Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey | Hacker News Reader

Canadians consider certain religions damaging to society: survey

globalnews.ca

68 pointsluu105 comments

There's lots of interesting nuance in the actual survey report: https://angusreid.org/canada-religion-interfaith-holy-week/

Edit: Towards the bottom of the report is a matrix showing how the various religious groups feel about each other (net positive/negative). Some takeaways: * Jews and Hindus are the only groups that think positively about all the others * Catholics and Evangelicals are negative on the Jews * Evangelicals are negative on everyone else

If evangelicals are negative about everyone else, it makes sense that everyone else might be less enthusiastic about them too

It seems like you mixed up the columns, it's reversed...

> * Jews and Hindus are the only groups that think positively about all the others

Jewish people were negative on (mostly) Ev. Christians and Catholics

Hindus were negative on Catholics, Protestants, Ev Christians, and (mostly) Islam.

> * Catholics and Evangelicals are negative on the Jews

No group was majority negative on Jews

> * Evangelicals are negative on everyone else

Evangelicals were negative only on Islam, Sikhs, and (mostly) Atheists

> Edit: Towards the bottom of the report is a matrix ..

You're reading it flipped. The columns define who they asked (hence it has a "Gen pop sample" entry), and the rows are their opinion of different religions. So Jews and Hindus are the only groups that all the others think positively of, not the other way around.

So Jewish people consider Catholicism negative (-15%), Protestantism positive (10%), and Evangelical Christianity strongly negative (-45%). Meanwhile Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelical Christians all consider Judaism positively (13%, 26%, and 35%, respectively).

In other words, the group that considers Judaism most positively (Evangelical Christians, at 35%), is considered the most negative by Jews (-46%, tied for the lowest score in the matrix).

> If evangelicals are negative about everyone else, it makes sense that everyone else might be less enthusiastic about them too

The truth is quite a bit stranger :)

That table is interesting.

The gulf between jewish view of evangelicals (+35) to evangelicals view of jews (-45) is interesting, but there are other situations similar like protestants like evangelicals (+55) while evangelicals are a little cooler to protestants (-10).

edit: it seems someone is saying the columns and rows are reversed from how I read it. I don't see where that's indicated, although that makes sense if you look at the evangelical row and how most groups dislike them, which was a reported result. Poorly labelled table.

Jews for Jesus was started in the 70s and maintains a $25M a year tax-free income through donations from Baptist and Evangelical sources. They make their rounds through the various churches every few years asking for money, and so Evangelicals have frowned upon the idea that the Jews have their own covenant with God. The Vatican, on the other hand, has stated in the past that Judaism and Christianity have incompatible beliefs and thus Catholics should not try to convert Jews.

If anyone is curious, I think this is referring to dispensationalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism), which is indeed a relatively new phenomenon compared to covenant theology. It's interesting how much it's caught on in baptist and non-denominational communities in particular. Most reformed (calvinist) evangelicals are still very covenantal in their theology, but even they seem to be less strict on it than they used to be. Mainline protestants are pretty uniformly covenant theology as well.

As a Canadian who spends a considerable amount of time travelling to the US, the difference is fairly striking.

Religion enters almost every conversation I have in the US in some way. Whereas in Canada, religion almost never comes up. If it does, it's generally a discussion on the merits where I'm talking more about history and culture. It's fascinating how two places, so geographically close can be so culturally different in this one topic.

I feel like you might be reversing the causality a bit and bringing religion into things because of that perception.

I can't remember the last time I discussed religion with anybody in public as an American. Admittedly I live in a bubble that means that I'm not interacting with any fundamentalists or evangelicals but if you are coming from Canada you are probably in that some bubble.

I'm with you. I don't recognize the OP's description of US culture at all in the community where I live. Granted, I'm in Vermont, which is not at all typical, but it is also right next to Canada. I lived in Buffalo, also right next to Canada, and any public conversation about religion was scarce there as well. Perhaps the OP flies regularly to Arkansas?

Red state/blue state difference applies to religion. So much so that religion drives the politics of red states more so that money or even "them". Although they somehow bend religion to separate Christians into good ones and bad ones just fine.

I don't get it either. Half of my family is Canadian. I've crossed the border my whole life... The only thing I can figure, is maybe they come to the US and don't get away from the border cities? They tend to be small and quite rural. I feel like those kinds of towns tend to be a bit more religious.

Also from Buffalo, same experience- someone bringing up religion in conversation would be odd. Would be really weird if they start talking about their relationship with God, praying, etc. Not that there's any problem with this stuff, but for me (and how I was raised), it's a private matter.

I've been away from Buffalo for maybe 15 years now and everywhere I've been outside of the north east, people will somehow work church and God into conversations. And for them, there's nothing odd about it... they just kind of assume I'm on board and it's not weird at all. I'm used to it at this point, but it used to be uncomfortable.

