Das Opium des Bourgeoisie

[shkrobius]

A UNL sociologist mined the data from the General Social Survey (conducted by the UoC since 1972) to correlate education and "religion" on a large nationwide sample. Here are the findings:

- Education had a strong and positive effect on religious participation. With each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services

Comments

[shkrobius]

I bet you do it for selling more insurance...

[eta_ta]

facts do not contradict this picture.
they just confirm that "education" - or, in truth, brainwashing - of any kind, poured on growing minds, works.
and what a person made to believe in his youth, uncritically, tends to stay with him for the rest of his life - unless. Unless life contradicts his beliefs and give him reality checks.
brainwashing with communist ideology stumbled on rocks of reality. so, it has been easier for people to analyze this failure and reject the ideology.
religion, by its nature, is unprovable - and so millions continue to believe the garbage they were fed in their sensitive years.
however, they feel insecure about it, underneath it all. that's why they lush out at atheists and proclaim eternal damnation on us.

Also, Buckner is right, when he says a lot of people go to church/sinagogue for social/networking reasons and as a force of habit. I heard that expressed by many so called believers themselves.

[shkrobius]

1. This jeremiad only tells that you cannot conceive faith to be the choice of FREE will. No offence, but I do not think you would be able to prove that

[eta_ta]

- you don't call my comment a jeremiad and I won't call your post a rant. OK

[shkrobius]

If you insist, you can call it a rant, I do not really mind, although it seems to me incorrect word usage. A jeremiad is writing "in which the author laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective," so your comment was, technically, a jeremiad. Meanwhile, to rant is "to talk in a noisy, excited, or declamatory manner," so the post was not a rant. Conveying other's opinions can't be called a rant in my book

[areksi]

последние два абзаца как-то не стыкуются с данными, приведенными в начале - как вообще можно смотреть на Американский религиозный ландшафт через всю эту совершенно ему чуждую европейскую Вольтериану? Абсолютное большинство американцев (в том числе и высокообразованных ученых) - веруют в Единого Бога, в то время как в Европе процент верующих раз в десять меньше и общество в целом настроено агрессивно-арелигиозно (чего невозможно представить в США)...

[shkrobius]

This landscape did not grow in America; it is all imported from Europe, and the Enligthenment is the organic part of it. For every continental Voltaire we have a homegrown Paine. You are right that we are not Europe, but this is not for the lack of trying.

[irrelative]

It is not hilarious, it is rather obvious: if you want to advance you have to conform.
Was not it the same for CPSU membership in... well, SU?

[shkrobius]

And, of course, uneducated people neither advance nor conform, only the educated ones do... Tremendously insightful, I agree.

[irrelative]

All or nothing?
Everybody can advance, some just chose more conventional ways.

Education pays, right?

[shkrobius]

Then you need to explain why uneducated choose these other ways, but educated ones keep to their churches in proportion to their college attendance.

Just to remind you, there was no particular emphasis on higher education in the CPSU. Perhaps it is fair to say that a college degree decreased (rather than increased) the chances for the promotion to the top ranks of the nomenklatura, though I do not have the statistics to prove it. I am not sure at all that education "paid off" in that particular hierarchy.

[vdinets]

That just shows how bad US education is ;-)
I have a question for you. It is a widespread belief among African hunters that if you stop eating meat, after ~10 days you start smelling like a herbivore, and it becomes much easier to get close to wild animals (ungulates, in particular). I tried it recently, and it seemed to work. Any ideas what the biochemistry involved could be?

[shkrobius]

Interesting. I never heard about it and I do not have any ideas. What do you mean by smelling like herbivore? You mean what: perspiration, skin oils, feces? In principle, the general explanation could be that the fewer S-containing foods you consume the less volatile S-containing molecules you excrete. This is most certainly true about the feces, but I am not sure about perspiration, because most of the malodorous molecules there are produced by bacteria in the glands and on the skin and they would degrade proteins in the sweat producing their own metabolites. I am sorry, I am on travel and I can't look it up. If you can wait for a couple of weeks, I'll try to ask someone once I get back to Chicago.

[vdinets]

I don't know, presumably prespiration, skin oils or exhaled air. What else would animals be able to smell?
No hurry, I'm just curious.