At Gene Expression I have a post up where I explore the relationship between lack of trust of other religions and other nationalities across nations. As many might expect, the relationship was close. On the other hand, there was no relationship between the self-reported importance of religion within nations and their distrust of other religions.
What does this tell us? Some theorists, such as David Sloan Wilson, argue that religion has functional role in generating group cohesion, following in the wake of the theories of Emile Durkheim. One indicator of ingroup cohesion is distrust of outgroups. Human propensities tend to exhbit this sort of zero-sum dynamic because like all animals our past was Malthusian; the pie was fixed, how we sliced it up was the issue at hand. These data suggest that though religion may foster ingroup cohesion, and there are many historical examples of this occurring, and the sociological data is highly suggestive in this direction, it is also not necesary or sufficient to have intense religiosity to achieve this. This explains the paradox of Japan. Of course we may modulate our definition of religion to include the generally agnostic Japanese as a religious people, but semantic expansion tends to result in true but trivial assertions.
This goes back to the point that correlations within nations may not be as informative as we would assume without prior knowledge between nations.
“Of course we may modulate our definition of religion to include the generally agnostic Japanese as a religious people, but semantic expansion tends to result in true but trivial assertions.”
It’s way more than trivial. The Japanese may be considered agnostic when it comes to the question of the existence of a unitary Abrahamic god, but they do seem to believe in some sort of existence for their deceased ancestors, and in some sort of transcendental existence of the Japanese race. There’s also a strong strain of good old fashioned shamanism. It’s easy to dismiss all these and place them into the same category as the New Age fad of the week spirituality we find in the West based on the content or substance of the beliefs, but you have to take into account the history, persistence, fervor, and sincerity of such beliefs and attitudes.
I would even say that the Japanese are more religious on a per capita basis than the US. People who’ve never lived in Japan or aren’t very familiar with Japan can’t really grasp how religious the Japanese are. The standard metrics in the US, such as church/temple membership/attendance, surveys asking about beliefs in a transcendent god or gods, etc. won’t really give you a good measure of Japanese religiosity. One thing many Westerners don’t know about the Japanese is that they pray rather frequently. It may be to an ancestor, or to Buddha, or to Mt. Fuji, or to all of the aforementioned, but the fact is that they do it with sincerity.
I would even say that the Japanese are more religious on a per capita basis than the US.
statistics?
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fwiw, 50% of japanese in the WVS belief in an afterlife, vs. 80% in the USA.
@David Hume
statistics?
Are you sure than you aren’t trusting “numbers” too much?
Not that the numbers themselves are questionnable but the basis of the numbers is most often not that clear except when dealing with trivial questions.
This is a matter of distinct methodologies (akin to Moldbug views of history on GNXP).
Pascal made a distinction between an “esprit de géométrie” and an “esprit de finesse”. The first one is a geometrical logic that is comprehensive and based on abstract principles. The second logic of precision has the penetrating force of exactness. Pascal believed that the two were distinct approaches in the search of truth but there was room to reconcile them.
Unfortunately I cannot find a good translation of Pascal original text.
Speaking of numbers I just stumbled upon this gimmick which may be of interest for any question, though I have no idea of its reliability.
Not that the numbers themselves are questionnable but the basis of the numbers is most often not that clear except when dealing with trivial questions.
numbers are usually clearer than non-numbers. yes, one must be cautious of the illusion of over-precision. but the game is lost from start in a non-quantitative discussion.