religion and literacy

[mellowtigger]

The internet connects society, and it permits the collection of huge amounts of data about people. You can be sure that companies are mining that data. I know only three cases where the results are shared back directly with the population base that contributes the raw data.

Today's example comes from a social dating website called OKcupid.com.

Comments

:o)

[otterlover01]

Bombshell! LOL ...NOT so surprised in the end though! I don't think results would be that different here south of the border! VERY interesting, thanks for sharing! Big hugs, l. :o)

Re: :o)

[mellowtigger]

My own stereotype is to assume "Latino=Catholic", "Black=Protestant(or Muslim)", and "Asian=Buddhist". If those associations are correct, it would explain much of the racial differences found in these results.

I'm curious about your impression of the social life in Mexico. Is it predominately Catholic? Does Protestantism take the majority? Or a mixture with native American beliefs?

[ext_257491]

Ha I would have guessed that you got a tickle out of that part ^_^ but.. not all freethinkers are atheists necessarily.. I'm not even sure all atheists are freethinkers..

[mellowtigger]

Atheism is acquiring its own fringe group of orthodoxy, yes. I was disappointed to not see a "neopagan" listing, but I guess some groups are too small to make any reliable summaries.

I'm slightly disappointed that my own profile was not included in their summaries. I tend to avoid answering the race/ethnicity question since I disbelieve in "race", and I avoid the religion pigeonhole since I'd have to attach too many adjectives/disclaimers for it to have any simple meaning.

[lordalfredhenry]

fascinating results.

[mellowtigger]

The only "literacy by religion" result that surprises me is the one for Muslims. Given that Islam has the strongest "submission" imperative, I would have expected the least complex exposition in that group.

Perhaps in the American audience, Islam tends not to be the religion that kids are exposed to, so it requires greater inquisitiveness amongst those who would leave their "native" religion to join it?

[lordalfredhenry]

I wonder about various kinds of protestants and fringey groups like JWs, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Scientologists etc. Cults tend to prevent free thinking but on the other hand, some groups highly emphasize education (BYU for example/Utah is not poorly educated but then again has lower black/latino population).

I also wonder if a test can be made with all kinds of criteria, then selects criteria which favor a desired group ordering. The reason I mention this is due to the same problems with various kinds of autistic vs non-autistic performance tests with language, spatial ability etc. That said, it doesn't surprise me if some of these results were unbiased/true. Any doctoring or pre-design testing would be bias. I can't make a judgement or keep an opinion without more information regarding the test itself. Not that I would try to spot problems but so I could relieve me worry that there is some glaring problem not seen by most. (autistics lives are often full of seeing everything differently)

[mellowtigger]

These results are not from any designed "test". They come from self-reported entries that people use to create their individual profile at a dating website (OKcupid). Ethnicity and Religion values are selected by drop-down menu, but the text that was evaluated came from the many free-form areas that people use to write descriptions about themselves.

A detraction from the generality of these results (and it's a big detraction) is the "self-sorting" that may have happened prior to anyone filling out any profile. What sort of people end up using an online dating website? Perhaps the well-educated fundemantalists of any group are so exclusive that they search for mates only amongst specialized social gatherings of their own group (Brigham Young University, Liberty University, Bob Jones University).

[kauko]

"Kudos to the Buddhists and the Jews for keeping pace (almost) with the freethinkers."

I wonder if the Buddhists here at Asian people or Westerners who have adopted Buddhism. If it the latter, then demographically, Americans who become Buddhist tend to be well-educated, white, middle class (the same demographic applies to Neopagans). The high placement of Jews also doesn't suprise me given that historically Jews have placed a higher emphasis on education and literacy than the Christians and Muslims that they lived among. As I remeber, too, Jews, tend to make up a dispropotionately large percentage of Americans who become Buddhists (insert Jewbu jokes here :).

[mellowtigger]

Yes, any review of American religious populations will be skewed from other nations. Because of the religious freedom that is valued here, people may find themselves exposed to many different traditions especially if they take even minimal effort to look. I would think that anyone who changes from their native/childhood religion to a new one would already be amongst a more inquisitive (and therefore literate?) population.

That Judaism outperforms the other Abrahamic varieties does not surprise me. What little I see of Judaism (on American television, ugh!) is frequently colored with animated arguments full of exposition on how to interpret different religious passages, each side trying to convince the other of their point. That kind of inquiry and discourse (if accurately represented) must be good practice for any literacy evaluation.