Today we interview Dr. Ryan Cragun about his new book, “What You Don’t Know about Religion (but Should).” Ryan is a professor at the University of Tampa, and specializes in the sociological study of religion, focusing on Mormonism, the nonreligious, and secularization. Topics covered in this podcast include:
- Why are people religious?
- Are religious people more educated than nonreligious people?
- Are religious people more moral, more humble, or happier?
- Are religious people more or less prejudiced than nonreligious people?
- Is religion good for your health and happiness?
- Are people becoming more or less religious?
- What are the alternatives to religion?
Please post any additional questions you have for Ryan here. Thanks!
John
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guest: Ryan Cragun
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Guest Background
John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3. Mormon Stories podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, and today I'm very excited to have with us Dr. Ryan Cragan. Dr. Ryan Cragan, I think you've been on Mormon Stories before, right, Ryan?
Ryan Cragun [00:00:43] That's correct. I've been on once before.
John Dehlin [00:00:45] I think Scott Holly interviewed you about demographics and demographic trends within Mormonism, right?
Ryan Cragun [00:00:51] That's correct. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:00:53] But Ryan is a professor of sociology at the University of Tampa. You just got tenure, right?
Ryan Cragun [00:01:02] That's correct. I am now an associate professor. That's right.
John Dehlin [00:01:06] Congratulations.
Ryan Cragun [00:01:07] Thank you.
John Dehlin [00:01:09] And Ryan specializes in the sociological study of religion. So he's a sociologist and he focuses on Mormonism, the non religious secularization. So kind of spans our audience really. I think, I think it'd be fair to start, you know, with a couple disclaimers. Well, first, Ryan has a brand new book out. It's going to be available. Did you say June or July?
Ryan Cragun [00:01:38] June 1st.
John Dehlin [00:01:39] June 1st. You can pre order on Amazon. The book is called what you don't know about religion. But should, you can purchase it through Mormon Stories. And if you do, Ryan will get all his royalties, plus Mormon stories will get a small little percentage back. But I encourage you all to buy the book. And just for disclaimers, I'm going to provide a disclaimer which is that I am active in the church now. I've kind of been in and out a bit, but I go and I consider myself sort of friendly to religion. And I have not brought Ryan on in any way to trash, you know, religion or to dissuade people from belief. But Ryan, what type of disclaimer do you want to give about your, you know, your religious biases before we begin just so we can get that out on the table?
Overview of the Book and Its Framework
Ryan Cragun [00:02:34] Sure. People may remember I was raised Mormon. I'm from Utah, small town in Utah, Morgan, Utah. I left the religion in 2002 and shortly thereafter began identifying as basically non religious. And I consider myself a non believer. I'm an atheist, agnostic atheist. My views towards religion, though, they've morphed a little bit over time. Right after I left, I would say I was more antagonistic. Today I've got A very nuanced perspective towards religion. For me, I see religion as being very complex and a lot of diversity within religion. And so I don't paint religion with one broad brush. And in fact, that's kind of one of the major points of my book, is that you can divide religion up into different types of religion in the book specifically, I break them up into kind of liberally religious people, moderately religious people, and then religious fundamentalists. And I do a lot of comparisons and basically just kind of laying out my general perspective on this. Religious fundamentalists can be difficult to swallow, but as far as kind of liberally religious people, I have no qualms with them. In fact, I highly respect a lot of people who practice their religion in that way. And I really hope that comes across in the book.
John Dehlin [00:03:55] Okay. Yeah. And for those who end up buying the book, and this may be a bit of a teaser, I think it's kind of fun. Something you do on page 189 of your book is you kind of divide again the sample up into these four groups that you just described, Fundamentalists, moderates, liberals, and non religious. And just to give listeners a quick preview of what the book is about, what the book. Well, why don't you tell us the basic approach of what the book's trying to do as it relates to this report card that you've got at the end.
Religion, Intelligence, and Education
Ryan Cragun [00:04:31] Sure. So I take a whole bunch of different topics and using those four groups, I compare them on things like educational attainment, their actual intelligence, their approaches towards child rearing, their views on morality, how they actually exhibit their morality, their political views, on how healthy they are, how happy they are, on their coping, on their volunteering, on how much they give. I basically compare them on all of these different measures using very large, very kind of good data sets, nationally kind of representative National Science foundation funded data sets. And at the end I kind of put together a report card based on how I perceive these different religious groups are doing okay.
John Dehlin [00:05:25] And yeah, and so fundamentalists get a grade, moderates get a grade, liberals get a grade, and the non religious get a grade. And so good. And so I think the book is fascinating because there's a lot of talk about is religion good or bad? Does it make you happy? Are religious people healthier? And regardless of your position with respect to religion, I think it's important to understand where religion seems to be a positive influence in people's lives and for us who are religious to sort of be really honest and self reflective about where it might not always be such a positive influence in our lives. And so let's. So let's jump right in. So, Ryan, I have a friend, Michael Nielsen. He's a really respected psychologist. He's one of the, I think one of the leaders in the field of the psychology of religion. And I just asked him straight out, he's at Georgia Southern University, I believe, and I just asked him straight out, what does the research say about whether religion makes you happier or not? And he said that it's pretty widely accepted that religious people report to be happier. So let's just start there. Would you agree with that? Would you not? And if so, or if not, are there nuances that are important to discuss?
Does Religion Make People Happier?
Ryan Cragun [00:06:57] Sure. Mike Nelson's a good buddy of mine, just to state that we've co published stuff together, so I really respect him and he's right to a degree. But there's a lot of nuance here that I think often gets missed in what's going on. So the first thing that I'll say just kind of flat out to lay this out. So everybody has it very clear, most of that research is based in the United States. Okay. As soon as you leave the United States, particularly as you go to other developed countries, specifically other developed countries that are less religious, that relationship falls flat. And there is no relationship whatsoever between religion and happiness. So we just have to be clear when we're talking about a relationship between religion and happiness that generally holds in highly religious countries, kind of holds in the U.S. okay.
John Dehlin [00:07:47] Okay.
Ryan Cragun [00:07:48] And so that just kind of the first big nuance there is that it holds in the US to some degree. Then if we want to get more nuanced within the US it gets a little bit tricky. Right. So I actually do cover this in the book. I've got a whole chapter on this. A lot of studies have found a very small but statistically significant relationship between religiosity and happiness in the US So I think that is kind of safe to say that's generally true. But there isn't a lot of good research on why. Right. Why might religious people come out to be a little bit happier? And again, keep in mind, we're not talking about a whole lot happier. We're talking a little bit happier. So, sure, there's a substantial body of research suggesting they're happier, but not that much happier. And then the question is, why? Right. And of course, often what you'll get with this is, oh, well, it's religion. Right. There's something about religion that makes these people happier. There's a growing body of research kind of coming at it from a different angle, which is studying the non religious and asking another question, which is why might the non religious in the US be less happy? There's pretty good data to suggest that it could be something as, I don't want to say simple but as straightforward as discrimination and prejudice that they suffer. It's pretty widely known, thanks to a number of journal articles that have come out in the last 10 years, that the most hated group in the US as far as broad religious groups is atheists. People are less likely to vote for an atheist for president than they are for a Muslim, a Mormon, Jehovah's Witness. Well, not Jehovah's Witness, they don't ask about that. But Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, blacks, women, et cetera, atheists consistently rank at the bottom. So we know there's a lot of prejudice towards the non religious, specifically atheists, and that does actually translate into discrimination, which is one of the papers that I published. People who self identify as atheists actually experience a substantial amount of discrimination on a regular basis. So that could be contributing to the lower levels of happiness. But in the book I offer another possible explanation. And I don't know if you want me to go into that or if you have some thoughts or kind of questions that you want to ask.
John Dehlin [00:10:11] What are your, I mean, what a lot of people like to say is that religion provides. Well, you know, this goes to the bigger question of why you or I might theorize that people choose religion. And you know, the basic answer that I sort of like to give is that people tend to seem to, you know, want to have a sense of identity. They seem to do better with a sense of identity than not. They tend to want, they tend to do better when they have social interactions and are part of a group. Religion can provide that. You know, there are a set of, of behavioral standards that, that even social science would say probably leads towards more health and happiness than not. And if the religion tends to support those types of behavioral standards, that's going to be positive. You know, religion can provide a sense of meaning and purpose, you know, sort of filling the existential gaps to give people a sense for why they're here. You know, and sometimes it can just kind of encourage you when you're down, kind of uplift you. And many people, whether they consider themselves believers in God or not, seem to long for some type of spirituality. And religion can provide a way to meet sort of people's spiritual needs. And so, you know, I tend to think that if people didn't benefit from Religious participation, society would have sort of evolved away from that. And we'll talk later about whether that's happening now. But you could probably argue even from an evolutionary standpoint, that the religion has persisted for so long because in some way it's been adaptive to the human species. So talk about all that to the extent that you want before we jump into the particulars in the book. But feel free to approach any of the topics like, what do you agree with about what I just said and what do you disagree with and how would you reflect on it?
Ryan Cragun [00:12:16] Right. Couple of points, really quick. So generally, I would not disagree with a lot of that. I think people do perceive a lot of benefits, and some people, I mean, practically, they actually get benefits from religion. I don't think there's really any question about that, so I think that's legitimate to say. One thing that you, you said that I might take a little bit of issue with is why do people choose religion? Most people don't actually choose religion. And that's something that I try and make very clear in the book, but something that I think is just important to point out. Most people belong to the religion that they were raised in if they're going to remain religious, which I know a lot of people would say, oh, well, I had a conversion experience. Why do people tend to convert to their religion that they were raised in? Right. So do people choose their own religion? Well, more than 50% of people never have doubts about their religion or never even question their religion. So that leads me to say, okay, most people don't choose their religion. Their religion was given to them. Right. Why do they stay or why do people convert? Okay. Then we get into issues like I identity, social interactions, how religions market themselves. And I would say, yeah, that makes sense. Right. All of that's going on there. But then to go kind of to the next step, which is, does that all bear out in terms of all of these benefits that religion may be giving people? And has religion kind of evolved to be, in some sense, beneficial for society? Well, again, we have to look a little bit broader, say, than just the US and one example that a lot of people who study this like to point out is Denmark consistently ranks as the happiest country on the planet. And it's also one of the least religious. Right. Very few people in Denmark go to church on a regular basis. Many of them don't believe in God. Right. And the research that you talked about, about happiness research, kind of the work by Ed Diener and other people who do work along Those lines, the subjective well being research, they find that there are a number of things that are beneficial for happiness. Right? Having goals in life, having friends, being social. Right. Being physically fit and having a certain degree of wealth, all of those hold true, but religion isn't required for those. Religion can facilitate it, but it's not required for those things. Right. So I would again agree religion can do that, but religion is not necessary for that. And we see that more and more in countries outside of the US People are perfectly happy without religion. And of course, increasingly in the US as those numbers go up, we have a lot of people inside the US who are happy without religion.
John Dehlin [00:15:11] Right. Okay, two quick responses. One is sure. I read a critique of the methodological approaches of some of these happiness studies where they compare country to country. And I read it may have been in one of the comments on mormonstories.org where they exclude countries like China and Russia or North Korea from these studies. In other words, some of the biggest countries that are the most non religious, that are also potentially the least happy have been excluded. Is that true to your understanding?
Ryan Cragun [00:15:50] Certainly true for North Korea, because access to data is impossible. Right? I mean, you're not going to get that data. Russia, I've seen it included in some. Same with China. I mean, if you're using World Value Survey data, they have data on both of those countries. So if they're excluding those, that's a little fishy. Right. And the ones that I've looked at, I don't recall them specifically excluding them. But again, I think this is just a much more nuanced question than religion makes people happy or religion doesn't make people happy. I think religion can make people happy, but religion is not required for people to be happy. That's kind of where I would fall on what the literature is telling us. Certainly you can be happy without religion and you can be happy with religion. Right. To try and argue that one is better than the other seems to fly in the face of all the data that we have.
John Dehlin [00:16:42] Okay, okay. And what I want to come back to is at the end is to what extent is it easier to be happy with the supportive religion than trying to generate your own happiness without the support of religion. But let's say that as one of the things we talk about at the end, the other thing I just wanted to ask really quickly is it's probably true that Denmark and the Scandinavian countries used to be highly religious. True.
Religion's Role in Human Civilization
Ryan Cragun [00:17:15] How far back are we talking? A couple Hundred years.
John Dehlin [00:17:19] 100 years?
Ryan Cragun [00:17:19] Yeah. A couple hundred years? Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:17:21] I mean, that's even 100 years, right?
Ryan Cragun [00:17:26] Secularization. Their process of secularization actually began in the mid to late 1800s. So they started actually they were where we are now about then.
John Dehlin [00:17:36] Right, right. And so I guess my question is, what do you make of the theory that whether that graduating from religion is in some sense a luxury? And what I mean by that is, what would you say about the idea that even for someone who doesn't believe in God, that man used to be like cavemen, we used to be more like the apes than like humans today. And that part of the progress of humanity was this notion of civilization where people became more and more educated, more and more civilized, less and less brutal and violent and simplistic and animalistic, and more and more enlightened. And if you agree that over the past, I don't know, six to 10,000 years, we've steadily become more and more civilized and enlightened, to what extent can you discount the role of religion in being an important civilizing factor for humanity? In other words, if Denmark is able to stand, stand today in the luxury of being non religious, can you discount the role that religion might have played in helping them get to that point where they're able to become non religious in a way that still meets a high level standard for quality of life? Does that make sense?
Ryan Cragun [00:19:10] It does. I've heard this argument a couple of times, which it's actually a very good argument. Right. I think it's a good point to basically say, well, okay, they were religious. To what extent was the religion a factor in helping them to progress and develop to the point where they are today? And then could you then turn around and attribute their wealth and how far along in terms of their development they are to actually them having been religious, not the. That they're now non religious? Right. Yeah, I think that's a great question to ask. I'm personally not persuaded by that criticism. And part of the reason why is even in countries like the US which remains relatively religious, and don't get me wrong, I don't think the US Is that religious. But even in countries that remain relatively religious, the non religious tend to favor things today that we would consider human rights, natural kind of universal human rights. And in fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is largely a secular document. Right. So if we think about things like gender equality, prejudice tolerance, attitudes towards politics, attitudes towards actually volunteering and charity and giving, all of those, if you're thinking kind of progressive and highly developed, they tend to favor more secular views. So my argument here to counter that point would be if we look at the whole picture collectively, sure, they may have been religious and maybe that kind of incrementally pushed things along. And I would actually be one of the people who would say that religion and science have had a complicated and sometimes complementary relationship at times it's tricky and it's messy, but historically that was the case. But where we get to at a certain point, I'm not saying that there was a magic line and once you cross the line, then religion is no longer influential. I'm not discounting the role of religion. I'm saying secular people tend to have values that align with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, and universal rights for everybody, including women, minorities, sexual minorities. They tend to be more favorable towards all those people. And that holds whether or not it's an entire country that's largely secular or secular minorities in a largely religious country. So I don't think that kind of counter argument that religion actually is what did this. I don't think it actually holds. Right. And you could actually see this in something. And let me kind of try and simplify this. And if we look at say political groups in the US today, progressives versus conservatives, so not talking parties, just progressive versus conservatives, progressives tend to be more likely to be non religious. And if you align yourself with those progressive values, which would be things like universal rights for everybody, including homosexuals, blacks, communists, atheists, et cetera. Right, right. The people who generally tend to support those things are non religious.
John Dehlin [00:22:27] Right? Yeah. And we're going to jump into to how religion affects people's attitudes today. I just tend to feel like, and this is just my gut, my instinct that there's something about religion's influence in things like, you know, nuclear family, maybe monogamy, maybe certain types of education, maybe a basic respect for law and order and just sort of an organizing structural influence to provide some order and stability to society. That my instinct wants to say that that was an important factor of an overall social fabric that maybe has allowed for the civilization of mankind over the past eight to 10,000 years. And it's just a gut. But I was just. You don't buy it? Is that what you're saying?
Ryan Cragun [00:23:28] Well, I mean, at some level it's going to be a little bit tricky to argue against that because we don't have a completely non religious like civilization or society to compare to the religious ones. What we do have are a variety of religious ones. Right. So you could say look at China, right? China didn't have Christianity, so. And this is where I would start to kind of. It's almost like a whole different argument, what you're describing, like the nuclear family and the structure to society. That sounds more like a Western civilization type of argument to me. Right. Are you then insinuating that somehow it was maybe Catholicism and Protestantism that did that? Or. Or are you suggesting that religion, everywhere that exists, did that? So did religion play that role in India through Hinduism? Did it play that role in Japan through Shintoism? Did it play that role in China through its kind of interesting mix of traditional religion, Confucianism, Buddhism and the various things that are going on there? Is that what you're suggesting? Or could we look at some of these other countries and other regions of the world where there were different religions and actually we see very similar patterns play out. Right. So are you. And again, I'm kind of asking you a question. Right. Are you suggesting then that maybe it was Christianity that did this as a whole, including both Protestantism and Catholicism, or did religion everywhere have this function? What do you think?
John Dehlin [00:25:03] Yeah, and there's also the Judeo kind of the. I mean, it's Judeo Christian. Right. It's not just Catholicism, but it can be Judaism. Judaism is an important influence and. Right. And I don't. I don't. I'm just gonna admit right off this is just a gut instinct, and it's. I'm probably biased by my own affections towards. Towards religion generally, but I'm fully aware of the critiques of religion and I'm sympathetic to them as well. So I don't have a good answer. I was more curious what your reaction would be.
Ryan Cragun [00:25:35] Well, yeah, the reason I was asking is how I would respond would be tied to that, because one criticism that does exist of a lot of the sociology of religion literature is that it tends to be very Judeo Christian centric. And a lot of the research ends up finding, not surprisingly, that Judeo Christian groups tend to be the best groups. Right. And that's obviously kind of, you know, discounting a lot of the contributions to society that we have today from China. Right. From India, from very. From Muslim countries. Right. I mean, we have a whole renaissance coming out of Islam when Christianity was in the Dark Ages. Right. So you got to be really careful with kind of broad critique, broad kind of statements about how did religion contribute? I don't know that anybody has great answers to that. Right. But I would be reticent to say that Christianity was somehow this enlightening, beautiful influence on the Western world. Actually, as somebody who's rather critical of capitalism. I think I would actually attribute more of the advances and the advantages of the Western world to, to the advance of capitalism than actually to having Christianity around, which some would argue go hand in hand. But that's a different debate.
John Dehlin [00:26:58] And would you be willing to turn that same position on those who want to look back at all the evils ever performed by mankind and blame religion for all the bad things? Would you be equally as critical of that talk type of argument?
Ryan Cragun [00:27:17] Absolutely. I think those kinds of debates. Right. Which ideology has killed more people, whether it's a secular ideology or religious ideology, I find those completely boring. I see no utility in that because at the end of the day you're basically talking, well, who killed more millions of people when you're dealing with millions of people. Both have been accountable for this. No, I don't think so. And I often point this out in my classes when I'm discussing with people. Religion is a great ideology to justify things like violence and war, but rarely is it actually the cause, often the cause is lack of resources and competition over resources. Religion is just very good at saying, well, okay, we're all going to align based on our religious ideology and then attack those people, but really it's because we want their land. Right. So I wouldn't attribute a lot of this to religion. Certainly there have been actual fights and violence and wars over specific religious ideologies, but most of them are just kind of competition over resources. Religion's not to blame for that necessarily. And in fact, I have a whole chapter in here on violence. And it comes out that they all get the same grade. Right. Religious fundamentalists are all the evidence suggests they're no more violent or less violent than the non religious or religious liberals or moderate. So yeah, I don't find those arguments compelling at all.
John Dehlin [00:28:39] Okay. And that's, I like to think of it as. Religion is not the horse, it's the cart. The horse, like you said, is competition for resources. You know, geopolitical dynamics. Religion becomes the cart that many people get carried on into battle.
Ryan Cragun [00:28:55] Absolutely. Yeah, I would agree.
John Dehlin [00:28:57] Okay. And you've talked about it just briefly, but, but, and you've said that most people are religious because of whatever their parents taught them. That's, that's over. Over. You know, we don't have spontaneous Mormons erupting in India or China. You know, people usually become the religion that they were raised in. But, but you would, you would agree that, that there's probably something to some, some basic core human needs that, that religion seems to be filling. I think you've already answered that, but I'll just. Just ask it one last time.
Ryan Cragun [00:29:30] True for some people. And actually, I think this is one of the failings of my work personally as a sociologist. I'm trained to do this. I look at social things, so kind of group influence on individual societal influence. Increasingly, we're finding that there's actually a lot of psychological stuff going on and biological stuff. There's been a bunch of research, again, just in the last 10 years or so, finding that things like analytical thinkers tend to be less religious. There was a big hubbub just came out about what a sociologist, and she was wrong. But a sociologist said in Turkey that autistic children are missing the part of their brain that makes them have faith. Right. Okay. That's patently false. But autistic people do tend to be less likely to be religious, which suggests there's a biological component to this. Right. And the whole reason I bring this up in light of what you're saying is, yeah, I would say that religion does tend to fulfill a need that some people have. We haven't found a God gene. There is no such thing as a God gene at this point. Right. So people don't have like a specific genetic thing, like one gene or set of genes that do this. But twin studies have found a greater than 50% chance. Right. So greater than chance odds of identical twins who are raised apart of having similar religious beliefs. So there's clearly a genetic component to religiosity. We don't know how big it is. We don't know to what extent it actually is influential and whether it can be fulfilled by something like spirituality rather than organized religion. But it certainly holds for some people, but it doesn't for others. And that's one of the points that I think we really need to hold, you know, have clear. Is that there are some people who have a biological proclivity to not be religious.
