Survey says ...

It's always a good idea to be skeptical of polls. With that caveat in mind, a recent survey (PDF file) of Canadians offers some possible food for thought.

In one section of the multipart 2005 survey, respondents were asked to identify themselves as theists or atheists. Elsewhere they were asked if certain moral values were "very important" to them.

Some values were about equally important to both groups - honesty, for instance. But in many cases there was a significant gap. Kindness was rated very important by 88% of theists but only 75% of atheists. Concern for others: 82% (theists) vs. 63% (atheists). In some cases the gap was really large. Forgiveness was very important to 84% of theists but only 52% of atheists. Generosity had a whopping thirty-point gap: 67% of theists found it very important, but only 37% of atheists felt likewise.

Sociologist Reginald Bibby, who crunched the data, "acknowledged that many non-believers still place a high value on morality and ethics. But he said some of that is a legacy from previous generations who held deeper religious views."

Discussing forgiveness, Bibby says,

That's a pretty explicit value within a large number of religious communities... Look at the culture as a whole and ask yourself: To what extent do we value forgiveness against themes like zero-tolerance? We don't talk very much about what we're going to do for people who fall through the cracks. So I think forgiveness is pretty foreign to a lot of people if they're not involved in religious groups.

If you think about it, it's true that movies, TV shows, and books with the theme of forgiveness are few and far between. This theme is heavily stressed in Judeo-Christian teaching, but rarely promoted in secular culture.

An atheist named Justin Trottier tries this response:

To me, scientific thinking is a value. Critical thinking is a value. Open inquiry is my biggest value.... If he made those values -- the way atheists would -- he would have gotten different responses.

Perhaps so, but I'm not sure "scientific thinking" is a moral value. It seems like  more of an intellectual skill.

Trottier adds:

Religion always does this black-and-white thing. An atheist is a lot more temperate, a bit more hesitant. An atheist might be more nuanced in his or her thinking.

Sorry, but I don't see a lot of nuance in the polemicism of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, to name two currently prominent atheists. Nor was there much nuance in the late Ayn Rand's writings; she was the champion of black-and-white thinking, and proudly so. Which is not to say that there aren't nuanced atheists - of course there are - but there are nuanced theists as well.

I have mixed feelings about this report. On the one hand, society is probably polarized enough already without exacerbating tensions via this type of study. On the other hand, if there are important moral values more strongly associated with religious belief than with secularism, then we need to know it - because in some parts of the West, religion is clearly on the wane.

Comments

[Tony M]

My biggest concern: how can 33% of theists NOT value generosity?

Generosity is putting your beliefs into practice. Attitudes cost nothing. Generoisty requires action....

[Manuel]

Is there anything more 'black and white' than atheism? Its just as dogmatic and entrenched in one position as fundamentalist religion.

[ersby]

Ah, another chance to have a go at atheists.

It could just be that this poll demonstrates that theists are more prone to describe themselves in more glowing terms than atheists.

[Larry Boy]

According to this survey, 88% of Canadians believe in God. It may be that this is a social phenomenon rather than an intrinsic kind of feature in religion. People with problems naturally seek to dissociate themselves from the majority. It may be that kind of thing.

I do believe media is to blame for a lot of this, but then media is a social and cultural phenomenon and we shouldn't associate it with a certain metaphysics just like that.

[ersby]

Another point to make is to ask what order the questions were asked. If, having just said "I believe in God", a person is given a list of positive adjectives to describe people, they may be more likely to they "this is important" than if they hadn't been asked, or had said no they don't believe in God.

[Filip Van Droogenbroeck]

There is still a big diffrence in believing that forgiveness and kindness is important and actually being it in daily life.
For example, there are a lot of christian people who are very loving and kind in their family but are not so kind to outsiders.
This is the whole mix of polarities, the same goes for atheists ofcourse...

I see this a lot in my own family, they claim to be christians, but once it is about illegal immigrants, "they are all thieves...".
I think there are a lot of people always swinging between love and fear and haven't made a conscious choice between the 2 ways.
If you are truly loving and forgiving this goes to the whole of humanity without any notion to race, belief system or whatever.

greets,
Filip

[Anon]

ersby has a point...it's interesting that, as far back as i can recall, religion has played a significant role in virtually every war...as others before me have pointed out, no war was ever started in the name of atheism...

[Tim]

To me, this survey is completely irrelevant. You see, I've found that it's much more reliable to judge others based on their actions than on their spiritual orientation. I've met incredibly compassionate, mystery-embracing atheists and bigoted, vile, hypocritical Christians...and vice versa.

