Hehe, We Americans are lying about how religious we really are !!

harleysportster
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Hehe, We Americans are lying about how religious we really are !!

This particular article cracks me up, check it out  here :

http://www.slate.com/id/2278923/

 

Walking Santa, Talking Christ

Why do Americans claim to be more religious than they really are :

Two in five Americans say they regularly attend religious services. Upward of 90 percent of all Americans believe in God, pollsters report more than 70 percent have absolutely no doubt that God exists. The patron saint of Christmas, Americans insist, is the emaciated hero on the Cross, not the obese fellow in the overstuffed costume.

There is only one conclusion to draw from these numbers: Americans are significantly more religious than the citizens of other industrialized nations.

Except they are not.

Beyond the polls, social scientists have conducted more rigorous analyses of religious behavior. Rather than ask people how often they attend church, the better studies measure what people actually do. The results are surprising. Americans are hardly more religious than people living in other industrialized countries. Yet they consistently—and more or less uniquely—want others to believe they are more religious than they really are.

Religion in America seems tied up with questions of identity in ways that are not the case in other industrialized countries. When you ask Americans about their religious beliefs, it's like asking them whether they are good people, or asking whether they are patriots. They'll say yes, even if they cheated on their taxes, bilked Medicare for unnecessary services, and evaded the draft. Asking people how often they attend church elicits answers about their identity—who people think they are or feel they ought to be, rather than what they actually believe and do.

The better studies ascertain whether people attend church, not what they feel in their hearts. It's possible that many Americans are deeply religious but don't attend church (even as they claim they do). But if the data raise serious questions about self-reported church attendance, they ought to raise red flags about all aspects of self-reported religiosity. Besides, self-reported church attendance has been held up as proof that America has somehow resisted the secularizing trends that have swept other industrialized nations. What if those numbers are spectacularly wrong?

To the data: There was an obvious clue (in hindsight) that the survey numbers were hugely inflated. Even as pundits theorized about why Americans were so much more religious than Europeans, quiet voices on the ground asked how, if so many Americans were attending services, the pews of so many churches could be deserted.

"If Americans are going to church at the rate they report, the churches would be full on Sunday mornings and denominations would be growing,". wrote Kirk Hadaway, now director of research at the Episcopal Church. (Hadaway's research has included evangelical congregations, which reported sharp growth in recent decades.)

Hadaway and his colleagues compared actual attendance counts with church members' reports about their attendance in 18 Catholic dioceses across the country and Protestants in a rural Ohio county.They found that actual "church attendance rates for Protestants and Catholics are approximately one half" of what people reported.

A few years later, another study estimated how often Americans attended church by asking them to minutely document how they spent their time on Sundays. Without revealing that they were interested in religious practices, researchers Stanley Presser and Linda Stinson asked questions along these lines: "I would like to ask you about the things you did yesterday from midnight Saturday to midnight last night. Let's start with midnight Saturday. What were you doing? What time did you finish? Where were you? What did you do next?"

This neutral interviewing method produced far fewer professions of church attendance. Compared to the "time-use" technique, Presser and Stinson found that nearly 50 percent more people claimed they attended services when asked the type of question that pollsters ask: "Did you attend religious services in the last week?"

In a more recent study Hadaway estimated that if the number of Americans who told Gallup pollsters that they attended church in the last week were accurate, about 118 million Americans would be at houses of worship each week. By calculating the number of congregations (including non-Christian congregations) and their average attendance, Hadaway estimated that in reality about 21 percent of Americans attended religious services weekly—exactly half the number who told pollsters they did.

Finally, in a brand new paper, Philip Brenner  the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research compared self-reported attendance at religious services with "time-use" interviews in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Norway, Finland, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Austria, Ireland, and Great Britain. Brenner looked at nearly 500 studies over four decades, involving nearly a million respondents.

