O:9:"MagpieRSS":20:{s:6:"parser";i:0;s:12:"current_item";a:0:{}s:5:"items";a:10:{i:0;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:35:"Friday Fluff – October 22nd, 2010";s:4:"link";s:78:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/friday-fluff-october-22nd-2010/";s:8:"comments";s:87:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/friday-fluff-october-22nd-2010/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 22 Oct 2010 17:19:34 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:16:"BlogFriday Fluff";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7347";s:11:"description";s:364:"1. First, a post from the past: The Round-Eyed Buddha. 2. Weird search query of the week: “straight jacket sex.” 3. Comment of the week, in response to Glenn Beck, Evolution, Global Warming & Tea Parties: People who don’t believe in evolution don’t comprehend evolution. Evolution is a struggle to survive as a species. How else can you [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:3661:"

FF3
1. First, a post from the past: The Round-Eyed Buddha.

2. Weird search query of the week: “straight jacket sex.”

3. Comment of the week, in response to Glenn Beck, Evolution, Global Warming & Tea Parties:

People who don’t believe in evolution don’t comprehend evolution. Evolution is a struggle to survive as a species. How else can you explain Neanderthal man and the dead end they came to? They existed, despite the Bible’s not bothering to mention them. The traits that ensured modern man’s survival were passed on genetically. That’s what evolution is; the passing on of traits that are more suited for the survival of the species.

This is all self evident. It doesn’t threaten religious orthodoxy except in the most simple-minded way. You have to wonder if the people who dismiss evolution because it somehow conflicts with their religious beliefs have ever taken the trouble to actually read Darwin’s “Origin Of The Species”? I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess no.

Evolution is not only a fact, it’s a necessity. It’s all about a species being able to adapt to it’s environment in order to survive. Many species in the history of this planet have gone extinct. How do you account for it? Was it God’s will, or something more plausible? How about this? They ceased to exist as a species because of their failure to adapt to their environment. In other words, their failure to evolve.

Homo-sapiens didn’t become the dominant species on this planet because we had so much spirituality and trust in the Lord. How did we do it? Here’s a clue, our eyes are located in the front of our heads like any natural predator, we stand upright and have opposable thumbs. The homo-sapiens with eyes in the front, who grasped weapons and stood on their hind legs to hunt, survived and passed these traits along. The traits most suitable for survival were passed along. Get it? It’s called natural selection.

As to how evolution gacked up a human hairball like GLenn Beck is another matter entirely. I think he must be some kind of double agent planted by the left in order to make conservatives look like a bunch of clueless, bloviating demagogues. Mission accomplished.

Often people who believe in evolution don’t comprehend evolution

4) From last week: “Genomic sequencing will be able to predict offspring I.Q. as well as looking at parental values + regression in….”. Here were the outcomes:

Never – 26%
More than 30 years – 14%
16-30 year – 34%
11-15 years – 10%
5-10 years - 14%
Less than 5 years – 2%

5) And finally, your weekly fluff fix:

feelslikefall

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:83:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/friday-fluff-october-22nd-2010/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:364:"1. First, a post from the past: The Round-Eyed Buddha. 2. Weird search query of the week: “straight jacket sex.” 3. Comment of the week, in response to Glenn Beck, Evolution, Global Warming & Tea Parties: People who don’t believe in evolution don’t comprehend evolution. Evolution is a struggle to survive as a species. How else can you [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:3661:"

FF3
1. First, a post from the past: The Round-Eyed Buddha.

2. Weird search query of the week: “straight jacket sex.”

3. Comment of the week, in response to Glenn Beck, Evolution, Global Warming & Tea Parties:

People who don’t believe in evolution don’t comprehend evolution. Evolution is a struggle to survive as a species. How else can you explain Neanderthal man and the dead end they came to? They existed, despite the Bible’s not bothering to mention them. The traits that ensured modern man’s survival were passed on genetically. That’s what evolution is; the passing on of traits that are more suited for the survival of the species.

This is all self evident. It doesn’t threaten religious orthodoxy except in the most simple-minded way. You have to wonder if the people who dismiss evolution because it somehow conflicts with their religious beliefs have ever taken the trouble to actually read Darwin’s “Origin Of The Species”? I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess no.

Evolution is not only a fact, it’s a necessity. It’s all about a species being able to adapt to it’s environment in order to survive. Many species in the history of this planet have gone extinct. How do you account for it? Was it God’s will, or something more plausible? How about this? They ceased to exist as a species because of their failure to adapt to their environment. In other words, their failure to evolve.