Religion or lack thereof is a label, nothing more. It's how we act that determines who we are. Too bad the religious right didn't stick to that when they put Dubya in office.

[Larry Boy]

"no war was ever started in the name of atheism..."

World War II? Weren't the nazis pretty atheistic?

[Anon]

'weren't the nazis pretty atheistic?' er...no...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_and_Religion - as a starting point...

'Nazism claimed to adhere to Positive Christianity which attempted to replace traditional Christian beliefs with those agreeable with Nazism, which many German Christians accepted.[1] Even in the later years of the Third Reich, many Protestant and Catholic clergy within Germany persisted in believing that Nazism was in its essence in accordance with Christian precepts.[1]'

...and, even if they were specifically 'atheistic', religion was still available as a tool to be used to their own ends, as it is with any other authority...

[mrG]

It's an informal hobby of mine to collect what I call Redeeming Angel stories in the mass media, and they are very few and far between, but curiously, they tend to be phenomenally popular, which perhaps points to a deep-seated identification (or 'hope') that should be alien to the atheists. There is no doubt that the antithetical Avenging Angel stories dominate the blockbuster new releases, but still these quiet Redeemers still pop up now and then and show off their magic.

For example, for a very good example, the Star Wars cycle sees the very serious fall from grace of a troubled young man dealt some pretty raw deals by life, and nearly everyone vilifies him, audience included, they want him taken out, punished, they boo him from the cinema seats. He is cruel, ambitious, sadistic, hated by everyone ... everyone but his own son, the son who, through great sacrifice, redeems the villainous father. And we want him to do it, we cheer at that ending.

Can you imagine Arnold reforming the Terminators? Bruce Willis bringing the drug lords around to a positive and social conscious frame of mind? In every one of the 'Pokemon' movies the villain is simply working from bad assumptions, and once 'educated' recognizes their folly on their own and seeks repentance and re-acceptance, and is granted both. Again, fiercely popular movies, but they slip through to the weekly-rental shelves of the shops very quickly after release, pushed aside by the constant thrust of Hollywoods ever more spectacular stream of Avengings.

Yet how many of those spectaculars make it into the All-Time Favourite Movies lists?

Could this be significant? We do know that what people say in these surveys only reflects what the interviewee thinks the interviewer wants or needs to hear, and may have very little bearing on what that same person would do if faced with a real-life ethical dilemma.

Indeed their own atheism may be similarly nothing more than idle chat not seriously thought through, answered because it was expected, hip, less likely to be ridiculed, more likely to be respected as "advanced" or "educated". Perhaps a better test would be to list out the Redeeming vs Avenging Angel movies and ask them which they enjoyed most!

[Markus Hesse]

Hehe, the selfish gene rears it's ugly head. ;)

>>"no war was ever started in the name of atheism..."

World War II? Weren't the nazis pretty atheistic?<<

The Nazi's were a mixed bunch, some were nominally Christians (tho their actions said otherwise), others were atheists while some were occultists, much as been made of the latter.

And it was decidedly atheist totalitarianism (Communism) that caused the largest combined body count of the 20th century, from Stalin's USSR to Mao's China to Cambodia's Killing Fields to Il's DPRK, as I pointed out in a previous post, if you don't believe you'll later be judged and punished (by a higher power) for crimes against humanity it becomes a lot easier to rationalize and commit them, it's the basic Machiavellian mindset.

Right or wrong, the fear of a final judgement is a great pacifier and enforcer of morality, where people that might otherwise be inclined to act "badly" feel compelled to do the opposite, thus benefitting society as a whole.

"as others before me have pointed out, no war was ever started in the name of atheism..."

"Second, several atheist writers argued that Stalin and Mao’s crimes could not be blamed on atheism since atheism is not really a belief, it is really an absence of belief.

As one writer put it, “Leaders such as Stalin and Mao persecuted religious groups, not in a bid to expand atheism, but as a way of focusing people’s hatred on those groups to consolidate their own power.” Of course I agree that murderous regimes, whether Christian or atheist, are generally seeking to strengthen their position. But if Christian regimes are held responsible for their crimes committed in the name of Christianity, then atheist regimes should be held accountable for their crimes committed in the name of atheism. And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a “new man” and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist."

http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0214.htm

[mrG]

perhaps also apropos in deciding just what it means to be either religious or atheist, a keynote address by a keystone atheist talks about the trouble with atheism (and religion) in terms of those terms not carrying any real functional definitions. As with many of the comments above, it is not one or the other that concerns most of us, it is the friction points between particular and specific cultural behaviours and beliefs. Well worth the read, and you can find some additional commentary back at the daily grail.

