'Monkey Girl' and Religious Tribalism

Well put. It’s important to ascertain what is the thesis on the table for discussion.

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I would not disagree that prescription drug addiction is a major problem.

As far as public health goes, @dga471 does not seem to like worlddata.info, so I turned to OECD’s far more scattergun info here.

In both Life Expectancy and Infant & Maternal Mortality (which I took to be the key indicators), the US has been improving over the last couple of decades, but at a slower rate than the rest of the OECD, meaning that its ranking has slowly been declining (at no point in this time period was it in the top half of the 38 OECD countries on either statistic).

It is already clear what we are discussing:

Why are you AVOIDING the question @dga471?

It is an issue you raised.

As a follow up question, were you aware that the US does so poorly on this, or similar, surveys?

I am not currently making that argument – and have made no suggestion that I was doing so. I probably could make such an argument, but would be willing to do so only on a new thread.

Then suggest some other form of “factual data” that you consider more reliable or more relevant. (I’ve already also brought up murder rates, and levels of voter participation.) I’ve invited you to do so, but have heard nothing back from you.

What part of “and has so for considerable time” did you fail to comprehend?

It seems @dga471 that you aren’t even replying to my arguments, but to rather what some imaginery, less nuanced, more absolutist debater, that exists only in your head, would argue based upon the facts I present.

As that debater lives only in your head, I would ask you to keep your replies to him likewise only in your own head, and either respond to the arguments I actually make, or hold your peace.

My arguments have throughout eschewed, and often explicitly disavowed, that I consider the behavior, originally under discussion, to be “ubiquitous”, “exclusive” or “unique”. It is frankly offensive to me to see my arguments caricatured in this way. It is deeply disrespectful.

I don’t know for sure if your impression of the US is biased, because I’m not completely sure what that “impression” is. Again, it’s unclear what you’re trying to argue in this thread. It’s hard to know for sure because you treat almost everything like an adversarial statement, instead of one of open inquiry.

If your “impression” is just “US has rank X in criterion Y according to organization Z”, then of course I wouldn’t have any quarrel with that. That’s a simple fact. There’s no bias in that. But without any other context or discussion, these facts are no different than trivia. I don’t see how they are connected to the main topic of this thread, which was about the things which happened in the Dover Trial. You earlier said they are a “symptom” of the bad quality of life in the US as expressed in several statistical indicators. Is that the main point that you want to defend by bringing these up?

Yes, of course. Notice that I never claimed that the murder rates in the US are better than other countries. I also never claimed that the quality of life in the US is better than other developed countries. In fact, I have often complained about the healthcare system here, as well as the worsening political polarization in the last decade. That is why I’m unclear about the purpose of bringing up these statistics, because I never meant to argue against them.

Then clarify what is the wider point that you’re trying to argue by bringing up murder statistics, instead of saying that it’s “obvious”.

From the phrase “has so for a considerable time”, I deduce that “considerable time” refers to a long but finite amount of time, let’s say X amount of years. Thus, there must have been a time 2020-X when the US was not lagging behind these other developed countries on this “wide range of indicators”. What objections do you have against this reasoning?

Discussing online with people often requires rounds of clarification, rephrasing, and being misunderstood. Sometimes it is indeed very frustrating if people don’t understand your point or seem to mischaracterize your arguments. That has happened to me several times here too. However, I don’t mean any disrespect. If someone feels greatly offended and disrespected due to being misunderstood online, then I would advise them to step away until they are ready to continue, or simply stop. You have no obligation to continue discussing with me here, especially if it is not benefitting you at all.

In addition, @Tim, I would like to state that the tone of your own posts has been needlessly adversarial and hostile in this thread, and that is not the first time that this has happened in this forum. I think in general you should learn to not treat replies to your posts as trying to attack you or disprove your point.

@dga471:

  1. “I don’t know for sure if your impression of the US is biased, because I’m not completely sure what that ‘impression’ is.” What part of my statement that I was “basing my opinion on these, and similar rankings and comparisons that I’ve seen reported” led to this uncertainty?

  2. In my immediately past reply, I am arguing against your implication/“possibility”/impression that my impression of the US is (in some completely unspecified way) “biased”.

  3. In the thread as a whole, I am arguing that whilst the behavior documented by my OP, and documented as being more widespread by the article I cited, is neither ubiquitous among conservative Christians, exclusive to conservative Christians, unique, or “worse than all others”, it is sufficiently serious, and sufficiently rare outside the context of conservative Christian reactions to Church-and-State cases, that it is worthy of heightened condemnation and heightened law enforcement scrutiny. It is in effect, as I suggested before, a (low intensity) form of religious terrorism – an attempt to get your way through fear, when you cannot do so through legal means. And I would say that about any group that engaged in such tactics – be they Rabid Right, Loony Left, Church-burning Atheists – or even Immoderately Anti-extreme Moderates.

I would suggest that I can legitimately go beyond this. If the US ranks worse than reasonable comparitors (e.g. worse than most OECD countries) on a wide range of criteria from a wide range of organisations, I can reasonably generalise an opinion that it is worse than these comparitors, within the general range that these criteria cover, without my opinion being in any way biased.