Homo-sapiens didn’t become the dominant species on this planet because we had so much spirituality and trust in the Lord. How did we do it? Here’s a clue, our eyes are located in the front of our heads like any natural predator, we stand upright and have opposable thumbs. The homo-sapiens with eyes in the front, who grasped weapons and stood on their hind legs to hunt, survived and passed these traits along. The traits most suitable for survival were passed along. Get it? It’s called natural selection.

As to how evolution gacked up a human hairball like GLenn Beck is another matter entirely. I think he must be some kind of double agent planted by the left in order to make conservatives look like a bunch of clueless, bloviating demagogues. Mission accomplished.

Often people who believe in evolution don’t comprehend evolution

4) From last week: “Genomic sequencing will be able to predict offspring I.Q. as well as looking at parental values + regression in….”. Here were the outcomes:

Never – 26%
More than 30 years – 14%
16-30 year – 34%
11-15 years – 10%
5-10 years - 14%
Less than 5 years – 2%

5) And finally, your weekly fluff fix:

feelslikefall

";}i:1;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:31:"A sign that Facebook has peaked";s:4:"link";s:79:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/a-sign-that-facebook-has-peaked/";s:8:"comments";s:88:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/a-sign-that-facebook-has-peaked/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:37:49 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:22:"BlogFacebookTechnology";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7353";s:11:"description";s:336:"The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1410:"

The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find the two GNXP weblogs on the world wide web pretty easily. And I feed the blog posts to two twitter accounts. I can see the value-add of Facebook’s selective semi-permeability when it comes to the “social graph”, but less so for websites which have a robust presence on the internet. GNXP in some form has been around for over 8 years. I can’t but help feel that this is a flashier Geocities fan page.

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:84:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/a-sign-that-facebook-has-peaked/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:336:"The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:1410:"

The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find the two GNXP weblogs on the world wide web pretty easily. And I feed the blog posts to two twitter accounts. I can see the value-add of Facebook’s selective semi-permeability when it comes to the “social graph”, but less so for websites which have a robust presence on the internet. GNXP in some form has been around for over 8 years. I can’t but help feel that this is a flashier Geocities fan page.

";}i:2;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:31:"A sign that Facebook has peaked";s:4:"link";s:79:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/a-sign-that-facebook-has-peaked/";s:8:"comments";s:88:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/a-sign-that-facebook-has-peaked/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 22 Oct 2010 08:37:49 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:22:"BlogFacebookTechnology";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7353";s:11:"description";s:336:"The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1410:"

The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find the two GNXP weblogs on the world wide web pretty easily. And I feed the blog posts to two twitter accounts. I can see the value-add of Facebook’s selective semi-permeability when it comes to the “social graph”, but less so for websites which have a robust presence on the internet. GNXP in some form has been around for over 8 years. I can’t but help feel that this is a flashier Geocities fan page.

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:84:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/a-sign-that-facebook-has-peaked/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:336:"The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:1410:"

The other day NPR’s Planet Money quipped that the gold bubble was going to burst soon, as they’d decided to buy gold. Well, perhaps Facebook is nearing its bursting point…I created a Gene Expression fan page. I don’t have a good sense of the great utility of this sort of thing…you can after all find the two GNXP weblogs on the world wide web pretty easily. And I feed the blog posts to two twitter accounts. I can see the value-add of Facebook’s selective semi-permeability when it comes to the “social graph”, but less so for websites which have a robust presence on the internet. GNXP in some form has been around for over 8 years. I can’t but help feel that this is a flashier Geocities fan page.

";}i:3;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:22:"The gods of the future";s:4:"link";s:44:"http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/?p=4935";s:8:"comments";s:53:"http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/?p=4935#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Fri, 22 Oct 2010 06:26:19 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"David Hume";}s:8:"category";s:22:"BooksCultureDemography";s:4:"guid";s:44:"http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/?p=4935";s:11:"description";s:224:"I have a long review of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? at Discover Blogs. My co-blogger reviewed it for Taki’s Magazine last June, prompting me to add this book to my “stack.” Well worth the read. ";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:829:"

I have a long review of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? at Discover Blogs. My co-blogger reviewed it for Taki’s Magazine last June, prompting me to add this book to my “stack.” Well worth the read.

Share

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:54:"http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/?feed=rss2&p=4935";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:224:"I have a long review of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? at Discover Blogs. My co-blogger reviewed it for Taki’s Magazine last June, prompting me to add this book to my “stack.” Well worth the read. ";s:12:"atom_content";s:829:"

I have a long review of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? at Discover Blogs. My co-blogger reviewed it for Taki’s Magazine last June, prompting me to add this book to my “stack.” Well worth the read.