John Dehlin [00:31:19] Right. Yeah. And that's why it's important, in my opinion, no matter where you stand, that we all be loving and supportive of people who choose to abandon faith. I think they deserve love and respect, and I believe religious people do too, if they are not violating the rights of others. And we'll get to that in a bit.
Ryan Cragun [00:31:43] Okay.
John Dehlin [00:31:44] Okay. So. So let's go ahead and go down some of the items that you mentioned, if that's okay.
Ryan Cragun [00:31:49] Sure.
John Dehlin [00:31:50] And the first one you talk about is education.
Ryan Cragun [00:31:54] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:31:56] And this is a little bit interesting because I'm familiar with a study that I think was done by Stan Albrecht, who's the president of Utah State University, where he found that there are some interesting relationships between education and religious and that it isn't always true that the more education you get, the less religious you are. But tell us what you found about education and if you can talk to the Albrecht study, I'd love to hear that too.
Ryan Cragun [00:32:21] Sure. So just again, using the four groups that I use, religious fundamentalists, moderates, liberals, and the non religious fundamentalists, hands down have the lowest level of education. Moderates are slightly above that. And then actually religious liberals and the non religious are almost on par with religious liberals coming out just a little bit ahead. And that's in terms of just kind of standard routine education, educational attainment. We're talking past high school into college. They clearly have more education. So there's a very clear relationship there. And there's a reason why religious fundamentalists have lower education. Darren Sherkat, in a great article, kind of laid this out. There's actually intentional efforts on the part of parents of who are religious fundamentalists to discourage their kids from going to college.
John Dehlin [00:33:09] Hey, Ryan, real quick, I don't want to interrupt you, but tell us how you define fundamentalists, because I'm assuming this can be an LDS church fundamentalist, but not an FLDS church. They would be fundamentalists too. But does your descriptor of fundamentalist eat into every religious sect or is it more categories of religions that you've tagged as fundamental fundamentalist religions?
Ryan Cragun [00:33:34] I'm actually using a measure that comes from the General Social Survey. Tom Smith is the one who created it. And it's been called into question because it does actually group everybody within a religious denomination into specific categories. And there are actually new classification schemes. There's one by Steensland et al, that's a little bit better. Right. So it really does actually kind of take groups that tend to be biblical literalists. Right. That tend to have kind of more literalistic interpretations of scripture, tend to think about the world in more black and white ways, and kind of says, well, okay, that's what the religion teaches. So we're going to put everybody in that religion into that group. It's not perfect. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it is perfect.
John Dehlin [00:34:13] So where does the LDS Church, which bucket are they put in?
Ryan Cragun [00:34:16] They actually get dropped into the fundamentalists.
John Dehlin [00:34:18] Really?
Ryan Cragun [00:34:19] Yeah, they do. They get dropped in there.
John Dehlin [00:34:21] Do you think that's fair or not fair?
Ryan Cragun [00:34:22] I would actually probably. I mean, it's always difficult, right, when you're just trying to put things into categories, and it's really more of a continuum. I would say the Mormon Church as an institution probably falls somewhere between fundamentalists and moderates, and it's actually moving more towards moderates. Right. And obviously within the Mormon Church, you have people who are liberally religious. They reject literalistic interpretations of not only the Bible, but the Book of Mormon. Right. So that is one of the problems with the classification scheme. And the Steensland et al. Approach to tries to take that into account. Right. But there's actually a lot of overlap between these two, so it's a little bit problematic. Right. You're never going to get everybody exactly where they think they fall if you're going to try and insist that they fall into specific categories. It's really a continuum.
John Dehlin [00:35:10] I would just say that for those who want to make the case against fundamentalism, it's a bit disadvantageous to have the LDS Church lumped in there, because as I understand it, the church comes out pretty well in terms of education and intelligence and health and happiness. So that might be bringing up the fundamentalist score a little bit to have LDS Church members put in there. Is that true?
Ryan Cragun [00:35:35] Yeah, that's absolutely true.
John Dehlin [00:35:36] Yeah.
Ryan Cragun [00:35:37] Yeah. I mean, you hit it. That's a great point.
John Dehlin [00:35:39] Okay. All right. So when you talk about fundamentalists, though, you are talking about LDS Church members on average.
Ryan Cragun [00:35:46] Yeah, they're grouped in there in the gss. I mean, that's where it puts them.
John Dehlin [00:35:52] Okay. And so in this case, fundamentalists don't do very well in education. But would you agree that in terms of education, the LDS Church actually does quite well?
Ryan Cragun [00:36:02] Yes, but for complicated reasons. Right. And I think I may have talked about this in the other podcast. The way that the LDS Church kind of is structured and the way that it functions is it tends to favor people with education because they have opportunities to basically move up into the hierarchy. And I'm not talking like general authority, but just even positions at the local level, they tend to be positions that value white collar skill sets. Right. People who have a certain degree of education. And that tends to be the culture of Mormon wards. Right. Whether you're inside Utah or outside of Utah. And so if you're not one of those people, you can feel a little bit uncomfortable actually going to a Mormon church. And I've actually talked to a number of social scientists, some at byu, who I won't name because I don't want to get them into trouble, who have said that's absolutely the case. If you look at who converts to the religion and then who stays? The people who are more likely to stay in the Mormon Church are people who are better educated. Poorer people tend to drop out. People with less education tend to be more likely to drop out of the religion. They're just less likely to stay. So it's not so much that the LDS Church is really, really pushing education, which I think it does a fair amount, particularly for men. Right. Okay. For women. But it's really kind of more who stays, and not so much that it's just strongly encouraging education for everybody. Does that make sense? I mean, I've tried to explain this to other people before.
John Dehlin [00:37:27] Well, culturally, I feel. I mean, I would say my Mormonism definitely encouraged me to get a bachelor's degree, and it seemed to put into those leadership positions a lot of MBAs, a lot of lawyers, a lot of doctors. And culturally, it seems like education is highly valued within Mormonism and even among women. I know that education is one of the young women's values, and even women are encouraged to get as much education as they can get. So I'm just saying, culturally, I feel like I've been highly encouraged to pursue education.
Ryan Cragun [00:38:07] I would agree with, though. How encouraged were you to pursue education in psychology? And I actually have a fun story there. While I was still in the church, this was during my first year in graduate school at the University of Cincinnati. So I was living in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of the members of my ward found out that I was studying the sociology of religion. And he actually said this in front of the entire Sunday School class. So he asked me, he was like, oh, you're new here. What do you do? And I told him, and he said, oh, my gosh, you're scary.
John Dehlin [00:38:37] Right.
Ryan Cragun [00:38:39] You realize you shouldn't be doing that. That's going to teach you scary things about religion. And he said that in front of the entire class. Right. Which of course, to me, a natural contrarian. I was like, I'm in the right field. This is exactly what I should be doing. But that's kind of the mentality. So you're right. There are a lot of MBAs, doctors, lawyers, who are in these higher positions, but you don't find a whole lot of social scientists in those positions. Right?
John Dehlin [00:39:02] That's right.
Ryan Cragun [00:39:03] Anthropologists are not likely to, you know, in the quorum of the 12, it's just not going to happen.
John Dehlin [00:39:09] That's right. That's right. And that's what I've heard as an explanation to the Albrecht study, which is that it's true that as a Mormon, the more education you get the more likely you are to stay in the church. But that those, those people who become more educated usually don't go into the liberal arts and social sciences. It's usually engineering and, and law and more of those types of fields. Business, accounting.
Ryan Cragun [00:39:39] Absolutely. And to touch one more point on Albrecht's study. Right. There is a little bit of nuance in the whole education and religiosity relationship and it gets a little bit tricky. So it does tend to be the case that people who have more education tend to be less orthodox in their religious beliefs. But if you make it through, say college with your, with your religious identity, so not necessarily all of your beliefs, but your identity still intact. We also know that college increases civic participation. So people who have been to college and are still religious, they tend to be more active in their church too. So it can have kind of weird effects on what's going on with religion. So just to be kind of fair and nuanced in how that relationship works.
John Dehlin [00:40:22] Okay, tell us, finish telling us. Give us a sampling of three or four religions that would go in each of the four categories so that as we continue talking about the categories, we kind of know who we're talking about.
Ryan Cragun [00:40:35] Sure.
John Dehlin [00:40:35] Who else would be fundamental? The biggest names in the fundamentalist group are Southern Baptists.
Ryan Cragun [00:40:40] Pentecostals are going to be two of the big ones that get grouped in there. Moderates includes Catholics, actually. So Catholics are in the moderate group. And then your more liberal religions would be your Episcopalians, your Congregationalists, United Church of Christ, United Methodists, and then of course there's a whole bunch there. And then clearly you have your non religious who just don't identify as religious. And that doesn't mean they're all atheists. They're a mix.
John Dehlin [00:41:05] So mainline Protestants are liberals.
Ryan Cragun [00:41:07] Yep.
John Dehlin [00:41:07] What about Jews?
Ryan Cragun [00:41:09] Jews are liberals. And I'm trying to think if I don't think they separate them out in the general social survey. I think even orthodox Jews get put in as liberals.
John Dehlin [00:41:17] But they're on which I mean, the largest, the largest group of Jews is Reformed.
Ryan Cragun [00:41:22] Is Reformed, Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:41:23] And they're super liberal. You don't even have to believe in God to be a reformed Jew.
Ryan Cragun [00:41:26] No, you don't.
John Dehlin [00:41:28] Okay, so fundamentalists don't do great in education. Moderates do okay. But liberals and non religious do great.
Ryan Cragun [00:41:36] Yep.
John Dehlin [00:41:36] What do you mean by intelligence?
Ryan Cragun [00:41:40] It's a fun one. So the general social survey actually includes some questions. There's a vocabulary quiz that they use in there that's trying to capture intelligence. It probably is capturing education too. But the World Value Survey, so I actually include international data in the book too. It also has some questions about intelligence. And there are plenty of other surveys and studies that have looked at this question of intelligence consistently. When you look at this question, religious fundamentalists come out quite low when it comes to intelligence. They just literally tend to. If you use IQ tests. Right. If you use average IQ tests, if you use the word kind of vocabulary test that they have in the general social Survey, if you use the intelligence test they have in the World Value Survey, religious fundamentalists come out at the bottom, moderates in the middle, and then again, there's virtually no difference between those who are liberally religious and the non religious. So it kind of doesn't matter what intelligence test you use. That's generally the results, how they play out.
John Dehlin [00:42:37] Yep. And I guess, I guess there's different types of intelligence. Right. There's native intelligence and then, you know, other types, things you pick up along the way and other types of things. I mean, I tend to see in our church that we, our missionary efforts tend to target not necessarily the unintelligent, but often those who are in lower socioeconomic status type, you know, third world countries and in the poorer regions of urban and rural sort of developed countries. They're not necessarily unintelligent, but they may not be highly educated. And over time, as future generations become more educated, then you're just going to probably see a natural attrition. Right.
Ryan Cragun [00:43:22] That's certainly what's happening right now in the LDS church. It's having a hard time retaining members.
John Dehlin [00:43:28] Yeah. Okay, so that'd be interesting. And, and you're basically saying the smarter you are, the less likely you are to stick around in a church.
Ryan Cragun [00:43:37] Yeah. The evidence for that is pretty compelling. It's overwhelming, frankly. And I get that there's a lot of nuance there. Certainly there are really highly intelligent people who are even religious fundamentalists. Not many of them, but there are some. Right. But yeah, I mean, if you look at elite scientists, which I know that isn't a perfect measure of intelligence, Elite scientists are among the most non religious, most atheistic people on the planet. And that's consistent wherever you look around the world, they tend to be very non religious.
John Dehlin [00:44:10] How much of that is selection bias versus controlling for other factors? Any idea?
Ryan Cragun [00:44:19] It's a good question. Well, I mean, you see similar stuff. I'm trying to think. There's a study that came out in like 2004 that actually looked at IQ tests and intelligence using an actual random survey of college students and they found the same relationship. So I don't know how much of it would be selection bias on that one. I think there's an authentic relationship here. Right? Yeah. I mean, it, it is.
John Dehlin [00:44:50] What do you make of it? Is it just that more intelligent people tend to question more and so they're always questioning and trying to find the logic and the consistency of belief and of authority and they tend to just ask so many questions that things don't add up and so they kind of bail. Or do you make.
Ryan Cragun [00:45:08] I mean, I'm sure it's partly that, right. Intelligence is obviously correlated with education. So you're going to get education going along with that, but you're also going to get, and this is me thinking as a sociologist, right? Intelligent people tend to run in different circles, Right. So if you're running in a circle that's already largely non religious, that social influence is actually going to be very, very powerful. And I actually, I don't want to reveal names again, so I'm not even going to give a relationship. But someone I know quite well was doing a postdoc at Princeton, right. And he was actually Mormon when he arrived at Princeton to do his postdoc and he didn't get, I mean, there wasn't like, you know, legitimate antagonism or prejudice. It was kind of insinuated though, right. So people would say, oh, you're Mormon? And it'd be like, yeah, I am. And say, oh, that's unusual. Right. I mean that's just like different. Because almost no one there was religious. Right. And by the time he finished his postdoc, he wasn't Mormon anymore. So you get highly intelligent people surrounded by other highly intelligent people who are not religious. And the end result is often, not always often that the religious people conform. So it's probably the questioning, it's probably thinking it's probably all of those things. I wouldn't say it's one factor or another. It's a combination of factors that ultimately lead them to leave.
Belief in Demons and Religious Attitudes on Sexuality
John Dehlin [00:46:38] Right, right. Why do you include belief in demons in there? What are you trying to say when you talk about belief in demons?
Ryan Cragun [00:46:46] So the book, remember the book is called what you don't know about religion but should. Belief in demons is a fun one because it's completely socially constructed. Prior to about 1974, when, let's see if you know what movie was released
John Dehlin [00:47:00] right around that Exorcist.
Ryan Cragun [00:47:01] The Exorcist, there was no belief in demons. There was no practice of exorcism in the US you couldn't get an exorcism in the US Prior to the release of the movie and the book the Exorcist in the early 1970s. Now, obviously, if we go far enough back, there was still a belief in demonic possession. But we're talking like a hundred years ago, once we had the advent of psychology, right, And a better understanding of psychological disorders, people stopped believing in demonic possession. It just didn't exist. So that chapter is called All Demons are from Hollywood For a very apparent reason, Hollywood created belief in demons, right? And the crazy thing is, I love the data that are there in that chapter. Christians in the US are more likely to believe in demonic possession than that Jesus was literally born of a virgin, which is an orthodox Christian position. That's how pervasive belief in demons is. And it's largely because on the order of two to five movies a year are released from Hollywood showing demonic possession.
John Dehlin [00:48:06] Yeah, it's awesome.
Ryan Cragun [00:48:08] It's insane, right? And one of the things I point out in there, if demonic possession actually occurred like you see in the movies, right, with the exorcist particularly, then why wouldn't we have like authentic documentary video of this stuff going on? Right. I think YouTube would be full of little girls with their heads twisting around 360 degrees, right. And saying really nasty things and doing awful things with crucifixes. Awful. All of that would be on YouTube. It'd be pervasive. But it's not because it doesn't exist, because demonic possession doesn't happen. Right. This is the remarkable ability of media to influence people's beliefs.
John Dehlin [00:48:48] And are there kind of broader negative implications of those types of supernatural beliefs that also make it worth mentioning as giving a grade on.
Ryan Cragun [00:48:58] Basically, yeah. So the. Those who. And again, this is a fun one, right? The only people who actually believe that they're getting possessed by demons are the people who believe in demons. So non religious people are particularly unlikely to have this happen to them, which I think is great. One of the things that is a bit problematic is we've now started to see and the interest in this has died off a little bit since the late 1980s, early 1990s, but it's still there. A lot of people who believe in demonstration start to chalk up life problems to demonic possession. So they'll say, well, you know, I watch porn all the time and it's because I have a demon. And so, you know, and it could be other things. I yell at my wife, I beat my wife because I have a demon. And those are kind of the mild ones, right? There have been people who have died because of exorcist rituals, right? Little kids who are killed, husbands, wives, who are killed in the process of trying to expel demons. The story that I open that chapter with in my book is about a young autistic boy whose mother just got fed up with the fact that he didn't listen to her because he was autistic. So she took him to a pastor and he tried to exorcise the demons of autism from him and killed him. Right? I mean, that's real, okay, Demons. No, they're not. I mean, come on, they're a Hollywood invention. But killing kids in the interest of trying to solve something like autism, that's real and that's terrible. And that should not be happening in the 21st century in the U.S. i mean, that's terrible.
John Dehlin [00:50:36] And for me there's a larger point there. You know, those who didn't, those who for religious reasons, don't believe in going to a physician to heal their child. It's the same type of superstitious belief. That may not have to do with demons, but sometimes superstitious beliefs can give one hope, but sometimes they can be fatal, right?
Ryan Cragun [00:50:57] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
John Dehlin [00:51:01] So you talk about sexual repression. Are you trying to say that the more secular you get, the better sex you have?
Ryan Cragun [00:51:07] There's actually a report out suggesting that very thing. Now, it's not mine, Right, I've read it and pretty interesting, but I'm not necessarily going that far to say that they're necessarily having better sex. They're more open to it, right? They're more open to sexual experimentation, they're more open to viewing pornography. They're more open to having sex before marriage. Right? Which turns out there are no negative side effects to actually doing that, right? So yeah, it turns out the non religious and liberal religious are less sexually repressed. Right? And I'm sure some people, right, some listeners to this, some people who read my book are gonna go, oh, but, but that kind of stuff's bad, right? Porn's bad and premarital sex is bad. No, no, that doesn't seem to be the case. I mean, if you look at the literature, the scientific literature, it doesn't seem to support that. Now obviously there's a lot of nuance there. I'm not saying that all porn is good. The type of porn matters. It gets really, really complicated. And I get that. But there's plenty of evidence to suggest that kind of semi regular consumption of non violent porn doesn't cause people to rape women or anything like that. Right. It's actually, it can be very beneficial. So, yeah, I mean, there's nuance there. But at the same time, religious fundamentalists are basically repressing people sexually. And as a result, you see some kind of. Some negative side effects that come out of that. Right. Higher incidences of rape, spousal abuse is higher. And actually closet consumption of porn and the idea of porn addiction all tend to be higher among religious fundamentalists.
John Dehlin [00:52:50] So religious fundamentalists are more likely to rape.
Ryan Cragun [00:52:54] There's a little bit of evidence to support that. Yep.
John Dehlin [00:52:57] And to be abusive to their spouses and to be a closet consumer of porn.
Ryan Cragun [00:53:04] Yeah. There was a great study that came out. It was a really funny study that showed that Salt Lake City was actually the highest subscriber to porn in the nation.
John Dehlin [00:53:14] And there are some methodological issues with that study, but I mean, there were. It at least gives you pause to think about. Right.
Ryan Cragun [00:53:21] Yep.
John Dehlin [00:53:22] I noticed you didn't mention in here abortion and. Or maybe you did.
Ryan Cragun [00:53:27] Abortion's in there. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:53:28] Okay, so what about abortion and teenage pregnancy, STDs, adultery, you know, is religion a protective factor against some of those things or not?
Ryan Cragun [00:53:42] No.
John Dehlin [00:53:44] Okay, wait, so a religious teen isn't less likely to get pregnant than a non religious teen?
Ryan Cragun [00:53:49] No, absolutely not. Now that's not actually in the book, so I'm just drawing on other data on this. But that's not in the book. But the fascinating thing about it is religious teens are more likely to get abstinence only education. And abstinence only education has consistently been shown to increase the incidence of STIs and teen pregnancy. It's not effective. It's not effective at all. It's a terrible thing. You're actually. I mean, I wouldn't say it's abusive, but in a sense it kind of is. You're giving people misinformation, bad information, and as a result, you know, kids are going to have sex. It's pervasive today. So your best bet is actually to inform them, educate them, and arm them for when they do have sex so they're ready. And abstinence only education doesn't do that. It fills them with misinformation and lies. So when they're ready to have sex, they end up doing it. You know, I don't want to say poorly, but not prepared. Right. And as a result, they have higher incidences of STIs and teen pregnancies.
John Dehlin [00:54:44] Religious fundamentalists do, absolutely. What about abortion?
Abortion, Divorce, and Family Life by Religion
Ryan Cragun [00:54:49] So as far as attitudes towards abortion, obviously fundamentalists, hands down, are the most Opposed to abortion. Right. I mean, that's clear cut across the board. They're most opposed. And that varies by the motivation for abortion. Right. So even among fundamentalists, acceptance of abortion in cases of rape or incest or a threat to the mother's life go up, but not that much.
John Dehlin [00:55:12] Right?
Ryan Cragun [00:55:13] I mean, they do go up. The one thing that I tried to do in here, because I haven't seen a lot of data on this, and in fact this may be the only one that I found, I had to scour a lot of data sets to find incidences of abortion. Right. And I thought this one was actually really nice. And I couldn't find it by my classic breakdown here of fundamentalists, moderates, liberals and non religious, but I did find it based on like evangelicals and mainline Protestants, Catholics and the non religious. Yeah, non religious people and liberally religious people are slightly more likely to get abortions in the US but they're such a small percentage of the population that the majority, the far majority of abortions in the US are actually for women who are conservative Protestants and Catholics.