[Anon]

it's interesting that you shoud begin citing stalin and communism...

'Communism was a comprehensive, all-embracing religion and not simply a political party, political system or philosophy. This fact is illustrated by the numerous ways in which Communism embraced and attemped to promulgate peculiar quasi-religious (and often clearly anti-scientific) beliefs which had nothing all to do with politics or government. Although Communism typically touted itself as anti-religious and pro-science, it was, in fact, deeply anti-scientific and clearly a religion. One of Communism's hallmarks in the Soviet Union and China was its aggressive and violent suppression of other religions. Communism was "anti-religious" only in the sense that it forcibly suppressed all religions other than itself.' - The Religious Affiliation of Communist Leader of Joseph Stalin

...so, communism apparently attempted to replace one belief system with another...
an atheist is not automatically a communist, regardless of whether or not all communists are atheists...
and fear of being judged by a higher power clearly doesn't stop massacres in the name of christianity...

[Tony]

In regards to wars started in the name of this religion or that religion. 'Religion' has merely been used as a rallying point to get the masses to rally behind the warring leader. It's hard to argue that a religion whose teachings include 'love your enemy', 'turn the other cheek', and forgiveness is warlike. Not until someone twists it to meet their own ends.

Make no mistake, in the absence of religion there would still be wars, they would just be justified on other grounds. As long as human beings are different from each other, there will be disagreements that can lead to conflict, and out-groups that can be scapegoated.

"an atheist is not automatically a communist, regardless of whether or not all communists are atheists..."

No shit. The point is that atheism can be turned into an ideological system just like any religious belief. The rhetorical tactic of claiming that "atheism is not a belief system" is simply unfair.

[Anon]

Atheism is 'turned into an ideological system just like any other religious belief' by those who recognise an opportunity to deceive those who mistake it for 'any other religious belief'.
The claim that 'in the absence of religion there would still be wars' may or may not be true...the fact remains, wars are generally started with religion in the car, if not in the driving seat...
Survey's of the kind discussed are impossible to take seriously, when they suggest that religious people feel more kindness, concern, forgiveness or generosity, when immoral and criminal acts are committed with religion dancing in the wings...

[MrV]

but christians, "kindly" removed the people of the Chagos, no doubt out of concern for their well being, by leaving them to rot in Mauritian slums.... on board the boat, after being defecated on by the animals the "kind, concerned" christians allowed on top of the deck, leaving the people, they were clearly concerned about below, with no access to food or water, some of whom, had to give birth in these conditions.

They clearly did this out of fear of a "higher authority".

I can imagine the typical response I am going to get now, from all the "fearful" religious amongst you now, about how you pray for these people and are concerned for them, and how dare I claim to know what you think or do.

but quite honestly, all the while these attrocites are carried out by people in the religions you claims are so very caring, compassionate and concerned and you seemingly do nothing to stop them, no amount of kindness, compassion on concern, you claim to have is going to make any difference at all.

there you go, get typing with your responses, but please bear in mind, at every point you make, i am going to remind you of the chagos islands, a classic example of religious kindness and compassion.

[Alex]

"a keynote address by a keystone atheist talks about the trouble with atheism (and religion)..."

Harris simply baffles me with his incoherent position. He extols the importance of ethics while at the same time referring to "free will" as an absurd belief (this isn't to say that there should be a dogmatic acceptance of "free will" beliefs). He seems to have an interest in the paranormal while also embracing Darwinian reductionism. At least he seem to recognize the problems with the New Atheist movement and the problems with such labels such as atheism, theism, religion, etc.

This could have been a much more sophisticated movement if it had ignored the theism/atheism dialectic and instead focused on how the practice of "faith" has been used to exploit people.

[Michael Prescott]

I think most wars probably start because of economic or hegemonic issues. For instance, the Punic Wars were basically a dispute between Rome and Carthage over which would be the regional superpower. The Peloponnesian Wars were a reaction to Athens' hegemonic designs on its fellow city-states. The Persian War was an attempt by the Persian Empire to subjugate Greece. Alexander the Great's wars of conquest were about creating a Macedonian empire. The American Revolutionary War was about throwing off the taxation and interference of the British Empire. The American Civil War was partly based on religious motives (Abolitionism was largely a Christian movement), but also on economic factors.

