Too bad Asimov does not call out religion as a culprit, as he alludes to that in his books. The US has a huge evangelical (or fundamentalist) population that places faith over reason.
The country's birth from a remote colonial revolution with a deep distrust of monarchy, tradition, and authority.
Being a destination for various people disenfranchised in their home cultures, who need a new metric of success, coalesce around money as the arbiter of success and indirectly "correctness".
Geographic isolationism from other and significantly diverse first world nations.
A lingering sense of superiority for our heroic role in WWII.
I don't know how much each of these contributes, but I think the answer to the questions Asimov raises is sooner found in, say, de Tocqueville than in Susan Jacoby.
AFAIK, a more orthodox understanding of faith this: It's a willingness to take the risk that a proposition is true, or that a person can be trusted, even in the absence of iron-clad proof. As one guy phrased it, it's "putting all your eggs in one basket".
And FWIW, I've encountered numerous liberals, conservatives, athiests, and theists who hold self-inconsistent sets of beliefs.
It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history that are (edit) religious or non-religious.
Speaking of contradictory beliefs, how about Lenin? He was an atheist but also thought he was a man of destiny...and murdered a bunch of people through fanaticism. Of course nobody wants to claim him today - not a true believer. Everybody knows true believers wouldn't do that.
I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say.
The first sentence seems to be an assertion about the relationship between reason and religious belief. But the second sentence seems to be about the non-relationship between holding a [non-]religious world-view and being a monster.
Are those two sentences were meant to work together to make a larger point? If so, would you mind restating it so I can understand?
With respect this argument (as presented) is anecdotal and subjective. There's neither data nor analysis so it's not very pursuasive.
> ...a more orthodox understanding of faith this...
Careful there, you're conflating the two meanings of the word 'faith'. One is putting trust in something, the other is to follow the doctrines of a religion (or referring to a specific religion). They're related but distinct.
Human beings are illogical and take a lot of things on faith. People often don't have good reasons to believe things or have simplistic views of other (see religion or not-religion). They believe because that's all they know. You eliminate all religion and you'll end up with non-religious faiths and ignorance. Haven't you noticed most tech is religion?
Religion might play a factor, but only as much as class, nationality, race, culture, education, background, genetic factors, etc.
Most people whether they are religious or not aren't applying the scientific method to their daily lives. You can't blame that - biases are easy and trying to be objective is a pain in the ass.
Most of the scientific facts don't have a direct impact on your life, so you don't get rewarded for getting things right, nor you get punished for getting them wrong. Different criteria thus become more relevant. How a belief fits your image of yourself? How does it help you strengthen your ties to the groups you're in? How it positions you against the groups you dislike?
Note that in situations when getting things right has direct impact on one's life - like, when it comes to money or job - people suddenly become very rational.
The vast vast majority of the population, for example, is in no position to question the LHC result identifying the Higgs boson. Unless you have a cool billion dollars or so to build your own collider, you are essentially in the position that an expert has told you so, and some other experts said they agree with them (peer review). So therefore believe what you are told. And whenever people do question scientific results, without the expensive equipment and basing their entire career around becoming employed as a scientist, we tend to call them cranks.
With most religious positions (eg, what is the biblical view on X), you've probably got three copies of different translations lying around the house, and have every means and encouragement to do your own questioning, argument, and interpretation.
In terms of the actual practice of questioning, interpreting evidence, and weighing up a decision on an open question where there are differing views -- most people have vastly more experience and engagement of doing that with religion than with science.
If a person truly believes his religion, it has major implications for his/her notion of what it means for humans to thrive, what activities are moral/ethical, and the goals of human society.
It would be very strange indeed if those beliefs had no bearing on one's politics.
I don't know. I see good arguments for and against.
In Europe, your usual choices when you disagree with the dominant church are to get over it, become atheist, or - more rarely - change faith altogether (as in to Islam, Buddhism, etc.) because, more often than not, you exhaust Christian picks after going through Catholicism and the local Protestant flavor or two.
In contrast, the US offers a very wide variety of Christian flavors (and Christian-based sects). So when, like your sister and her husband, you disagree you can just pick another church flavor down the block that is mostly the same with a few twists. You're still nominally Christian though.
The difference between the two is sometimes put forward to explain the contrast between the high number of atheists in Europe and the high number of religious people in the US.