John Dehlin [00:55:58] Just because of numbers, right?
Ryan Cragun [00:56:00] Just because of numbers.
John Dehlin [00:56:01] Yeah, but. But you'd probably concede that you're at least slightly more likely to both engage in premarital sex and to have an abortion if you're non religious. True.
Ryan Cragun [00:56:13] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that's true. Yeah, I would.
John Dehlin [00:56:16] You're just saying that's not unhealthy in your view?
Ryan Cragun [00:56:19] No. And you know, that goes to kind of my chapter on morality, which we don't have to get into at this point, but it's a really interesting thing, right. When you begin to take away these barriers, right. When you begin to say what's wrong with this? Right. And you kind of question it. And you're not just taking what some religious leader has told you and you question it yourself and then you arrive at the conclusion. Actually there's no evidence and there really isn't any evidence that engaging in premarital sex with, not with thousands of partners or something. Right. But with a few partners. Right. People that you care about, you're close to. So you're not just having kind of one night hookups, but committed relationships and you're having sex with these people. Turns out 95% of Americans are having premarital sex these days. If this was so damaging, we should be seeing horrible consequences to this. Serious problems with kind of psychological health, higher rates of teen pregnancy, higher rates of STIs. Teen pregnancy's down, it's not up anymore. It's actually going down. SDI's. Okay. They hovered about a certain number. They're not necessarily going up. They're not going down either. But there's no real evidence. And in fact, here's another one. Divorce rates are down, right? So even divorce rates, which you'd think, oh, maybe, you know, you had premarital sex, so that must be bad for the marriage in the long run. Turns out that's not really the case either, Right. Is there a little bit of a relationship there? In a couple of studies, but overall, having sex before marriage is perfectly fine. So. And really what ends up happening is people feel, you know, when they're taught not to do it, they feel guilt about it, but the guilt is completely socially constructive. They've been taught that it's not good when you don't teach people that. Right? So they come out thinking, well, what's wrong with premarital sex? There's no guilt associated with it. It's perfectly fine. People are fine with it.
John Dehlin [00:58:12] What about likelihood of getting divorced? Are non religious people more likely to get divorced than religious people?
Ryan Cragun [00:58:19] It's about sixes, right? Liberal religious people are actually the least likely to get divorced in my data. Right. And I've seen different data sets that have shown slightly different things. But here's the interesting one, and I thought this was great, and this popped out in my data. Religious fundamentalists are actually just as likely as the non religious to get divorced, but they're more likely to get remarried right away. So if you only look at current marital status, it looks like religious fundamentalists are the least likely to be single. Right? But they're actually just as likely to have gotten divorced in part because they marry at younger ages, but then they immediately remarry. Non religious people don't immediately remarry. So you have more of them at any given point in time who are divorced, but they're not more likely to actually divorce.
John Dehlin [00:59:03] But non religious people are not necessarily more likely to get divorced in your understanding, right?
Ryan Cragun [00:59:09] That's correct.
John Dehlin [00:59:11] Okay. Criminality.
Ryan Cragun [00:59:16] Well, it's a fun one. Unfortunately, there's not great data, and I'm just going to full on admit that there's not great data on this. What we really need is some enterprising criminologist to go into the prisons and try and actually get this data. Good data on religious affiliations of prison inmates hasn't come out since the 1960s, so we just don't have that. Right. But if we ask some other questions and even if you go back to that data, so if you use that data, the non religious are particularly underrepresented in prison populations. If you ask about committing crimes. Right. So incidence of committing crimes, various crime rates, things like that. Again, non religious come out about sixes. Doesn't seem to be a big difference there. Right. They're no more or less likely to engage in crimes than our religious fundamentalists, moderates or liberals. Just there's no difference. Right. So this is another one where religion's kind of a wash. It's not going to make you less likely to commit a crime. Just doesn't happen.
John Dehlin [01:00:13] I see criminality. Non religious get an A while the others get Bs.
Ryan Cragun [01:00:17] That's the historical data. So based on the historical data, you find virtually no atheists in prison populations. But again, that's historical data. There isn't current data. So I was giving them a slight edge because in the 1960s there were no atheists in prison populations and there were no atheists religious people. Right. Whether that holds today, I couldn't tell you. I don't think anybody could.
Humility, Prejudice, and Tolerance Among Nonreligious People
John Dehlin [01:00:38] Okay, now this one's interesting because if you're raised at least lds, you mentioned humility. Right. And in the LDS context, I was raised to think of intellectuals, to think of, you know, intellectuals, which we've, which we've associated with the non religious as being arrogant, you know, as being high and mighty, as being they think they're better, they think they know more than God and everybody else. And you're giving fundamentalists a D for humility and then it goes C, B for liberals and then A for non religious. You're saying non religious people are humble. And I think I know a lot of religious people who would look at like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens and say, you know, some of the most strident atheists out there seem to be some of the least humble people imaginable. So tell us how you arrived at that.
Ryan Cragun [01:01:35] Sure. And this is a great one. In fact, this is probably my most passionate chapter in the entire book because I am one of these intellectuals and I've been called arrogant because I'm an intellectual. Right. And you said something beautiful. Right. Which I wanted to interject when you were saying it, that they claim, oh, you know, these intellectuals claim to know more than prophets and God. You know, what they do. Right. And I'm just going to put it out there. They actually do. Right. They do know those things. And that's not arrogance. In no way is that arrogance. They know certain things. But here's the beauty of true Scientists and intellectuals, they also know that there's a lot they don't know. And they won't step out and say, I know this when they don't know this, right? And that's actually where you get the big distinction. And there's one big study that I'm drawing on in there, but I'm also using some world value survey that has pretty good data on this. So basically how I look at this, and I don't want to ruin the chapter for people who are going to read it, I strongly encourage everybody to read this chapter. In fact, if you're not going to buy the book and you just want to read that chapter, email me and I will send you just that chapter. Everybody should read that chapter. Because what's happening, right, is you have highly religious people, religious fundamentalists, who go out and say, I know X, right? I know how the world was created, I know that there's a God, I know that this thing happened. I know that what the Bible says is absolutely true. And they're consistently and regularly and in fact, in Mormonism, they're taught to say, I know, I know, I know. And they don't know. They believe certain things, typically with very little evidence or emotion based evidence. And that just doesn't pass muster for scientists, for intellectuals, for people who actually understand how you know things, who understand epistemology. They know that they don't know those things, right? But then you turn that around and you look at scientists, right? Any good scientist worth his salt. So let's say you take an engineer, right, A mechanical engineer, and say, well, you're a mechanical engineer, you've got a PhD, tell me about the meaning in life. And he'll say, I don't know anything about that. I'm an engineer. Does that make him arrogant? He's basically admitting he doesn't know stuff. And what you see is the non religious are the most likely to say they don't know. Compare that to religious fundamentalists. They're the most likely to say I do know stuff. And then if you ask them a whole bunch of questions about kind of like, do people look up to me? Fundamentalists are like, yes, people look up to me. Everybody aspires to be like me, right? So you have a whole bunch of questions kind of trying to tap into this idea of arrogance. And the most religious are the ones who pop out. The non religious are the ones who fall out. They're the most humble, right? Yet they're consistently accused of being the most arrogant, right?
John Dehlin [01:04:35] Yeah. I think one of the Fastest ways to ruin your reputation as an academic is to, is to claim something that isn't true as fact.
Ryan Cragun [01:04:46] Because academics will eat you up.
John Dehlin [01:04:48] They do. Yeah. I have a. You know, my advisor right now in my PhD program probably would describe herself as non religious. I'm almost certain of that. And if I were to, if I were. If I were to state, you know, in the sample from my survey, you know, 70 cent. 70% leave the church, she would say, John. No, 70% report to leave the church. And there's a very important difference in just distinguishing between what is and what people report to be true. And there's just a really, a really significant emphasis in being very accurate about, about how you talk about things. And it is, it does come from a place of humility. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna say I like your message there. So. Good.
Ryan Cragun [01:05:34] Is that, Is that one A for me on the book?
John Dehlin [01:05:37] Oh, lots of A's. Lots of A's.
Ryan Cragun [01:05:38] Okay.
John Dehlin [01:05:39] Lots of A's. I would not have. I would not. This book is an A. And I wouldn't have had you on if I didn't feel like it was awesome. Okay. You've got several categories here that I'm just gonna lump together. I'm assuming you're trying to make a point about social progressivism. So you've got prejudice, you've got environmentalism, you've got. I believe you have women somewhere. Gender equality. Gender equality. Just talk about that for a second. What point you're trying to make with those categories.
Ryan Cragun [01:06:05] Sure, yeah. So basically, and this is one, it's largely psychological literature, right? So there have been some sociologists who've looked at this, but mostly psychologists have looked at this question of prejudice and tolerance. And consistently the non religious went out in being the most tolerant of a variety of groups, Right. Particularly minority groups. And what I mean by that, they're the most accepting of, say, homosexuals, of blacks, Hispanics, women, communists, atheists, Right. Often the least accepting of religious fundamentalists, but they're very accepting. That's the one exception. They're very accepting of lots of minority groups. And where this just kind of fascinates me to no end is that psychologists know this, right? And they can't hide it. Even Putnam and Campbell in their new book, American Grace, this is the one where they have to admit it, right? I don't like the rest of what they do in that chapter on the non religious, but everybody has to admit it. This led Gordon Allport, very famous, you probably know of him, very famous psychologist, to introduce an idea into the psychology of religion called intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. And the only reason he introduced this is because he didn't like the fact that religious people were more prejudiced than non religious people. So he introduces this distinction and really if you read his original paper and you read some of the follow up research, the distinction is basically between what he calls mature religious people and immature religious people. The mature ones are tolerant, the immature ones are prejudiced. And so what you then get is Gordon Allport, who was religious himself, was able to say, well, I'm religious and I'm not prejudiced. And so religion has nothing to do with prejudice. It's how some people practice their religion that maybe makes them prejudiced. Right. It's such an artificial distinction designed to make him feel good about his religion that it just drives me up a wall. Consistently religious, fundamental, and frankly, it makes perfect sense. Right? Religious fundamentalists, let's just get this, they're black and white thinkers. This is one of the things that characterizes them. They live in a world that is us against them. If you're not with us, you're against us. And so what do you think that does when you start talking about outside groups? It makes them think, I don't like those people. I think less of those people. And that's built right into what it means to be a religious fundamentalist. They don't like people who are not like them. And the evidence on that is overwhelming. It's unquestionable. They are the most hateful people on the planet.
John Dehlin [01:09:20] Okay, so I resonate with so much of what you say, but here's where I'm going to push back a little bit. Okay, go for it. Ready? Yeah. So if you hate black people, right?
Ryan Cragun [01:09:32] Sure.
John Dehlin [01:09:33] What percentage of the US population do you hate?
Ryan Cragun [01:09:36] About 12%. 12 to 13.
John Dehlin [01:09:38] Okay, if you hate gays and lesbians, what percentage of the US population do you hate?
Ryan Cragun [01:09:42] It's a tricky one, somewhere between 2 and 5 upwards. Estimates are 10, but probably 2 to 5%.
John Dehlin [01:09:48] Okay, and let's do the most egregious one. If you hate women, what percentage of the population are you hating?
Ryan Cragun [01:09:56] That's 51%.
John Dehlin [01:09:57] All right, so here's the kicker. What if you hate religious people?
Ryan Cragun [01:10:04] Well, those numbers are going down. It's about 80%.
John Dehlin [01:10:06] Yeah. But it's the largest group. And so this is my biggest beef with non religious, secular, atheist, agnostic type people is they tend to hate almost everybody that isn't like them. Just like you say. So. Yes, it's true that they don't hate women as a category necessarily, or blacks or homosexuals, but they hate 80% of the population because, guess what, they're religious.
Ryan Cragun [01:10:33] Good point.
John Dehlin [01:10:34] Okay, wait, I don't mean that all non religious people hate all religious people.
Ryan Cragun [01:10:39] That's where I'm going.
John Dehlin [01:10:40] But I'm agitated. I'm agitated at the degree to which and the vociferousness with which so many atheists and agnostics undermine their cause by being haters of everybody.
Ryan Cragun [01:10:52] No, I absolutely agree with you. And this is a point where I actually do take issue because I think what's happening, right, you get the more strident non religious people. So really kind of you're out of the closet, in your face. Atheists, they tend to lump all religious groups together, right? And unfortunately, the face that they give religion is fundamentalism. So what ends up happening? They don't like fundamentalists. I'll admit that the data admits that non religious people, particularly atheists, they don't like religious fundamentalists. There's no question about that. I mean, that's clearly the case, right? But then they kind of paint all religion as being religious fundamentalists. And so your point comes out very well, that it's like, wow, now it seems like they hate 80% of the population. Here's the amazing thing. When you sit down with an atheist, and I've done this, right, I've sat down with a bunch of atheists and I've attended their meetings, right? I go to a lot of these meetings. When you sit down with them and you're like, okay, let's just give a little bit of nuance here. Are you really telling me that you hate members of the United Church of Christ who are very accepting of gays or the Metropolitan Community Church, which is a gay church? And they're like, no, those people are fine. I don't have issues with them. It's the extreme religious people. So there's actually more nuance there, right? Quite a bit of nuance. And in some of the other research that I've done, right, if you actually ask the non religious, and this is kind of interesting, if you ask the non religious along with the religious, a bunch of target kind of groups, right? Do you. How close do you feel towards these people? These people, These people, et cetera, the non religious come out pretty good unless you ask about religious fundamentalists. So if you ask them, you know, how do you feel about Catholics? Would you vote for a Catholic for president? They're like, yeah, sure, that's fine, right? And their numbers are just as high as almost everybody else, except Catholics, who are the most high because they're voting for themselves. Right. Same for Jews, same for general Protestants, liberal Protestants. It's only when you hit the fundamentalists that they're like, whoa, I don't like those people. And actually, here's the great irony, right? Almost no one in the US Actually likes religious fundamentalists, but none of the big national level surveys have asked that question. They ask about atheists and Muslims and Mormons and, you know, a variety of groups, Catholics, various Protestant groups, but they've never asked about religious fundamentalists.
John Dehlin [01:13:15] Right.
Ryan Cragun [01:13:15] So that data is not there. So your point is a very good one, that it seems like, you know, Richard Dawkins hates all religious people. No, no, Richard Dawkins doesn't hate all religious people. He unfortunately is not very nuanced in how he describes religion. He groups them all together a lot of the time. But if you were to sit him down and have him actually talk to somebody who's liberally religious, and this has actually happened, he did this with the archbishop of the Anglican Church and they basically had like a convenient kind of amiable tea time and they're like, yeah, we agree more than we disagree. Yeah, that's pretty cool, right? We can hang out. I mean, it was not antagonistic at all. So yeah, the non religious don't really hate the majority of people. They dislike religious fundamentalists, but they also,
John Dehlin [01:14:03] too often, you would agree, use sweeping generalizations and talk about religion as if everyone were fundamentalists.
Ryan Cragun [01:14:12] Yes, and I take them to task on doing that in my book.
John Dehlin [01:14:14] Okay, good. And I would just push back slightly and say that if you pull aside the average fundamentalist or racist or homophobic person and say, you may not like gays, but do you like Billy, who's your cousin, who's gay? They'll probably say very similar things. So when you isolate people, you are going to find that they're less hostile than when they're speaking rhetorically about large groups. Right?
Ryan Cragun [01:14:39] Yes, absolutely.
John Dehlin [01:14:41] And my just final thing, I just want to say two things to those secular folks out there is number one, it's hypocritical when the door of tolerance only swings one way towards, you know, your own particular ideology. I think we all do well to, to, to be tolerant across the board, except, you know, when we see, you know, really heinous, evil things. And I just. But the second more bigger point is I want non religious people to know that I think if your goal is to have all people become non Religious. I just think you're gonna have a better shot, better shot at being listened to, to a better shot at being taken seriously and a better shot of having an impact if you speak, if you engage in civil discourse, that's respectful. That's just my opinion.
Ryan Cragun [01:15:32] Yeah, I support that. And yeah, I've been on record actually saying that that's a much more effective approach.
John Dehlin [01:15:39] Yeah. Okay. Money. Are you going to be richer if you are less religious?
Wealth, Charitable Giving, and Health Outcomes
Ryan Cragun [01:15:46] Yes. Yes you are. You'll save 10% if you leave the Mormon Church. That's the easy. Gimme one. Right. Not everybody actually donates that kind of money. But it does turn out that if you look at social class and income, non religious people tend to score a little bit higher than moderates who score higher than fundamentalists, and the liberal religious actually score the highest. And there's actually, there's a very kind of basic explanation for this. With religious fundamentalists. If you're looking at household income and, and it actually holds for individual income too, but household income, their wives. Right. So the wives, if we're thinking nuclear families, wives are less likely to work outside the home, which cuts out an entire income. Right. And that's less likely to be case for liberal religious people who are also better educated and non religious people who are more favorable towards women working outside the home. So religious fundamentalists actually have lower income. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:16:35] Right. Okay. This is a really sensitive one because the LDS Church likes to tell how much service is going on and how much charitable contribution is taking place by church members. What's your understanding about giving?
Ryan Cragun [01:16:54] Giving is an interesting one. Right. Most of the studies that you'll see will suggest that religious people are more charitable. Now the first thing that you have to do there is you have to say, okay, but you've got to separate out what they're giving to. Right. So if religious people are giving a lot of money to their church, well, that's not really a fair comparison anymore. Right. Non religious people aren't going to be giving money to their church because they don't have one. Right. So you have to separate out the giving based on what you're giving to. Is it a religious charity or is it a non religious charity? Once you do that, clearly religious people are still more religious when it comes to giving to religions. Right. And even religious based charities when it comes to secular charities. So non religious charities, non religious people are actually more giving, they're more charitable. Right. Numbers aren't huge, but there is a statistically significant difference there. Non religious people are still pretty charitable they're just not giving to their churches. If you add it all up, turns out religious people are probably giving more overall. Right. But I was actually having this conversation with a colleague of mine the other day. I mentioned this and he said, well, yeah, but that's kind of like a club membership, isn't it?
John Dehlin [01:18:11] Right?
Ryan Cragun [01:18:11] I mean, and this is particularly true for Mormons. If you don't give your 10%, you kind of lose some privileges in the church. Right. So is it really charity if you have to give it? Which is kind of an interesting point. Right. And I'm not going to push that point. And I don't in the book, Right. I don't really try and emphasize all that much. Turns out the giving isn't a huge difference. Non religious people are about as charitable as religious people are. Obviously religious people give more to their religion. But you can kind of call into question a little bit of the giving because a lot of it's kind of obligatory, right? You're paying your club dues. It's kind of interesting.
John Dehlin [01:18:49] Sure. Okay. One of the main things people seem to seek religion for is coping with, with loss and specifically death. I think it's interesting that you cover that and how you treat it in the book.
Ryan Cragun [01:19:04] Yeah, that one is actually fascinating. And you're precisely right. A lot of people kind of want to say, oh, this is something religion does. Right. Turns out the studies that have looked at this suggest that's actually not the case. And honestly, I'm being completely honest. Right. As a non religious person, I would love to be just like, ah, in your face. Right. We won that one. That one surprised me. I mean, it really does surprise me because religion does seem to like have built in. Well, here's how we cope with these things. But when you actually look at the studies, non religious people cope better with death. They're less fearful of death, they're less likely. Here's a good one. They're less likely to try and expend every possible resource to keep themselves alive. So if they've got a terminal illness, they're like, okay, I'm going to die, so be it. Moving on. Right. Whereas what you have with religious people, and I'm kind of drawing a stark contrast here, right, Just to illustrate, but religious people actually spend more money and more time trying to fight death than do non religious people. And that one, still, it surprises me, right? You'd think, well, why, why is that the case when non religious people, and not all non religious people, but particularly atheists, right. Those who deny an afterlife they think they're gone, right? It's over, they're done. Wouldn't they be the most likely to be like, no, I must fight this, I don't want to die. They've basically come to terms with it, they're okay with it. And here's the flip side, highly religious people, and this is the weird part, right, they apparently are a little bit worried about where they're going to go and as a result, they try and put it off, right? Now, there could be another component, and this is a component that I can't capture that, you know, it's kind of outside the realm of the stuff that I do. But there could also be what I would argue is kind of a biological or psychological component. It may be the case that the people who are most fearful of death are also the most likely to turn towards religion. And that could be something intrinsic or biological. And as a result, those are the people who are most likely to fight off death. Right. So it could be either one of those two that basically highly religious people are also just kind of intrinsically the most afraid of death. And that's why they're religious and that's why they're afraid of death generally. And so they're fighting it off. That could be the case. Right. But as far as coping with death, non religious people actually do quite well. And that's fascinating.
John Dehlin [01:21:29] Right? Okay, so here's where as I cover the last two topics you have, they're kind of the most important, important, and this shows to me that your report card has some credibility. Because the truth is, if you had to ask the average human what they care most about, my guess is they're going to say two things, health and happiness. Right? They want to know that they're healthy and that they're enjoying their life. Right. I mean, what's the point if you're not healthy and if you're not enjoying things? And what you have here for health is B straight across, which is interesting. Talk about that for a second. Then let's talk about happiness.
