fallen to 9%.

Given all of this, only one thing is really certain: Those who take part in any survey are not a random selection of the population. They also tend to be less educated and less affluent. Contrary to the common wisdom, research has long demonstrated that this demographic group is the one least likely to belong to a church.

As the less-affluent and less-educated have made up a bigger share of those surveyed, so has the number of those who report having no religion.

Maybe the much touted change is a matter of mis-mesauring?

Or maybe not. There are reasons to be believe that the measurements are reliable.

This isn't a new or unheard of issue that Stark is raising, and current polling practices are calibrated to deal with the issue. Dropping response rates and completion rates have been documented by pollsters, including Pew. Polling experts have been thinking about this problem for a while, and have developed methodology they think counter balances the possible problem of bias and over or under sampling certain groups.

They have done this, according to statistician Nate Silver, "mostly through the 'magic' of demographic weighting."

This means that the people who do respond are taken as representative for their demographic. Perhaps a poll reaches and gets responses from fewer hispanics than there are in the population. The pollsters can re-calibrate, valuing each hispanic response as representative for three, ten, etc. This is logic by which polls work anyway -- i.e., they're "representative" -- so while it might seem that demographic weighting is "cheating," it's part of the process, part of the analysis that's necessary to produce those numbers.

The people at Pew, where the questioned study was done, have thought about this question that STark is raising and have responded at length. Citing multiple studies on the matter of response rates, Pew concludes that "carefully conducted polls continue to obtain representative samples of the public and provide accurate data about the views and experiences of Americans."

Where polls accuracy can be checked, for example with elections, this methodology, which is really a defense mechanism for what Stark is criticizing, has be shown to work. Silver calls it the "uncanny accuracy of polls." Looking at voter surveys prior to elections specifically, Pew found "there is little to suggest that those who do not participate hold substantially different views" than those who do.

Perhaps questions of religious affiliation are different. Stark, at least, seems to think so. Given the research that's gone into the methodological question he raises, though, and the continued good-enough accuracy of polls in other, more easily verified, areas, the declining poll response rates aren't enough, in and of themselves, to seriously call the reports of declining religious affiliation into question.

It's necessary to be careful and thoughtful in interpreting the reports of rapid rising rates of irreligion. They probably don't mean as much as they're commonly thought to mean. However that change should ultimately be understood, though, it seems likely that the reports that there is a change are reliable.

Read More

The triumph of Darwin's Doubt

One might think that getting a negative review of a recently released science book in a high-profile magazine would be a bad thing for that book. In the case of Darwin's Doubt, though, it's not. Getting trashed in the New Yorker is actually something of a triumph.

Gareth Cook writes in the New Yorker that this book, the latest big splash for Intelligent Design, has an "inspired-by-true events feel," and is a "masterwork of pseudoscience." For author Stephen C. Meyer, for the Discovery Institute where he works, and for advocates of Intelligent Design and criticisms of evolution more generally, this is a good thing.

The negative review is a positive sign.

As David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, wrote:

What's important is the way the logjam against intelligent discussion of intelligent design in the mainstream media is finally unjamming .... Real scientists and thoughtful, open-minded laymen are paying attention right now to a genuine and fascinating disputation about biological origins. The endorsements from scientists in relevant fields that Darwin's Doubt has already received is itself confirmation of that. I've said already that I don't know how the debate will be resolved, if it ever will. But make no mistake: the debate is happening.

Debate has long been the immediate goal of the Intelligent Design movement. The goal has been to legitimate the possibility of the Intelligent Design position by generating controversy. Meyer's book, which looks at the "Cambrian explosion," a relatively rapid diversification of organisms in the fossil record, where new and more complex forms of life appeared, will be seen as achieving that goal precisely to the extent that there's public pushback, take-downs and criticism.

Controversy -- such as claims the book is "holed beneath the waterline on the key issues of Cambrian paleontology, phylogenetics, and the information argument" -- are opportunities for Intelligent Design advocates. They're opportunities for rebuttal, but more, they serve as evidence that there's a controversy. And if there's a controversy, then there are sides to that controversy, and the rules of fairness dictate that both sides should be taken seriously. The case can be made for "teaching the controversy," which doesn't resolve it or end it in the way Intelligent Design proponents might want, but does give them a public hearing.