My anecdotal conclusion is that the "religion is a private matter" mentality might just be local to the northeast US.

I lived many years in the US and almost nobody ever asked me about my religion or initiated a conversation about it.. I shared an apartment with a Canadian who used to ask me constantly about religion and how I prayed and when I prayed.. It was almost annoying!

> Religion enters almost every conversation I have in the US in some way.

I'm an American and this is very surprising to me. In fact, I find it difficult to believe. Can you give some examples?

Yep! Now, I've primarily been travelling to Texas, Kentucky and Ohio. But things like most people mention bible study, it's assumed you're going to church on Sunday, more religious aphorisms and sayings.

Primarily, most of my interactions with clients are on a blue collar level, although an affluent blue collar level. Not sure if that changes the circle a number of HN readers might be in?

I also might notice it more because I specifically try to avoid religion in any conversation, it's a topic that really has no upside to talk about with clients.

I mean -- you've been in three of the most religious states in the U.S., and you're interacting w blue collar workers. There is a fairly tremendous sampling bias.

But I agree that very religious Americans do manage to work their religion into conversations in which you just wouldn't think it would come up.

I mean, 30-35% of the country is still evangelical and evangelicals love talking about religion. You could randomly choose a state and the GP's experience is probably true. Texas, Kentucky, and Ohio... but in my experience Arkansas and parts of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia are actually more religious than those three. Admittedly, a lot of my travel has been through rural areas -- but still, 30-35%!

In Boston I could go half a decade without a stranger bringing up religion unprompted. But in Arkansas, nearly every conversation was loosely tied to religion. And it was in my best interest to pretend I was still Pentecostal to get by.

>you've been in three of the most religious states in the U.S., and you're interacting w blue collar workers.

you're saying that like they went to Arrakis and interacted with the Fremen lol. Blue collar red state workers are what a lot of the US looks like. Two thirds of Americans do not have a university degree.

All I'm gleaning here is that trying to generalize the experiences and preferences of 400+ million people between the U.S. and Canada isn't a particularly useful exercise. Beyond what country / state / county you're in, I have to imagine that age, race, socioeconomic status, general social preferences, and probably a whole other slew of factors play a significant role in how often people experience religion being thrust upon them in.

Not to say that this is necessarily a useless conversation, but it feels odd to me considering many dang people there are.

Your inclusion of “without a university degree” is doing a LOT of work in that sentence to make it seem like rural (and let’s admit it: white) evangelicals are anything close to a majoritarian bloc in the United States.

You don't need to be an evangelical, and certainly not a white evangelical, for religion to pop up in your conversations. Big cities are quite secular, but that's pretty much it... This is also one of those figures where the area-versus-population thing in the US matters a lot. In the vast majority of the land in the US, I'd agree that religion pops up in a huge share of conversations, but this does not imply that it appears in the vast majority of conversations in the US.

Goalpost, move thyself! Nobody was talking about land vs people until you brought it up. I personally am not pursuaded.

> Yep! Now, I've primarily been travelling to Texas, Kentucky and Ohio.

This is land^ “The US” is also land. It’s not moving goalposts to acknowledge that you two may be talking past each other based on this ambiguity :)

Your family or in laws maybe?

I've lived in the US for the past 12 years. I never had a conversation about religion. Do you remember the context when it came up for you?

It has to be somehow ultimately the result of one of our main origin stories about the first settlers arriving here to escape religious persecution.

That image of poor harmless persecuted victims huddling in their homes with no candles lit so that no one knows they are having a prayer meeting or else they'll be killed for the crime of praying is taught to everyone in gradeschool, in the public, government run, non-elective schools to everyone, and so freedom of religion ends up getting way over-reaction enshrined.

Like freedom of religion is itself a religion in the sense that you mindlessly quote the scripture but don't actually think about what it means or do what it says, but do bend it to serve whatever want.

And the tendency of the more intellectual to forgive and tolerate stupidity in the name of freedom and freedom of speech just amplifies that.

And don't the same schools make you pledge some words including a deity daily?

Yep. Well they did in the 80s but since then I think there are a growing but still tiny number of exceptions. And the money still has a god on it, and courts use a bible in the ceremony for giving testimony in trials, and laws about limiting vices (alcohol) on Sundays are almost universal...

"Perception is reality". People get easily manipulated by the media on everything, it can't be helped.

