Who is smart: Secular, religious, Right or Left?

Posted on November 29, 2008 by David Hume

A friend emailed me and suggested I look into the GSS and figure out which groups are smarter in terms of political & religious combinations.  So again, my methodology is simple. I took the WORDSUM variable, which is the # correct out of 10 on a vocabulary test as a proxy for intelligence.  Sliced & diced the survey sample into “Secular” vs. “Religious” (i.e., those whose confidence in the existence of god is 0 to sometimes vs. those who are mostly to totally sure), and “Right” vs. “Left” ((aggregating from “slightly” to “extremely” liberal or conservative).  I also split the results including non-whites, and only with whites.  Here are the means for the classes:

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Religion and moral decline, contd.

Posted on November 29, 2008 by Heather Mac Donald

A reader suggests that one needs to examine the same society over time, rather than comparing different societies, to test whether the waning of religious belief and fervor leads to moral decay. So let’s look at the West over the centuries, which has become increasingly secular as the Church was ousted from government power and religious faith and practice occupied less central a role in civil life. It is not my impression that public norms have become more callous, predatory, or violent; that civil society has become more unruly; or that individual obedience to the law more uncertain.

Here are just a few practices that have become unthinkable in our secular times:

–Burning at the stake was not only tolerated by religious authorities, it was practiced by them. Continue reading →

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Kmiec as Vatican Ambassador?

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Walter Olson

I suppose I should pass over in silence the blog flap over whether President-elect Obama might properly name Pepperdine lawprof Douglas Kmiec as Ambassador to the Holy See (Michael Sean Winters, America Magazine, pro; UCLA lawprof Stephen Bainbridge, con and more). It’s not as if I have a horse in the race, exactly. Although he’s a respected guy, I had never warmed to Prof. Kmiec’s writings back in his days of obscurity when he was an expositor of fairly standard Catholic social conservative views, and I found it no improvement when he rose to sudden fame last year as the founder of what sometimes seemed like a one-man club, Catholic social conservatives for Obama. When his name surfaced as a possible ambassadorial pick, I found it hard to care much either way: Obama won the election, so naturally he’ll fill jobs with his supporters.

But I find something jarring in the nature of the Catholic-conservative mobilization against Kmiec, which quickly runs to words like “traitor” and focuses on church traditionalists’ “disappointment with Kmiec’s role in the recent elections”. To read Prof. Bainbridge’s posts, it would appear that Kmiec’s appointment would gravely “insult” the Vatican because the wishes of that ecclesiastical institution in this month’s U.S. election were clear and Kmiec chose to defy them (as in fact did a majority of Catholic voters) by preferring the Democrat. All U.S. ambassadors to the Vatican have been Roman Catholics. Perhaps I’m missing some nuance, but if I’m reading Prof. Bainbridge correctly — and I’m a big admirer of his work on most occasions when religion does not rear its head — the only acceptable candidates for the job would seem to be those whose obedience to church dictates would pass muster with “serious, loyal” Roman Catholics.

Am I the only one who thinks this a bit mad? I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I say that if there’s one quality I want above all others from members of our diplomatic corps, it’s their willingness to adhere unflinchingly to U.S. policy and interests as opposed to those of the host country or institution. It is no use pretending there are never clashes of interest between two sovereignties; there are always some. And when that happens, we want an American ambassador whose conscience will be completely untroubled at the memory of having smiled and said misleading things while the interests of the host country or institution are left to twist and wave in the wind. I have no idea whether Prof. Kmiec is such a person, but I know that if I were a President seeking to fill this particular slot, I would be looking for someone with a proven record of intellectual independence from the Vatican, not the opposite quality.

But that is to assume that the position should be filled at all. As Bainbridge commenter Stephen Green points out, it was President Reagan who in 1984 broke with long American tradition by creating the first ambassador-rank diplomatic station directed to a church (the Vatican) rather than to a country. Time, maybe, to admit he made a mistake?

P.S.: The Vatican could refuse its assent to a foreign power’s naming of a particular ambassador, though perhaps at a cost (in making explicit a strain of relations) that it would not always wish to pay. In recent years the church has vetoed ambassadorial picks from France and Argentina because they were divorced or gay.

Further: Bainbridge has now expanded on his views in an exchange with blogger Henry Farrell (Crooked Timber).