  1. “I don’t see how they are connected to the main topic of this thread, which was about the things which happened in the Dover Trial.” I am not obliged to argue solely one point in a thread, particularly when people, such as yourself, bring up side issues. I have however done my best to make it clear (by quoting you) which issue I was responding to. If this confuses you, then I’d suggest you avoid bringing up side issues.

  2. “That is why I’m unclear about the purpose of bringing up these statistics, because I never meant to argue against them.” The purpose was to provide evidence that my impression was factually-based, and therefore not “biased”. This was also clear, from the fact that it was in explicit response to your “None of this really answers my question.” (Your question being that of my purported “bias”).

It does not follow that “there must have been a time 2020-X when the US was not lagging behind these other developed countries”. I was silent on what happened before then – and therefore said nothing about that time period. You are simply making the unfounded assumption that this is what I meant. In fact the reason I placed that limitation on my statement was that whilst I had reasonable certainty about the last few decades, I did not have any strong impression before then (I don’t even know if there is even reliable data going back much further to base a well-informed opinion on). You committed what amounts to a particularly egregious form of the ‘Argument from Silence’ fallacy.

Thinking about it further (these thoughts were not included in my “considerable time” comment), I would conclude that (i) the US would have to have been better in most, and probably all, outcomes than most, and probably all, European countries during the 1940s, due to WWII and its aftermath. (ii) I would also suggest that before the fall of the Iron Curtain, it is entirely likely that conditions behind it were worse than the US. Add to that, many European countries either didn’t exist, or had very different borders (and thus different demographics) back before these two events, making historical comparisons even more problematical.

dga471: in this, and at earlier occasions on this thread (your “Because you claimed that the toxicity from religious tribalism is worse than other types of tribalism” comes most prominently to mind) your over-interpretation of what I have been saying reaches the point of outright extrapolation – beyond what ‘Tim must mean’ to what ‘Tim might mean’. This has led to first confusion, then frustration, then outright anger on my part. I try to limit what I say as much as possible to what I can prove, and to clearly demarcate what I say that I cannot prove. So being accused of making claims that I know I didn’t make tends to be especially aggravating.

If you don’t want me to be “adversarial” then I would suggest that you stop extrapolating my claims – as I find it very difficult to view anybody who repeatedly misrepresents me in other-than-adversarial terms. If you cannot help yourself, then perhaps we should avoid interacting.

  1. Repeatedly (I might even go so far as to say ubiquitously) having to ‘clarify’ your unfounded extrapolations of what I have said (i) has been very exhausting and frustrating, and (ii) has ground this conversation to a halt.
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The uncertainty is based on your extremely negative reaction when I’m trying to respond to anything you say.

No, Tim, I’m trying to interpolate, not extrapolate. All conversation involves some amount of interpolation, because communication is never perfect. If I converse with someone and they say, “Look at this bad religious fundamentalist behavior in the US, and look at these rankings which show how the US is trailing other countries in many metrics,” then I would infer that they are trying to connect these two things in some sort of causal or correlative relationship, because they chose to juxtapose these them together. Would my interpolation necessarily be a correct representation of what is actually meant? Sometimes yes, sometimes not. Yes, sometimes misunderstandings happen, and what person A thinks is a valid interpolation of what person B is saying is actually not - it’s an extrapolation instead! But the normal reaction by person B is not to angrily accuse A of disrespect or accusing A of “using an argument from silence”. Rather, it’s to simply clarify that he doesn’t mean that.

I agree with the basic sentiment that the behavior documented in the OP is egregious in a civil society and should be condemned, no matter what kind of group - religious or not - engages in it. (I will leave it to law enforcement to determine which kinds of threats are more important to monitor.)

Once again, I don’t think such behavior is more commonly encountered in “Christian reactions to Church-and-State cases” compared to other controversial issues. I’m not accusing you of saying otherwise. If we don’t disagree on this, then good.

Well, thank you for clarifying your opinion. I’m sorry for misunderstanding what you meant to say in that case. Note that I was not making any sort of sustained argument about your claims in the US. I was asking you to clarify by asking some questions (not arguments):

and you did clarify by pointing out that these questions assumed something which you didn’t believe. There is no need to accuse others of making logical fallacies or arguments from silence when they never meant to argue in the first place.

I won’t disagree with the statement that the quality of life US is worse than some other developed countries according to some metrics. But such a statement oversimplifies something complex - “quality of life” and might give a misleading impression. For example, despite the metrics you cited, many people are still more interested to live or work in the US compared to other developed countries, because of the greater range of opportunities in certain fields, such as science and technology. (That’s certainly one of the reasons for why I chose to study in the US instead of say, Sweden or New Zealand.) While certainly the quality of life in the US is worse in some aspects, it’s not always much worse to the point that it outweighs these other benefits. To take an example: a national murder rate is just that, a national murder rate. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m 5 times more afraid of being murdered when I’m in the US than in Australia, for example. The US is a large country, and the local situation is likely more pertinent to the question of the quality of life.

You are certainly in my top 3 of the most adversarial users I’ve encountered on PS. I’m also not the first person to notice here that you commonly elevate casual and friendly interactions to an adversarial debate very quickly. For example in this thread:

No. My “extremely negative reaction[s]” have been when you respond to something that I did not say.