Share

";}i:4;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:16:"…Those Germans";s:4:"link";s:44:"http://www.gnxp.com/wp/culture/those-germans";s:8:"comments";s:53:"http://www.gnxp.com/wp/culture/those-germans#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 21 Oct 2010 23:48:49 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:14:"CultureGermany";s:4:"guid";s:29:"http://www.gnxp.com/wp/?p=925";s:11:"description";s:321:"I have a long post reviewing Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Good book. In the process of blogging on the topic I found something kind of funny, but it was too immature to be posted there. I yanked some charts from Gallup Coexist 2009. Basically it shows [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:2752:"

I have a long post reviewing Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Good book. In the process of blogging on the topic I found something kind of funny, but it was too immature to be posted there. I yanked some charts from Gallup Coexist 2009. Basically it shows differences among UK, France and Germany on social issues, as well as differences between Muslims and non-Muslims. In general Muslims are more socially conservative, though the gap is the least in France and the most in the UK. Here are the charts, with the last one the one I found funny:


In general the Germans are more socially conservative than the French, except in that case where Western European nations have achieved consensus. But look the numbers for porn. Perhaps there’s something to the idea that Germany is the land of “dirty porn.“ Also, still something to “No Sex Please, We’re British.”

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:49:"http://www.gnxp.com/wp/culture/those-germans/feed";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:321:"I have a long post reviewing Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Good book. In the process of blogging on the topic I found something kind of funny, but it was too immature to be posted there. I yanked some charts from Gallup Coexist 2009. Basically it shows [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:2752:"

I have a long post reviewing Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Good book. In the process of blogging on the topic I found something kind of funny, but it was too immature to be posted there. I yanked some charts from Gallup Coexist 2009. Basically it shows differences among UK, France and Germany on social issues, as well as differences between Muslims and non-Muslims. In general Muslims are more socially conservative, though the gap is the least in France and the most in the UK. Here are the charts, with the last one the one I found funny:


In general the Germans are more socially conservative than the French, except in that case where Western European nations have achieved consensus. But look the numbers for porn. Perhaps there’s something to the idea that Germany is the land of “dirty porn.“ Also, still something to “No Sex Please, We’re British.”

";}i:5;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:39:"Borders we forget: Saudi Arabia & Yemen";s:4:"link";s:84:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/borders-we-forget-saudi-arabia-yemen/";s:8:"comments";s:93:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/borders-we-forget-saudi-arabia-yemen/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:36:31 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:59:"ComparisonsCultureDevelopmentSaudi ArabiaYemendatageography";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7336";s:11:"description";s:336:"There’s a lot of stuff you stumble upon via Google Public Data Explorer which you kind of knew, but is made all the more stark through quantitative display. For example, consider Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In gross national income per capita the difference between these two nations is one order of magnitude (PPP and nominal). [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:5016:"

There’s a lot of stuff you stumble upon via Google Public Data Explorer which you kind of knew, but is made all the more stark through quantitative display. For example, consider Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In gross national income per capita the difference between these two nations is one order of magnitude (PPP and nominal). Depending on the measure you use (PPP or nominal) the difference between the USA and Mexico is in the range of a factor of 3.5 to 5. Until recently most Americans did not know much about Yemen. It was famous for being the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s father and the Queen of Sheba.

Let’s do some comparisons.


Good luck Saudi Arabia! :-) Couldn’t happen to a nicer nation.

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:89:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/borders-we-forget-saudi-arabia-yemen/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:336:"There’s a lot of stuff you stumble upon via Google Public Data Explorer which you kind of knew, but is made all the more stark through quantitative display. For example, consider Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In gross national income per capita the difference between these two nations is one order of magnitude (PPP and nominal). [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:5016:"

There’s a lot of stuff you stumble upon via Google Public Data Explorer which you kind of knew, but is made all the more stark through quantitative display. For example, consider Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In gross national income per capita the difference between these two nations is one order of magnitude (PPP and nominal). Depending on the measure you use (PPP or nominal) the difference between the USA and Mexico is in the range of a factor of 3.5 to 5. Until recently most Americans did not know much about Yemen. It was famous for being the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s father and the Queen of Sheba.

Let’s do some comparisons.


Good luck Saudi Arabia! :-) Couldn’t happen to a nicer nation.