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On religion & morality

Posted on November 28, 2008 by David Hume

Heather’s post, Religion and Moral Behavior, allows me to make a point which I think is important.  Some conservatives who argue for the powerful utility of religion in promoting the social order ignore the confounds with other parameters, and look at research which might suggest the efficacy of religion ceteris paribus. So, they make an inference that X increment of religiosity ? Y increment of social amity and Z decrement of social anomie. Extrapolating to the aggregate one then projects the increased social amity which might be generated by increased religiosity. The problem which this sort of model though is the point about the interaction of religion with other social variables; e.g., race, education and income. The groups where religion is concentrated in America today are those who are reservoirs of a great deal of social pathology already, while the groups where religion is weakest are those with lower levels of social pathology. Within the group where social pathology is low (e.g., Jews), the religious may be less prone to various problems, so you might obtain some increment of positive good, but you would receive far less than you might expect projecting out of from microeconomic research. As an illustration, consider Japan, along with Sweden probably the most secular advanced nation in the world. The Japanese might get some value out of greater religiosity, but their murder rate is so low that the return would be small. Contrast that with Nigeria, where some have joked that the nation’s only two exports are oil and preachers. Since religion already saturates the society, increasing religious belief would be hard to do.

Below the fold is a chart which displays confidence in the existence of god for blacks and whites of lower and higher educational attainments. I think looking at these data will make clear my point about the issue of marginal returns.

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On social science data

Posted on November 28, 2008 by David Hume

Since some have asked, let me stipulate unless otherwise noted my survey based charts are all drawn from the General Social Survey.  UC Berkeley has a very user-friendly interface which one can use to replicate my findings.  As they say, “Seek knowledge, even in Berkeley!”

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Ears are burning

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Walter Olson

Some reactions to the site in its first days:

That’s aside from the earlier-mentioned posts by Razib (and again and on TalkIslam.info), by John at NRO “Corner” (and again and again), and by me at Overlawyered. Also at NRO “Corner”, John Miller seems to consider it a point in favor of relatively pious Founder Sam Adams that “he would never have joined a blog called Secular Right”; also, allusively, Kathryn Lopez. And Ann Althouse has an eyeball-centric follow-up to her earlier post.

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Theology Outside the Tribe

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Bradlaugh

The ravishing and brilliant Ilana Mercer has a column on input from Judaism to economic principles.

In line with its efforts to educate about Judaism’s philosophical affinity with the free market, the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies has inaugurated the Center for the Study of Judaism and Economics …

This got me thinking about theology.  What’s it for ?  It’s obviously tribal in essence, though you have to extend the meaning of “tribal” to include “fictive tribes” like Christianity and Islam. (Well, I think you do.)  Any given theology is of zero interest to anyone outside the tribe.  If someone tells you he’s making a deep study of Rabbinic Literature, you can be 99 percent sure he’s Orthodox-Jewish; if deep in Thomism, he’s Roman Catholic; etc.

And yet the intellectual effort that’s applied is tremendous.  Think of an Orthodox-Jewish shul, those rows of earnest young men rocking and chanting as they memorize vast chunks of material.  The material is difficult.  Rabbinic literature is a colossal edifice of intellection, by some very smart people indeed.  It’s not just memorization; there’s a strong tradition of debate and textual analysis, with great respect awarded to those who can most subtly elucidate what Rabbi So-and-so meant back in the 13th century.  And yet, for all that intellection, the material is of no interest to anyone who isn’t an Orthodox Jew.  Similar things apply to Roman Catholic theology, which RC readers keep urging me to explore.  Why would I — as opposed to picking up the Talmud?  It’s all just tribal chanting.

When, as in Ilana’s piece, theologians apply their lucubrations to topics of universal interest, I find myself thinking of the early space program, when billion-dollar projects to put men in orbit were justified on the grounds that we would get non-stick frying pans out of it.  If it’s a non-stick frying pan you want, get some materials scientists together in a lab and let them work the problem.  You don’t need a Saturn 5 rocket. Similarly, if it’s rational, maximum-benefit economics, you want, how does it help to know what that rabbi said back in A.D. 1250?  Get some economists, historians, sociologists, and business people together and let them thrash it out.

I don’t see how theology helps.  And I’m sure that if your theologians can come up with theological justification for free markets, his theologians could offer just as robust a defense of state socialism.  Where is the informed guidance here?