E.g. you said “Because you claimed that the toxicity from religious tribalism is worse than other types of tribalism”, and I knew that I had not made that claim, and so had an “extremely negative reaction”.

No. When you need to first paraphrase my my statement, and then enter a rather dodgy syllogism (as here) to get to the word you were explicitly putting into my mouth, then you are not interpolating. Likewise, when you are enter into an Argument from Silence, you are not interpolating. Likewise when you take an interpretation, that is both not necessitated by my wording, and is contradicted by my other statements, you are not interpolating (it is not interpolation if it conflicts with existing data).

If this is what you mean by “interpolation”, then I would suggest that we need to stop even attempting to communicate, because we are clearly not speaking the same language.

Except that this is not how things came about. I did not “juxtapose” the two issues.

First you wrote:

I responded:

You responded:

Only then, and as an explicit response to that statement, did I bring up relative murder rates (and later other summary data). This was not me juxtaposing these issues, and it was not my (ungoaded) choice.

My background is in Statistics. If the issue of bias is seriously raised (as your unwillingness to accept a simply anecdotal account seemed to indicate), then my reaction is to test the purported bias against empirical data.

I would conclude that given that you appear neither satisfied by my anecdotal account, nor by the empirical data I presented supporting my negative view of US society, as evidence that I lack significant bias, I am at a loss how you expected this issue to be resolved.

I would point out that you have not provided any evidence that this behavior is no more common outside of conservative Christian reactions to Church-and-State cases, outside of a relatively small, unrepresentative and socially-condemned fringe (drug cartels, Sovereign Citizens, the KKK, etc) that we have already agreed to.

This issue is further aggravated by conservative Christianity’s disproportionate, and thus arguably anti-democratic, influence on the halls of power, through a majority on the Supreme Court, to control of the Republican Party, to their favored candidates holding the position of President, against a popular majority, for eight of the last twenty years.

With all this unwarranted privilege, conservative Christianity (or some apparently not-insignificant elements of it) still reacts violently to the least check on their excesses.

It is not a clarification of my opinion – because I had not expressed an opinion on the situation before your “2020-X”. It is a correction of an opinion that you fallaciously imputed to me.

I would be less grudging about accepting your apology for your “misunderstanding” if you acknowledged that it was your fallacy (not my statement) was at its root.

Being asked questions about things you didn’t say, is at first confusing, and with repetition downright aggrevating. Your questions frequently aren’t about clarifying what I said, but by taking your (often false) assumption about what I have said as the premise for your question.

You did not ask me: “Do you mean that there was some time that the US did not lag behind other developed countries” …

You asked me “When was the last time the US did not lag behind other developed countries? Why do you think it lags now compared to then?”

This means that you’ve already baked the assumption in, before asking me the question. It is akin to what is known as a Loaded Question.

The former is a legitimate request for clarification. The latter tends to derail conversations, and aggrevate the person you’re talking to.

Likewise, when you consider my statements to be inconsistent or contradictory, the correct thing to do is to quote the statements (paraphrases tend to just add to the confusion) and ask me to explain the apparent contradiction, not to assume a meaning and barrel on.

That does not surprise me in the least. I would also question whether the decision is always, or even in the majority, well-informed. Yes, in professions where capital costs and economies of scale are high, the US may be the best choice. But I’d argue that this is more of a matter of necessity (or at least severely limited choice), not quality of life. For the many more immigrants that end up driving taxis, working in restaurants, etc, I would argue that the decision is likely less well-informed, and is probably driven by a combination of name recognition, and the (often false) hope of upward mobility in the “Land of Opportunity”. In neither case do I see evidence that I have inferior knowledge on the generalities of the issue (I would of course have less information on the details of specific PhD programmes and specific high-tech industries).

Yes, but the question wasn’t whether I am biased about Cambridge, Massachusetts. The question was whether I am biased about America (implicitly America as a whole). I would therefore suggest that it is the America-wide average that is the relevant statistic. I would also wish to quietly and peacefully suggest that you are moving the goalposts here.

I would further point out that @Mercer has already suggest that “You may need to get out of the northeast to see just how bad it is.” What is the proportion of conservative Christians in Cambridge relative to the rest of the US as a whole, out of interest?

This was in reponse to my response to his statement that:

I responded with:

I then proceeded to demonstrate that the data was in no way unclear on the issue – a point that was acknowledged by this reply to “Chill out”:

I do not think a degree of displeasure at Joshua commiting the very thing that he was accusing me of (failing to look closely at the data) was unwarranted. I will leave it to you to decide whether you think the degree I expressed that displeasure was unwarranted.

I will admit I have not been at my best on this thread.

On this forum I’ve been recently trying to make an attempt to discipline myself to avoid interactions with those who conversing with has tended to produce more heat than light. I have been relatively successful avoiding Thoughtful and r_speir. Less so avoiding Eddie. I did not know, previous to this thread, that you were someone I should consider likewise avoiding. I am however now seriously considering it. I am dissatisfied with this thread – not so much because you didn’t agree with me, but because I feel that your disagreement failed to put my thesis to any significant test. We argued more about whether or not I said things, and about my purported bias, than about any concrete way to assess the relative or absolute seriousness of the issue.