Brenner found that the United States and Canada were outliers—not in religious attendance, but in overreporting religious attendance. Americans attended services about as often as Italians and Slovenians and slightly more than Brits and Germans. The significant difference between the two North American countries and other industrialized nations was the enormous gap between poll responses and time-use studies in those two countries.

Why do Americans and Canadians feel the need to overreport their religious attendance? You could say that religiosity for Americans is tied to their identity in a way that it is not for the Germans, the French, and the British. But that only restates the mystery. Why is religiosity tied to American identity?

 

Historians will point to the European roots of North American colonization. Many European settlers came to the New World in search of religious freedom, presumably because they cared more intensely about religion than did the brethren they left behind.

Perhaps. That answer feels unsatisfactory. I don't think religious intensity necessarily explains how religiosity becomes part of one's identity. Canada and the United States are quite different today in terms of their religious intensity and the importance they attach to the role of religion in public life, yet citizens in both countries greatly exaggerate their church attendance.

Whatever the reason for the disparity, here's the bottom line: For many Americans, church attendance is a central part of their lives. For others, it's a waste of time. If you're in either of these groups, more power to you. But in the spirit of Christmas and the truthteller whose message we celebrate, surely believers and atheists can agree on what to tell folks who talk Jesus but walk Santa: Enough with the two-faced posturing

 

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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I'm not surprised.  Looking

I'm not surprised.  Looking around my neighborhood, the only ones who attend church are the evangelical Russian emigres. 

I think we can blame Ronald Reagan and his "Moral Majority" and the subsequent political posturing.  At some point, during the late '70s - early '80s - some idiot started talking about how wonderful the world would be if we were all christian.  And somehow that expanded into we all had to be religious to be moral.  I don't remember this attitude prior to the late '70s.  Could be a case of CRS, but that is my best recollection.

 

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So once we have shown that

So once we have shown that irreligion isn't evil, and we have become big enough, there'll be a massive deconversion Smiling People always boast about how so many thousands of African people converted in a short time and that 8000 people converted on the first easter. After that they can't anymore Laughing out loud

But this shows how much tradition has an effect on people's way of thinking.


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Thunderios wrote:So once we

Thunderios wrote:

So once we have shown that irreligion isn't evil, and we have become big enough, there'll be a massive deconversion Smiling People always boast about how so many thousands of African people converted in a short time and that 8000 people converted on the first easter. After that they can't anymore Laughing out loud

But this shows how much tradition has an effect on people's way of thinking.

Plus, some of the nations that have very humanitarian practices, strive for equality and are rated as having very viable living conditions are largely the more secular ones. Kinda throws the whole Hitler/Stalin argument out of the window.

Especially when you compare the activities of more theocratic nations and how their standards of equality and peace are measured to be significantly lower.

The U.S. being a bit of an odd exception to the rule. But it looks like a large majority is simply "claiming" religion because they feel that they are supposed to and probably just have a fear of looking like the odd person out.

Plus, it seems like little hints of spirituality are thrown out everywhere in the entertainment industry of the U.S. Look at some of these Hollywood movies that always "hint" at things like higher purposes and destiny. No religion but still the need for some "higher" belief.

Comically enough, my youngest niece and my sister were down here visiting me over the holidays. I let my niece pick a movie to treat them to. She picked the Narnia film "The Voyage of Dawn Treader" . I noticed that the bratty kid in the film that everyone is supposed to dislike is the kid that scorns make-believe, fantasy and magic. He's the one that needs to be taught a valuable lesson.

Now of course, I said absolutely nothing about it (I would have been accused of being overtly sensitive and they probably would have been right). But it is those little clever subtle hints that are thrown in pop culture that I notice.Not all of it of course, but quite a bit more than some people would think. For instance, my girlfriend loves that medical/hospital show House. Ever so often, I notice they have to throw in some sort of "miracle" that shakes the cynical and misanthropic behavior of our anti-hero main character. (Cause after all, only cynical and misanthropic people could "possibly" be Atheists right ? Hehe )

I love my country of course, but I think there is quite a bit of naive thinking here.