Many wars are dressed up in religious terminology to disguise the more basic, and less inspiring, motives of money and power that are the real casus belli. For instance, the Crusades were presented as holy wars in order to whip up popular support, but their real purpose was to reverse Islamic expansionism, which had swallowed up a lot of fomerly Christian territory. Islamic expansionism, in turn, was motivated in part by religion but also by the desire to establish a worldwide Arabian empire.

People tend to fight about the things that matter to them. If religion matters to them, they will fight about it sometimes. But money and power usually matter even more.

[murenhausen]

so, wars are dressed up in religous terminology to gain popular support from the moronic, bovine masses...all the while, being conducted for the real reasons of money and power...what does that tell you about the authorities and their claims of religiosity? what does it tell you about the level of respect they really have for your religions?
and all the while you followers of religions go along with their abuse of your religions, you're all nothing more than 'good germans'...
as MrV has pointed out, where was the kindness the religious are supposed to feel when they were tearing the chagossians from their homes? where was the concern when they were forcing the chagossians to give birth amongst the animal filth? where was the generosity when they murdered 1m iraqi's? was it demonstrated by the liberal use of depleted uranium? all the while the religious sit back and let these atrocities occur with anything whatsoever to do with 'their name', they have no claim to any of the feelings discussed in the survey cited above...

[Markus Hesse]

What would Jesus do?

[murenhausen]

i'll assume you're being ironic...

[Alex]

"as MrV has pointed out..."

HAHAHHAA...does anybody else get the feeling that murenhausen and MrV are the same person? By the way, this isn't some indirect way of dismissing both of your comments.

[murenhausen]

oh, well done...it wouldn't be possible for TWO people to think that the chagossians have suffered, would it?

[MrV]

oh very good.... no actual answers then, simply dismiss a few comments. so because 2 people may actually have the same opinion, they must be the same people? no defence of religions kind, caring, concerned front then, as depicted in your review of this pointless survey......

as there is more than one sharing the same view maybe we should start a caring, kindness based religion? what do you reckon murenhausen? oh, hang on, that's me.... i'm talking to myself.... erm.... shame i'm not religious, i could claim it's some deity talking to me.... although, no doubt, in this day and age, i'd still be locked up like a nutter, by some caring sharing religious folk.

[murenhausen]

hang on MrV, our answers are so similar, we must be THE SAME PERSON!
what a waste of time this is...so long, douchebags...

[Alex]

"...it wouldn't be possible for TWO people to think that the chagossians have suffered, would it?"

It is possible, but when the two comments are written with an eerily similar prose style then it becomes much less likely.

[MrV]

oh no, our replies are similar..... we MUST be the same person....

but let's not get off course, the chagossians, and their kind, caring concerned treatment, by the practitioners of gods word.....

[Arthur]

I'm not at all confident or sure there is such a thing as theist or atheist. We might lean one way or the other but the truth is that none of us will know absolutely 100% for certain till we shed our physical bodies and cross over to the other side. What we say or proclaim we are and what is going on in the deepest recesses of our soul might be very different. I say I lean heavily towards a belief in life after death yet recently I went to the doctor and he prescribed several medications that will supposedly lengthen my life. I dutifully drove to Wal-Mart and filled the prescriptions and have been taking them since then. Now, if I truly believed 100% in life after death would I not be in a hurry to get there? Why would I take medications to lengthen my stay on this Earth? Not only that, what I believe may depend on how I'm feeling at the time, and my response might be heavily influenced by particular mood at the time of questioning. - Art

[Michael Prescott]

MrV and murenhausen have different IP addresses, so I would think they are two different people.

>what a waste of time this is...so long, douchebags...

Adios! :-)

[Greg Taylor]

War is about power. Everything else is window dressing.

And atheism is as much a belief system as a religion.

Kind regards,
Greg

[ersby]

I agree. I've never quite underdtood atheists who say their belief system isn't a belief system. I certainly isn't a "lack of belief" system, because that doesn't make any sense. My opinion is that, as belief systems go, it's pretty good.

It may be colder outside the church, but you can see a lot further.

[william]

atheists and evangels two sides of the same coin called "our truth is thee truth".

[william]

from my point of view the human mind is at the beginning stages of discovering the mysteries of life and the universe.

we are gods in the making through a process of soul evolution. the process is the reality. kind of.