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Just a general comment on this thread.

For background, I’ll note that @Tim is Australian (or at least that is my impression), while @dga471 is American. I grew up in Australia, and moved to the US for graduate school. Most of my life has been in the US.

My overall view is that this was a potentially good discussion. But, in my opinion, @dga471 has over-reacted. For myself, I never thought @Tim was making an attack on American culture, but possibly @dga471 has taken it that way.

Just my two cents worth.

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But my question about whether your perception is biased regarding the US was sparked by this remark of yours:

Let me outline to you my thought process. (Again, perhaps my thoughts were very wrongheaded. If so, I mean no disrespect, and I apologize in advance for any offence caused.)

It seems to me that you think the Dover case is an exemplar of how bad things are in the US in general - a symptom of a place where there are “authoritarian regimes subverting democracy and the rule of law”. To back up this perception, you brought up murder rate statistics (among other things).

However, I am confused about the relevance of these statistics because I never argued that the US has the lowest murder statistics, nor even that the US has the best quality of life compared to other countries. The Dover case also seems to have little concrete relations to these statistics. It did not result in any murders or mass shootings, nor did it significantly affect income inequality, child poverty, or voter participation rates.

Rather, my only point was that things in the US aren’t that bad in general, and this was even more true in 2005. In 2005, the US was still a functional, developed country with rule of law, and the bad things which happened in the Dover case are an aberration (which are already universally condemned) rather than a regular feature of everyday life in the US.

I said that I was trying to interpolate, not that I was actually interpolating. My attempt at interpolating failed and turned out to be an extrapolation instead. Thus what you said above has little relevance to the point I’m making, which is that when people sincerely try to understand (i.e. interpolate) what others are saying, they should be treated charitably, even if they’re wrong and are in fact extrapolating.

Now, my next step could be to accuse you of disrespect and great insult for misunderstanding what I said. But I won’t, because I know that these misunderstandings happen in discourse and the best way is to clarify, instead of attack.

Yes, my question was loaded, and regrettably so. I should have been more careful. But a loaded question isn’t an argument. Yet you chose to treat it that way.

To be honest Tim, there have been several times on this forum that I wanted to respond to something that you said (which are often intellectually substantial points), but I decided not to, because based on my past observations of your posts, I had the impression that you easily take offense to simple misunderstandings and prematurely elevate friendly interactions to adversarial ones. I also guessed that you will be extremely reluctant to concede any point in a discussion. Your conduct on this thread has only confirmed my impression.

First, I’m going to say that bullying, intimidation, and threats of violence and intimidation are today very common in hot button public controversies involving race or politics. Almost every public figure (on either side of the aisle) will have to deal with them. I don’t think I have to give concrete examples because it is very easy to search for them. Of course, I condemn these actions and this situation wholeheartedly. But they happen.

Second, my guess is that the worst of the behavior in the Dover case (such as making death threats against a judge) were also perpetrated mostly by the extremist fringes, which we already agree are unrepresentative of the general population and universally socially condemned.

I just think that it’s usually misleading to try to take one specific case (the Dover Trial) which is primarily to do with one sphere of life (church-state relations) and try to connect it with certain general quality-of-life statistics that cover a large geographical area. Even though the statistics are not wrong, they are just not very relevant to analyze such a case, because the actual causal factors which lead to that case may be very far removed from the causal factors that lead to the general statistics.

I take exception to your “either side of the aisle.” There’s one side with 99.9% of the violence, and it’s the side that the majority of evangelicals have chosen.

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The problem here is that I do not in fact think that Dover was “an exemplar of how bad things are in the US in general”. I think it is an exemplar of conservative Christian reaction in Church and State cases, and thus religious tribalism. This was why the title of this thread is “‘Monkey Girl’ and Religious Tribalism”, not “‘Monkey Girl’ and what a terrible place the US is”.

If you had put that question directly, I could have refuted it, and we could have moved on. As it was, I did not even realise that this misapprehension existed. So I was left to try to demonstrate that I was not biased, without any clear understanding of why you asked the question. This is in fact a worse form of the Loaded Question (I will use the term, acknowledging that it is an imperfect fit, because I don’t know of a term that fits better). Because the assumed premise was not explicit, I did not even know that I had to refute it.

The qualifier on my statement about “authoritarian regimes have subverted democracy and the rule of law” was just that, a qualifier. I know that civil rights, rule of law, and political stability issues are worse under authoritarian regimes. Given the spotty reporting (due to lack of civil rights) and the reporting that does get out, it is not clear to me that conditions under those regimes may not be as bad as you were suggesting. I therefore excluded them from my dissent to your opinion. Although I did not imply that the US was that bad, Idid have in the back of my mind that it has been taking the first steps down that road.

[tensely but quietly] I have already repeatedly explained the reason I brought up these statistics (and it had nothing to do with my original thesis). Your continuing to harp on about the issue is not in the least bit Peaceful. If you continue to do so, this conversation will rapidly return to being decidedly “adverserial”, at least on that topic. Please desist.