I have encountered quite a number of people that think religion is nonsense but it is "necessary" to keep people from breaking the laws. The whole "without an ultimate purpose there is no morality" argument is the one that I get the most tired of answering.

 

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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This is really neat

This is really neat stuff...anyone have access to the original paper by Philip Brenner?  I'd love to read it!

 

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


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Reminds me of "dress for the

Reminds me of "dress for the job you want instead of the one you have."  Just comes down to wanting people to think you're better than you really are, and sadly many Americans equate religiousness with goodness.  I wonder how many religious folks, when confronted with this study will say, "Well, thats not me, I'm one of the good ones." 

I know the answer! The answer lies in the heart of all mankind!...The answer is 12? I think I'm in the wrong building. --Charles M. Schulz


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Merkins say they're

Merkins say they're religious like they say they are Republican or Democrat, because they're supposed to say that. "If you say you're religious I won't challenge you to prove it if you don't challenge me."


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mellestad wrote:This is

mellestad wrote:

This is really neat stuff...anyone have access to the original paper by Philip Brenner?  I'd love to read it!

 

It's possible that I do, i'l look around to see if I can find it. A title of the paper would be nice to go with the name though. would make it so much easier


 

 

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.


Tapey
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Tapey wrote:mellestad

Tapey wrote:

mellestad wrote:

This is really neat stuff...anyone have access to the original paper by Philip Brenner?  I'd love to read it!

 

It's possible that I do, i'l look around to see if I can find it. A title of the paper would be nice to go with the name though. would make it so much easier

 

 

 

ok it appears that its in Public Opinion Quarterly. It appears in the next issue after 10 December. I don't no if this has happened yet but the next release is 11 January. I looked though the latest one which is winter 2010 and couldn't find his name there, I guess it only comes out 11 January. I'm quite possibly wrong though. I just scanned the list of people. Either way I won't have access for a while, I only have access to mid 2010 journals atm.

 

Here is the journel if you want a closer look

 

http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/

 

On a side note it appears online texts are free of charge.

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.


mellestad
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Thanks Tapey! 

Thanks Tapey!

 

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


100percentAtheist
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 Actually, the full report

 Actually, the full report is in Brenner's PhD thesis.

Here is a link. I hope you can access it.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&attempt=1&fmt=6&startpage=-1&ver=1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1905259351&exp=01-03-2016&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1294183262&clientId=10426

 

Edit: it is big.  It is VERY BIG. Smiling


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100percentAtheist

100percentAtheist wrote:

 Actually, the full report is in Brenner's PhD thesis.

Here is a link. I hope you can access it.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&attempt=1&fmt=6&startpage=-1&ver=1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1905259351&exp=01-03-2016&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1294183262&clientId=10426

 

Edit: it is big.  It is VERY BIG. Smiling

Well, I have access to pro-quest, but not through that link.  Would you mind posting the paper name and publication date?

Edit:  Nevermind, found title, "Overreporting of Socially Desirable Behavior in Surveys"  my library is too lame to have it listed Sticking out tongue  I'll find it though.

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


harleysportster
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sidekick wrote:  I wonder

sidekick wrote:

  I wonder how many religious folks, when confronted with this study will say, "Well, thats not me, I'm one of the good ones." 

LOL, probably most of them.

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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I know, someone should do a

I know, someone should do a survey Sticking out tongue

 

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


harleysportster
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mellestad wrote:I know,

mellestad wrote:

I know, someone should do a survey Sticking out tongue

 

 

LOL. NINETY-NINE PERCENT all said that they were "True" Christians and not like the fake people on the list.

NINETY EIGHT PERCENT believed that only their religion was actually going to Heaven.

NINETY NINE.NINE. NINE PERCENT stated that : Without a god there is no morality.

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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mellestad

mellestad wrote:

100percentAtheist wrote:

 Actually, the full report is in Brenner's PhD thesis.