[Susan]

Survey says: The least religious countries, i.e., Norway, Sweden, et.al., have the highest quality of life, equality in incomes, and lowest violence rates in the world, according to the UN's Human Development Report in 2005.

Conversely, the most highly religious countries are notorious for the opposite, found at the very bottom of the UN's scale.

It's reasonable to believe that all religions are man-made, and therefore flawed... and dangerous.

[Marcel Cairo]

Well, what the survey failed to mention is that if you don't believe in GOSH, you may end up in HECK!

[Vitor Moura]

Look: http://www.reginaldbibby.com/papers.html

AND:

http://www.reginaldbibby.com/datahighlights.html

I think the study is very, very suspicious.

[Markus Hesse]

Scandinavia also has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

>>It's reasonable to believe that all religions are man-made, and therefore flawed... and dangerous.<<

So you would say that all religions are created equal and are therefore equally "dangerous?"

>>but christians, "kindly" removed the people of the Chagos, no doubt out of concern for their well being, by leaving them to rot in Mauritian slums.... on board the boat, after being defecated on by the animals the "kind, concerned" christians allowed on top of the deck, leaving the people, they were clearly concerned about below, with no access to food or water, some of whom, had to give birth in these conditions.<<

Such behavior isn't christlike tho, they did those things in spite of Christian theology, not because of it, ergo my "What would Jesus do?"

[Tony]

For some athiests, the idea that 'religion is the root of all ill in the world' is a form of dogma. They will stick to it and ignore any evidence to the contrary. It's also the same exact kind of scapegoating that religious leaders are often accused of. Whoever said this behavior is the flip side of the coin of fundamentalism is absolutely right.

[Markus Hesse]

I used to share similar views when I was an atheist, a steady diet of Dawkins literature during one's teens has that effect.

[Alex]

>>It's reasonable to believe that all religions are man-made, and therefore flawed... and dangerous.<<

First off, I should state that I'm not a religionist of apologist for religion. I don't even consider myself to be an atheist, theist, or agnostic (the "God" question is, to my mind, incoherent). However, I do think it should be noted that the most biting critiques of religion are from the religious figures themselves:

"Jesus made more than a few enemies by pointing out that religion does poison the true message of God. Religion binds people in hopeless legalism. Religion controls with shock collars of fear and guilt. Jesus came to this earth to allow relationship with God. Jesus hated religion as it was being practiced by the religious leaders he addressed. Exhibit A comes from the Gospel of Matthew."

http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/DBurchett/11540028/

[ersby]

Markus said: "Scandinavia also has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest suicide rates in the world."

No it doesn't.

[Filip]

one has to make a distinction between orthodox religion and esoteric religion.
There is a huge diffrence between the way people experience orthodox religion and how gnostics think.

[Chris]

I think the arguement of atheism vs. theism ignores the root source of both concepts, the power of ideas. Ideas can enliven and ensnare people like nothing else. They have both their good sides and their down sides, and when adhered to religiously, can blind a person who puts to much rigid faith in them in their legalistic interpretations.

I do not think one can ignore, however, the role atheism has played in various leftist/communist idealogies. Speaking of which, although European countries like Sweden and Norway may be quite peaceful at the moment, with abyssmal birth rates and massive welfare spending, its questionable how long their prosperity will last.

To be fair though, many mystical leaning people have also been supportive of socialistic idealogies.

[Vitor Moura]

DR. REGINALD W. BIBBY has five of his best known books focus on religion - Fragmented Gods (1987), Unknown Gods (1993), There's Got to Be More! (1995), Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada (2002), and Restless Churches: How Canada's Churches Can Contribute to the Emerging Religious Renaissance (2004).

And: Professor Bibby has conducted research and analyzes in Canada for the Presbyterian (1982), Anglican (1986), United (1994), and Alliance (1999) churches, along with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (1995).

The man woorks for the CHURCH!!! I think his study is very suspicious.

[Markus Hesse]

>>Markus said: "Scandinavia also has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest suicide rates in the world."

No it doesn't.<<

See the Feb 2005 issue of the British Medical Journal

[ersby]

Could you at least give me the name of the paper?

[Michael Prescott]

There seems to be a lot of variation in suicide rates across Scandinavia, with Finland at the high end and Sweden at the low end. A brief discussion is here.

A Google Book search turned up this material.

It appears to be a surprisingly controversial issue, and the statistics from 20 years ago are much different from the statistics today.