Statements like this just harden the suspicion that I should avoid conversing with you. It is not that I think you are being dishonest. It is that I have the strong suspicion that somebody who thought they were “trying to interpolate” in the leaps that you made would appear to be incapable of telling a reasonable implication of a statement I make from a unreasonable one.

Some low level of misunderstanding should of course be tolerated and in fact expected. But when the misunderstanding level rises sufficiently, effective communication starts to become difficult, and eventually impossible. The level of effort required to try to resolve misunderstandings, misunderstandings of misunderstandings, and misunderstandings of misunderstandings of misunderstandings, etc, just overwhelms any benefit.

There is probably a degree of truth to this.

I know that I tend to be a rather argumentative person.

As to whether my reluctance to concede a point is a sign that I am good at testing opposing arguments, or of the intransigence of pig-headed arrogance, is something only a third party can unbiasedly offer an opinion on. I try to do my best to reevaluate my opinions in the light of new evidence, and I try to make a point of explicitly conceding points when I know I’m in the wrong.

I think it is possible that my argumentativeness may have caused you to unconsciously pigeon-hole me as a hardline, antitheistic atheist. I also think it is possible that may you have been unconsciously cherry-picking some of my statements out of context to support this view. I am in fact more of one of the “immoderately moderates” I mentioned before. I do not trust religion to be, on the balance, a postive feature, but I do not think that there is nearly sufficient evidence to label it as being, on the balance, harmful. And I do not trust anybody (myself included) to make those decisions for others. I do not trust that all free speech is helpful, but I also do not particularly trust governments to place restrictions on free speech that will not have unintended consequences, or other harms. So I tend to be pragmatically, though not necessarily in ideals, somewhat of a Free Speech absolutist.

I would suggest that the phrase “on either side of the aisle” contains a degree of false equivalence. Whilst I am not denying the existence of Left-on-Right violence, I would suggest that the preponderence of violence and intimidation, at least in the last decade, has come from the Far Right.

This chart (from this article) shows that in the past decade, the Far Right has been the largest source of terrorism, followed by Religion, followed by the Far Left. (Yes I am aware that there was a Far Left spike 2000-2008, probably caused by reaction to the Bush Presidency – but since 2006, the Far Right has dominated, irrespective of which party controls the Presidency.)

Yes, as I have already stated, the more extreme the behavior, the rarer it is – so the more reasonably it can be labelled as “fringe”. However, I would suggest that conservative Christianity would appear to have a more prominent (I don’t know whether I’d say larger, more active, or more extreme, or some combination of the three) intimidatory and/or violent fringe, than other groupings with as much political influence as they have.

I make an issue of its political influence, because resorting to violence may be understandable (if not condoned) in the politically disenfranchised – it is far less forgivable in a group that already has considerable (and many would say disproportionate) political power.

I was not doing this. See my comment above.

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Actually, I’m a New Zealander. :slight_smile:

All that I admitted to was that I’ve “lived and worked in two countries, Australia and New Zealand.” This might lead somebody to think that I’m more likely, by population, to be Australian, but I suspect that the majority of those who have lived in both countries are New Zealanders (though I suppose that this is a level of detailed knowledge I cannot expect from those further afield).

We tend to be a somewhat mobile lot (somewhat of necessity, given our small population), and I have an uncle who has lived most of his adult life in Australia, a sister who lived in Japan, Portugal and Indonesia before settling down, a nephew in London, and a niece in British Columbia. My youngest nephew is in a relationship with a young American women, with dual citizenship – the daughter of a New Zealand woman who emigrated to the US, who is in NZ to attend university.

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Has it occurred to you to question why the US lags behind other developed countries, on a reasonably wide range of issues, given all its advantages?

Unlike Eastern European countries (among others), the US is not a new, and thus immature, democracy. Unlike all European countries, it has not had war on its soil in 150 years. It has abundant natural resources. So why does it do so poorly?

The two distinguishing features of the US appear to be its religiosity and its legacy of slavery. Neither can probably be pointed to as either sole or proximate cause, but I have the suspicion that both their legacies (and more particularly the intermingling of them) have had a part to play.

You are right to point out that I have probably unconsciously pigeon-holed you as a hardline atheist, and that led me jumping to conclusions more prematurely than I should have. Some of my most formative years (15-19) were during a time when Internet atheism was at its most intense, and arguments blaming religion as the main source of most of the world’s problems were extremely common. Those arguments were not just an abstract debate for me - they caused an existential semi-crisis. So, just as some people here are very defensive or acerbic when arguing about certain topics (such as ID or creationism) because of their past history of bad interactions, I think I may have picked up that tendency as well. I’m sorry if that has affected our conversation negatively.

I think I should clarify some things here. First, my mention of “both sides of the aisle” did not mean to imply that the amount of violence perpetrated by the Far Left and Right is equal or comparable. As the plot above shows, it has changed over the years. Second, we should not unconsciously equate the Far Right with religious extremists (or conservatives), the Right with the Far Right, or the Left with the Far Left, even if there are overlaps in some of these categories. (I think there is a temptation for us to keep reverting to an analysis of American controversial issues in terms of binaries, and I consciously want to move away from that here.)