Meyer has long been a proponent of teach-the-controversy. This book isn't a break from that modus operandi. 

Since the late '90s, organizations such as Meyer's Discovery Institute have explicitly pushed the policy of "teach the controversy," a phrase Meyer apparently coined. Intelligent Design advocates have not mainly sought to debunk evolution and neo-Darwinian understandings of life, but to start a debate, and make the case there is a debate.

The strategy has been clearly outlined in Discovery Institute policy documents, including the "Wedge Document," a fund raising proposal that was leaked in 1999. In the "Wedge Document," the outlined ultimate goal is "To defeat scientific materialism and it's destructive moral, cultural and political legacies." The first objective, in accomplishing this, is to start a "major public debate between design theorists and Darwinists."

Meyer has been one of the very public advocates pushing for that objective, though he generally argues that he doesn't want to start a debate, put get some acknowledgement that a debate is happening.

In 2002, he wrote, "When two groups of experts disagree about a controversial subject that intersects the public school curriculum students should learn about both perspectives"

In 2003, he wrote, "Teaching both the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinian theory will engage student interest and teach them to weigh evidence -- a key skill in scientific reasoning. "

In 2005, he co-authored an opinion piece repeating the argument. It said,

We encourage teachers to present the case for Darwin's theory of evolution as Darwin himself did: as a credible, but contestable, argument. Rather than teaching evolution as an incontrovertible 'truth,' teachers should present the arguments for modern neo-Darwinism and encourage students to evaluate these arguments critically. In short, students should learn the scientific arguments for, and against, contemporary evolutionary theory.

The negative review of Meyer's book on Intelligent Design should be understood in this context. Victory, for Meyer and his compatriots, does not necessarily look like convincing people, though of course they're interested in that too. The main goal, the primary goal, is for there to be a debate.

Mostly, the advocates of Intelligent Design have pushed for this debate to happen in public schools. As the New York Times reported in 2005, they "mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive." That same strategy works in the public square -- and is possibly even more successful there, given the commercial possibilities of controversy.

This book is being promoted prominently at 300 Barnes & Nobel stores, where there are special displays of Darwin's Doubt. That's not inconsequential in getting on the bestseller lists and stirring up controversy. The book also, like Meyer's last one, was published by a mainstream commercial publisher, HarperCollins, through the imprint HarperOne. Jerry Coyne, an active opponent of Intelligent Design, has critiqued the publisher for its participation in this, asking "have they no shame"?, but the publisher, along with the booksellers, are obviously mostly interested in the question of profits. They stand to quite literally gain from the very same public debate that Meyer and those who agree with him wants to generate.

Negative and even hostile reviews will likely help that cause.

According to Klinghoffer, the generated controversy, and the fact that a mainstream publisher is happy to contribute to this specific controversy, may be the true triumph of Darwin's Doubt. He writes:

The publication of Meyer's book marks the moment when the theory of intelligent design -- love it or hate it -- has solidly joined the mainstream discussion about biological origins. We of course can't say how the debate will ultimately be resolved. No one can. But we take great satisfaction in knowing that it is definitively engaged. The hunt for a replacement theory for Darwin's noble but crippled idea is now unmistakably on -- not only in the professional, peer-reviewed scientific literature, as Stephen Meyer documents, but in the public square as well. 

Even if one agrees with the New Yorker that Meyer's work and Intelligent Design generally are matters of pseudoscience, it's hard to dispute that the debate over evolution has entered the mainstream of American culture. The Discovery Institute and others have been quite successful, perhaps not at changing minds, but at starting a debate than can then be pointed to as justification and legitimation for "hearing both sides."

As Rick Santorum, then a US senator, said in 2005, "My reading of the science is there's a legitimate debate. My feeling is let the debate be had." The debate, as it's happening, validates the debate happening.

With Darwin's Doubt, this long established strategy can be seen at work.

On Sunday, Darwin's Doubt made the New York Times bestseller list, coming in at number 7. It has also made Publisher Weekly's bestseller list, where it is ranked 10th in sales for the week, with more than 6,000 copies of the more than 400-page tome sold.