I have come to view religions as organisms in an eco-system. The behavior is very analogous. The goal for both is survival and propagation. As within an eco-system, organisms evolve and adopt survival strategies. Religions do the same too. Organisms evolve due to genetic aberration, Religions evolve due to social aberration. In any eco-system, the young organisms are known to adopt harsher survival strategies, in religions you find the younger religions (Abrahamic, at this point of time in history), adopt strategies of violence and coercion. The more tougher to get out of a religion is directly proportional to how young it is. The principles are hard wired for survival, hence more emphasis on mandatory daily/weekly rituals for all in the religion, unlike in older ones where rituals in general are more often than not a domain of the priests. The older religions on the other hand are less virulent and more susceptible to younger challengers. Some organisms in nature beat this challenger possibility by adopting a more distributed structure, there by surviving in spite of assault from challengers. Young religions on the other hand prefer a centralized control structure which helps in keeping the line discipline. As within an eco-system, strategies of some organisms might be damaging to the eco-system as a whole. When it comes to religion, the ecological balance can be obtained only when damaging survival strategies are identified and discarded by the said organism, in other words it just needs to grow up...

It is funny to observe that even a religion is itself the product of, and subject to, and actively conducting evolution exactly the same as biology.

All evelotion is is the axiom or truism "That which works, works."

That statement can't be denied or escaped, and regardless what your mystical feelings are about how unbelievable it is that an eyeball just evolved by itself because that would be magic and magic is impossible but gods are magic that is possible or maybe gods aren't magic...I'm so confused...anyway no matter what you think about all that, there is no way around such a basic statement. You can't not-believe it.

And everything else ultimately flows from that. You can avoid considering it and imagine that there is some unknown other stuff between that and evolution and eyeballs, but you can't actually produce that unknown other stuff if you are ever forced to consider it.

And so it is with any self-oganizing self-modifying system, including organized religions and religious ideas.

You are right that they evolve strategies to perpetuate themselves. That which works, works. If someone had a religious idea to only accept seekers but keep themselves secret and never advertise, not even to their own offspring, that religion would cease to exist within a generation. Anyone still in it after that would have to be in some new religion resulting from a mutation that it's ok to bring in at least some new people by some means or other.

tl;dr: two thirds of Canadians report believing in a higher power in some way. If you slice the data in enough ways you'll find a few that will make headlines like this.

I was about to snark that this was done by a polling firm who works for political parties whose main opposition are also faith based, but as a finding to say 2/3 of people can be appealed to based on their faith in something, that's an important and valuable number.

The people who believe nothing are indeed in a minority, and they are also in power, so the tone of the article was likely to make believers of any faith feel isolated instead of reminding them that they are a majority.

I don't wanna take any sides here, I just point out when someone reports their data in a questionable way.

Wasn't my intent to suggest your comment had. Re-reading, I may have unfairly levered it into something more partisan than it seemed as well. Harder to maintain charity in Canada lately.

Please consider belief in $GOD as different from $RELIGION. Consider one the theory and the other the implementation, and the latter seems to cause way more difficulties, particularly with respect to the hardware.

The theory of $GOD is based on a whim, feeling, and the use of psychedelics by self-appointed (or self-anointed) clerics who recognize a shared human condition of wanting a purpose

The openness to an explanation occupies a register in the brain, in a first come first serve basis, and stays there.

To me, the former is a personal spiritual bond while the latter is an imposed social bond. And the further that social bond moves away from the individual experience, the more dimly I tend to view both the religion and its followers.

> Please consider belief in $GOD as ...

Hmm ... isn't God a value, not a variable?

God is an X.

https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/everything-is-an-x-patter...

$GOD is both an environmental variable, set upon system initialization and the value contained in the $GOD environmental variable. It is the Alpha and Omega, set first upon startup and cleared last upon shutdown. Unfortunately, it's up to the user's shell to interpret it.

God is an global constant of undefinable type.

Meanwhile the Buddhists are unattached about being left out of the survey. They don't mind.

Buddhism isn't a religion insomuch as it is a philosphy.

it most certainly is an actual religion/theology and a rather dark one, too.

e.g. "your life sucks today for reasons beyond your control? well, you must've deserved it in the previous life, scumbag"

That's something you'd get from Buddhism for Dummies if you just assumed Reincarnation and Karma were simplistic concepts with only one definition. The reality is that these are metaphysical concepts and Buddhism is often conveyed via metaphor or analogy.

Your interpretation is a rather naive one, and "deserve" is a loaded word.

Reading Mahasi Sayadaw on the hell realms cured me of that idea.

That's what i thought too, before visiting a majority Buddhist country and i was shocked at the lavish temples, the amount of temples, full sized and miniature versions everywhere, the amount of clerics, the indoctrination of children ( they start the journey to be a monk at a very young age, iirc 8), how much it seemed to matter to the locals ( stuff like people stopping to pray at a mini-temple before a journey, buses being lavishly decorated with religious symbols, etc), including their donations "for good luck" while the country was on the verge of bankruptcy and going through an economic decline. Funnily, in a majority Christian city in the same country everything was the same, just directed at a different diety.

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