My main point is just that death threats and violence are regrettably common in all sorts of hot button issues, not just related to religion. And the above chart supports that (although granted, it’s talking about terrorist plots, which are probably more serious than random threats to public figures transmitted via social media or email): in 2020, for example, far left and right violence comprised over ~85% of all terrorist attacks, and only ~5% was related to religion. I regard far left and far right related violence to be political violence, not religious violence, which is what I wanted to say from the beginning.

I don’t know if I would disagree with your statement above. However, from my observation I think it’s common for people on both the Left and Right to underestimate the amount of political power and influence that they have themselves, and think that the other side is much more powerful than them, giving them a justification for engaging in more extreme behavior themselves, because they think it is a form of “punching up”. This is one of the factors which I think have contributed to the worsening polarization on both sides in the US.

Instead, I would say that conservative Christianity has a very strong influence in certain regions and contexts in the US, and a very weak influence in others. I think being constantly cognizant of these different spheres of influence when discussing religion, politics, and science is really important in order to get sustained and productive dialogue.

For example, conservative Christians have very little influence in academia or the scientific community (especially relative to their influence in general American society). Thus, the feeling that some closet ID supporters have that they are being “discriminated against” in academia may not be entirely unjustified. However, on the other side, many ID supporters refuse to acknowledge that they often do have power and influence in other spheres (such as the political), and that does make many scientists (who are often apolitical) uncomfortable, especially given cases like the Dover Trial. Overall, the refusal of either side to recognize these two differing realities is an obstacle to productive discussion, instead of endless back-and-forth accusations of being oppressed or censored by the other side. (To be clear, I don’t mean to imply that “both sides are equally justified in their behavior” or anything like that - this is just an example.)

I think this is also a problem in atheist-Christian discussions, a topic that we have touched upon here on PS. Namely, both sides think that they are the side which are persecuted and powerless. And again, there could be some truth to both of those opinions. Many atheists come from regions where fundamentalism and conservative Christianity has a very strong influence, and atheism is extremely stigmatized. No doubt, they feel justified in speaking stridently against religion, because of the very real stigma and perhaps even trauma from religion that they endured when growing up. Some of these atheists go on to attain high positions in academia in mostly urban centers where atheism or agnosticism is not only tolerated, but sometimes considered more culturally more respectable and “normal” than devout religiosity. However, they do not adjust their anti-religious rhetoric to reflect that. The ironic result is that such rhetoric makes religious minorities around them feel to some degree intimidated and stigmatized. (Again, I do not mean to imply that the degree and severity of stigmatization is equal or comparable on both sides. Just that they both exist.)

This is why even I, myself, am not 100% comfortable being open about my own religious beliefs, living in Massachusetts. If (hypothetically) my thesis advisor were a strident atheist, I would not feel comfortable disclosing my personal beliefs to people in my lab, for example.

First, I think answering a question like that responsibly requires a far more complex analysis than just identifying the surface-level cultural and political differences between the US and other developed countries. It’s very likely that this phenomenon that cannot be reduced to one or two factors that you cited.

Second, I think answering such a question responsibly requires more long-term historical analysis - has the US always been behind in this way, and if so, why? How well does the US performance in these rankings correlate with the degree of religiosity in the US, for example? I don’t know the answer to these questions.

Third, to some extent worse performance on some of these metrics may simply be a result of the unique cultural, geographical, and historical situation of the US. The US is really interesting in that it is probably the most diverse of the developed countries. While America has a larger degree of fundamentalism, worse health outcomes, mass shootings, etc., it also contains some of the world’s best universities and research institutes, cutting-edge companies, and centers of cultural influence. Of course, it is tempting to imagine a future where you still have all of the latter and none of the former, but it’s not clear to me that that’s realistic. To some extent all parts and aspects of the nation (positive or negative) are coupled with each other.

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We do not need to, as the graph explicitly lists religion as a major cause of terrorism.

I have, from my very first post, disclaimed that this is exclusively a religious problem. I do not however think that you have presented evidence that it is “common in all sorts of hot button issues”, and particularly that it rises to the same level of severity and frequency (as religious intimidation and violence) in this wider range.

I do not think that the left-right imbalance in science and academia (due largely to self-selection, I would suggest) is any way similar to the imbalance in politics (due to structural imbalances in the US system, further aggravated by gerrymandering and voter suppression).

I would also rather doubt if any of the terrorism reported was due to embittered ID supporters disillusioned by their exclusion from the Ivory Towers. :slight_smile:

Tolerating this is an inescapable consequence of Free Speech. They’re free to criticise you – rightly or wrongly. You are likewise free to criticise them.

Also, why does the fact that they’ve finally reached a degree of security from personally experiencing the negative effects of Christian chauvinism, mean that they lose their right to speak out against it? Does a slave becoming an ex-slave suddenly have to be silent on the evils of slavery?

I would suggest that the proportion of atheist professors that are sufficiently bigoted as to make this a serious threat is comparatively small (God is not Dead, would appear to be more of a caricature perpetrated by conservative Christians than a reality) – but would wish it to be even smaller. Likewise, due to self-selection bias, the proportion of devoutly religious graduate students is small. This would mean that the probability of such interactions would be low. Outside of these interactions, I would suspect that most devout church-goers have little knowledge or interest in some random academic’s views on religion – unless of course they become as famous as Richard Dawkins. But is Richard Dawkins really a genuine threat to US Christians – or simply a bugbear that pastors there use to rile up their congregations?