Read More

Running

Read More

The face of one man who fought in the American Revolution

Jonathan Smith was 93 when a chemically treated copper plate was exposed to light, recording his image for posterity. He gave the image to his granddaughter along with a personal note in 1854, the year before his death.

That image is now one of the very few existing daguerreotypes of Revolutionary War veterans.

Smith was 14 when he first joined the revolution in 1776. It was for a two-month stretch with a Massachusetts militia. He joined another regiment in May of that year, and was enlisted, on and off, in the irregular manner of the time, until 1779. Early in the war, he helped seize a supply ship on its way to Boston loaded with pork and butter. Towards the end, he was at the Battle of Rhode Island when the Americans were attacked while retreating from their failed siege of Newport.

The year after the war he joined the Baptist church, and spent 19 years as a self-taught lay preacher,  before getting ordained in 1899 and taking a pulpit in Rhode Island.

By the time he sat for his daguerreotype, the old reverend was a thrice-married industrialist, who was a lauded local symbol of the revolutionary generation, propped up and paraded out for political speeches. He was often misidentified as a military chaplain.

Smith's story and image, as well as eight other images of aging veterans of the Revolution can be found in Joseph M. Bauman's e-book, Don't Tread on Me: Photographs and Life Stories of American Revolutionaries. Buaman is a former reporter and a collector of antique photographs. He spent three decades tracking down, documenting and verifying these few existing daguerreotypes of Revolutionary War veterans.

According to Time Magazine:

Bauman used markings on the images and their cases to locate corresponding pension, tax, and other records in order to find what, if any, role these men played in the Revolution. In one such case, Bauman obtained an image of an elderly gentleman only marked with a note to his granddaughter, signed J. Smith with the date of the photograph, October 20, 1854, and his birthday, March 10, 1761. Bauman headed over to the Salt Lake City genealogical library, to dig through census records for all J. Smiths still alive in 1854 who would have been old enough to have served in the Revolution. After gathering a list of candidates, he began looking through pension documents until he came across one who signed his name J. Smith, in the same way as on the back of the daguerreotype. When he checked the date of birth he found exactly what he expected -- March 10, 1761. He had found the match.  

Thus began the historical digging.

Given how far away and mythic the men who fought for American independence often seem, the results of the digging are well worth checking out. The peculiarities and concrete details -- both biographical facts and the lines on aging faces -- are good reminders of the human complexity of the patriots. These aren't the men who signed their names to the words Americans annually intone, "We hold these truths...." But these are old men who, in their youth, dug the ditches, carried the guns, suffered the cold and hunger, and fought the actual war that those words were about.

Read More

'So pray to God for a lil' more spring'

It just got warm out, its this shit I've been warned about.
I hope that it storm in the morning; I hope that it's pouring out.
I hate crowded beaches; I hate the sound of fireworks.
And I ponder what's worse between knowing it's over and dying first.
'Cause everybody dies in the summer.
Wanna say ya goodbyes, tell them while it's spring.
I heard everybody's dying in the summer, so pray to God for a lil' more spring.

I know you scared, you should ask us if we scared, too.
If you was there, then we just knew you'd care, too.

-- Chance The Rapper

Read More

Secular Jesus

A statue of Jesus at a ski resort is not religious, according to a federal court ruling. Or at least not religious enough to matter.

"Big Mountain Jesus," as the statue is called, has become secularized, and over the years has lost the potency it might have once had to seem like a religious message to any passersby.

In the ruling, Judge Dana L. Christensen, an Obama administration appointee, wrote that the statue is "unquestionably a religious symbol" but is not really very religious, lacking any significant symbolic power. Because, "for most who happen to encounter Big Mountain Jesus, it neither offends nor inspires."

The symbol is secular because it's impotent.