Ryan Cragun [01:22:12] Sure. So here's how it plays out in the numbers statistically, and if you use historical data, it's actually been a little bit different. But today, using current data, when you ask self report, and I know there are problems with self report, but when you ask about health, right. In the US there's no statistically significant difference. Based on this distinction, fundamentalists, moderates, liberals, or the non religious, they basically all come out awash, Right. When you do that internationally using slightly different measures, it largely comes out of wash today too, right? So that's kind of interesting. Basically, you're not seeing any big differences. These are really small differences, if they exist. Okay? So that's the data that I present in there. But I also draw upon lots of studies. And when I say lots of studies, literally there are thousands of studies that are. Have been published looking at this, and here's the fascinating thing about health, right? And I know some people on your forum kind of asked about this. There have been a number of studies, lots of studies that have found a statistically significant relationship between being religious, however they choose to measure that, and health, however they choose to measure that. But here's the point. That relationship is never very big and never very strong. It is always tiny. And when I say tiny, I mean it usually explains. And this is getting a little technical, but like 1 to maybe 2% of the variation in health, what does that mean in practical terms? Does that mean religious people are going to live a year longer? No, it doesn't mean anything. It literally means nothing. It's virtually meaningless. Right? It's so meaningless that I actually, and I recount this in the book. I was at a conference on, you know, sociology, religion. There was a session on health and religion.
John Dehlin [01:23:54] And.
Ryan Cragun [01:23:55] And all three papers found the same thing. Oh, look in this data set, in some obscure data set from somewhere, there's a statistically significant relationship between this religion or this type of religiosity and this measure of health. And every single time they finished their presentation, I raised my hand and I said, okay, you found a statistically significant relationship, but turn it into practical terms. Are those people going to lead a better life, be healthier, live longer? What's the actual effect? And none of them could. None of them could actually say, this is a meaningful difference. And one of the people presenting was a medical doctor, and he came up to me afterwards, after the session, and he's like, why don't you want to admit that religion is good for your health? And I said, well, let me ask you this. If you're a medical doctor, right, and if a patient of yours came to you and said, you know, I'm not religious, would you encourage him to join a religion for his health? And he said, no. And I was like, you just proved my point, dude. There is not a meaningful difference here. When you control for all of the things that influence health, when you're controlling for healthy behaviors, which is the important thing, religion washes out. It is not that meaningful. Occasionally you find something. It's never big. And most of the time you find nothing. So is religion good for your health? No, not really. Is it bad for your health? No, not really. It's basically negligible, which doesn't totally make
John Dehlin [01:25:22] sense to me, looking at your report card, because I would think that more highly educated, more intelligent, more affluent people are going to be healthier.
Ryan Cragun [01:25:33] Good point. Right. And since liberally religious people, you know, are more educated, more affluent, same with the non religious, you'd think they'd be healthier. So maybe there's something going on there.
John Dehlin [01:25:44] Right.
Ryan Cragun [01:25:44] But doesn't really matter. And actually I'm trying to think. I think it's in that chapter that I deal with. Yeah. So I show the relationship between health and education. Education is a huge deal for health. It makes a major difference. But religion doesn't. Right. So maybe at some level, right. The religion, and I don't want to say it's the religion, it's probably the behavioral practices that are associated with the religion for fundamentalists and moderates is driving their health up a little bit. Right. But when you control for all of those things, it's a wash. It doesn't come out as being meaningful at all.
John Dehlin [01:26:20] And here's the most shocking or ironic part about the whole thing in terms of happiness. You give Bs to everyone but the fundamentalists. And tell us what grade you give the fundamentalists for happiness.
Ryan Cragun [01:26:37] They get an A. They win on that one.
John Dehlin [01:26:40] So explain that.
Ryan Cragun [01:26:43] Which is great. Right? Now, you asked earlier, I mean, is there a relationship between religion and happiness in the us There is. Right. And I'm not going to deny it. I mean, that's the data. Right. At the end of the day, I'm about the data, what the data show or what the data show. And I do try and kind of explain it away, but you do see an interesting relationship there. Now, I do want to cite a recent study by Ed Diener who found that that relationship doesn't hold in other developed countries that are not particularly religious. So it holds here in the US doesn't hold in other countries. My attempt to explain it away, and I don't know that it's a great attempt, I like it and I think it's fairly compelling, is that in a sense, religion kind of functions as a sort of delusion. And, and I know that term is not a nice term, and I'm not trying to be mean. Right. But in a sense, religious people deal in a realm that's outside of reality. Right. They believe things for which there's not really a whole lot of evidence. And you could kind of call that a delusion, right? Not being perfectly in touch with reality. And I'm not saying that they're like, you know, completely living in this alternate universe, but at some sense they're less in touch with reality and they're more accepting of these alternative ideas. And so I'll come back to that in just a second. Non religious people, particularly atheists. Right. But non religious people generally are less likely to live in that supernatural world ever. Right. And they're actually more likely to be in touch with what we could refer to as reality. And I know those terms are a little bit loaded and they can be complicated, but there's some truth to that. Right. They don't believe in supernatural things. Okay, so what does this have to do with this happiness component? Turns out depressed people are actually more realistic in their interpretations of what's going on. Right. Happy people actually are deluded. They reinterpret negative events in their life in positive ways. So their 10th birthday, that was kind of a flop. And people were upset and they were crying. Five years later they're like, that was the best birthday ever. We just have this amazing ability, if we're among the happy, to reconstruct our past and reconstruct events in positive ways. In essence, we're deluding ourselves. We're all doing this. And depressed people don't. Depressed people are actually seeing what's happening in the world around them. They literally do. Right. And that's part of the reason why they're depressed is because they're like, wow, that actually was terrible. And it really was terrible. I'm not going to put a positive spin on it. That's what happened. So my argument there is that the non religious people are more in touch with reality and as a result, they're a little bit less happy. Religious fundamentalists, they're less in touch with reality, more likely to be deluded, and as a result, they're happier. I give them an A.
Happiness, Meaning, and the Nonreligious
John Dehlin [01:29:47] And again, that's ironic because you're saying they're less happy, non religious or less happy, but they have more money and better sex and better education.
Ryan Cragun [01:29:56] Yep, that's the way it falls out.
John Dehlin [01:29:58] But then you go on, you know, you go, you know, you go serve a mission in the third world and you find out that these people really are happy. Like, yeah, money doesn't buy happiness, it turns out. And education doesn't necessarily buy it either.
Ryan Cragun [01:30:12] Nope, that's absolutely the case.
John Dehlin [01:30:16] Yeah. So it may not bring you more happiness to be non religious, but I kind of get the sense of what you're saying here is that if the world is going to evolve to a better place, the extent to which we become more secular is the hope that civilization is going to be able to get out of some of the fixes it's in and move to a place where there's greater well being for more people across the globe. Is that kind of what you're saying?
Ryan Cragun [01:30:47] Yeah, I mean, I try and give that big take home message at the end, right. That if we're living in a world, right, and this really is kind of a global book, we're living in a world that's increasingly diverse in the sense that globalization is happening, people are moving here, people are leaving here, and, and we're living around people who are different from us, right? So that's a legitimate issue. We need to be tolerant because we're surrounded by people who are not like us. So tolerance is important in this increasingly globalized world. We're living in a world that is facing environmental issues. Right. I know some people are trying to deny this, but most people, and actually, I mean, I'm not completely unfair in that chapter, right. Even religious people recognize, most religious people recognize there are problems. Right. None of them, none of these groups are in favor of pollution. Right. But there are some different ways that they think about addressing these issues. If you recognize we have environmental issues, the secular perspective seems to be a little bit of a better perspective. We're also living in a highly technical world, a world that requires some advances. We're going to need some technological advances to deal with our environmental issues, with our food issues, with our population issues. So you need education. And if you want education, well, you know, there are two groups here, the liberally religious and the non religious who are really winning out on this. We need science. And that's something we didn't talk about in this. But there's a whole chapter on science acceptance. Fundamentalists get an F on this one. I mean, there's, hands down, this is the one where they score really, really poorly. Liberally religious and non religious people, they win out on this. They accept science and science holds a lot of potential for our future. So kind of across the board, I lay these out and say, if you're thinking about the future of humanity and it's not a cataclysmic apocalyptic future, right? If you're just saying, hey, the future of humanity is we're going to be here for a while together, we really need the perspective that the non religious and the liberally religious give us. That holds the best hope for all of humanity.
John Dehlin [01:32:49] So if, you know, I'll ask you the same question you asked a doctor. If somebody were to come to you and say, hey, Ryan, you know, I'm religious, but life isn't, you know, quite living up to what I want it to be, should I leave my church? Would you give them an unequivocal yes or no?
Ryan Cragun [01:33:14] I would probably not give them an equivocal yes or no. Right. I'd talk to them. I mean, come on, it's nuanced, right? What is your religion? And do you believe things that potentially are causing you to be unhappy? Does your religion teach things that you disagree with? Right. Is that a religion that you want to support? Is it a religion that you have any hope of changing from the inside? Or is it a religion that's largely progressive, Right. And agrees with your views and your politics? I mean, you know, just to be perfectly honest, one of the factors that led me to finally leave the Mormon Church, right. And actually leave is one, I didn't think I could change it from the inside, and two, I disagreed with it on so many levels, right. Politically, beliefs wise, the morality that it taught. I just didn't feel like I could support it anymore. They weren't going to get my money. Right. And so I walked out. But I wouldn't encourage everybody to do that. If it's working for you, Right. Then that's great. And that's one point that I do like to make with this book. Right. Religions can help people. I get that. I'm not trying to say that they're always damaging, they're always harmful. I don't think that's true. If your religion's working for you, awesome. Just don't be a jerk, don't be mean, don't be hateful. Right. Be accepting, be tolerant, pursue education, be favorable of minority rights. Right. Be concerned for the environment. And if your religion allows you to do that, props to you. And it's working for you. Stay. If it's not, hey, there is a very viable, very positive and healthy, not as happy, but healthy alternative.
John Dehlin [01:35:00] Only slightly less happy.
Ryan Cragun [01:35:02] Only slightly less happy. And that's leaving. Right. And there are lots of us. One paper that I wrote estimated that 600,000Americans are leaving religion in the US every year. There are massive numbers of people leaving. You don't have to be religious to have a wonderful life. Right? But being religious doesn't mean that you won't have a wonderful life. Religious fundamentalists, yeah, that's a rough life, a challenging life. And it's not necessarily a life that I agree with. And so I'm very critical of religious fundamentalists, but I largely have nothing but positive things to say about people who are liberally religious. I'm okay with that. I have no problem with that because it's actually kind of recognizing the society and the world that we live in and they're trying to actually contribute positively, in my opinion. And that kind of boils down to my opinion. So I don't know if I answered your question.
John Dehlin [01:35:56] Yeah, you did. So if a fundamentalist comes to you and says, should I become more liberal? You'd probably say yes.
Ryan Cragun [01:36:02] Yeah, I probably wouldn't hesitate. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:36:04] But if a liberal comes to you and says, I'm super happy in my church, but should I leave it?
Ryan Cragun [01:36:09] You'd probably say, no, no, no, hang out, do it. You know, as long as it's working for you. Props to you. I've got no problem with that.
The Nones and the Future of Nonreligious Community
John Dehlin [01:36:15] Yeah, real quick, you've kind of alluded to this, but remind the audience what the fastest growing group within the religious segments are. What's that group?
Ryan Cragun [01:36:25] That's the non religious. They're growing faster than any other group. They're now the second largest. They just passed the Southern Baptists. Only Catholics win out 24% of the population. Give it another 10 years, and the non religious will be the largest group
John Dehlin [01:36:38] in the US and so we're kind of moving towards where Europe is, right? Western Europe.
Ryan Cragun [01:36:42] Yep, absolutely. We're headed down that path.
John Dehlin [01:36:47] So I. The point, the point that I've tried to make lately, and some people have been really upset about it. You know, you think about these Boston bombers, right? And it didn't take long for the media to tie the bombing to Islam. And what I was worried about when I made a Facebook comment a couple weeks ago that caused quite a stir, is that, you know, there's going to be a lot of non religious people who go, yep, there it is, religion causing pain and evil and destruction again in society. And my point is, you know, there might be some value in being constantly critical of religion. I believe that what that ends up doing is creating resistance and causing the religious to kind of just re entrench their positions oftentimes and become more committed to resisting, you know, secularization. But regardless of that, you know, if there's some adolescent young male in a third world country or in an urban population here in the United States that's kind of just aimless wandering, not sure. You know, it seems to me like they're the ones who are very susceptible to religious enticements, particularly to fundamentalist religious enticements, because, you know, if there's someone who's wandering whether it's, you know, Malcolm X, Malcolm Little, eventually being recruited by the Nation of Islam, or, you know, take your pick of the person that was lost who then got recruited by the religion, you know, if an organization isn't there to recruit those people, the religions are going to win almost every time. And usually the fundamentalist ones because they're the ones that are most missionary minded. And so part of the message that I have to non religious is that if you really want to weaken and defeat religions, what you probably have to do if you don't want those two guys to become bombers instead of just, you know, criticizing religion all the time, it seems like the most ethical and productive thing to do is to create some type of organization that would entice those young men to join to a better set of values and of behaviors than what the radical Muslims are going to be offering when those boys are starting to question their direction in life. But as someone who kind of tried, at least experimented with creating secular organizations, they're incredibly difficult to create. Like liberals and non religious are incredibly difficult to organize and to manage. And so I would just love to get your response on that kind of what I just shared. I know it's a broad thing and there's lots of ways to answer it, but don't you think that if some way, Alain Debouton's sort of approach of the Atheism 2.0 that takes the best of religion to try and create social groups that may even sing hymns, but that organize weekly and maybe even have sermons? Do you know, do you feel like that is an important step that secularists are going to need to make to make progress? And is it achievable or is it like herding cats or chickens?
Ryan Cragun [01:40:17] Well, you hit the big term there, herding cats. I mean, that's one of the major problems, I think, with what you could loosely refer to as kind of the free thought or secular movement in the US and actually globally. Right. They have the hardest time organizing. And even when they do get organized, they end up fighting, right? They fight amongst themselves. It's died down. I have it on good authority that it's died down. But there used to be serious antagonism between, say, American humanists and the American atheists. They didn't get along at all. They fought even though they have common cause. I mean, almost everything they agree on. Right. They disagree on these Minor things, but they just fight. And one point that you made is these people, many of these people are just not joiners, right? They don't like to join groups. If we look at the numbers, right, so we've got 20% of the American population, adult population today, are non religious. But what percentage are actually affiliated with free thought groups or atheist groups? I mean it's so much less than 1%. It's basically insignificant. These people don't join groups based on this. So to go to your major point, I agree, right. There are people who feel lost, who are wandering, who don't know where they belong in society. And if we want to address that concern and keep them from joining fundamentalist groups, because one thing fundamentalist groups do do is they give you your place in society, right? They have a beautiful package, a sacred canopy, to use Berger's term, right? A beautiful package of here's where your place is in society and here's all the evidence and we're going to bring you into this community and it's a close knit community and you will feel like you belong. They're very successful at that. It would be awesome if free thought groups, secular groups were able to do the same thing. Maybe there will be some, right? And I actually support that. I think that's great. I think you're going to have better outcomes and better results as kind of secular groups, as free thought groups. If you actually set up organizations and you don't, this is kind of weird that are not based on the fact that you collectively disagree with religion. Join a football club. And football, I mean soccer, sorry, I'm thinking British football, but join one of those, join something that you agree on, not something that you disagree on. And I think that's actually where most of these non religious people are going. They're joining yoga groups, they're joining various groups where they have things in common and they can go do things on Saturday and Sunday instead of go to church, they're going golfing, they're going to, to football games, right? Because there you actually have something that you can agree on and you can talk about. When you get free thinkers, I mean what they have in common is their rejection of religion, right? They agree to disagree about something and that is just not a recipe for solidarity. Now don't get me wrong, I was just at the American Atheist Convention and there were almost a thousand people there. They seemed somewhat together, right? It was nice, it was congenial, there was a lot of solidarity. But I don't know that everybody agreed with everything. That was said and that's fine. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but I think you're going to find greater solidarity in groups that are not organized based on their communal rejection of something else. I totally get what you're saying. I think some of those groups need to exist and I think we've probably got the right institutions that are building up in place there. But I think we're going to have better luck just getting those wandering youth into institutions where they feel like they belong because they have something in common with the people who are there. I don't know. That's my two cents on it, and I could be wrong, but I think we're just going to have better luck. I'm sorry. I'm very supportive of American Atheists and American Humanists and all the other free thought groups. I think what they're doing is great, but I don't think they hold the future for providing alternatives to religion. Yeah, I just don't think they do.
John Dehlin [01:44:25] And I'm, I'm just going to say that I, I think I find a lot of what you say compelling. And, and I, and I see a lot of beauty in those types of groups that you describe. You know, I'm sitting here in Logan, Utah, and there's something, there's something beautiful about the fact that I know 90% of my neighbors, you know, within a, you know, within a, a five minute walking radius. That the fact that there's this religious congregation that we're all a part of, that we see each other every week. I know when Sister Jones has cancer. I know when Sister Smith is pregnant. I know when, when young Billy has, you know, has some type of disorder, when the Williams house floods, you know, because we know each other, because we're in contact, contact with each other. You know, it's, it's something that's very different than what I experienced when I lived in Seattle, which was that I didn't know. I couldn't tell you the names of two out of the three houses that sort of surrounded my house. And maybe that's my own fault, but there's something that gets lost there and I know that it comes at a cost. I know that the cost of that is that those who aren't included in the community, community often feel marginalized and excluded. And I think that's awful. But man, I hope that if we evolve away from religion as a society, we can find a way to not evolve away from a sense of community. And we don't just become isolated, you know, nuclear families all living in houses that really don't know their community, surrounding community very well.
Ryan Cragun [01:46:08] You know, I absolutely agree. And I happened. I mean, this is kind of total coincidence, right? I happened to see a movie just recently, last week called Happy. I don't know if you've seen this, right? But I recommend it. It's good. It summarizes a lot of the work of Ed Diener, somebody we've talked about already with the happiness work. And he highlight in the movie, they highlight a particular arrangement they've done in Denmark, going back to Denmark, right, Where they actually have people living semi communally, right? Complete strangers, but they put them in housing units that are basically all oriented together, right? And they share communal meals. The kids play together, right. And they're not all of one age group. So you have some older people, some younger people. They're all mixed in. And it has this amazing effect, right, that it's not just your immediate family that you care about anymore.
John Dehlin [01:46:57] It's.
Ryan Cragun [01:46:58] It's the entire community of people. And they're not very big. 30 people can live in this kind of communal arrangement. You only have to cook twice a month. That would be awesome. But it gives this amazing sense of belonging, and it's the exact type of belonging that you're talking about. I think the way, and this is more kind of radical, but you said it too. I think the way that our communities are structured, that we all live in our own little homes and we're completely isolated from everybody else, it's just not conducive to a sense of community, particularly once religion goes away. And I think that's really unfortunate. I absolutely do. I agree with you 100%. We need to figure out a solution to that.
Closing Thoughts and Book Recommendation
John Dehlin [01:47:35] All right, well, any final things, I'm not going to ask you to bear your testimony at the end of this Mormon Stories interview.
Ryan Cragun [01:47:43] Good, good, because I wouldn't.
John Dehlin [01:47:46] Are there any final thoughts you want to give the readers before I plug your book?
Ryan Cragun [01:47:51] No, but I'm very open to people emailing me with questions. I say it actually multiple times in the book. If you find something that you think is wrong and you've got good evidence, send it my way. I will make those adjustments. I plan on releasing a new edition because there's a companion volume that's in the works and I will recognize you by name. I'll tell people, hey, I got something wrong and this person pointed it out. So if you see something that you think is wrong, send it my way. I will gladly accept it, be nice about it, but I'LL gladly accept it.
John Dehlin [01:48:19] So we'll invite people to comment up on MormonStories.org and Ryan, you'll maybe go up there and respond as you have time to people's questions or comments there.
Ryan Cragun [01:48:29] Absolutely.
John Dehlin [01:48:30] And then I'll try and include what your Tampa email address is. The address you want.
Ryan Cragun [01:48:37] That's fine. Or my Gmail address. Either one's fine. Sure.
John Dehlin [01:48:40] Okay. So the book is what you don't know about religion but should. The author is Dr. Ryan Craigin, and I highly recommend it to everyone listening. And Ryan, thanks so much for coming on Mormon Stories.
Ryan Cragun [01:48:56] My pleasure. Thanks for having me, John.
John Dehlin [01:48:58] All right, and listeners, again, please go to MormonStories.org to comment. Thanks for all you who support us. If any of you are able, please consider supporting the podcast financially. It's basically what keeps me able to do this as a graduate student. So thanks for everyone who's supporting Ryan. Thanks again and we'll talk to you guys soon. Thanks for tuning in.
Ryan Cragun [01:49:40] Come, come ye saints, no toil nor labor fear, but with joy.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
119 Responses
Looking forward to listening to this interview. Any chance of a kindle version of this book?
Kindle version should be available June 1st.
Great, thanks Ryan.
Wonderful discussion but where is the address to request the sample chapter?
ryantcragun@gmail.com
I’ll happily send the humility chapter. As mentioned in the podcast, everyone should read it!
