Heather’s post about Democratic prayers for the bailout made me wonder about differences between the parties. The photos in the article show a black church, so I was skeptical that Democrats prayed as much as Republicans overall. I looked at the PRAY variable in the GSS. The N’s were huge, PARTYID and PRAY were asked of nearly 20,000 people.
Here’s the result for all races:
OK, but what about whites?
I checked the PRIVPRAY and PRAYFREQ variables, and the same general trend. It seems people with strong party identities also pray more! There is plenty of room for speculation, but I’ll leave that to readers.
What shocks me is that half my countrymen admit to having an imaginary (or at least one-sided) conversation with their invisible friend at least once a day, regardless of their ideological preference! ◄Dave►
What shocks me is that half my countrymen admit to having an imaginary (or at least one-sided) conversation with their invisible friend at least once a day, regardless of their ideological preference!
Easily shocked, no?
I confess that I’m surprised. I expected the Democrat side to be far more secular than it is, which isn’t by very much.
What shocks me is that half my countrymen admit to having an imaginary (or at least one-sided) conversation with their invisible friend at least once a day, regardless of their ideological preference!
Putting aside your puerile phrasing above, I say good for them. At least they act on their belief. I’m more amused by the half that does believe in God and won’t pray on a daily basis.
I was surprised too, but poke around the GSS’s regression feature, and I think you get a sense of what’s going on….
@David Hume
Easily shocked, indeed.
People need to find out amongst whom they’re living.
I just ran some numbers. Allowing for the persistent petitioners who pester him/her/it several times a day, we can assume it averages well over 200M prayers a day. Assuming an average length of a prayer at one minute, that means it averages processing about 139K simultaneous prayers 24/7/365 just on the American circuit. When one considers the peaks around bedtimes, disasters, and final exams, that would take some serious bandwidth, to say nothing of multitasking processing power.
Omnipotent or not, one would think it would get distracted by a few of the thousands of emergencies that are happening somewhere at any given moment. No wonder most prayers go unanswered. It is like trying to get an important message through to a politician in DC. It may be a burning issue to me; but in politician central, they could care less what I want. ◄Dave►
This is the thread of the Beast.
Can I ask is there a reason why some posts appear on the left and some posts appear on the right? I dont see any pattern.
I, too, am surprised at the results of the graph. I mean sure, everyone’s probably met some Christian leftists, but it surprises me that, at least when classified by prayer frequency, they’re fully as numerous as the rightists.
I’m also surprised at how low the “never” score is … only about 2% or so. Since more than 2% of Americans are atheists, it seems to imply that many atheists also pray regularly.
I suspect many who are of the 19% who pray “less than once a week” prayed years ago, or as children. Many people lie. Also, 2.4% in the GSS don’t believe in god, while 3.1% never pray.
Well, here is something kinda weird. I’m an atheist, but I occasionally pray. Probably this phenomenon can be explained from my growing up in a family that was (very casually) Christian. I generally start out with something like “Dear God, if you do in fact exist (contrary to my best judgment)…”
I only pray on behalf of friends or relatives who are sick, when I have to fly, or when the lottery goes above $100 million.
I am not only a bad Christian, I am also a pretty lame atheist.
TrueNorth, I think that was the funniest comment I’ve read on this site.
On topic: The asymetric bell curve of never praying is interesting. I’d be interested in seeing if that pattern holds true with belief (I guess I’ll check the link).
Off topic: Welcome to the post of the Bea- D’oh! Stopped Clock beat me to it.
“Well, here is something kinda weird. I’m an atheist, but I occasionally pray. Probably this phenomenon can be explained from my growing up in a family that was (very casually) Christian. I generally start out with something like “Dear God, if you do in fact exist (contrary to my best judgment)…””
Atheists get often spooked in cemeteries even though they don’t believe in supernatural agents. Human nature?
The perception of who prays most (as in Right or Left) can easily be related to that public/private formulation I keep trying to sell.
Dave: I suspect as the frequency of prayer goes up the duration goes down.