Christensen explained:

the statue does not convey any message that individuals visiting Big Mountain whether in the summer or winter might be treated more favorably or less favorably depending on their religious beliefs or affiliation.

and,

The statue's secular and irreverent uses far outweigh the few religious uses it has served. The statue is most frequently used as a meeting point for skiers or hikers and a site for photo opportunities, rather than a solemn place for religious reflection. Big Mountain Jesus is one of the last remaining remnants from the original Big Mountain Ski Resort, and many individuals in the community value its historic significance. For many, it reflects the evolution of the town of Whitefish from a lumber town to a tourist attraction .... Typical observers ofthe statue are more interested in giving it a high five or adorning it in ski gear than sitting before it in prayer.

There are other reasons for the court's ruling that the statue on land leased by the federal government does not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. The Lemon test was applied, there questions about what a "reasonable observer" would infer about the relationship between church and state from the statue, issues of standing, and so on.

This aspect of the case is quite strange, though. It's come up several times now, where those who defend religious symbols in public spaces defend them on the grounds that the symbols are meaningless. You have to wonder about how the Knights of Columbus that went up to the top of the mountain to put of a statue of their Lord and Savior would feel now that that statue is official recognized as a symbol of a town's tourist economy.

Don Byrd, of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said the secularization of the Jesus statue is one reason religious people should be committed to the separation of Church and State. He writes,

The idea is disturbing that a monument to Christ can lose its religious significance, and become an appropriate government monument in the process, due to years of 'frivolity.' This line of thinking underscores why we should not allow government to co-opt religious monuments. In so doing, government doesn't honor religion, it systematically secularizes its expression.

The ruling will likely be appealed.

Read More

Atheists make peace with public monuments

There was some reticence.

Among the atheists who organized to erect an atheist monument at a Florida courthouse, there was some ambivalence about the idea of having a monument. It was a compromise. They had wanted a 10 Commandments monument removed from the courthouse grounds, and had argued against such displays on government property in principle. Such a monument, they said, signaled the exclusion of some citizens. Such a monument meant an implicit government endorsement of religion.

They settled for denying the 10 Commandments its exclusive position in Starke, Florida.

David Silverman with America's first atheist monument.
Credit: American Atheists

According to the Associated Press, "It's a case of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Maybe that's a win for pluralism, and equal access, but it's also at least a little bit of a de facto endorsement of the idea of monuments on government land. It would seem to be accepting the idea that a monument in can exist on public property, at least in certain contexts without signaling government endorsement or making some feel like second-class citizens.

The internal conflict can be seen in the public statements about the monument made by the American Atheists. The man who designed the monument expressed this reticence. Ken Loukinen, a regional director of the American Atheists, said "We'd rather there be no monuments at all, but if they are allowed to have the 10 Commandments, we will have our own."

The president of the American Atheists made similar statements. David Silverman told Time Magazine "We don't want to establish this monument; we feel we need to establish it."

The American Atheists have apparently made peace with that position, though, because Silverman announced on Saturday at the monuments' unveiling that there's now a plan to build 50 more monuments on government property in the United States. Silverman said an anonymous donor has provided funds for more atheist monuments, and the group is working to make that happen.

He told reporters he would also support other groups' legal rights to put up their own monuments.

Atheist blogger Hemat Mehta writes that this strategic, though not ideal. He says,

In an ideal world, atheist monuments like this one wouldn’t have to be here. It’s not like American Atheists was pushing to have it installed. It was only when the Courthouse granted special access to a Christian group that AA knew they couldn’t let them get away with it. Same with the rest of the nation.  

If the Christians take down their monuments, the atheists will, too.  

But until then, might as well make Christians feel *really* uncomfortable about the fact that their actions are paving the way for pro-atheist monuments to go up across the country.

There were a few protestors at the unveiling who perhaps could be taken as evidence of more general discomfort with the idea. Some flew Confederate battle flags and had signs with slogans about Yankees. Another, creationist Eric Hovind, reportedly jumped up on the monument and thanked those gathered for giving him a platform from which to preach Jesus. The private group that put up the 10 Commandment monuments has said several times publicly that they're not concerned by this development. They also weren't present at the Atheists' ceremony on Saturday.

Whether there are others who "feel *really* uncomfortable" with the monument and the idea of other such monuments remains to be seen.

The American Atheists, though, seem to have overcome their own discomfort with idea of public monuments, so long as they can have theirs too.

Read More