Thanks Ryan. Enjoyed the podcast a lot. Can you provide links to the studies (or reports on the studies) you mentioned related to sexual repression/better sex for less-religious people?
Here you go:
https://www.ipcpress.com/
I appreciated your explanation of the happiness of non-religious compaired to the happiness of religious fundamentalists. I’ve frequently struggle to explain the concept of depressive realism to my family and friends. I recently came across this image which summed it up nicely. It’s called “The Trouble with Perspective”: https://i.imgur.com/LreCOuB.jpg
You’re right. That picture does a great job!
The picture struck a chord with me, but I think it is flawed in that it seems to imply that you only only negative things as you become more educated. There is so much beauty in the life, so much good, so much to be excited about. The discoveries of science, the progress of mankind in knowledge, the rational basis for morality and the evolutionary fitness for societal happiness… you can be both enlightened and choose which thoughts you wish to be your focus.
Sure, the wizard behind the curtain is revealed, and you see that there is in fact no wizard, and that can be difficult to face.
Or maybe I’m ignorant? Well, there are useful ideas, and factual ideas, and sometimes they aren’t the same thing.
John – Excellent interview. Thank you.
FWIW, I laughed out loud at your comment. “Liberals are incredible difficult to organize and manage”. I attended the D. Michael Quinn lecture in Aug 2011, and had the following text exchange with my wife while sitting in the pews:
Wife: We are going to the dollar movie. How is the lecture?
Me: Hasn’t started yet.
Wife: Wasn’t it supposed to start 30 minutes ago? What’s the hold up?
Me: Nothing particular, just a meeting run by people who dislike organization.
lol. Thanks, Marcus. We had technical difficulties that day (in trying to stream it live to people). Anyway, fun memories. :)
Fun memories, indeed. Keep up the great work.
Fascinating interview! I loved John’s questions, like when he pushed back on Ryan about atheists being more tolerant, because don’t they hate religious people and aren’t religious people something like 80% of the population? And I loved Ryan’s response, that it’s a great point, but that they really dislike the orthodox and should be clearer about that.
Thanks, Chris!
He is cherry picking. Utah Porn Study was just poor. His Charitable giving is also problematic, giving to you University Club charity but giving to you church that is just a club membership.
I wouldn’t call that cherry picking. I didn’t put much emphasis on the porn study in the podcast and it doesn’t even get mentioned in my book. It’s a funny finding; seriously, I think it’s hilarious!
As far as giving goes, all I said was that nonreligious people are just as likely to give to nonreligious charities (or more so, as some studies find) as are religious people. Sure, they give less to religions, but why should they give to institutions to which they don’t belong?
As far as “club memberships” go… That’s a different point. Some have suggested that the reason religious people are so likely to give to religions is because it functions as a sort of club membership. Thus, how “charitable” are people really if they are giving because it’s the equivalent of club dues and not just giving without getting anything in return? That’s a separate argument to who gives more. That’s calling into question the motives of religious people for giving to their religions. It’s interesting, but not of primary interest to me.
The Utah Porn study is funny because it was written to be funny. It was not to find anything about porn usage it was written to show that Utah was the largest user of porn. As such it has no value and should not be used, like using the creationist journals to disprove evolution.
NPR is an example of a non-religious “Club” that counts as a charity, the urban areas are full of them like Art org or AAUW are much more like clubs that are more about being in the club than helping you fellowman. The IRS standard is not perfect but is the best standard for charitable giving.
If you want to identify charities that are about selfless giving then you need to just count those, not throw out the religious giving to make the categories equal.
I think he makes a good point about religious donations not really being voluntary. You face social consequences for not donating. In Mormonism where the consequences are very high for not donating I think among those who attend regularly the percentage who donate is quite high and they give pretty large amounts. Maybe for other churches where the consequences aren’t so high people give smaller amounts but for those who actively participate I would imagine most still give something. There aren’t really any consequences for not donating to your alma mater. The average percentage of alumni that give in a two year period is 13% according US News. If there were huge social costs for not donating I think that number would be much higher.
Ryan,
Does religion make a difference in who is willing to bear and raise children? In particular, I would be interested in whether religion promotes parenthood and the number of children born into higher socioeconomic families. What is your assessment of the highly secularized European countries that are facing long-term economic crises because they are becoming depopulated (birthrates below the replacement rate)? Does religion help society by contributing to a quality generation of young people who will care for an aging population? I am always shocked to discover over and over again how often intellectuals eschew raising up the next generation in their own families. What does this mean for society?
Great questions, Clinton!
Good question. I address birth rates in the book. Religious people do, on average, have more kids. But religious people – really, religious fundamentalists and moderates – are more authoritarian in how they raise their kids (they want obedience over autonomy and are very strict).
I didn’t examine whether religious people who are of a higher socioeconomic status (i.e., rich religious people) are more likely to have kids. That’s a good question. I could examine that relatively quickly for the US if it interests you and let you know what I find.
I’m not sure the economic crisis facing European countries is primarily due to lower than replacement level fertility rates. There are other issues involving monetary policy and social welfare that are big issues, too. The coming glut of elderly people is going to be a problem in a lot of countries – from the highly developed European countries to Russia and the Eastern European countries, as well as Japan, China, Australia, and New Zealand. Yes, many of those countries are fairly secular, but the strongest predictor of fertility rates isn’t religiosity; it’s women’s empowerment and economic structure. When kids become expensive (i.e., parents have to pay to educate them) rather than when kids contribute to family income (e.g., when there is a lot of farming), fertility rates tend to drop pretty dramatically. I doubt religion will offset that to any real extent. Even among Mormons fertility rates have dropped in the last 50 years to where they are just a bit above the national average; kids are just too expensive.
Your point about highly educated people (i.e., intellectuals) not wanting to have kids is a good one. There is good evidence that education and the number of kids people have are inversely correlated. To what extent that is a serious problem, I don’t. Other issues can be introduced here to complicate this issue, like over-population concerns and the environment, as well as migration (people from less-developed countries could move to more developed countries to offset population losses due to an aging population). So, yeah, these are complicated issues without clear answers. I don’t think religion holds the key to addressing population issues, though.
Ryan,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I would be very interested in any evidence you can provide about whether religion increases commitment to raising children among high socioeconomic families. Maybe I am imagining, but anecdotally it seems there is a real paradox when it comes to intellectualism and parenting in the social sciences—we know so much about what is needed to help people thrive and do well in life—but does academia deliver in our personal lives? Below is one of my all-time favorite excerpts summing up this area:
Bogenschneider and Corbett (2010):
In the midst of the decade’s global economic transformation, every nation’s competitiveness will depend more than ever on its human capital, in particular the education and social skills of its labor force. Human capital in the new knowledge-based economies, according to economists like Heckman (2006), requires cognitive and non cognitive skills, both of which are shaped to a large extent by socialization that occurs early in family life and in preschool programs. In knowledge-based economies, family contributions can be even more substantial because children can remain economically dependent on their parents, at least in part, for the 30 – 35 years it can take to develop the panoply of technical abilities, credentials, social competencies, and personal maturity technically advanced jobs require (Longman,2004, p. 136):
Doctors . . . must first be born. Doctors must also, for many years, be swaddled, fed, and comforted . . . . Prodigious human effort is further required to teach them to read their first sentence and to add their first sums. Indeed, teaching them to read almost always requires far more adult effort and pedagogical savvy than teaching them biochemistry, the latter of which is usually performed in large lecture halls by teaching assistants and junior faculty members. Moreover, because doctors must be trusted with highly technical life-and-death decisions, they had also better acquire a strong sense of morality, balanced personality, sober habits of living, and discipline—all of which will most likely require vast commitments of time and money by parents and other nurturing adults.
Economic policy debates often are myopic because they fail to connect the dots among contributors to human capital development. As aptly put by Folbre (2008), ‘‘If parents don’t create and nurture children, schools can’t educate them, employers can’t hire them, and governments can’t tax them’’ (p. 179).
Clinton,
Just ran a quick analysis and it suggests that religious fundamentalism and other measures of religiosity (e.g., attendance) do increase the odds of having more kids when you control for income or when you look only at the top 1/4 of households by income. I ran this several ways (using regression where I controlled for income and other variables and ANOVA where I limited the analysis to the top 1/4 of households by income).
Here is some of the output of the ANOVA which is easier to understand. First, by attendance (only looking at the top 1/4 of household incomes in the US):
https://imgur.com/Ma4oru4
And by religious fundamentalism (also only looking at the top 1/4 of household incomes in the US):
https://imgur.com/vFxBu13
Those two figures show the various groups followed by the number in those groups (“N”) and then the “mean” or “average” number of kids reported. That’s the column you want to compare.
In other words, yes, people in higher socioeconomic classes who are more religious have more kids (even when you control for things like education, sex, race; not shown). (FYI, data come from the 2008, 2010, and 2012 waves of the GSS.)
This is a consequential concession. If current European trends continue, Europe will be substantally depopulated (as least of indigenous Europeans) in about 150 years. If we think of this in evolutionary terms, secularism is a dead end. It doesn’t reproduce. Clearly, Cragun, leveraging his now despised Mormon heritage, has become a missionary for his new secular faith, a very necessary act because the anti-natal tendencies of atheism/secularism mean that the belief system can survive only as a parasite attached to pro-natal religious cultures.
Pacumeni,
While it’s fun to prophesy 150 years into the future, I wouldn’t put much weight behind such estimations. Europe today is not what Europe was 150 years ago. And Europe 150 years from now will not be what Europe is today. Your prognostication of Europe’s apparent “demise” is a bit, shall we say, premature. And that’s overlooking the racist and European-centric undertones to your comment – as though allowing non-Europeans into Europe somehow results in Europe being “depopulated” or as though there is such a thing as “indigenous Europeans,” consider we are all from Africa, originally.
Atheism is a parasite to theism. I’ll grant that. It’s defined by what it is not. Secular humanism is not a parasite. It’s defined by what it is.
But I think what you were saying is that nonreligious people can only survive by converting the kids who are only being birthed by religious people. Hmm… That’s simply not true. Nonreligious people do have kids. They just don’t have them by the dozen, like, say, Quiverfull folks do. Why? For the reasons I outlined elsewhere in the comments: cost, concern for the environment, and desire to raise healthy kids.
In fact, a growing number of kids in the US are being raised without religion: https://secularismandnonreligion.org/index.php/snr/article/view/5
I agree with Ryan about prognosticating 150 years into the future. There are too many variables to make any kind of reasonable assumptions. If the rampant speculation on worldwide overpopulation that was the talk-of-the-day a few decades ago had materialized we would have many hordes more people than the hordes of people we have today. In my sci-fi world, atheism and homosexuality could have emerged as some sort of societal-level check on overpopulation. Instead, I am much more interested in what will become of the European nations in the next 20-30 years.
RE: “Nonreligious people do have kids. They just don’t have them by the dozen, like, say, Quiverfull folks do.”
If the rate at which nonreligious people have kids falls below replacement rate (as it generally does), nonreligious people are an evolutionarly dead end even if they do have some children. Secular Humanism is, thus, a parasitic culture. The source of the quiverfulll allusion has 5 children, not a dozen. I hope/trust you avoid similar hyperbole when makng arguments in your book. If we take Clinton’s 20 to 30 year horizon as our standard for evaluation, Europe is in clearly in serious trouble. Indeed, we needn’t wait 20 years. Most analysts agree: in combination, the European birth dearth and welfare state are already economically unsustainable. The problem is already apparent in the current European financial crisis. To be sure, the word “indiginous” becomes meaningless if one presses on it hard enough. (But if I mustn’t look forward 150 years, should you look back a million to decontextualize “indigeneous” by placing us all in Africa?) Like languages, cultures can disappear over time. Lamentably, the Navaho I learned when young has almost disappeared as a living language. The disappearance of once vibrant cultural and linguistic traditions isn’t lamentable only when the disappearance occurs outside of Europe.
Ryan, thank you for calling Pacumeni out on the racist subtext in his or her statements. Immigration in western Europe and the United States from impoverished overpopulated countries is a win-win situation. Now if we could just do something about the xenophobia…
Also, Pacumeni, as Ryan pointed out non-religious people do have children, just at lower rates than religious people. It only takes 2 children per woman to keep a population at replacement levels. The birthrate of a number of western European countries (France, for example), has in fact increased over the last couple of decades and is now at or close to replacement rate. So I would agree that all the doom and gloom prognosticating is a bit premature.
So the main message I took away from this podcast is that fundamentalist religion is bad and more moderate and liberal religion is not. I think this last general conference showed a more fundamentalist Mormonism.
I wonder what the percentages are of fundamentalists, moderates, and liberals are in the church
I don’t have an exact answer, Michael, but I can tell you the following: Of the ~660 Mormons who have participated in the GSS (1972-2010), 32.8% are Biblical literalists, 58.8% believe the Bible is the inspired word of god, and 5.6% believe the Bible is a book of fables. Biblical literalism is usually a key question for determining whether or not someone is a fundamentalist (fundamentalists are literalists, but this is complicated for Mormons, who believe the Bible is inspired based on what Joseph Smith taught).
Using a different question, acceptance of evolution, just 17.5% of Mormons accept that humans evolved, but a slightly higher 26.5% believe the universe began with a huge explosion. These capture acceptance of science, which is another aspect of religious fundamentalism.
These numbers don’t tell us a definitive answer, but it would suggest that somewhere around 10% of Mormons (could be as high as 20% or as low as 5%) are liberally religious. Distinguishing between moderates and fundamentalists would be more difficult.
(Also, do note that the GSS data I just used is aggregated over a nearly 40 year time period, which has its own problems.)
Hey Ryan, thanks for answering questions, I’m going to piggy-back off this post.
The definition of “religious fundamentalist” seems to be an ambiguous one. You mention in the podcast that the LDS church falls under the title based on the percentage of biblical literalists and such. Why is biblical literalism an indication of fundamentalism? You’d think that one of universal requirements for Christianity is to believe the Bible is true and the word of God. Do many practicing Catholics not take the Bible literally? (you mentioned they fall under the liberal category) Are more people taking a more “symbolic” or “allegorical” approach to the Bible nowadays?
Thanks again for being here!
Hi Brian,
Good questions. First, one correction. If I said Catholics fell into the liberal group, that wasn’t correct. They fall into the moderate group. (I’m pretty sure I got that correct in the podcast; if not, my bad.)
Second, all classification schemes are artificial. They are attempts by those who study groups to find meaningful ways to distinguish between them. I mentioned in the podcast that there are other ways of distinguishing between religions. One that was popular for a long time was the church-sect continuum, which has fallen out of favor (Mormonism was often depicted as a “cult” under that scheme). The one I used has also started to fall out of favor, but I chose it because I wanted to focus on religious fundamentalists. The current scheme du jour is a scheme proposed by Brian Steensland: https://www.indiana.edu/~soc/pdf/Steensland%20Et%20Al_2000.pdf
It didn’t do what I wanted, so I went with the one I used. But it does offer finer discrimination within groups.
This is all to address part of your question about why “Biblical literalism” is a criteria for fundamentalism. That is simply part of the classification scheme. In order to distinguish between different types of religion, scholars have to choose criteria. One of the criteria chosen is Biblical literalism. And that is one of the primary characteristics that distinguishes between conservative and liberal Protestants (or Conservative and Mainline) as well as between fundamentalists and liberals. Yes, you’d think that believing in the Bible is a requirement of Christianity, but how you think about the Bible can vary. Most members of liberal religions take an allegorical perspective on the Bible: the stories aren’t literally true, but they have useful messages. Most members of fundamentalist religions believe the stories are literally true. That distinction matters – which is one of the primary points in my book.
And your last question: Are people taking a more allegorical approach to the Bible today? Yes. The shift hasn’t been dramatic, but the percentage of Americans rejecting Biblical literalism is going up (this is also shown in my book).
I hope that answers your questions.
I appreciated the podcast! Thanks! Though, there are a couple things that were somewhat disconcerting/surprising about Dr. Cragun’s research/presentation.
1) Either he had momentary flashes of forgetting his audience or he really had a personal score to settle. I’m thinking most specifically of his declaration (made more dramatic by the ensuing 15 seconds of dead air) that religious fundamentalists “are the most hateful people on the planet.” I’m glad John pushed back somewhat, but this was upsetting (and not because I’m *apparently* one of those “fundamentalists”). First, “hateful” is now synonymous with “intolerant of certain minority groups of interest to the GSS”? I’m all for tolerance, and I would like to think of myself as in the “liberally religious” camp when it comes to my attitudes toward minority groups. But in my limited understanding of econometrics (i studied it a few years in College, and thus did not have the vast training Dr. Cragun has so forgive me), the terms we use in operationalizing our study directly impact the type of conclusions we are allowed to draw. This move struck me as plain wrong. And second, Dr. Cragun ought to have more sympathy for John’s initial shock at the LDS Church’s inclusion in the “fundamentalist” category, and therefore recognize the very legitimate (even if visceral) urge to protest (again, not just because people don’t like hard truths). Mormons inclusion with fundamentalists, as Dr. Cragun even concedes, is odd given many of the demographic tendencies (wealth, education, etc.). So, when Dr. Cragun calls Religious Fundamentalists “hateful,” without searching for the nuance as he was otherwise wont to do on behalf of Richard Dawkins’s hatefulness of the religious, he is being unduly harsh toward his former faith and hypocritical in his analysis.
2) I guess this is more of a question but it touches on a concern of mine. Again, disclaimer – my knowledge of econometrics/statistics is woefully outmatched here. But as I understand it, most of Dr. Cragun’s data is useful for understanding correlations rather than causations, yet there seemed to be, in the tone and direction of the conversation, some hidden, implicit assumption of causation. Further, many of the effects for which Dr. Cragun has graded these four categories seem very influenced by education and socioeconomic status. In other words, many of the conclusions drawn in his book (which I am looking forward to reading, but admittedly have not yet) seem really susceptible to multicollinearity problems. Without any instrumental variables, it seems that all causation and many of the correlation conclusions are suspect. Can you help me understand how you have avoided this?
Again, though, just because I only highlighted my concerns with the podcast should not underscore how tremendously valuable and insightful it was. I learned a lot and truly do look forward to reading your book. Great work!
Brad, I always like your comments you seemed to be very thoughtful and balanced. Refreshing.
Hi Brad,
Great questions.
1) I’m harsh on fundamentalists. But not without reason. I haven’t posted all of the figures in the book (you’ll have to buy it to see them!), but in the chapter on tolerance and prejudice, it’s pretty apparent that fundamentalists are really prejudiced. To give a sampling – 20% of the nonreligious oppose homosexual marriage, 61% of fundamentalists do; 19% of the nonreligious think homosexual sex is wrong while 70% of fundamentalists do. I’ve heard lots of people try to explain why opposition to homosexuality is not prejudice, but those “explanations” fall flat to me. For example, people chalk it up to scripture, but they are selectively quoting passages of the Bible and ignoring neighboring sections, which suggests this isn’t about following religious dictates but justifying prejudices. In my opinion, those gaps are big – very big. What’s more, and this is why I tend to be hyperbolic with fundamentalists, the most extreme religious fundamentalists would like to deny me the right to exist: atheists should be killed, according to some fundamentalists (e.g., dominion theology advocates). For a rather obvious reason, I CANNOT tolerate that. So, yeah, I go after fundamentalists, but I believe for good reason.
Now, the fact that Mormons get grouped into the fundamentalist camp isn’t entirely fair based on that last point, as most Mormons (at least members of the LDS Church) would grant me the right to live (FLDS would take bigger issues with my existence). But if you look at Mormons’ views toward homosexuality, they fall right in line with other fundamentalists. Likewise with their views toward atheists, communists, women, and racists (all groups examined in the book). Also, Mormons tend to fall in line with fundamentalists on science acceptance. So, while Mormons differ in some ways, they align with fundamentalists in many other ways.
2) I do imply causation here, again with justification. There is a great study by Johnson et al. that illustrates a causal relationship between Christian religious ideas and prejudice: https://spp.sagepub.com/content/1/2/119.abstract
So, yes, this has been shown to be causal.
As per your second point, I note in the methodological appendix that almost all of the relationships I have identified hold up when you include statistical controls. Just to illustrate this, here is the output of a very basic linear regression predicting attitudes toward homosexual sex:
https://imgur.com/kDRy2jF
Included are just three variables – education, respondent’s sex, and how fundamentalist someone is. All three variables are significant predictors of attitudes toward homosexual sex, but the strongest, even when you control for the other two, is religious fundamentalism. In other words, fundamentalists are still prejudiced when you control for their lower levels of education.
In sum, yep, I’m not a fan of fundamentalism because it has repeatedly been shown to increase prejudice and intolerance. And, as I wrote in the book and said in the podcast, we need tolerance in our increasing globalized world.
I hope that makes sense.
Thanks for the thorough response! Again, I look forward to reading the book and thanks for the podcast!
I’m sorry, but this was extremely disappointing. I found it to be little more than an hour-long lecture on why secularism rocks and religion sucks. It’s hard to see this as an “objective” book when we consider the souce and his leanings.
Andrew, in logic we call your comment an “ad hominem”. You aren’t debating what I’ve said, your attacking my character. You’re free to do that, but it’s unlikely anyone will take you seriously if you do. If you don’t like what I’ve said, take issue with it: download the data and examine it for yourself. The data are publicly available. That’s why I chose to use the data I did.