Here is a link. I hope you can access it.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&attempt=1&fmt=6&startpage=-1&ver=1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1905259351&exp=01-03-2016&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1294183262&clientId=10426

 

Edit: it is big.  It is VERY BIG. Smiling

Well, I have access to pro-quest, but not through that link.  Would you mind posting the paper name and publication date?

Edit:  Nevermind, found title, "Overreporting of Socially Desirable Behavior in Surveys"  my library is too lame to have it listed Sticking out tongue  I'll find it though.

 

Sorry, you are right, it is not in an easily accessible (read "free&quotEye-wink public domain. 

Also, it is "kind-of-available" here:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/47513467/Overreporting-of-socially-desirable-behavior-in-a-cross-national-perspective-Religious-service-attendance-as-a-sample-case

 

If you out of luck with your library, let me know I can email it to you.

 


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Very interesting...

...and worthy of further thought. Having stayed in the homes of several of my siblings (each of whom would claim to be religious, I'm sure) I was amused to note that but once have I seen any of them attend mass (except for a funeral or two) all year. Even my most heartfelt roman catholic sister (who tells me about her bible study group every week) attended (maybe) mass once in the months I spent in her home. My cousin (a quaker) attended meeting once, when her nephew was visiting.

My younger sister, who scoffs at my atheism, hasn't attended mass in a month, unless she attended mass for christmas eve (to which I cannot testify, since I was singing at the Episcopalian church. Hey - a gig's a gig. My brother was not seen to attend any masses at all, but then he never claims to be religious. I've never discussed the matter with him at all. It would be interesting to call my nieces and nephews in Florida to ask about that brother's attendance.


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100percentAtheist

100percentAtheist wrote:

 Actually, the full report is in Brenner's PhD thesis.

Here is a link. I hope you can access it.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&attempt=1&fmt=6&startpage=-1&ver=1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1905259351&exp=01-03-2016&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1294183262&clientId=10426

 

Edit: it is big.  It is VERY BIG. Smiling

Thanks, a number of places said it was coming out in the next POQ. Assuming people can access it this will probably be better.

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.


100percentAtheist
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Tapey

Tapey wrote:

100percentAtheist wrote:

 Actually, the full report is in Brenner's PhD thesis.

Here is a link. I hope you can access it.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&attempt=1&fmt=6&startpage=-1&ver=1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1905259351&exp=01-03-2016&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1294183262&clientId=10426

 

Edit: it is big.  It is VERY BIG. Smiling

Thanks, a number of places said it was coming out in the next POQ. Assuming people can access it this will probably be better.

 

Again,  sorry, I was accessing it through my university network. I gave actually another link that works from my home in my next post.   The quality of the text is not really so great. Those of you who are really interested in the source, please let me know and I will email you the original file.

 


Tapey
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100percentAtheist

100percentAtheist wrote:

Tapey wrote:

100percentAtheist wrote:

 Actually, the full report is in Brenner's PhD thesis.

Here is a link. I hope you can access it.

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&attempt=1&fmt=6&startpage=-1&ver=1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1905259351&exp=01-03-2016&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1294183262&clientId=10426

 

Edit: it is big.  It is VERY BIG. Smiling

Thanks, a number of places said it was coming out in the next POQ. Assuming people can access it this will probably be better.

 

Again,  sorry, I was accessing it through my university network. I gave actually another link that works from my home in my next post.   The quality of the text is not really so great. Those of you who are really interested in the source, please let me know and I will email you the original file.

 

I have what I think is access to ProQuest, I have never used it before though. Is there only a preview up there?

I'm assuming he has written a journal article on the same topic coming out in the next POQ.

Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.


Gawdzilla
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I can get a hard copy of POQ

I can get a hard copy of POQ easily enough. I imagine a PDF of that article might somehow find it's way onto the Internet shortly thereafter.

("Don't try this at home, kids.&quotEye-wink