Stopped Clock: Lefty comments are the product of Secular Right authors.
If I attended a Bar Mitzvah last month, does that mean I “prayed.” Or did I just stand there watching other people pray?
Certainly. Even the most rational mind can revert to the fight/flight instinct when confronted with the unknown. Conditioning as a child with ghost stories, etc. could facilitate a form of self-hypnosis that overpowers reason in such circumstances. When the mind is trying to identify the unseen source of strange noises, etc. the associations that arise from childhood or primordial memories could easily momentarily spook an atheist.
As to Hanes’ occasional prayers, I would suggest that he is more of an agnostic than an atheist. I grew up in similar circumstances; yet I passed the “if” stage many years ago, and couldn’t imagine doing such a thing. ◄Dave►
When the mind is trying to identify the unseen source of strange noises, etc. the associations that arise from childhood or primordial memories could easily momentarily spook an atheist.
Probably it is primordial. Theres’s an adaptive function to being hyperactive in terms of agency detection; false positives are way cheaper than false negatives 🙂
Woah… post/page 666. I think we all know who Razib (GTBMS) is now.
Seems pretty straightforward to theorize that some people have greater propensity towards belief and are more likely to a) pray and b) have strong political beliefs. This effect, which is pretty weak, doesn’t surprise me at all.
@TrueNorth – I’m atheist/agnostic/whatever but on very rare occasions I’ll pray just because… it can’t hurt. For me, “it can’t hurt” isn’t a good enough reason to get up early and dress nice on Sunday mornings, but it made sense when my 24-year-old brother was being wheeled into the OR for open heart surgery (long story, of course).
I’d be curious to see what the cross sectional data looks like with regard to intelligence. Those who identify as “strong” either way are almost by definition dogmatic and probably do not tend to think very hard about the issues as no one who thinks heavily on the many political issues of the day can possibly be satisfied with either party “strongly”.
If it stands to reason that those who do not tend to think, tend to be those who cannot think, I imagine the relationship between religious belief (as evidenced by praying) and partisanship becomes quite clear.
Maybe libertarians are especially nonreligious, and tend to only weakly identify with either of the major parties?
When theists pray, aren’t they admitting that their deity of choice isn’t omniscient? An all-knowing god would know what they’re thinking, what they want, need, and so forth. Seems to me that prayer is an act of doubt, not faith.
I think that the “Strong Democrat” category is picking up a lot of African Americans, who 1) make up a key block of the party, and 2) consistently report higher levels of religiosity than whites. If you were to reproduce the graph, limiting the sample to whites only, I bet that Democratic side would be more secular.
If you were to reproduce the graph, limiting the sample to whites only, I bet that Democratic side would be more secular.
I did. It’s in the post you supposedly read 🙂
Phil Studge wrote:
“When theists pray, aren’t they admitting that their deity of choice isn’t omniscient?”
Not at all. Jesus himself said, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Mt 6:8) Then he proceeded to teach his disciples the most famous prayer of all time, the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father”).
Christians believe that God is a community of persons (the Trinity) who are defined in terms of the love relationships between them. The Holy Spirit “proceeds from” the love between God the Father and God the Son.
Christians also believe that human beings are not simply the most advanced animal, but actually participate in the divine nature: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (Gn 1:27).
Thus, in the Christian understanding, prayer is a way that we enter into the most fundamental activity of the divine: God’s loving relationship with himself and his creatures who are capable of loving him back.
God the Father could have redeemed humanity after the Fall on his own, but he chose to do so through his Son, who himself took on our human nature — another gratuitous act that made humanity a participant in our own salvation.
Given those mind-blowing mysteries, it is not hard for the Christian to understand how, through prayer, we become again and again a part of the divine economy. When we intercede for our neighbor, we become not only an agent of God’s providence, but we become more closely united in love with that neighbor and with our God.
When you think of it, isn’t that more important, from an eternal perspective, than God’s providence acting completely in isolation?
Apologies for straying a bit off-topic here …