";}i:6;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:38:"Daily Data Dump – October 21st, 2010";s:4:"link";s:79:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/daily-data-dump-october-21-2010/";s:8:"comments";s:88:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/daily-data-dump-october-21-2010/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:37:18 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:19:"BlogDaily Data Dump";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7332";s:11:"description";s:336:"Bob Guccione, Penthouse Founder, Dies at 79. Playboy has been in decline too. HUMAN GENE COUNT: MORE THAN A CHICKEN, LESS THAN A GRAPE. Going under 20,000. Hey, it’s just a number, not the measure of a man. Robert Heinlein, We Never Knew Ye. Fred Pohl’s blog is really interesting. Only You. And You. And You. This is [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:1465:"

Bob Guccione, Penthouse Founder, Dies at 79. Playboy has been in decline too.

HUMAN GENE COUNT: MORE THAN A CHICKEN, LESS THAN A GRAPE. Going under 20,000. Hey, it’s just a number, not the measure of a man.


Robert Heinlein, We Never Knew Ye. Fred Pohl’s blog is really interesting.

Only You. And You. And You. This is really confusing: “Terisa Greenan and her boyfriend, Matt, are enjoying a rare day of Seattle sun, sharing a beet carpaccio on the patio of a local restaurant. Matt holds Terisa’s hand, as his 6-year-old son squeezes in between the couple to give Terisa a kiss. His mother, Vera, looks over and smiles; she’s there with her boyfriend, Larry.”

Insulin Sensitivity May Explain Link Between Obesity, Memory Problems. Another reason to lose weight.

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:84:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/daily-data-dump-october-21-2010/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:336:"Bob Guccione, Penthouse Founder, Dies at 79. Playboy has been in decline too. HUMAN GENE COUNT: MORE THAN A CHICKEN, LESS THAN A GRAPE. Going under 20,000. Hey, it’s just a number, not the measure of a man. Robert Heinlein, We Never Knew Ye. Fred Pohl’s blog is really interesting. Only You. And You. And You. This is [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:1465:"

Bob Guccione, Penthouse Founder, Dies at 79. Playboy has been in decline too.

HUMAN GENE COUNT: MORE THAN A CHICKEN, LESS THAN A GRAPE. Going under 20,000. Hey, it’s just a number, not the measure of a man.


Robert Heinlein, We Never Knew Ye. Fred Pohl’s blog is really interesting.

Only You. And You. And You. This is really confusing: “Terisa Greenan and her boyfriend, Matt, are enjoying a rare day of Seattle sun, sharing a beet carpaccio on the patio of a local restaurant. Matt holds Terisa’s hand, as his 6-year-old son squeezes in between the couple to give Terisa a kiss. His mother, Vera, looks over and smiles; she’s there with her boyfriend, Larry.”

Insulin Sensitivity May Explain Link Between Obesity, Memory Problems. Another reason to lose weight.

";}i:7;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:38:"The wheel of history turns to the gods";s:4:"link";s:86:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/the-wheel-of-history-turns-to-the-gods/";s:8:"comments";s:95:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/the-wheel-of-history-turns-to-the-gods/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Thu, 21 Oct 2010 09:08:43 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:131:"CultureDemographicsEric KaufmannPredictionReligionSecularizationShall the religious inherit the earthSocial ScienceWorld Population";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7313";s:11:"description";s:316:"About six months ago I read a history of modern Italy and was struck by a passage which observed that during the early years of the Italian state none of the prominent political leaders were practicing Roman Catholics. Part of this was specific to the history of the rise of modern Italy, Umberto I fought the [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:36694:"

shallrelig1

About six months ago I read a history of modern Italy and was struck by a passage which observed that during the early years of the Italian state none of the prominent political leaders were practicing Roman Catholics. Part of this was specific to the history of the rise of modern Italy, Umberto I fought the Papacy, and so alienated the institution of the Church from the royal house and the state over which it ruled. But more generally many of the nationalists of the 19th century in Catholic Europe were of an anti-clerical bent. Only with the reconciliation of the Roman Catholic Church with the modern liberal democratic nation-state in the 20th century, and universal suffrage, have the political elites come to resemble the populace more in their religious sensibilities in these nations. And before you dismiss this as a European matter, observe that Andrew Jackson, our sixth president, was the first to have personal religious views in line with the American majority. As late as William Howard Taft in the early 20th century the United States had a head of state who rejected orthodox Christianity (he was a Unitarian Christian). Can we imagine that such a thing would come to pass without much controversy today? Mitt Romney has famously had to elide the yawning chasm between Mormonism and Nicene Christianity to be a viable candidate.