Unfortunately, your average atheist, moderate Christian, or believer in non-Christian religions cannot so easily ignore the impositions of conservative Christian judges and politicians.

It is somewhat amusing, if somewhat disheartening, to watch you simultaneously attempt to argue the (somewhat contradictory) points that (i) the US lag is too difficult to analyse, but (ii) cannot be attributable to slavery and religion.

As to the “unique” factors that you seem to think render the US so inexplicable:

  • Culture – the US does not have a unique culture (beyond Native American). It’s culture is an amalgam of European cultures with WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) being the historically dominant – the same culture that dominates the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

  • Geography – Canada has frozen wastes, Australia has deserts, both have wide open spaces, Canada, NZ (and to a lesser extent Australia and the UK) have mountains. What is it exactly about the US’s geography that makes you think it would be so inexplicable?

  • Diversity – the US would be a bit more racially diverse than most. It does however have formerly-colonial European countries with sizable immigration from their former colonies (most notably the UK, France and Spain) as comparitors in this. It would also probably be less religiously diverse than those countries (all of whom have received sizable Muslim immigration from their former colonies).

  • History – this is of course what I was hoping we’d be discussing. It cannot be argued that Slavery and its legacy has not had a significant influence on US history – the Antebellum South, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Segregation, the Civil Rights movement, BLM. The effect of religion has been more subtle, but potentially more pervasive. And I would rather doubt if any historian would say that any area of history was so unique as to be inexplicable, or to not have parallels to other areas or time periods.

And what proportion of the US actually benefits significantly from this? Yes, it will mean that the US has a disproportionate share of the world’s billionaires and Nobel prize winners, but the downside is a disproportionate share of inequality, poverty, violence and misery, given its advantages. Do you, as a follower of Jesus, think that such a trade-off is justified?

I would also point out that there are many fine universities, research institutes, centers of cultural influence and even some cutting-edge companies in countries with far less misery.

I would suggest that it probably did not lag, at around the time of its founding. It’s two most obvious comparitors at the time were Britain and France. Britain at the time was reactionary, largely undemocratic and ruled for the benefit of the aristocracy – Rotten Boroughs and the Corn Laws come immediately to mind. France went from a self-serving and profligate Absolute Monarchy to a violently unstable Republic to a short-lived and eventually-ruinous Empire.

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I think I have offered such evidence in my post previously, just by citing the same plot as you did:

Of course they’re legally free to speak out whatever they want. But even if our speech is legally protected, we should still be careful about how and what we speak, because some kinds of speech may have a real impact on other people beyond the simple meaning of the words. For example, many of the egregious behaviors cited in your OP are protected by freedom of speech. Repeatedly quizzing a fellow board member about their religious beliefs, pronouncing them atheists, insulting reporters, being ignorant - none of these things are illegal, even if they are unethical. So, I’m not at all saying that atheists should “remain silent” about their beliefs or their past. But being in a position of power on campus and making strong statements which effectively communicate “anybody who seriously believes in religion X must be stupid” may intimidate a student who identifies with religion X, whether the professor intends it or not. I just think everyone, whether they’re religious, atheist, or otherwise, should be sensitive about the effects of their words.

There are not many overt racial bigots in academia, yet we still do care about unconscious racial bias affecting the environment we create for underrepresented racial minorities in academia. (And I think such a concern is eminently justifiable, because implicit bias is real, even among people who normally don’t think of themselves as “racist”.) In the same way, even if few professors are outright like Dawkins, how many harbor an implicit bias against religious students? I don’t know for sure. It’s likely that this issue of anti-religious bias in academia is understudied, compared to bias against other underrepresented groups in academia. At least one study has already found a degree of unconscious bias against students who identify as evangelical: "Are scientists biased against Christians?" - from the Brownell and Barnes group. To be clear, I don’t think it’s as serious of a problem as racial discrimination, given that someone’s race is usually far more apparent than their religion in everyday interactions.

But what does an atheist professor in a liberal coastal area like Massachusetts have to fear from Christian judges and politicians who hold power in places like Alabama and Mississippi? (Now, of course there are also atheists living in Alabama and Mississippi, so I would not disagree with your point regarding those.)

I’m not going to even try to answer your points about culture, geography, diversity, history, because as someone trained primarily in science I don’t have the knowledge or expertise about American history, culture, and society to perform an intellectually responsible and informed analysis.

It seems that you are conflating between moral justification and practical realities. You also insinuate that I don’t care about improving the quality of life in the US, which is not what I was trying to say.

Firstly, that table presents only three issues, not “all sorts of hot button issues”. Secondly (your cherry-picking of 2020 notwithstanding – a highly anomalous year for a great many reasons), Religion has been the second worst offender on average in the period since 2009.

Yes, both Far Left and Far Right can probably be disaggregated into sub-issues, but that would probably only leave only a very small number (I would suspect two or three in total in any given year) that would have such an impact as Religion does. This is again not “all sorts of hot button issues”.