Maybe the reason you find this disappointing is because what I’ve said runs counter to what you believe. As a result, you want to reject what I’ve said. And, for you, the easiest way to do that is to simply dismiss my arguments and data based on the fact that I’m not a believer, like you. That’s precisely the attitude I’m trying to counter with my work.
I wouldn’t call it an “ad homonym” attack by Andrew at all in questioning the objectivity of your book. When you seem to struggle during the entire podcast to accept any benefit at all of religion even when science is on it’s side without having to bring up some supporting “nuance” to the contrary, you come across more as a non-religious apologetic rather than from any position of neutrality which you would generally hope to expect with someone working in the social sciences. I think the perfect example of this was writing off greater levels of happiness with delusion. It’s not because their life is filled with love or peace or purpose….they’re simply delusional! Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think your entirely one-sided, but it does seems like you do arrange your data to fit your particular world view. Just saying…I don’t think Andrew is the only one dismissing arguments that run contrary to what he believes.
Adam,
Of course no one is objective. We all have biases. But I didn’t gather the data and anyone can verify the data. I may interpret it differently than others when there is room to interpret the data. But does that mean you should dismiss the whole book? In my opinion, of course not. But that’s what Andrew is suggesting. Because I don’t share his biases, then everything I say is suspect. That is an ad hominem. He isn’t critiquing my argument, he’s critiquing me.
Wow, that’s not what I got out of it at all. I felt like Ryan was pretty clear in saying that his harsh criticism is of fundamentalist religion, and he even expressed his hesitance to lump the LDS Church in that camp (even though it officially is).
And I agree that your last point is an ad hominem argument: He can’t be objective because he doesn’t agree with me. By that logic, why should we trust anything a believer says about religion?
Ryan – My question is….what is the overall well-being of non-religious fundamentalists (i.e. the followers of Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris who tend to be intolerant towards the religious)? Are they happy? Healthy? Productive?
Hi John,
I mention at the very end of the book that almost all of these relationships hold for atheists, and in many cases that are accentuated. In other words, atheists are even more educated, more wealthy, more intelligent, more tolerant (except of fundamentalists), more accepting of science, more gender egalitarian, etc. The reason I didn’t focus on them is because of small sample sizes. But, increasingly, there are datasets that include lots of atheists. And, just because I hadn’t looked in the GSS for this, here’s a crosstab of belief in god by happiness:
https://imgur.com/0IBw65c
Turns out, atheists are about as happy as theists. So, yeah, atheists (which isn’t necessarily what you meant by “fundamentalist” atheists) come out pretty good on all of these characteristics.
I guess I’m curious to know if fundamentalism is “bad” whether it’s of the religious or non-religious type.
I do take atheists who exhibit “fundamentalist” tendencies to task in the book. I think you and I are in agreement that atheism of that sort doesn’t do much good. But as far as characteristics go, they tend to be pretty good manifestations of secular humanism.
Also, Luke Galen has some great work on this topic that suggests atheists fare pretty well when it comes to subjective well-being:
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/arp/2011/00000033/00000002/art00003
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22925142
Ahh John, the old trope of “fundamentalist” atheism being the false dichotomy of, well, anything other than the embrace of the metaphysical world, or at least the nod or hope of its mushy, squishy possibility. Yes, the materialist worshipers of microscopes and telescopes and the very scientific method attempting to keep far from us our likely propensity to delude ourselves, it is the atheist, who although being open to the concept of God, is labeled a fundamentalist when we insist the unlikelihood that your concept of God, your religion out of the thousands of Gods and religions that have followed our species, yea the anthropomorphic angry bearded Caucasian may not exist. I think there is amazing projecting from believers towards atheists. Yes, fundamentalism is bad whether it’s of the religious or non-religious type. Criticism of religion and insisting that faith and the numinous cannot be proved, just believed or not believed is not fundamentalist behavior. Hell, we atheists will even give you that religion can and does bring happiness to its adherents and well may be happier than non-believers myself included, although I must posit that going from believing Mormon to confidently and firm atheism has brought an amazing amount of happiness, and a deep satisfaction, meaning, and liberation.
This brings me to your happiness and well being question. Who says that happiness is the ultimate end point for us as a species? You know that the majority of atheists are well educated, non-criminal, productive members of society. We tend to support equality, compromise, societal advancement. We know more about religion than any religious group (this same study showed we were followed closely by Mormons when it came to knowledge about the Bible and comparative religion) and we are generally concerned for the welfare of our fellow creatures. Are we as happy as the religious? I doubt it, and I don’t think we should be. In fact, the question of happiness is in my estimation the question of a child. Asking if there is a greater happiness in belief than non-belief is like asking if a child is happier than an adult. I would say a healthy child who is not a product of abuse or exploitation is basically happier than an adult of the same circumstance. I’d say it is a happier circumstance to believe in Santa Clause than to not believe. Ecclesiastes reminds that “With much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge the more grief.” That ignorance is bliss is not far off. In addition ignorance breeds confidence, breeds solipsism, and a particular lack of humility. We atheists do stare the abyss of death without consolation and it would be nice to believe. But believing would not alter reality, and my non-belief has led me to take every day as extremely rare and important, I see too many happy religionists who put off till “the other side” the execution of important endeavors, including the pursuit of the true circumstance of our reality.
At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is the concept of self-actualization. Of all the characteristics Maslow and Goldstein used to describe self actualization, happiness was not one of them. Some characteristics include:
-Efficient perceptions of reality
-Comfortable acceptance of self, others, nature.
-Fellowship with humanity.
-Comfort with Solitude.
-Continued freshness of appreciation.
I am an atheist. It is not only my belief that probably, most likely God does not exist, but evidence points towards this conclusion as well, at least the Gods that have for millions of years been articulated by human minds. That God could exist inside the laws of physics or elsewhere I’m open to, but until that purpose and observation has been established, let’s just concentrate on the hear and now, which is this world, within which there are great challenges that would wipe the smile off anyone’s face that comprehends them. Let’s let our kids grow up happy. But dare I say, when we become adults let’s put that away and become men and women of Christ, and with sobriety and an eye single, work within the framework of reality towards the betterment of our societies, our planet, and our fellow man.
Hey Rude Dog,
I very much enjoyed reading about your perspective. I was surprised by where you ended up and it brought to mind some questions I have had since studying Maslow’s hierarchy–well one question anyway and that is, where do you think Jesus of Nazareth would come out on this scale?
-Efficient perceptions of reality.
-Comfortable acceptance of self, others, nature.
-Fellowship with humanity.
-Comfort with Solitude.
-Continued freshness of appreciation.
Antoher question: Your candor about how “we atheists do stare the abyss of death without consolation” is not something that the atheists I know seem willing to say. do you think this comes from your atheism or former Mormonism? And, when you discuss death, with your atheist friends how is the discussion different than with religious believers. I would be very interested to know if those conversations are as different as I often have to assume they might be.
Thanks!
Probably ought figure out if Jesus existed or not before we assign him a step on the hierarchy. I tend to think there is enough evidence that he probably did exist, even if he didn’t his life and teachings have philosophical merit. One of the more profound teachings was his disassociation from belonging to the world. “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head” would put the Nazarene maybe outside the structure. Maslow described a hierarchy of needs, not sure the story that is Jesus would belong inside a human needs model.
Oh Death, oh death! won’t you spare me over till another year! It is this fear of death and the fear of each other that has driven us into the faith myths and religions that attempt to assuage such fears. On death, let me quote a hero of mine: “When Socrates was sentenced to death for his philosophical investigations and for blasphemy, he said, ‘well if I’m lucky, I might be able to hold conversation with other great thinkers and doubters too’. In other words the discussion of what is good, what is beautiful, what is noble, what is pure, what is true could always go on. Why is that good? Why would I like that? Because that is the only conversation worth having. And whether it goes on after I die, I do not know, but it is the conversation I want to have while I am still alive.’ Which means to me the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer not worth having. I want to live my life taking risks all the time, that I don’t know anything like enough yet, that I haven’t understood enough, that I can’t know enough, that I’m always operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I urge you to look around yourselves at those that would tell you, people who would tell you that you’re dead till you believe as they do. What a terrible thing to be telling a person, that you can only live by accepting an absolute authority. Don’t think of it as a gift, think of it as a poison chalice, and push it aside however tempting it is. Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come your way.”
I will get your book. Thanks. In addition to the questions above, I had a couple of observations. I believe you mention that the divorce rate is going down, leaving the impression (at least in my mind) that there is some trend toward committed stability in relationships (or more natural, healthy serial relationships?)–even as the indicators of religiosity are declining. However, it seems to me that the rate of marriage is also declining as people increasingly choose to form non-marriage relationships. What that means for society in the long run is, well, yet to be determined.
On a related point about declining teenage/out of wedlock births, I’m not sure what to conclude about that in light of the easy access to abortion services and morning after pills. I think the societal implications of fetal abortions versus births to unwilling or ill-prepared mothers is still open for future generations to learn.
Finally, I generally agree with your response to the “we need to procreate our way to economic and social prosperity” or, in the Mormon context, all this spirits waiting to be born. I’ve found there is no way to have a discussion about this with my conservative, fundamentalist inclined friends as they start with the sure knowledge that God is going to solve the problem at the Second Coming: End of discussion.
Hi Doug,
Yeah, the divorce rate ticked down just a little, so it’s now just under 50% of first marriages ending in divorce. But, you’re right that the marriage rate has gone down, too. And the implications for society aren’t clear. It doesn’t seem to have caused major problems in, say, Sweden, where a far higher percentage of people aren’t marrying and are instead cohabiting than they are here in the US. But, you never know.
Yeah, I think procreating your way to economic prosperity is short-sighted, at least until we start colonizing places off the earth (that’s my sci-fi optimism coming through). Until we have that technology and a commitment to live off-planet, I’m wary of efforts to prop up birth rates.
Ryan,
Thanks for the analyses that you ran in response to my earlier question; the question was whether religion may encourage high-SES adults to have more children. If I understood your results correctly, after controlling for a number of important demographic factors, high-SES liberals have .40 FEWER children compared to high-SES fundamentalists (Mormons included), and high-SES adults never going to church have .64 FEWER children than high-SES adults going more than once a week (easily most active Mormons). These results apply only to the top earners in the United States.
I am not sure if you and Doug were commenting on these analyses specifically or only my related comments about whether depopulation contributes to economic decline. I am on the fence about whether increasing RAW population numbers can solve some of the social and economic problems that are faced in developed countries. What I do think is a compelling story, and also ironic, is that the most capable (most educated and highest earning) people in the United States, seemingly as they become more secularized, have fewer children (although it was cross-sectional data). I think that you are right, that it is getting harder to be a parent in the modern world, but it appears that being religious either makes it easier or encourages high-SES individuals to do this hard thing.
GET READY FOR MY RANT: The United States is slipping in the areas of math and science education. I think this is probably more due to selection issues (more and more children unequipped for learning) rather than the commitment the nation makes to education. As a demographic category, young people are some of the least employable in the U.S. As the tax system gets more progressive, the population ages, and fewer children are born to families with significant amount of resources to invest in them, there are much larger numbers of people slipping into the “receiving government support” side of the equation and fewer making it into the “paying for government support” side of the equation, and these devastating symptoms are causing markets and governments to fail in the most secularized, supposedly “first-world” countries, including the U.S.
REFRAMING A “MORMON STORIES PODCAST” MESSAGE: John has been showing his listeners that the “best and brightest” have been leaving the Mormon Church (i.e. religion); although he has been able to stay in. Almost invariably, the childhood experiences have been fantastic, from parents grounded in the faith, and perhaps a bit delusional, but because of it are willing to make incredible sacrifices in bearing children, teaching those children to be hardworking, and lovers of the truth—a recipe for upward mobility. Then some, or possibly many of these, become secularized, atheistic, etc… (breaking the hearts of their faithful mothers) and are less willing to give to the world what their mothers gave to the world. The hard-core atheists and the Mormons will always have this in common: they MUST proselytize!
Clinton,
I think about why the US is becoming a little less competitive on science and math differently. First, if you only look at wealthy Americans, their children are doing great and actually rank near the very top in science and math education. But when you include poorer and working class kids in the averages, then the US is doing pretty poor. I think knowing both of those numbers is interesting and important as it indicates the following: We still have some great educational institutions, but they are increasingly restricted only to the wealthy.
Second, as an educator, it seems to me like there is a serious lack of motivation among many of our students. The way I try to explain this to my students is with the following scenario: For the upward-striving person in rural China, if she doesn’t work really, really hard, she may not eat, and the sacrifices her parents made will go to waste (plus her parents may not eat). Compare that to a kid raised in the US today. If she doesn’t really work that hard and doesn’t push herself in school, what’s the worst that will happen to her? She’ll end up with a lower-middle or working class job. The result is lots of kids in the US who aren’t motivated, despite having advantages.
Now, of course, there are many kids in the US who are being raised in the equivalent of undeveloped-world poverty who are heavily motivated to escape but are limited by their resources. So, yeah, it’s complicated.
As far as religion playing a role… I have a child who will be raised middle-class with two parents who are PhDs. He’ll have lots of advantages. But I have no intention of having as many kids as my parents did (9) or my wife’s parents did (5). Part of that is cost; there is no way I could afford to have 9 kids with my salary; even 5 would be challenging. Part of that is I am worried about population sizes and overpopulation. And part of that is I want to give my child as much attention and as many advantages as possible. So, I’m not going to have lots of kids, but the one I have will, in all likelihood, be highly educated. Religion isn’t motivating me, obviously, but neither is my lack of religion preventing me from having lots of kids. Cost, overpopulation, and my ability to raise my son with as many advantages as I can give him are the primary factors involved.
Ryan,
I am quite disturbed by the implications of what you just said so I am seeking some clarification. Are you arguing that in order to properly motivate kids today we need to create a society in which they and their parents worry about whether they will eat or not? If that is what the data says then that is what the data says … but I would find that to be quite a dis-heartening discovery about the nature of our world.
I have lived in China and have found, anecdotally, that what motivates those Chinese I have met is a confidence and assurance that their hard work will be rewarded with a life better than their parents. Is it possible that a positive outlook on the future could be the reason for a more successful youth?
Your response is very interesting! I think it supports an affirmative to what I have been asking about the role of religion all along—whether it encourages high-SES families to have more children. I agree that we still have advantaged children at the top with heavy investments from their parents, and others at the bottom with parents who have less to give, (never mind your description about how safety nets are eroding the middle-class) but the only way that could lead to a net loss in human capital on a national level is if there are increasingly fewer advantaged children to offset children with less human capital. This is where I think religion may play a positive role for the country—even if it is a minor role. Everyone agrees that our nation is becoming more secularized, especially among the most educated, and your data showed that high-SES individuals retreating from religion invest their resources in fewer children.
I have to be honest, I chuckled when I learned that the religious generation in your family (your parents and your wife’s parents) produced 14 PhDs (or, I assume, the functional equivalent) and that your atheist generation will produce one. I am not at all, trying to make any recommendations for your individual family on such a truly sacred and rational matter, but on a sociological level, doesn’t the retreat of High-SES families away from investment in parenting harm society? Whatever the reasons, the highly religious are still willing to make these investments; investments that can benefit everyone.
Clinton, if more Americans are slipping into the “receving side” of government support and lack the adequate resources to invest in their children, I think we need to take an honest look at why this is happening. Your “recipe for upwarding mobility” doesn’t tell the whole story. What about factors like today’s astronomical college admission costs and predatory interest rates for student loans, out-of-control healthcare costs and the difficulty in obtaining insurance, corporations outsourcing jobs to overseas sweatshops, and a stagnant minimum wage that’s almost impossible for workers to live on let alone support a family.
Mary, I don’t think that I was trying to outline a recipe for upward mobility, I was merely asking whether high-SES couples who are also highly religious raise more children than high-SES secular couples do.
Clinton, forgive me if I’ve misinterpreted your comments somehow. But your premise seems to be that if the people in society with wealth and resources became more religious they would have more children and that would solve the problems of poverty, government dependency, and economic crisis. But isn’t that kind of elitist? How exactly does that work? The rich keep reproducing until the poor die off? I agree that we as a society should be trying to produce more people with wealth and resources. But instead of trying to produce them by encouraging people who already have wealth and resources to have more babies, why can’t we produce them by making wealth and resources available to those who DON’T already have them? Consider the Scandinavian countries. They are among the most irreligious in the world, yet they are consistently ranked as the richest, most stable, most egalitarian, and happiest. So their success clearly does not derive from religiosity. It derives from smart social and economic policies. Yes, their birthrates are low. But they are experiencing a lot of immigration too. Presumably those immigrants, who likely arrive with less wealth and education, will benefit from their host coutries’ progressive policies and with time will assimilate and become equally prosperous contributors.
I’d like to say, since I was mentioned in the podcast, that I agree with Ryan’s characterization of the research concerning religion and happiness. Religious people report higher levels of happiness than do irreligious people, but that simple summary which I gave to John some time ago does not convey the nuance that exists in the data. And, yes, it is based primarily on data collected in the US, as Ryan points out.
Ryan, thanks for the podcast. I really enjoyed it. A few questions:
1. I assume that factors like economic status, level of education, physical health, (and any others I haven’t thought of) are much stronger drivers of happiness than religiosity. Can we quantify the relative effects of these different factors?
2. To what extent can self-reported happiness statistics be skewed by the fact that in many fundamentalist religions (like Mormonism), it is more-or-less a religious requirement to be happy?
3. I think that the religion that someone identifies in a survey is far less important than whether or not they participate regularly in or donate money to a particular religious group. Have you done any breakdowns based on these indicators?
4. You pointed out that religiosity is decreasing dramatically in the United States, and I was hoping you could go into more detail about how we know this is the case. In particular, is there any reliable data on trends in religious donations per capita or activity rates in major religions? How does the data change when you break it down by age?
Hi Mike,
1) Regression allows you to examine the factors you listed simultaneously and get a general sense of the relative strength of each when the others are controlled (i.e., held constant). Here’s an output from a regression that does this (the dependent variable is happiness; the independent variables are income, education, health, sex, and fundamentalism; the data are the 2012 GSS):
https://imgur.com/fDzVwUN
When you put all of these in, income and health are significant predictors (indicated in the last column; values below .05 are considered “statistically significant,” which indicates there is a relationship that is not likely due to chance); education, sex, and fundamentalism are not. This aligns with what we know about happiness: income to a certain level matters (about $50k to $75k; after that it doesn’t really matter) and health matters. Religion doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.
2) This suggestion isn’t all that different from what I suggest in the book: a happiness delusion. I’m reticent to go so far as to say that being happy is required in Mormonism, but it does seem like many Mormons believe: (a) Mormonism is supposed to make you happy so (b) you have to act happy. But I don’t have any rigorous data on that, so I can’t assert that with confidence. That’s my experience, and the experience of lots of other people with whom I’ve spoken, but until I have data to support it, I won’t assert it.
3) Yeah, other indicators of religiosity are important. Many researchers like to use attendance, but I find attendance problematic because not everyone attends and those who do aren’t always representative of the religion as a whole. So, yeah, you can do these breakdowns lots of ways.
4) You can read Chapter 26 in my book! :)
If you want something now without reading my book, try the Nones Report I helped write that was released as part of the ARIS series:
https://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2011/08/NONES_08.pdf
It presents some of the data on the increase of nonreligious people in the US. And, yes, young people are more likely to be nonreligious than are older people – a lot more likely. Data on that is presented in the book as well.
With regard to Fundamentalists getting an ‘A’ in ‘Delusion 101’, Karl Marx was on the right track: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”.
A great podcast.
One thing about this podcast… It sent my wife and I into deep reflection on whether we were happier during all those years of activity or, now that we’ve been out a year and a half, are we happier now?
The thing is we loved the people in our stake and loved showing up to big hugs, smiles, fist bumps, high fives, and sharing stories from the week. Loved! We seriously miss that. And we loved the stake plays, teaching family relations, and some sacrament talks.
Our first year out was sad and hard because we missed our friends and were trying to suppress thoughts that were creeping in about the General Authorities voting themselves lives of the rich & famous, and that we had been too trusting of what the church says.
But now we feel we’ll be forever grateful for all the wonderful youth leaders who helped our kids turn out great with wonderful marriages. We were stretched, and learned to teach and serve and speak.
But we’re pretty sure we’re happier now because we have more time for our family, and to focus on new and different causes without the overhead of temple tips, tithing settlement, 4-hour leadership meetings, etc.
I don’t envy sociologists who have to try and compare happiness of different groups because we found it so hard to even understand our own.
Thanks for sharing, Chris!
Likewise, thanks for sharing Chris.
The things you describe missing the most are the things that held the greatest appeal toward Mormonism for me, as well. I was very conscious of the loss of community when I decided to stop attending. Losing that was hard.
But, and this is, of course, anecdotal, I would agree that I’m happier now that I’m out, as does my wife. My wife is the one who discusses this more often than I do. For her, the reduction in guilt and the greater acceptance of empirically based information is what makes the most difference as far as happiness goes. There is no more holding one’s self up to an impossible standard of perfection. So what if we don’t read scriptures or say our prayers (neither of which we ever do anymore, but hopefully you get the point)? So what if I try a glass of wine (and realize I don’t like it)? So what if I see someone who is attractive and think, “That person isn’t my spouse, but he/she is attractive.”? The guilt from religion is gone. And that has made a huge difference in our quality of life.