The point I’m trying to make here is that the paths of the arrows of history are more complex than we perceive them in our own moment in time. It is ironic that we in the United States are living through a period of secularization at the grassroots, while at the same time having to deal with the fact that all high level politicians have to pass through a de facto religious litmus test of relatively stringent orthodoxy. The complexity of this sort of social phenomenon makes it exceedingly difficult to analyze and characterize in a pithy fashion. Too often when scholars and intellectuals speak of the history of religion they impose their own visions on the flux of human belief and behavior. Eric Kaufmann’s Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is not such an argument. Rather, it is a cautious work which makes recourse to both robust theoretical models as well as a wide and rich set of empirical data. Kaufmann casts a very wide net in his attempt to retrieve a useful catch in terms of plausible and robust predictions. The central idea of the book is derived from the fact that the endogenous growth rates of religious segments of developed societies can often be rather high. The broader implication is that history moves in cycles, and that the current age of secularism is nearing its peak, and inevitable demographic forces will see the tide retreat.


As indicated above Eric Kaufmann does not simply present one with qualitative verbal arguments, he actually goes over the projections of quantitative models which his research team generated! In this area this is gold, for pure conjecture and speculation tend to abound. But Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is not purely a theoretical treatise, it is rich with thick empirical data and references the broader literature. Eric Kaufmann is not sloppy with detail, and tends to couch assertions carefully. Unlike many who have a thesis he does not ignore or mitigate trends which go in the opposite direction of his broader argument. He admits, for example, that secularization continues in some regions of the world; in particular the United States, Southern Europe, and southern Latin America. There may even be some juice left in secularization in Northern Europe as the older generations which fill the pews die off to be replaced by the cresting wave of irreligious born since 1960. He also admits that societies which have gone through secularization have not swung back to irrevocable religiosity. For example, France in the early 19th century was characterized by a situation of highly fecund Catholic immigrants arriving to reinforce the conservative Catholic faction among the native-born. And yet nearly two centuries later France is as secular as ever, and in fact getting more secular.

These caveats aside, the demographic parameters of growth and decline do significantly shape the destiny of the future. In regions such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands the religious makeup of a society has slowly shifted purely through differences of fertility. This has had long term social-political consequences of varying degrees. This is not speculation or prediction, rather, we know the present conditions, and can see the hand of demography shaping the path of the past. His attention to specific details and their nuance is where Kaufmann wins my respect. He notes that the seemingly inevitable Catholic ascendancy in the Netherlands was never to be, because that sect experienced the same collapse in popular support which the mainstream Reformed Church did a generation before. The parameters of demographic destiny can be quite variable, so the details must always been approached with caution. Similarly, the fertility gap between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland has closed, so the likely inevitable shift to a Catholic majority has slowed to a crawl and is only proceeding by demographic inertia. The long-term winners of the demographic game may not always be who we perceive to be most salient in the present, as engines of activity bubble underneath the radar.

The outline of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is simple. A few initial general chapters lay out the parameters, probabilities, and projections. Then a series of specific sections focus on particular regions; the USA, the Islamic world, Europe, and Israel. Finally Eric Kaufmann reviews the general outline of his thesis, its implications for secular people, of whom he is one, and the caveats that must be made.

In a nutshell, here’s the power of endogenous growth.

changegrowthrates

Russia currently has a -0.50% growth rate, while Afghanistan has a 3.85% growth rate. Projecting outward on a yearly basis and you see the power of compounding. Assuming current rates of growth (or shrinkage) the two nations will cross paths sometime in the year 2050. Do I believe that that will come to pass? No. There’s no reason that these growth rates have to stay constant. I believe Afghanistan’s will decrease, while Russia’s will increase. In the former case I don’t think Afghanistan’s Human Development Index could get any lower, so I think fertility is  going to go down almost as an iron law of modern existence. For Russia, fertility collapsed relatively recently, so it may bounce back with a cultural change. Also, there are likely more fertile minorities within Russia would will bring back median fertility.

Let’s use a toy example to illustrate what I’m alluding to here. Imagine that 10% of Russian citizens are very fertile. If a nation of their own they’d have growth rates of 5% per year. In contrast 90% of Russians have a negative population growth rate of -0.6% per year. This produces about -0.50% per year when you weight by population for Russia as a whole, what we have right now. Let’s take the projections from the first chart, and add a new value for Russia which consists of the total population assuming these two sub-Russias are viewed as distinct populations. In other words, they don’t intermarry, and continue at their current pace of population growth.

changegrowthrates2

So what happened? The new scenario for Russia still has population decline for the next 20 years, but eventually it stops and reverses. That’s because of the subsegment within the Russian population which is fertile keeps increase its proportion, and the aggregate rate of change shifts along with that. In fact, projecting outwards, in 2109 the fertile Russian group will be 94% of the population of Russia, as opposed to 10% in 2009. Because they’re the preponderance of Russia’s population in this toy model Russia they’re actually outpacing Afghanistan by then.

