{"id":774,"date":"2008-12-12T00:10:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T08:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=774"},"modified":"2009-01-09T12:28:02","modified_gmt":"2009-01-09T20:28:02","slug":"catholics-lead-interesting-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/catholics-lead-interesting-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholics lead interesting lives?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ross Douthat<\/a> responds to a post by Bradlaugh<\/a> on various beliefs in the supernatural:<\/p>\n

But even extraordinary happenings aren’t, well, all that extraordinary. Religious belief exists and persists in part because religious experiences exist and persist<\/strong> – even if they’re far from universal, as Derb will be happy to inform you – and in existing and persisting seem to cry out for an explanation. And many of the numinous encounters that people seek to explain, both to others and to themselves, don’t fall into the “oneness with the universe” category that gets the students of brain states and meditation so excited: They’re often weirder than that, and often darker….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously my own model is that religious belief exists because the human mind has a tendency to infer supernatural agency in the world based on peculiar sensory inputs. I won’t get into that in detail, you can read In Gods We Trust<\/a> or Religion Explained<\/a>. \u00a0On a more banal level it seems to me that the variation as a function of<\/a> time<\/a> and culture suggests that humans fit their perceptions of supernatural agency into their own frameworks. \u00a0Ross admits this. \u00a0But that isn’t the point of my post…I went and looked for the original Harris Poll<\/em> that Bradlaugh’s post was based on, and I found it online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These particular bits of data really confuse me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\u00a0<\/td>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Religion<\/p>\n

<\/strong> <\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Catholic<\/p>\n

<\/strong> <\/strong><\/td>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Protestant<\/p>\n

<\/strong> <\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\u00a0<\/td>\n\n

%<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

%<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution<\/td>\n\n

52<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

32<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Ghosts<\/td>\n\n

57<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

41<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Creationism<\/td>\n\n

46<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

54<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

UFOs<\/td>\n\n

43<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

31<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Astrology<\/td>\n\n

40<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

28<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I understand why Catholics are more prone to accepting evolution than Protestants. But astrology, UFOs and ghosts? \u00a0I checked the GSS and it doesn’t look like there’s a big Catholic-Protestant difference on astrology in their sample, but it’s smaller than Harris’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ross Douthat responds to a post by Bradlaugh on various beliefs in the supernatural: But even extraordinary happenings aren’t, well, all that extraordinary. Religious belief exists and persists in part because religious experiences exist and persist – even if they’re … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[110,109,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1231,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774\/revisions\/1231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}