We still feel guilt, but over completely different things. Are we spending as much time as we can with our son? Are we letting him watch too much TV? Is he too spoiled? Do we spend enough time working on our relationship? Our guilt is now guided by what matters most to us: our family. And dropping the time spent on religion means our son gets our undivided attention all weekend long, every weekend. We still care about quality of life and still have morals, they just aren’t dictated by people who know nothing about us or people who died centuries or millenia ago.
Thanks, Ryan. Great response. I can’t wait to read your book.
My wife really resonates with your comment about guilt, which I always found odd because she was one of the most active members I’ve ever known. She was always off to the hospital to visit someone sick, or making sure I got my home teaching done, or working at the cannery. I would have thought she could feel good for all that she did instead of feeling guilty for the things she couldn’t get to, like reading the scriptures enough, etc.
I’m not sure I felt guilt in the same way, but I sure felt conflicted. As a Bishop with 3 teenaged boys at home, how do you spend all that time on tithing settlement and still be a good dad? One of the General Authorities boomed over the pulpit at a leadership conference, “Bishops, if you’re not spending 50% of your time with the young men of the ward, you’re failing at your calling.” I thought that was very powerful and it really applied to me because of my sons being so active in scouts and their quorums.
But how do you make that happen? By counseling less? Visiting fewer people in their homes? Going to the temple less? Making your tithing settlement meetings 10 minutes instead of 15? Each time you do one of those things, there are High Councilmen, ward members and Stake Presidency members who will remind you not to cut back on those things.
At least in your business and private lives, you can focus on things you think are critical and really nail them, instead of being pulled in so many directions that you’re like the jack of all trades but master of none.
Why should it be surprising that sociologists put the LDS Church in the fundamentalist bucket again? While Mormonism has many intellectual and liberal members, institutionally and in practice, the Church remains a fundamentalist religion. The last time I checked the LDS Church believes or supports:
Creationism
Noahs Flood
Tower of Babel
Exclusive Truth
Exclusive Authority
Literal Prophet
Actual Ministering of Angels
Actual Healing by Priesthood
Evil Spirits, Satan…
Etc, etc, etc
I suppose these kinds of beliefs would not matter so much if it seemed like they were not somehow major parts of the engine that drives the Church to such an abysmal human rights record. These kinds of beliefs seem to give the Church the belief that they have the authority from God to discriminate against women, blacks and homosexuals.
Your right John, the gate of tolerance should swing both ways. However, when it comes to the LDS Church, the gate is only swinging the one true way. The Church is an institution that pretends to have the moral authority to tell homosexuals how to live their lives. How does an idea like this deserve equal tolerance? It took until 1978 for blacks to get the priesthood! 1978! It took a letter writing campaign by a bunch of members who were tired of tolerating female inequality to get a woman to pray in a Church meeting………that took place in 2013. I mean it is 2013 and a women just now prayed in conference.
John, I can tolerate your brand of Mormonism and even learn a thing or to from it. However, I can’t tolerate the programs and policies of the Church because they don’t even support basic human rights.
I would love to hear a discussion in the future on what kinds of pressure and tolerance have contributed to the church changing in the past. What actually gets the church to change? What kind of tolerance contributed to the church changing its policies regarding polygamy, blacks, women and homosexuals?
Great podcast. Anybody that refers to soccer as futbol knows what they are talking about.
Great comments. Thanks, Seasickyetstilldocked. And I’d love to host such a discussion for a future podcast episode. Please let me know if/how you think it should be structured.
Great points, Seasick. John’s comments about “atheists should be tolerant of religious fundamentalists” got on my nerves, too. It’s a complete false equivalence. Fundamentalist intolerance leads to gay people being denied equal rights, women being denied control of their own bodies, and, globally speaking, people being killed for being the wrong religion, speaking up against religious abuse, or even the simple act of going to school. Atheist intolerance leads to what? Internet arguments and jokes that offend people’s religious sensitivities? You’ll forgive me if I don’t lose too much sleep over that.
Cylon,
In my humble opinion, whenever there are two (or more) sides to an issue, especially a contentious one, both sides can benefit from practicing tolerance. Even if one side is 95% correct and the other is 5% correct, each has room to improve, and progress is more likely when tolerance is practiced.
When you wrote about “women being denied control of their own bodies” were you referring to abortion? I think this is an issue that brings out much intolerance on both sides–because there is so much at stake. The functional equivalent of abortion rights for women is not merely an “internet argument and joke” but the willing death (or some would say murder) of a child. Why couldn’t an intelligent atheist see some shred of credibility in that type of fundamentalist viewpoint? As a religious person, I would have much more respect for the atheist who says, “I understand that you feel that abortion is killing a child, but even then, I think that the rights of the mother should outweigh that, or that we should not penalize that choice.”
When the message that comes across from an atheist is something like “believing that a fetus is a child is a wacko notion” what good can possibly come from making a statement like that? I am not saying that is what you said; I am simply trying to illustrate a point.
In a way, I think what John is saying is that being peaceable perhaps is as important as seeking to be right all the time when it comes at the expense of others. One of the slogans from the abortion debates that I mostly disagree with, yet still greatly admire is “safe, legal, and rare.” The “rare” part captures my attention, because it represents what could be common ground on both sides of the issue. Even those who want abortion rights do not generally want to increase the number of abortions when pregnancy in the first place can be avoided. Opponents, of course, also believe the rarer the better.
Beautifully put, Clinton.
Abortion is a part of what I was getting at with my comment, but not all of it. Often those attitudes go along with a willingness to deny birth control to women and generally dictate how they should live their lives.
But that was just a small part of my complaint, and not even necessary to my point. I was annoyed because when John complained about atheist intolerance, he completely ignored the context of what causes it. I’m all for respectful debate, but I don’t see being peaceable as being the highest priority. There are some things that do take precedence. Additionally, merely understanding someone else’s position does not automatically solve all problems. I understand perfectly well that if someone believes that God placed women on the earth to be subservient to men and that their purpose is only to raise children, then in their mind allowing women to work is a great evil. It might even land a woman in hell for all eternity, which would make it worth paying almost any price to help her avoid such a fate. Just because I can see where they’re coming from doesn’t mean I can just stand by and comply with their wishes. And in order to change someone’s opinion on certain things you have to completely change the foundation of their entire belief system, which is often impossible. When there is no common ground to be found with someone, what do you do then? Sure, you can still be polite to them, but if what they’re doing causes measurable harm to people, I feel an obligation to oppose that even if they have good intentions.
I think you have done a good job of showing that opposition can be a virtue, just as I have tried to show that tolerance can be a virtue. Each has their place. Either one can also be a vice, and I think that the worst kind of opposition comes from those who already have the upper hand. It is hard for those in power to practice tolerance; by then it is purely an intrinsic practice which is what makes it so beautiful–at least to me. I think that the major premise for practicing tolerance is faith in that idea that there is always some common ground–even if it is small. It certainly takes work to find it!
> I think that the major premise for practicing tolerance
>is faith in that idea that there is always some common ground–even
>if it is small. It certainly takes work to find it!
So well said.
I agree with your last comment, Clinton. It does take work, and I don’t want to make it sound like I oppose looking for common ground. Maybe I’m pushing back on this point because growing up I always believed the “contention is of the devil” line, and thought that any form of disagreement was automatically bad. I now feel that sometimes, contention is justified and necessary. But it’s certainly not the first thing I turn to when dealing with people I disagree with. Tolerance should be our first choice when faced with new people and situations.
Homer,
I’m not suggesting we withhold food to motivate young people. I’m suggesting that it appears young people in less developed countries have GREATER intrinsic motivation than young people in the US because of the reality of their situation – they really, really want a better life than their parents (as you noted). And, for many of them, in order to get that better life they’re going to have to work extremely hard (and that may not be sufficient). That dedication often means foregoing: late nights drinking and partying, spending days at the beach or campus pool, not watching TV and movies, not doing drugs, etc. (all of which are things my students do regularly, and assume are part of being college students).
Again, I’m not suggesting that we withhold food from our students. I’m just trying to help them realize that they are now competing with young people around the world. Alas, my meager attempts to motivate them typically fail.
After listening to this podcast, go to the Research on Religion website and listen to Rodney Stark discussing his new book “How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists.” Stark is a respected sociologist of religion and on virtually every factual point, he contradicts Cragun. The disagreements aren’t on matters of opinion but on matters of fact. One thing this may demonstrate is a limitation of science. Studies will often show contradictory things just because sampling error exists. Five out of every 100 studies will show that there is a significant relationship between variables when in fact there isn’t one. Since social scientists have a clear incentive to massage data to get statistical significance because non-siginificant results rarely get published, the incidence of false positives is demonstrably greater than five percent. Science (and especially social science) is by no means the neutral, objective enterprise Cragun and Dehlin imply. All those false positives leave ample scope for cherry picking studies when one wants to support a rhetorical point. The flat contradictions of virtually every factual claim (with cited studies that support all the contradictory facts) demonstrate this truth. Here is the link for the Research on Religion podcast. Listen to it. The contradictory claims get close to 100% of what Cragun asserts.
https://www.researchonreligion.org/player/index.php?episode=RoR_151_Stark_04302013
I agree. Everyone should listen to Stark’s podcast, too.
His ideas about secularization, religious economies, and Christianity have been widely refuted in the sociology of religion. As sociologists of religion like to joke, “Many people have made their careers publishing research showing how wrong Rodney Stark is.”
He also sponsored the Baylor Survey of Religion that has been shown to be poorly designed and remarkably biased (and probably serves as the basis of his pro-Christian book referenced in your post; not sure about that since I haven’t read his book yet). It doesn’t align with any of the other major surveys in the US as far as religious affiliation or participation goes. He does a great job of showing how apologetics masquerades as legitimate social science.
If I had more time, I’d refute every point he makes in that podcast with data. Well, actually, I already took that time. Read my book and check the data. Stark is, not surprisingly, wrong.
I’m listening to the podcast right now and I’m flabbergasted. He just claimed that the US has lower crime rates (except homicide) than does Europe. That is so false as to be laughable:
https://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf
Seriously. Pacumeni, if you want to take issue with my book or findings, try to find someone with credibility. Apologist Rodney Stark shouldn’t be your go-to guy.
Ryan,
The link you posted generally supports Stark’s claims, not yours. For every crime listed on the linked report, including homicide, there is at least one and in most cases a number of European nations that have higher, often much higher, crime rates than the United States. Readers can check the link out for themselves. Your derisive tone–“so false as to be laughable”–and the link to a source may convince some that, surely, the facts must be on your side of the question. But folks can check the link out for themselves to see if Stark’s claims are laughably wrong or if you are, at best, over stating your case in calling his claims laughable or, at worst, are making fast and loose false statements to score rhetorical points.
Stark suggested that European countries have much higher crime rates than the US. The report indicates the exact opposite. On some measures, some European countries are higher, but on all measures, the majority of European countries are lower than the US. That demonstrates that Stark was wrong. Here are the numbers:
-homicide – US is #3; only Estonia, which is Eastern European, ranks higher
-rape – US is #4; only Sweden ranks higher
-robbery – US is #8; Belgium, Spain, Portugal, France, and England rank higher
-assaults – US is #16; a variety of European countries are higher
-burglary – US is #13; several European countries are higher
-car theft – US is #10; Sweden, Italy, Denmark, France, and Ireland are higher
So, the US consistently ranks near the top in crimes, despite two facts: (1) it is more religious and (2) it is more punitive (it has the highest punitivity ratio of any country included in the report).
Stark was trying to say that US religiosity lowers crime rates. US crime rates, for all crimes, are higher than the majority of European countries, and on several are higher than all but one or two European countries. Ipso facto, Stark is wrong. Yea, “laughably wrong.”
As any competent sociologist would, Stark controls for the proportion of young males when making claims about religion and crime rates. (As I note above, the secular societies of Europe are in a demographic death spiral.) The median male age in the United States is lower–generally much lower–than that of all the European countries listed except for heavily Catholic Ireland, which is slightly younger than the US. Since the proportion of young males is powerfully correlated with crime rates, the US should have higher–generally far higher–crime rates than all the European countries except Ireland based on proportion of young males–but it doesn’t. The assault rate in Scotland is 5.7, in Sweden 3.5, in England 2.8, in Belgium 2.7, in Germany 2.4, in Finland 2.3, in Luxembourg 1.8, in Ireland and the Netherlands 1.3, and in Portugal and France 1.2 times the rate in the US. Burglary rates are higher than in the US by factors of 2.7 in Denmark, 1.8 in Austria, 1.4 in Sweden and England, and 1.2 Belgium and Switzerland. Sovenia and Northern Ireland are also higher than the US. The rape rate in Sweden is more than twice as high as that of the US, and the rates of England and Belgium are very similar in spite of the far lower proportion of young males. Vehicle thefts are substantially higher in Sweden, Italy, Denmark, France, and Ireland though it is harder to hide a stolen car in those smaller, more centrally regulated counties than in the US. For robbery, Portugal’s and France’s rate is 1.4, Spain’s 8.9, and Belgium’s 13 times greater than in the US. England is also higher than the US. Clearly, many European countries have far higher crime rates than the US despite the fact that all but Ireland should have lower rates given the powerful effects of young male demographics on crime. Stark’s claims are not laughably absurd nor are Cragun’s claims patently obvious. What is obvious to me is that Cragun’s use of numbers is rhetorical, not dispassionately and scientifically objective. Readers should understand that he sees the data through the prism of his anti-religious and especially anti-Mormon animus and selects data that support his preordained anti-religious thesis.
First, thanks for re-summarizing everything I previously posted but trying to spin it the other way.
Second, are you sure you want to defend Rodney Stark on this? If so, go ahead and explain away these papers that find the US has higher crime rates:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=110776
https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=139741
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935107000503
And, interestingly, this book (https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=DsN5glgW0v4C&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=international+crime+rates&ots=VnxM9JrABg&sig=er_Yr-Cp4iUjm3TIgRlp9oApidw#v=onepage&q=international%20crime%20rates&f=false), which specifically focuses on crime, indicates the percentage of young males is a weaker predictor of crime rates than all of the following:
-educational attainment
-individual past experience in criminal activities
-past incidence of crime in society
-level and growth of economic activity
-income inequality
-existence of profitable criminal activities
-strength of the police and the judicial system
So, if Stark is claiming the US should have much higher crime rates because there are more young men, and the US does have higher crime rates (though Stark claims it does not), just not higher than every country in Europe in every year, what exactly have you shown?
As any competent sociologist would, Stark controls for the proportion of young males when making claims about religion and crime rates. (As I note above, the secular societies of Europe are in a demographic death spiral.) The median male age in the United States is lower–generally much lower–than that of all the European countries listed except for heavily Catholic Ireland, which is slightly younger than the US. Since the proportion of young males is powerfully correlated with crime rates, the US should have higher–generally far higher–crime rates than all the European countries except Ireland based on proportion of young males–but it doesn’t. The assault rate in Scotland is 5.7, in Sweden 3.5, in England 2.8, in Belgium 2.7, in Germany 2.4, in Finland 2.3, in Luxembourg 1.8, in Ireland and the Netherlands 1.3, and in Portugal and France 1.2 times the rate in the US. Burglary rates are higher than in the US by factors of 2.7 in Denmark, 1.8 in Austria, 1.4 in Sweden and England, and 1.2 Belgium and Switzerland. Sovenia and Northern Ireland are also higher than the US. The rape rate in Sweden is more than twice as high as that of the US, and the rates of England and Belgium are very similar in spite of the far lower proportion of young males. Vehicle thefts are substantially higher in Sweden, Italy, Denmark, France, and Ireland though it is harder to hide a stolen car in those smaller, more centrally regulated counties than in the US. For robbery, Portugal’s and France’s rate is 1.4, Spain’s 8.9, and Belgium’s 13 times greater than in the US. England is also higher than the US. Clearly, many European countries have far higher crime rates than the US despite the fact that all but Ireland should have lower rates given the powerful effects of young male demographics on crime. Stark’s claims are not laughably absurd nor are Cragun’s claims patently obvious. What is obvious to me is that Cragun’s use of numbers is rhetorical, not dispassionately and scientifically objective. Readers should understand that he sees the data through the prism of his anti-religious and especially anti-Mormon animus and selects data that support his preordained anti-religious thesis.
Yikes, Rodney Stark… When I hear his name for some reason I think of Glenn Beck. Somewhere along the road they seem, at least to me, to have gone insane.
I listened to the interview last night. I find myself in agreement with Ryan on certain points. I have reservations about some of the things he said as well. The issues bothered me enough, that I feel compelled to write this. I was reminded of a brilliant quote from Michael Crichton as I listened to the interview:
“But now science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways—air, and water, and land—because of ungovernable science.”
Ryan was seemingly in favor of abortion. Didn’t have data to support a negative societal impact of abortion. I found it interesting how he aligned progressivism with secularists, and liberal practitioners of religion. He said that these people are more on track with the universal declaration of human rights. I find some irony and conflict here. In light of the trial of the abortion doctor in Philadelphia, I think it’s fair to raise the question as to when the unborn have “rights”. There are some serious questions to be raised in our civil society about when a human being first has rights. This is a question I would pose to him, because he suggested that secularists are more concerned about rights. What about the rights of the unborn? Are late term abortions exercising the rights of those babies? I just raise the question, because I see a disconnect in the idea that progressives are the champions of “rights” in this situation, because the rights of these children, at least in the late term abortion scenarios are not a minor “nuance”, as Ryan puts it…. I would remind Ryan that Margaret Sanger, the founder of planned parenthood was an advocate of negative eugenics. That doesn’t seem like a very “tolerant” progressive stance to me. There’s some serious lines that need to be drawn here, if our society is to stay in the “tolerant” category.
I took note of your discussion on pornography. Ryan suggested that there was no data suggesting that pornography was harmful to society, and that it could actually be beneficial. I would like to hear more information on what makes pornography consumption beneficial. I’m sure he driving at some kind of “release of sexual tension” or something. With that said, my biggest beef here is that I don’t think he’s looking at the damage caused in the production of pornography. What about the women who are subjected to these productions? Do you really think that women enjoy being objectified this way? I’ve seen interviews with women who were in the industry, and they were often sexually abused as youth, have drug problems, and often contract STDs. It’s ludicrous to suggest that pornography doesn’t harm people. I’m not suggesting it should be banned or anything, but there is no doubt that porn harms people, and it’s not just some contrived harm, manufactured by religions.
Another point of contention is Ryan’s comments on tolerance. He said that secularists/progressives are the most tolerant of minorities etc… He included communists in the list. I find this interesting because he said that secularists/progressives/atheists are not tolerant of fundamentalists…. This just cracks me up, because I have just as much reason to believe communists to be just as dogmatic as any religious fundamentalists…. This seems like selective tolerance to me.
Ryan where’s his political bias on his sleeve as well. The fact that he suggests that progressives are more tolerant of minorities in the first place is extremely misguided. What does he mean by this? Is he referring solely to religious context, or to a political one?
One of the last things I wanted to point out was his talk about premarital/extramarital sex. There is a big problem with this… especially with black minorities who have 70% of their births outside of wedlock. In the political arena, so called progressives control the vote of over 90% of blacks… They also have overwhelming control over the educational system…. This suggests to me that progressives are not doing very well with their own platform. They’re either not educating the black community well on birth control, or they’ve unintentionally created a mechanism that is incentivizing blacks to have children out of wedlock.
All in all, I take issue with academics like Ryan, because they tend to get stuck in a a dangerous paradigm. They can analyze data, but they really have a problem in diagnosing proper solutions. People that come up through the academic ranks tend to get indoctrinated into leftist/progressive ideologies. I think Ryan’s political stance was very evident, and tainted the objectivity of some portions of the interview.
Neil,
Thanks for the detailed, thoughtful reply. I’ll try my best to respond to your points.
First, abortion. I’m not in favor of abortion, but rather in favor of a woman’s right to control her fertility. I’m actually in favor of reducing abortions by increasing women’s access to birth control, as are almost all of the people who are pro-choice. Abortion should be the last option when it comes to controlling fertility, not the first.
Your bigger issue with abortion, though, seemed to hinge on the issue of rights. I’m reticent to get into a discussion about whose rights should take precedence – an unborn fetus’s rights or the mother’s rights, as these are debates that never seem to end. So, rather than debate this, can I just say my position and we respect each other’s position? I favor the rights of the living over the rights of the potentially living. I know not everyone will agree with that. And that’s okay. But that’s where I stand. And I’m not sure the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can provide a clear answer on this issue. So, this may just be an issue where we agree to mildly disagree. (If you want to pursue this further, I’m fine with that, but I’d really rather not debate the morality of abortion. I’m a sociologist, not an ethicist.)
Second, pornography. If I’m not mistaken I basically said in the podcast that porn is complicated, but not all bad and can even be good. Pornography is complicated by a number of factors. The type of pornography seems to matter. Why it is used seems to matter. How it is produced is also important. All of those are complications, and I get that. But the interview wasn’t really about pornography and the nuances of pornography consumption. A good summary of this research can be found here: https://www.sexscience.org/dashboard/articleImages/SSSS-Pornography.pdf
Basically, good research on this generally finds that nonviolent pornography increases normal sexual responses. Otherwise, it doesn’t really do anything else. Violent pornography has seen mixed results – sometimes no effect, sometimes a mild effect. But, most of the research shows that viewing non-violent pornography does not change people’s views toward women and at least one study has shown that people with more egalitarian gender attitudes are more likely to watch pornography. In short, porn helps people get off, quickly, effectively, and efficiently, and does little else (again, with the violent/nonviolent caveat in place). We can debate whether or not that is good or bad, but it generally doesn’t seem to cause problems.