I wanted to show you a very simple toy model to give a good sense of the power of endogenous population growth and projection. This is the core axiom at the heart of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth. Demography influences destiny. I say influence because as Kaufmann himself will admit, and I always want to emphasize, fertility differences between populations can invert. In the 19th century in Rumelia, the Balkan regions under Ottoman rule, Christians had higher fertility than Muslims. Today the situation is very different. Some historical scholarship indicates that until very recently what we know of as Bosnia actually consisted of two populations, Muslims and Catholics, whose dialect of South Slav was more similar to Croatia than Serbia. The rise of Bosnian Serbs may then have been a function of migration due to population growth in Serbia proper. The subsequent conflict in the Balkans can be traced to Serb fears of Muslim hegemony in a nation in which that element became a larger and larger fraction due to higher fertility.

Before we move to specifics, a few general trends highlighted in Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth. First, the simple one: the highly fertile religious nations are waxing in population, while secular regions are stagnant, or even in decline. In general Europe and European dominated societies are in the second class, along with East Asia. Basically the two regions of the world which most people reading this weblog would consider at an advanced state of modernity. In contrast, in the Islamic world, and in the more religious nations of Latin America (exclude the southern cone), Africa, and South Asia, secularism is weak as a mass phenomenon (though it has some purchase among elites in Latin America and India), and fertility is still high. Even in nations which are now sub-replacement, such as Iran, will grow in population because of demographic inertia. The young have not entered their peak childbearing years. Here are some examples:

Of course one can imagine that secularization will kick in in these societies at some point. But generally there needs to be a particular level of development, and in many of these nations it will be a very long haul indeed. If we’re taking about the scale of 2-3 generations it seems plausible that the proportion of atheists and agnostics in the world will decline as East Asia and Europe become a smaller and smaller fraction, and secularization does not immediately initiate in developing world. Examples of “snap secularization,” where societies go from being very religious to very secular in a decade or so, like Quebec, seem to have a bit of affluence under their belt (Spain today may be an example of this).

Eric Kaufmann has a specific thesis as to how modern secularization occurs: as societies develop nominal believers in religious societies eventually fall away. In Saudi Arabia, or Thailand, the connection between religion, culture, and nationality, is such that there are vast numbers of people who are affiliated and religious, but who don’t have any strong individual drive to be so. Rather, in their particular social environment some level of religiosity is the only option. Also, in the high fertility fraction of these societies there does not seem to be much fertility difference between the more and less religious. Rather, the fertility difference becomes stark once a society goes through demographic transition, and having children becomes a discretionary choice, rather than an expectation. The choice seems to be made in particular by individuals affiliated with strongly communitarian religious groups.

In the United States the fertility differences between religious groups can be stark. Muslims have a TFR of 2.84, while Jews have one of 1.43. The long term consequences of these between group differences are obviously interesting, but I believe that the more important data in Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is the documentation of within group differences. Aggregate Jewish fertility is low, below the 2.08 natural average. But Orthodox Jews are above the national average, while “ultra-Orthodox” (haredi) Jews are two to three times the national average! While the generic conservative white Protestant TFR is 2.13, there is a core group of radical conservative Protestants who have a TFR of above 2.5. Small sects such as Foursquare Gospel have Mormon-like rates of fertility. While the average American Catholic is around the same fertility as the non-Catholic, conservative traditionalist Catholics are much more fertile. Antonin Scalia has nine children.

Because of the relatively advanced state of the world Ashkenazi Jewry some of Eric Kaufmann’s predictions seem to be especially born out in them. Haredi Jews are the most ‘conservative’ of Orthodox Jews. We gentiles would probably recognize them as the Jews who ‘dress weird.’ The Hasidic communities are famous, but there are also non-Hasidic Haredi Jewish groups. In Britain the Haredim are 17 percent of the Jewish community. But shockingly they’re currently 75% of the births currently in Britain to Jews! Kaufmann also claims that the Haredi are now ~10% of American Jews in 2010, which would mean that the Orthodox as a whole are now gaining. The patterns in Israel are also striking, though more complex.

