I’ve presented this data before, but I thought a review would be nice to get into the record. AllahPundit and Ace have both linked to Heather’s post on David Brooks & the New Atheist. Ace notes:
This gets at something I think is important: I believe that evangelical atheists like Bill Maher are more obsessed with religion than the Pope because they believe that if people simply reject God, they’ll automatically agree with Maher’s libertine liberal take on the world.
They won’t. Religion is often associated with traditional values, but it is not always the cause of them. There is a religious left which, I’m sure, is quite serious about its religious beliefs, and yet champions a liberal values system more in line with Bill Maher’s preferred politics.
On the other hand there are atheists like Allah and agnostics like myself who nevertheless are mostly traditionalists. Despite Bill Maher’s desperate belief, a lack of affirmative faith in God has not made us good little liberals.
Below the fold I’ve reproduced the GSS data comparing belief in God & political orientation. The red shading indicates overrepresentation in a cell, while the blue the inverse. As you can see, the more secular you are the more liberal you are, but most secular people are not liberal. Similarly, liberals tend to be more secular, but most liberals are not secular.
| Frequency Distribution | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N | GOD | |||||||
ATH. | AGN. | HIGHER POWER | SOMETIMES | DOUBTS | GOD EXISTS | TOTAL | ||
| POL. | VERY LIB. | 8.7 27 | 5.8 31 | 5.0 57 | 3.0 16 | 2.0 43 | 2.1 171 | 2.7 345 |
| LIBERAL | 27.8 87 | 19.6 106 | 20.1 227 | 15.1 80 | 13.2 277 | 8.6 681 | 11.6 1,457 | |
| SLIGHT LIB. | 10.5 33 | 20.6 111 | 18.6 210 | 10.1 53 | 15.3 322 | 10.5 836 | 12.4 1,566 | |
| MOD. | 31.0 97 | 31.6 171 | 34.1 386 | 42.2 223 | 38.0 797 | 38.8 3,092 | 37.9 4,766 | |
| SLGHT CONS | 9.1 29 | 12.8 69 | 13.2 149 | 16.9 90 | 18.6 390 | 15.8 1,262 | 15.8 1,988 | |
| CONS. | 10.2 32 | 7.8 42 | 6.9 78 | 11.7 62 | 10.9 229 | 19.8 1,578 | 16.1 2,020 | |
| VERY CONS | 2.7 8 | 1.8 10 | 2.3 25 | 1.0 5 | 2.0 43 | 4.3 345 | 3.5 436 | |
| TOTAL | 100.0 312 | 100.0 540 | 100.0 1,132 | 100.0 529 | 100.0 2,100 | 100.0 7,965 | 100.0 12,579 | |
| Frequency Distribution | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N |
POLVIEWS | ||||||||
| VERY LIB. | LIB. | SLIGHT LIB. | MOD. | SLGHT CONS.. | CONS. | VERY CONS. | TOTAL |
||
| GOD | ATHEIST | 7.9 27 |
6.0 87 |
2.1 33 |
2.0 97 |
1.4 29 |
1.6 32 |
1.9 8 |
2.5 312 |
| AGNOSTIC | 9.1 31 |
7.3 106 |
7.1 111 |
3.6 171 |
3.5 69 |
2.1 42 |
2.3 10 |
4.3 540 |
|
| HIGHER POWER | 16.5 57 |
15.6 227 |
13.4 210 |
8.1 386 |
7.5 149 |
3.8 78 |
5.8 25 |
9.0 1,132 |
|
| BELIEVE SOMETIMES | 4.6 16 |
5.5 80 |
3.4 53 |
4.7 223 |
4.5 90 |
3.1 62 |
1.2 5 |
4.2 529 |
|
| BELIEVE BUT DOUBTS | 12.4 43 |
19.0 277 |
20.6 322 |
16.7 797 |
19.6 390 |
11.4 229 |
9.8 43 |
16.7 2,100 |
|
| KNOW GOD EXISTS | 49.6 171 |
46.7 681 |
53.4 836 |
64.9 3,092 |
63.5 1,262 |
78.1 1,578 |
78.9 345 |
63.3 7,965 |
|
| COL TOTAL | 100.0 345 |
100.0 1,457 |
100.0 1,566 |
100.0 4,766 |
100.0 1,988 |
100.0 2,020 |
100.0 436 |
100.0 12,579 |
|
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 4/9/2009, at The Unreligious Right
Where do libertarians tend to put themselves on a liberal…conservative scale, when they get done railing against the inadequacy of one-dimensional political models?
The religious/secular divide might not exactly track the red/blue divide in this country, but as has already been discussed here before, religious and secular-minded people do have quite different sets of motivations.
Simply put (maybe a bit too simply, in fact), while religious people on the whole are probably no more and no less capable of reasoning, or of listening to reason, than secular people, religious people have one other factor to consider on any given issue or situation that secular ones don’t: Which choice is most likely to please God, and thereby get me and the people I care about into heaven? The answer to that question is, of course, a function of one’s understanding of what God wants, which in turn is a function of one’s specific religious beliefs. That explains why the right doesn’t have a monopoly on the religious.
Beliefs do matter, particularly for the incentives they create among their believers.
while religious people on the whole are probably no more and no less capable of reasoning, or of listening to reason, than secular people,
C’mon, ANY religious belief is bound to conflict one way or another with plain everyday evidence, this sends religious people into a tail-spin of demented pseudo-logical contrived arguments, this is NOT “listening to reason”.
And yes, alas, “Beliefs do matter”, this could be the right explanation for the Fermi Paradox, every “civilised” sentient life turn nuts and crushes the rational minority within.
K’buangaa: C’mon, ANY religious belief is bound to conflict one way or another with plain everyday evidence, this sends religious people into a tail-spin of demented pseudo-logical contrived arguments, this is NOT “listening to reason”.
You missed my point. I said religious people were capable of listening to reason, not that they actually did. That’s where incentives and the motivational factor come in. Religion ups the ante, quite literally to infinity. Your brain may be telling you X, but if you also believe God says Y, and that your eternal salvation is riding on your acceptance of God’s answer above all others, then Y becomes, well, a no-brainer.
On any poll which asks me to rank myself on a liberal-to-conservative scale, I refuse to participate. That’s like asking me to rank myself on a Croatian-speaking to Serbian-speaking scale.