Perhaps I just don’t— well, obviously I don’t — see the appeal of theological study.  It doesn’t seem to make anything happen.  It’s just a waste of good brain power, in a tribal cause. 

Ilana’s piece, in any case, disabused me of one of my consolations.  I’ve always assumed, based on occasional and casual encounters, and a priori assumptions about Ashkenazi intelligence, that Rabbinic theology is intellectually head and shoulders above any other, a sort of gold standard for theology; but that it is very intensely tribal, so that the scholars of it don’t bother the rest of us with it.  RC theology, by contrast (what happened to Protestant theology, by the way?  is it still around?) is much more at ease with going out of the tribe and trying to make things happen in the larger world; and Islamic theology of course even more so.

I don’t really have a conclusion here.  I’m just thinking out loud.  And trying to get Ilana’s attention.

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Oogedy-Boogedy

Posted on November 28, 2008 by Bradlaugh

Ron Guhname, “The Inductivist,” is scathing about Kathleen Parker’s now-famous  “oogedy-boogedy” column.

New York City Republicans should become the center of the party. That there are six of them and 100 million born-agains isn’t the point; the NYC-ers are cooler.

I like Ron’s style, and I thought Kathleen’s column showed the ugly face of metroconservatism.  She was right to this degree, though:  the extremes of religious enthusiasm repel a lot of people who favor general conservative principles.  I meet those people all the time.  They generally end up with a grudging vote for the GOP, if they bother to turn out (and there isn’t a Libertarian on the ticket), and Ron is right that their numbers are not currently convincing enough for GOP strategists to start saying to candidates:  “Tone down the God stuff, for God…, er, I mean, for goodness’ sake.” 

That might change in a few election cycles, though; as, of course, might the preferences of evangelicals, who don’t vote Republican because they want small government and fiscal restraint, but from hostility to the greater social liberalism of the Democrats.  (I probably should have said “white evangelicals” there.)   As Jonah Goldberg says: “The Religious Right will stop being Right before they stop being Religious.”  So far as conservatives are concerned, evangelicals are fair-weather friends.

It’s a tough circle to square.  The GOP alliance of irreligious conservatives with religious haters of social liberalism may not be stable. 

In any case, we on the secular Right have to understand, as Kathleen plainly doesn’t, how marginal we are in the big antler-clashings of national politics.  Currently.

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Skepticism of science, necessary & needless

Posted on November 28, 2008 by David Hume

Just a quick addendum to my previous post where I advised caution about skepticism of science.  A biomedical scientist recently told me that the journal Virology had a statistician audit all their papers within a 1 year interval with statistics to see if they were using them correctly. Turned out that 2/3 of the papers which had statistics made basic elementary errors!  The moral here is to be very cautious of, and therefore skeptical of, new science, especially sexy new science.  Junk statistics are especially an issue with medical science because of the incentive structure of these research. But when it comes to 100 year old science, skepticism is far less warranted. If you are hearing about it now, chances are that it has made it through the gauntlet of generations of skepticism.  Almost all scientific hypotheses initially conjectured are wrong, but those which last centuries and are still in circulation are almost certainly of great heuristic utility and predictive power.  It is important to respect and conserve knowledge which has been accumulated through experience and has proved useful.

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Yes, I am a fundamentalist….

Posted on November 28, 2008 by David Hume

…about certain things.  Someone named Floyd quotes my post where I explain why I won’t talk much about Creationism and observes:

That sounds pretty fundamentalist to me. Jerry Falwell couldn’t have said it any better. There will be no debate. I AM right. Hey! A secular “I AM” statement! Just like Jesus — the cause of most human suffering and in no way responsible for the greatness of the West.

To be frank, this is the one of the reasons that I am in favor of a website like this. Even on Culture11, where only a minority of readers are likely religious right participants, it was clear that I couldn’t take evolutionary theory as a prior in making arguments in my diaries because many will start rambling about how it is “only a theory” which has been “disproved by modern science.” This is made up stuff from bizarro-world. Unless people want to go back to living in thatched huts they need to be very stingy with the psychological luxury good that is skepticism of the findings of established science. Science does not tell you how you should live in this world, it does not tell us what is important, what is good, what is right, or, importantly, what non-scientific inferences we should make from it. It gives us the basic parameters which frame our position in the universe. Others can expend their marginal time arguing with people about the basic premises of existence in the universe, it’s not my cup of tea….

(Data below the fold on who does, and does not, reject evolution)

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