Israel is on of the world’s most ethnically diverse societies, with broad ethno-national categories of Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Sephardim, though even within these categories there is variation. In addition to this, there are divisions between secular Jews, religious, but not strictly Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Jews of a modern bent, and finally, the Haredi. In this framework arguably the Ashkenazi are bimodal, concentrated among the secular and Haredi segments, while the non-Ashkenazi Jews tend to be religious, but not hyper-observant. On top of this there are also hyper-secular Russian Jews, many of whom are only partly Jewish in origin, as well as the non-Jewish minorities, mostly Arabs. In 1960 15 percent of elementary age students in Israel were Arab or Haredi. In 2010 ~50% are. It is because of the Haredi that Israel does not face an immediate demographic crisis as a Jewish state:

…In 2001, there were around 95,000 Jewish births in Israel and 41,000 Arab births. Just seven years later, in 2008, Jewish births had risen to over 117,000, but Arab births had declined to less than 40,000. In a period that constitutes barely a quarter of a generation, Arab births had fallen from around 30 percent of the total to around 25 percent. This has been a steady trend and, should it continue, it will only be a very short time before Jewish and Arab births each year are broadly proportionate to the overall balance of Jews and Arabs in the population as whole – that is, 4:1, or 80 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The Haredi fertility is stable, somewhere in the 6-10 TFR range depending on the community, while Arab TFR has dropped to 4 or below. Interestingly the secular Jewish TFR has also increased in the past generation, from 2.1 to 2.6. This is a reminder to be very careful of average values of fertility for a group. It seems that for ideological or cultural reasons the Haredi in Israel remain fertile, even after allowances for children were cut back, which had an immediate effect on Arab fertility. The lower Jewish aggregate fertility ignores the motive force of the Haredi within the larger community. Assuming current trends the Haredi will likely become the majority within Israel by about 2050.

Shifting to Europe, the same dynamic may be at play. It is well known that much of Europe has a Muslim minority, though perhaps less well known that Russia has a larger proportion than any Western European nation, at ~10-15%. In the European Union as a whole the total number of Muslims is on the order of ~5%, and this includes traditionally Muslim groups in the Balkans (Slavs, Albanians, and Turks). But the key is the future. Kaufmann assembled data from nations where there was information on fertility changes by religion, migration rates, etc. Here are some numbers for Western European nations:

euroslam1

Some of this is not too surprising. The problem in the area of statistics about Muslims in Europe is that ignorance, fear, and stupidity is rife. As someone with an aversion and dislike for Islam in particular of all the higher religions I have been known to be susceptible to that tendency. But the reality is that Islamic populations are modest, but very concentrated, in much of Europe. So, for example the fact that in Rotterdam the majority of births may be to Muslims is conflated with the fact that the majority of births in the Netherlands will be to Muslims! Americans who travel to Europe and visit Amsterdam, London, and Paris, may get a very skewed view as to the ethnic diversity of Europe. Even then, London, that most diverse of cities, is actually about as white as the United States as a whole.

There are several parameters which will influence Islam in the future. Primarily, intermarriage, conversion & defection, immigration, and fertility. Outside of the French Muslim community intermarriage with non-Muslims is low in Western Europe. This is in contrast to traditionally Christian groups; more than 50% of second generation black Britons intermarry, vs. less than 10% of Muslims (though the number for South Asian non-Muslims is nearly as low). Though there are prominent instances of conversion, the reality is that numerically they are few and far between. Though outright defection to Christianity or other religions seems uncommon, in part because of social ostracism from the community, in some regions secularization is common (e.g., France). Finally, there is immigration and fertility. Some of the source nations of Muslims to Europe, such as Turkey and Algeria, are near replacement or sub-replacement in fertility. Additionally, even though European social benefits are generous, one could assert that Turkey presents a more favorable medium-to-long-term prospect in terms of labor opportunities than Germany for a Turk. With the likely curtailment of the most generous aspects of the European welfare state in the age of austerity one presumes that that magnet for immigration will be less powerful. Finally, there is the issue of fertility. Here there is wide variance, with very fertile South Asians and Somalis, and far less fertile North Africans and Turks. The source nation of the ethnic group seems to matter quite a bit. Nevertheless, there are two factors to highlight here. First, there is almost always a gap in fertility between Muslims and non-Muslims. In the German-speaking world and Italy the fertility of non-Muslim populations (excluding Roma) is so low that even modestly fecund Muslim minorities have a great advantage. Second, Muslim fertility rates do tend to converge with non-Muslim ones after a few generations.

euroslam2

The assumptions in the model:

- Convergence between Muslim and non-Muslim fertility by 2050

- The same rates of immigration between now and 2050

- No secularization for Muslims between now and 2050

None of these are realistic assumptions, but the deviation from reality of the first would have the opposite effect as the latter ones. That is, fertility will probably not totally converge, but it is also likely that some secularization will occur, and that immigration rates may decrease because of the global demographic transition. Taking the projections further the models indicate that the Muslim proportion of Europe will stabilize at around ~20% by the second half the 21st century. I find it interesting that Sweden may have the highest fractions of Muslims in Europe in my lifetime, excluding areas with traditional Muslim majorities (Albania), or large minorities (Macedonia, Bulgaria, etc.). Perhaps by 2050 a “Swedish Burqa Team” will be more appropriate than a “Swedish Bikini Team.”?