‘Not as bad as the Far Right’ is hardly an endorsement, given how toxic the Far Right has been in recent years. This is particularly true given that the overlap between conservative Christianity and Right-wing Politics is considerable, with conservative Christianity’s capture of the Republican Party on a number of hot-button issues driving it further to the right, and thus arguably closer to the Far Right.

I would argue that they were not in the majority protected speech. Repeatedly quizzing in a School Board context as to whether you are ‘born again’ would appear to be religious harassment. Calling people “atheists” when (AFAIK) none of them were, is potentially libelous (and I know that at least one taught Sunday School). Taunting of school children is bullying, not protected Free Speech. Vilification of reporters is both potentially libelous, and (as Trump has shown) corrosive to the political system. Geesey’s gross dereliction of her duty as a Board member, was certainly not criminal, but hardly in any way comparable to your Atheist professors. Perjury is never protected speech, nor are death threats.

Whilst some of these issues are in a grey area, I would not think that they make particularly good comparitors to your Atheist professors. A more apt comparison would be to the pastors that are delivering sermons denouncing Atheists to their congregation. They are likewise in positions of power, and likewise are in a milieu where there beliefs are considered culturally respectable, and they likely never suffered being “stigmatized” for their beliefs. In comparison to these, do your Atheist professors seem so unreasonable?

How common is this? And in what context does it occur? Could you please cite some specific examples for context.

We also apparently care about if Homework is reinforcing socioeconomic hierarchies (as a paper I recently saw reported suggests).

I would argue that in such cases a balancing act needs to be made between the benefit of reduced inequality versus the cost in disruption, and/or reduction in benefit, to education.

But if we are now talking about implicit bias, rather than overt bigotry, you appear to be moving the goal posts again.

I would suggest that you are overestimating the degree to which the non-religious, on average, care about religion – unless it’s being thrust into their face. I cannot remember a single lecturer that I had at university who gave the least indication of their religious beliefs (even the couple that I worked as a research assistant for). For that matter, I can only remember two students who gave any impression – one was a student in my Statistics class who was an overtly devout Christian, one was an acquaintance (and the son of a Church friend of my mother’s) who once tried to recruit me for an Antitheist Society he was starting up. At the time I was still, at least nominally, a Christian, so declined, but this did nothing to strain our acquaintance thereafter, and I don’t think the subject ever came up again.

That survey gave some very mixed results, and I would note that although it found significant bias against Campus Crusade for Christ versus non-sectarian UNICEF students among Atheist staff, it also found bias (albeit non-significant) even from Christian staff.

Could it be that Campus Crusade for Christ (now ‘Cru’) and Evangelicalism more generally has a (self-inflicted) image problem? If you are perceived as branding more moderate fellow Christians as Atheists, and for demonising Atheists, is it any wonder that both have an unconscious tendency to rate you less positively. I am not saying that all Evangelicals are responsible for this perception, just that the ones that are are sufficiently prominent (Pat Robertson telling Dover voters that they are going to hell for voting out the creationist School Board immediately comes to mind) as to create that impression.

THIS:

The likes of Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, William Barr and Betsy DeVos, to name only the most blatant examples, affect Americans far beyond “places like Alabama and Mississippi”.

Addendum:

Further, this case reminded me that your “atheist professor in a liberal coastal area” doesn’t just have SCOTUS to worry about. Alabama judges (as well as Georgia ones) can sit on an appeals court circuit that also covers Florida. Kentucky and Tennessee judges can sit on a circuit that includes Michigan and Ohio.

And many large and thus tending-towards-liberal cities are in states with conservative state governments and judiciaries.

Yet you feel yourself to be sufficiently informed to state that:

(Noting that the above is somewhat of a strawman exaggeration of my position. – that “Neither can probably be pointed to as either sole or proximate cause, but I have the suspicion that both their legacies (and more particularly the intermingling of them) have had a part to play.”)

No. I am suggesting that you appeared to be attempting to claim that the fact that the US “contains some of the world’s best universities and research institutes, cutting-edge companies, and centers of cultural influence” in some way mitigates or justifies the fact that it “has a larger degree of fundamentalism, worse health outcomes, mass shootings, etc.” And I was suggesting that the benefits of the former generally accrue to a small privileged minority, and that the costs of the latter to the majority (and are most often avoided by that privileged minority).

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More like the reverse, since the Republicans have induced conservative Christians to vote for a man (Donald Trump) who is in all likelihood not a Christian at all, and certainly not a conservative Christian. If Conservative Christianity truly owned the Republican Party, someone like Mike Huckabee would be the leader; the conservative Christians would impose such a person on the Party.

This is probably true of professors of Science, Math, Engineering, Business, Phys. Ed., etc. It’s less true of professors the humanities and social sciences, who, without saying explicitly what denomination they belong to or whether or not they believe in God, often manage to convey, through side-remarks and general attitudes, a good deal of their thought about religion. This is obviously true in the case of religious studies and philosophy, but it’s not hard to see in many cases in English professors, sociology professors, psychology professors, politics professors, history professors, etc. The nature of the subject-matter in the Arts subjects is such that it is hard to separate the person’s ultimate commitments from the way they approach their material.