Also, you mentioned porn production. I agree that it can be damaging. But there is also a lot of porn that is produced in less damaging ways. Admittedly I’m thinking about feminist pornography (e.g., https://www.feministpornography.com/synopsis.html), but not all women in porn are sexually abused and horribly mistreated. (Note: I don’t have numbers on this part. So, my argument here is a bit weaker.)
Third, I’m not sure what you mean by “selective tolerance”. Atheists tend not to be communists, but they tolerate people who disagree with them politically. That’s not really selective tolerance. As I noted in an earlier post, the reason why atheists tend to be less tolerant of religious fundamentalists is because fundamentalists don’t want us to exist.
Fourth, pre-marital sex. It seems like you’re singling out a weird situation here that isn’t exactly about pre-marital sex. It’s about out-of-wedlock births – and really, out of cohabiting, committed relationships births, too. What you’re suggesting in that section is that blacks have issues because they are having kids outside of committed relationships. I’m not going to disagree that anyone who has kids outside of a committed relationship is going to have problems, black or white. That’s true. But what does that have to do with pre-marital sex? If 95% of Americans are having sex before marriage and our society is not collapsing as a direct result, what’s the problem? And, FYI, I didn’t say anything about extramarital sex (at least, I hope I didn’t; I shouldn’t have). That’s a whole different can of worms that I’m not going to get into.
Fifth, you’re probably right about the last point. I don’t have great solutions. But, I also don’t see major problems here. What’s the solution to pornography if pornography isn’t a problem? What’s the solution to premarital sex if premarital sex isn’t a problem? What’s the solution to abortion if abortion isn’t a problem? I guess, if you see these things as problems you’ll need solutions. What are your solutions to these nonproblems?
Neil, I understand what you’re getting it, and I agree with you about pornography. But some of your claims are just plain uninformed. For example, in the case of Kermit Gosenell, the abortion doctor in Philadelphia. You make it sound like progressives and pro-choice advocates approve of what he did. They don’t. Nobody does. It wasn’t even legal. Except for cases where the mother’s life or health is in danger, late-term abortions are banned in the U.S. with bipartisan support(to say nothing of delivering full-term babies and then killing them with scissors).
Also, your statement that progressives “have control over the vote of 90% blacks” is just plain offensive. You’re implying that black people don’t have control over their own votes (i.e. opinions and ideas).
Also, since when do progressives control public school education? I wish. Then in places like Texas maybe abstinence-only sex ed would be done away with, along with religion being taught as science and the re-writing of textbooks to eliminate mention of the founding fathers owning slaves and to downplay other social ills in our history that don’t fit a sanitized conservative narrative.
Thanks for all the replies Ryan.
wonder what you think of Alain De Botton? He seems to offer a kinder treatment of religion and the religious, based not on it’s ‘truths’ but it’s utility. Thoughts? Thx!
I always like responding to “a dude”!
Like Alain de Botton, I disagree with Christopher Hitchens that “Religion Poisons Everything.” Hitchens is well-justified to criticize religion; I criticize it, too. But blanket condemnations of religion are too simplistic.
I think we can learn from religion and, as I point out repeatedly in my book, I think liberal religion and nonreligion can exist side-by-side. How successful de Botton will be in building social institutions that replace religion, I can’t say. Honestly, I hope he succeeds. And I do think there is merit in humanist ceremonies marking important milestones, like births, marriages, and deaths. But, as I said in the podcast, I’m not sure the future of religion is being replaced with a nonsupernatural equivalent. If we look at countries where religious observance has dropped to very close to zero (e.g., most of Western Europe), the landscape is not littered with humanist temples. It’s littered with futbol stadiums. People are building communities based on shared interests.
A good example… I love to hike. During a trip last summer to England for a conference I convinced my wife to let me stay over a few days to go hiking in Scotland. While the trip itself was amazing – everyone should go hiking in the Scottish highlands – what was even more amazing was the number of Europeans I met on my hikes. There were a fair number of Brits, but almost all of the people hiking with me were Germans, Swedes, Austrians, Italians, Spaniards, etc. They weren’t visiting churches or secular temples. They were visiting “natural temples.” They were recreating. They were spending their time in relaxing, pleasant pursuits with friends and family.
So, while I value the work of people like Alain de Botton and am sincerely interested to see what comes of it, I’m not convinced that is what will “replace” religion. I think some ceremonies will pop up to mark important milestones and then we’ll find community and companionship based on shared interests. My two bits. I could be wrong, but that’s what seems to have happened in Western Europe.
Ryan
I don’t check in at MS very often these days, but I am glad I did. Thanks to you and John for this interview!
And thanks also for making your papers (an wiki-books) so accessible from you website.
I have been reading the research of Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan on the psychology of anti-atheist prejudice and the origins of religious disbelief and I see some of your work complements that.
I’ll also look forward to reading your new book which seems to complement Phil Zuckerman’s and Luke Galen’s recent (and joint upcoming) work.
This all strikes me as a positive and productive follow-up to the “New Atheist” polemics – whose lasting value may be in how they paved the way for, and then gave way to, a deeper and more broadly accessible naturalistic understanding of religious belief and non-belief.
Best wishes,
JT
JT,
Glad you liked the podcast.
Seems like you’re pretty familiar with the other scholars doing work in this field. Gervais and Norenzayan are doing some of the most innovative work in this area. And Galen and Zuckerman both wrote blurbs for my book!
I agree that the “new atheists” probably paved the way for a new wave of more nuanced work on nonreligion that is less hostile and more scientific. There’s a lot of interest in this area and it doesn’t seem to be waning. Good time to be studying the nonreligious!
JT, you may have already seen this, but here’s a presentation Luke Galen did on the results of some surveys he did on the nonreligious a few years ago. https://doubtreligion.blogspot.com/2009/02/episode-32-profiles-of-godless.html.
Also, he’s a regular co-host on the Reasonable Doubts podcast and often talks about his sociology work, there’s lots of good stuff there.
Cylon,
Thanks for the link. I listen to Reasonable Doubts occasionally and now remember this episode – and now I that have the slides I’ll give it another listen.
Perhaps you remember a funny bit one of the panel did imitating Carl Sagan’s voice to portray a “Bizarro world” fundamentalist preacher delivering his version of Sagan’s Cosmos narration.
https://doubtreligion.blogspot.com/2008/03/episode-11-bizarro-world.html
Cheers
Yeah, I definitely remember that one. Strangely enough, I got a weird sense of sacrilege when I heard Carl Sagan’s voice talking about creation science and stuff. It was eerie.
I found the discussion of contemporary demon-belief fascinating. My memories of the movie The Exorcist as a 12 year old are among my most vivid. I remember not being able to listen to the theme music, Tubular Bells, for months – which was tough because it came up on the radio so often. I think what made The Exorcist so disturbing was my identification with the possessed child and the feeling of vulnerability that evoked.
Recently while flipping through a General Conference Ensign I found a talk in which “Satan and his minions” played a prominent role. I don’t see how this differs from demon-belief, except that contemporary Mormonism may present in a light enough manner that members can tacitly brush it off as soon as they step out of the chapel and back into their normal everyday lives.
Is Satan-speak still common at the ward level? My guess is that the church leadership knows not to lay it on too hard. My guess is that they are sensitive about crossing a line into the embarrassingly ridiculous or overtly manipulative. Perhaps the broader demographic of Mormonism, at least relative to some backwater evangelical congregations, demands a softer peddling of Satan. It might be interesting to statistically analyze of the frequency of the word Satan in church publications as a function of time.
And yet Satan remains embedded in the LDS belief system. To me this is the most pathetic feature of any religion that claims certainty in it interlocking revealed supernatural propositions. They can’t discard worn out ideas without losing the coherency that made its worldview so compelling at the start. This seems to leave members facing a cognitive dissonance that must be resolved by repression, disaffection, or retrenchment into a deeper fundamentalism. Perhaps this is a main driving force behind the proliferation of religious sects across the liberal-fundamentalist spectrum. Perhaps Mormonism is unique in being able maintain that spectrum within a single institution. If so, what are the forces that accomplish this? And will they continue to hold?
JT,
Ask and you shall receive. ;)
https://imgur.com/o5IOctw
That’s a graph of the frequency of occurrence of the word “Satan” in General Conference talks from 1897-2013. Looks like it was big in the 1970s, right when The Exorcist took off. Has definitely died down since then.
The changes could be a change in the vernacular terms being used. I wonder what this graph would look like if you included synonyms like “adversary” etc.
Remember “old scratch”? :)
Never heard that one … but you inspired me to look for others. The top hit on a Google search for “Satan nicknames” turned was the following LDS related site!
https://lds.about.com/od/basicsgospelprinciples/a/names_of_devil.htm
Poor old scratch didn’t make the list. Perhaps I’ll send it in. :)
Here’s the figure with the following words – satan, adversary, devil, and lucifer:
https://imgur.com/U3qLkfH
Looks the same. So, yeah, Mormons were influenced by The Exorcist, too. ;)
Excellent …thanks.
Ryan,
How much work did it take to put that graph together!?
I have always wanted to do this with terms like “Joseph Smith” and “Book of Mormon” to see if the foundation of the faith is being discussed less as history is more exposed.
(Would also like to see “church is true” or “true church”)
Any way to do this without copying and pasting all talks?
Building the “corpus” (all of the talks) took quite a while – several days worth of work. But I have software that pulls the words out. So, now, it’s pretty easy to generate these graphs (maybe 5 minutes). Here’s what I found with “church” and “true” within 5 words of each other:
https://imgur.com/BrFY0G9
I’m not the only person with this ability. A professor at BYU put something similar together that is publicly available:
https://corpus.byu.edu/gc/
That’s awesome. Thanks for showing me that!
Wow, that’s amazing!
Thank you for this interesting podcast. I will be buying your book. I also found most fascinating the comment made of the exorcism movie and its influence on religion/western culture. It made me reflect on how uncomfortable I have always been with the concept of satan/devils. I grew up LDS, so I struggled to understand how God could punish me for sins I did while being influenced by an unseen devil. And then that also led to questions concerning a God that would let me be controlled by devils/satan. I’m not talking about head-spinning control, but more the invisible influence of an outside evil that would bring me to fib to my mother.
Ryan, I wonder if you have any insight to the opinions of religious people concerning devils? I imagine that fundamentalists believe in the reality of devils as strongly as they believe in the reality of God. But I wonder if liberal Christians who still believe in the reality of God still believe as strongly in the reality of devils? Do the liberally religious believe less in devils than their fundamentalist counter-parts? While I can see the difference in biblical interpretation (literal vs non-literal)as a clear distinction between the two, I wonder if the perception of Satan/devils is also strikingly different between religious categories.
Thank you, John for this podcast. Really enjoyed it. I am no longer LDS, but it is thoughtful initiatives like this that make me a better person; more thoughtful in my appraisal of religion.
Hi Travis,
I was pretty sure liberally religious individuals would be less likely to believe in the devil, but I checked the GSS to make sure:
https://imgur.com/RZ2Prkd
They are. They are about half as likely to “definitely believe in the devil.” The GSS doesn’t include a question about demonic possession, so belief in the devil will have to work as an approximation.
I liked the podcast. Except for the fact that sociologist often include what should be outcomes as controls (controlling for health behaviors when examining health…..). This due to their rather careless approach causality. If we are throwing causality at the window, discussion of decompositions would be really useful.
Maybe I was in a bad mood when I listened to this, but I found Ryan’s bias to be quite hard to stomach. I realize I am biased in the opposite direction, but he seems to give excessive toleration to secularism, while scorning the fundamentalists whenever possible. Case in point, and the only place John really pushed back, in the matter of hating. Secularists don’t really hate that many people, Dawkins debated a minister and said he like him, so Dawkins is a great guy, but that minister, what a closed minded bigot.
Secularists are more humble because they admit when they don’t know something, whereas the religious claim to know there is a God, the fools. Never mind that Dawkins thinks life was seeded on earth by aliens, and he’s the most pompous jerk you could ever listen to. You can have Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens, I’ll take Monson and Eyring, or the Pope, or Billy Graham any day. Guess we have a different idea of humility.
Theist’s charity doesn’t really count because it’s a “membership,” whereas secularists donate because of their goodness, never mind their names being listed as donors and the tax write-offs they get. Everyone donates to causes they want to be associated with or think they will benefit from, yet only for religious folks is that a negative.
According to Ryan there is absolutely nothing wrong with porn or pre-marital sex, yet there is plenty of data, religious and otherwise, indicating otherwise. The same day as this, I happened to listen to MS episode 390 on mental health issues, discussing porn. Lots of data there indicating porn has a terrible impact on our culture, but it was a mormon that shared the data, so it must be made up.
I understand there are great atheists and lousy believers, but it seems the secularist’s idea of comparison is to take their best and compare to our worst. The crusades show how bad religion is, and Steven Hawking never killed anyone, so it must be faith is bad.
Atheists condemn the religious for being intolerant and hating of gays because we think marriage is about more than just simply loving another person, yet who runs off and gets a lawyer any time a cross shows up in a public place, or a high school student puts a scriptural reference on a football poster.
I think Ryan tries hard, and I’m impressed by all his replies to people who’ve comment, but I have a hard time thinking he’s any different than all of the people he’s criticized. He just bats from the other side of the plate.
All in all, I think the issues Ryan is critical of are human issues that show up in the different faith systems, not necessarily a consequence of them. Just my thoughts.
John, surprised you didn’t push back more. Many times I thought you’d push back a little, but you just let him go on. Not sure if it was a matter or time, or if you agreed with the point, but it surprised me. Looking forward to you having some conservatives on (I’m sure you’ll push back more then).
RayG, I think you’ve missed the nuance throughout the interview. I repeatedly said things like, “this is a characteristic where religion doesn’t matter” or “porn isn’t all bad” or “that’s complicated.” Based on your description of the interview, you make it seem as though all I said throughout was, “religion = bad” and “nonreligion = amazingly awesome, perfect, and good.” That’s simply not true. The whole point of my book is to illustrate that this is far more complicated than just either/or comparisons. If I wanted to make either/or comparisons, I would have examined just fundamentalists and the nonreligious, but I didn’t. I included religious moderates and liberals. And, not surprisingly, they fall in-between the two extremes on most things.
In your response you actually seem to take a fundamentalist perspective, depicting everything as black and white. That’s precisely what I don’t want people to do. Life is full of shades of gray. Being religious doesn’t automatically make someone bad or good; neither does being nonreligious.
Ryan,
Maybe I’ll have to listen again, but my frustration was not the nuance, but the bias. After classifying mormonism of being fundamentalist, you are very critical of that position, while being quite generous and forgiving to the liberal religious and non-relligious.
I would describe myself as fundamentalist, but I don’t think I take everything as black and white, though I guess that is open to interpretation by those debating the point. I think many times liberals feel conservatives are only being open minded or flexible when we accept liberal arguments and opinions as our own. Conservatives can still be open minded while disagreeing.
I agree that good and bad is not dependent on religiosity or lack thereof, though in the discussion with John the tone seemed to be that only liberal believers and atheists actually used their ability to think in any significant way.
RayG,
I reticent to mention this, but there is some evidence that conservatives and fundamentalists actually don’t think the same way as other people and are more likely to believe things that are not true. The evidence on this is growing and is quite fascinating. Here’s a good book summarizing the literature that is very accessible: https://www.amazon.com/Republican-Brain-Science-Science-Reality/dp/1118094514
I don’t mention this to be demeaning or belittling at all. Honestly, I’m surprised that this is true as I long thought that progressives and conservatives just interpreted things differently and it was my own bias that was on display. But the science really does suggest that conservatives and fundamentalists literally think differently, and how they think results in them holding more erroneous beliefs. Pretty fascinating, actually!
Ryan, my guess is that I could find a few educated people willing and able to refute a book that is written by a liberal criticizing conservatives. I agree that we think different, though I don’t think it’s brain structure or DNA.
In the past hundred years progressives have praised communists and Nazi’s, honored fools like Paul Ehrlich, Rachel Carson, Margaret Sanger, and Al Gore, feared global cooling and heterosexual aids, predicted catastrophic depopulation, banned DDT, blamed global warming on human CO2 emissions (yet not a single climate model has accurately predicted temperature increases or lack thereof for the past dozen years), and many other things. The common thread to all these crises and movements is the need and drive for more powerful governments, something progressives seem hellbent on achieving.
Are liberals correct sometimes? Yes. Are conservatives? Yes, but each side cherry puts blinders on and refuses to see what the other side is saying. I may have blinders on, but at least I admit it, something I rarely hear from the other side.
Ray, you may be able to find some people willing to write such a book. But would it be based on hundreds of studies in social psychology that find differences in the thinking and in the actual brains of conservatives and liberals?
Seriously, read that book. Or, at least read some research on this topic:
https://www.psych.nyu.edu/jost/Jost-Amodio-2012.pdf
https://www.psych.nyu.edu/jost/Political%20Ideology__Its%20structure,%20functions,%20and%20elective%20a.pdf
https://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n10/pdf/nn1979.pdf
Ryan, Chris Mooney is and english major who works for The Center for American Progress, probably the most left wing organization in America. My guess is he wasn’t particularly unbiased in the data he selected. And social psychology might not be the most rigid science in the world. Lots of nuance and interpretation and experiments based on questionable methods there.
There may well be differences in the way we think, but I maintain the conservatives are no more or less likely to be idiots and fools than progressives. Conservatives may be prone to resisting change, but progressives are prone to wanting to run everyone else’s lives.
Ray,
I didn’t say that conservatives are less intelligent. What I said, and what Chris Mooney says (and what the science says) is that conservatives are more prone to “motivated reasoning,” or looking for information to confirm their pre-existing beliefs. And if you’re going to just go ahead and dismiss entire domains of scientific inquiry by claiming “it’s not the most rigid science in the world,” well, then I’m not sure what more I can say. You could try to read it, but if you don’t value science as an epistemology, then there this discussion is kind of done. I won’t accept any other epistemology.
And since you keep pushing, I guess I can engage in your taunts about progressives wanting big government and trying to run everyone else’s lives. That’s simply not true. Conservatives are the ones trying to restrict what people can do sexually, who people can marry (progressives didn’t push through all the constitutional amendments at the state level banning same-sex marriage), and whether or not women can control their fertility. Yes, progressives want large corporations to have more regulation to prevent them from polluting, but they generally don’t care if one, two, ten, or 1,000 people get together to have an orgy, so long as they are all consenting adults. Progressives want greater rights for minorities, not fewer. And that doesn’t mean fewer rights for whites or heterosexuals or men, just equal rights for everyone else. So, please stop with the ridiculous comments about how I want to run your life. I’m not interested in running your life. Just stay out of mine.
Ryan, this is my last comment and I’ll stop, but I’m honestly not trying to be a jerk. I like science, think it’s great and very important. I don’t think social Psychology is as rigid a science as, say, physics, or chemistry, or even astronomy. Lots of good things can be learned, but I think a lot of interpretation could take place by how the experiments are structured, the participants, the biases of the experimenters, etc.. Mooney is as unbaised as Anne Coulter, and I doubt you’d put much weight in anything she wrote, even though she might back her stuff up with facts and studies and interviews.
The only point I’m trying to make is that a person can be conservative and still have intellectual merit, and that being liberal doesn’t inoculate a person or group from making big intellectual mistakes. Maybe your nuance is too subtle for me.
On the political issues, fertility issues are completely within a woman’s control, but killing the unborn goes beyond that, and don’t take my money to pay for your birth control. I’m completely for equal rights, but “minority rights” by definition aren’t equal (when whites drop below 50%, do we get special “minority rights? I hope not). Orgy for all you want, just do it in private. For all but 10 of the last 7,000 years gay marriage wasn’t even a blip on anyone’s radar, making such a radical change with so little history might be worth slowing down a bit. If regulation were only about pollution, great, but it goes way beyond that.
Anyway, good luck with your book, and thanks for the discussion. I appreciate and admire how much time and energy it takes to write, let alone always stopping to jump back into message boards to reply to anonymous posters.
Very much enjoyed this podcast! I left the Mormon church almost 2 years ago and now consider myself to be agnostic/atheist. It has not been an easy transition for a lot of reasons. I try not to have hard feelings towards the church but that’s not easy. I’m mad that I was raised in the Mormon church (at times). I can see how that has negatively influenced my life. I wasn’t encouraged to pursue an education. I was lead to believe that women should never work outside the home. I was taught not to question or think for myself; anything that wasn’t making sense to me was my fault and was probably due to a lack of obedience in some way. While I know now that that’s not true, it’s already deeply part of who I am and it’s hard to overcome. I feel lied to and betrayed in a lot of ways. It’s really hard to come to terms with all that! Not to mentioned maintaining healthy relationships with my still-Mormon family members.
I can’t remember the exact wording you used, Ryan, but when you mentioned that non-religious people are accepting of everyone but fundamentalists (in general), I was really able relate. It’s something I constantly struggle with. I want to be accepting of everyone! But, for example, when I speak with my gay uncle and hear of the things he went through when he left the church nearly 15 years ago, I feel so enraged that I can’t help but blurt out how much I hate Mormons. But of course that’s not true! Some of my best friends are true and literally believing Mormons. It’s a difficult balance.
Anyway–really enjoyed this! Thanks to John and Ryan for putting it together.