Wealth vs. Religiosity | Hacker News Reader

Wealth vs. Religiosity

theatlantic.com

11 pointsgruseom19 comments

So, religiosity = c / wealth for some constant c, with the U.S. (and Kuwait) as an outlier. Why am I not surprised, yet somehow disappointed?

It would be interesting to see what religions beget what wealth.

Our own preconceptions set aside, what is obvious is the relation between countries with a Judeo-Christian backgound that are wealthy. Even if many countries have abandoned many of these practises it is still the root of many bases of society (our law system, trust as fundamental to business e.g. contracts, money etc.). Societies stemming from Judeo-Christina values more often have a everyone-has-value society than non-Judeo-Christian based societies. Apart from the actual debate on where wealth comes from (slavery anyone?) it still is interesting to ponder.

I'd be interested in a causal representation: whether becoming less religious caused countries to become wealthier, or visa versa.

Come on, this is the kind of trolling I was hoping to avoid by coming here instead of reddit...

Where's Ireland, yo? They only have one of the highest per-capita GDPs in the EU.

What's a "religiosity scale"?

Good question. The graphic is taken from http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/secularism. The article itself is rather platitudinous, so I didn't post it. Here's the passage that answers your question (and more or less summarizes the whole piece):

the idea of inevitable secularization has fallen out of favor with many scholars and journalists. Still, its most basic tenet—that material progress will slowly erode religious fervor—appears unassailable. Last October, the Pew Global Attitudes Project plotted 44 countries according to per capita gross domestic product and intensity of religious belief, gauged by the responses to several questions about faith [...]. The pattern, as seen in the Pew study and a number of other sources, is hard to miss: when God and Mammon collide, Mammon usually wins.

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/2275614130/

"Definition: Religiosity is measured using a three-item index ranging from 0-3, with 3 representing the maximum religious position. Respondents were given a +1 if they believe faith in God is necessary for morality; and +1 if they say religion is very important in their lives; and +1 if they pray at least once a day."

most atheists seem to think morality is a religious idea. like dawkins.

No? Show me serious writing by an atheist, explaining how morality exists and isn't religious?

So If we don't choose to immediately respond you automatically declare a default victory?

Because even if we can't disprove your assertion, we are expected to go along with your idea without question?

The "No?" was to the downmodders, who were basically saying I'm wrong without giving a counter example. They declared a position. If you're unsure and have no position, that's fine.

I don't care if you "go along with my idea". I do care that many people say something exists, but no one has ever been able to give me a single half-way-decent example.

I would agree that morality outside of religion is nonsensical, but I would also say that religion is nonsensical . I can't say "most atheists" think morality is a religious idea, but Dawkins certainly does not think that it is. At least in The God Delusion and in his lectures, he maintains that it isn't. So...

Would be interesting to see where China is...

The second comment on this thread:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/2275614130/

puts it all in context.

In short: the graph means what you want it to mean, according to your own background.

In the absence of more information about the graph and how the data was created, yeah. The rest of what she says, though, are mostly bizarre inferences. Based on that, and reading the rest of her profile, I don't think she really cares about science. I have a hard time thinking that people would, as a society, willingly choose to not have clean running water, environmental protection, or sewage treatment plants because it might not be "pious".

The thing to ask now should be to ask is what is the casual relationship, if any, between the two data sets and if there is a way to test the relationship. I think she may also be missing out on the idea of "aggregate" sums.

If you look at the color of the dots, though, you see that richer continents don't overlap; or at least, they seem discrete. That's interesting.

Slavokia, Bolivia Czech Rep? Lots of rich people in those countries (not). This graph should show income based upon the real local value because showing it in just dollar skews the results.

Sorry it is not the poor dumb tards that are religious it is usually the rich. (Except in muslim countries, then you can turn it around and say it is the poor but that is for different reasons all together.)

It is PPP. US is, per capita, about nine times richer than lebanon and about a hundred times as rich as Senegal, not in dollar terms, but in real terms. In dollar terms, the difference is larger still.

That's another thing I'm interested in. It isn't clear to me whether it is only an inverse proportion. It may be more a matter of extremes: i.e. the extremely religious or irreligious countries do worse economically, whereas the moderate countries do better.

The relationship may also be qualitative instead of quantitative. The content of the religion may have more to do with the GDP than "religiosity."

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