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posted by n1 on Thursday April 10 2014, @03:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the internet-is-the-devil dept.

In 1990, about 8 percent of the US population had no religious preference but by 2010, this percentage had more than doubled to 18 percent. That's a difference of about 25 million people, all of whom have somehow lost their religion. Now MIT Technology Review reports that Allen Downey, a computer scientist at the Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, has analyzed the data in detail and says that the dramatic drop in religious affiliation is the result of several factors but about 25 percent of the drop is due to the rise of the Internet. Downey concludes that the increase in Internet use in the last two decades has caused a significant drop in religious affiliation: for moderate use (2 or more hours per week) the odds ratio is 0.82. For heavier use (7 or more hours per week) the odds ratio is 0.58.

What Downey has found is a correlation and any statistician will tell you that correlations do not imply causation. But that does not mean that it is impossible to draw conclusions from correlations, only that they must be properly guarded. "Correlation does provide evidence in favor of causation, especially when we can eliminate alternative explanations or have reason to believe that they are less likely," says Downey. It's straightforward to imagine how spending time on the Internet can lead to religious disaffiliation. "For people living in homogeneous communities, the Internet provides opportunities to find information about people of other religions (and none), and to interact with them personally," says Downey. "Conversely, it is harder (but not impossible) to imagine plausible reasons why disaffiliation might cause increased Internet use."

There is another possibility: that a third unidentified factor causes both increased Internet use and religious disaffiliation. But Downey discounts this possibility. "We have controlled for most of the obvious candidates, including income, education, socioeconomic status, and rural/urban environments. (PDF)" If this third factor exists, it must have specific characteristics. It would have to be something new that was increasing in prevalence during the 1990s and 2000s, just like the Internet. "It is hard to imagine what that factor might be."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10 2014, @11:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10 2014, @11:04PM (#29759)

    Charles Murray in "Coming Apart: the State of White America 1960-2010" and in his AEI talks covers this phenomena.

    Among the top 10% of income earners, religious preference and REGULAR CHURCH ATTENDANCE has stayed the same as it has since 1960, that is very strong. This is counter intuitive, as the Seinfeld / Friends 1990's style cohort of young(ish) urbanites who seek love and meaning in major urban ares dominate the media but are not in and of themselves the so-called "SuperZips" (i.e. parts of the Upper East Side, Georgetown, etc. where nearly everyone makes over 10 million and went to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or Princeton) but there it is.

    Meanwhile, the middle classes (defined as the middle 40% of White income earners, Murray only looked at Whites to eliminate racial considerations) dropped down considerably and the lower classes (bottom 20% income earners) had basically no affialiation or church attendance.

    This however DOES NOT MEASURE BELIEF. I would submit we live in the most religious age. Just one not of traditional Christianity. It is entirely possible to have deep religious beliefs that are not traditionally Christian or are post-Christian and akin to belief in "magic" and that likely describes most Whites in America: belief in "karma" and "the one-ness of the World" and crystal channeling and Gaia and the universality of mankind and ghosts and ufos and bigfoot and numerous other "folk" (as opposed to High Church beliefs) religion mixes in with the media to provide a giant soup of intense, folk religion that is part Christian and part, decidedly not.

    Non-Whites are intensely religious, with Latin Americans being either Catholic or fundamentalist Protestant (the so-called charismatic sects with intense services); belief in various Christian/Voodoo mixtures is strong among those immigrating from Africa; and traditional Taoist/Buddhist/Christian beliefs among Asian immigrants and their children.

    Meanwhile what appears as Atheism is not really that. It is miles away from the science-math centered beliefs of say, Bertrand Russell. Those who believe in Bigfoot, UFOs, Crystal Channeling, Karma, chakras, Angels, Demons, ghosts, Fate, Gaia, "one-ness of life" etc are not Atheists. They simply are not traditional Christians, mixing various aspects of Christianity with folk superstitions and so on.

    Why this is significant is that Charles Murray links both support networks and traits of success (deferred consumption, kids within marriage, hard work, staying married) among Whites (to ignore racial issues it useful to look only at Whites) to weekly religious attendance (as opposed to perhaps genuine belief). Lack of attendance means all that support network from a community of believers and checks on counter-productive behavior ESPECIALLY SINGLE MOTHERHOOD implies a far greater downward mobility for those in the middle class and no chance for the lower class (what Murray calls Fishtown from a neighborhood in Philly) to move upwards. Particularly since mass immigration won't cease anytime soon and a labor surplus implies that kids must have two involved parents doing everything to ensure their kid(s) have as much cognitive advantage against what amounts to global competition.