euroslam3The exception in Europe in regards to the Muslim vs. non-Muslim gap is France. This has long been evident to me in the survey data. French “Muslims” are more religious and fertile than French non-Muslims, but the gap is far smaller than between British Muslims and non-Muslims. The figure to the left is from The Gallup Coexist Index 2009. It’s immediately evident that though French Muslims are far less gay friendly than the French public as a whole, the gap between them and the broader society is far smaller than between British Muslims and the British in general. Literally 0% of British Muslims believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable. I guess the British can take pride in their multicultural society, which has allowed for diverse values to flourish.

In any case Eric Kaufmann argues that there’s a relatively understandable reason why French Muslims are more integrated than their co-religionists in Britain and Germany. It isn’t because of France’s ideological demand that immigrants assimilate to “French culture.” Rather, he points out that a disproportionate number of French Muslims, the majority, are of North African origin, and that North Africa has a relatively large secular population in relation to the rest of the Muslim world. Additionally, a disproportionate number of North Africans in France are of Kabyle Berber stock. This non-Arab minority in Algeria has long been subject to discrimination from the Arab majority, especially in the nationalistic era. In response Kabyle intellectuals have espoused an aggressive separatist identity, which has pushed Islam somewhat to the side because of its association with the Arab conquest and the Arab majority. Though Muslims, I believe one would see the same trend with the Alevi Turkish Muslims in Germany, who are reputedly more open to assimilating into German society. A group which has been persecuted and marginalized in Turkey itself by the Sunni majority, it seems plausible that the Alevi Turks have a less strong attachment to a separate identity as Turks because of their fraught history.

But what about the presumed Christian majority? European societies have been traditionally Christian, and today are nominally so. In nations like Finland most people are members of the national church, but it is an expression of their national identity, not their belief in the truth claims around which the institution was built. In other words state-sponsored Scandinavian Lutheranism is rather like a facade, with all the trappings of outward religion, but generally lacking in substantive dynamism. But there are exceptions to this in all European societies where a lax and nominal majority is ascendant. In Finland there is a branch of the sectarian Laestadian Lutherans. Their fertility is awesome. In the 1980s while the TFR of the majority Finnish Lutherans was 1.5, that of the Laestadians was 5.5. I met an individual whose family was from the Laestadian tradition last spring. Though he himself is not a religious believer at all, I was struck by the fact that he and his wife (also irreligious) were enthusiastic about the prospect of having a rather large family, definitely above replacement. In the United States such a sanguine attitude toward family planning, and pro-natalist enthusiasm, is pretty much unknown among secular professionals of my acquaintance. In contrast, in Italy the whole society is strongly skeptical of the sustainability of large families in terms of maintaining levels of individual affluence, though they are rather ill-at-ease with the importation of West African, Filipino, and Bangaldeshi servitor castes.

These sorts of within society fissures and divisions lead us to consider the wide gap in fertility and religiosity which has now emerged in Western developed societies. Eric Kaufmann points out that it is precisely in these secularized developed nations that the correlation between religiosity and fertility is strongest. The religious invest their surplus economic productivity in children in a classic Malthusian manner. Secular and moderately religious folk tend to practice family planning, and many have delayed child-bearing so long that they will not replace themselves (being childless or only having one child). It is in the wake of the first demographic transition that Eric Kaufmann believes a second demographic transition will emerge. The cultural and social realities which enjoined high fertility in the pre-modern world no longer hold. Now that people may choose when to have children, many choose not to. Those who choose to have children do so for ideological and normative reasons. The natural inference then is that the correlation between values and fertility is driving rapid cultural evolution in these societies.

From all the data surveyed it seems that Israel is the nation which is closest to the second demographic transition.

In many ways it is a peculiar nation. Though the Haredi are the primary vehicles of the Jewish demographic renaissance, they are also famously less economically productive on a per unit basis than non-Haredi Israelis. They also tend to avoid national military service at much higher rates than the rest of the Jewish population. It is clear that in some ways Israel is facing a crisis of national identity because of the demographic decline of its core Zionist ethnos, the secular Ashkenazi Jew. These are the intellectuals, politicians, and military officers of the Israel state. But if current trends pan out, by 2050 Haredi Jews will be a majority of Israel’s population. If that is so then without a massive gain in per capita human economic productivity the Israeli state will not be able to subsidize the scholarly pursuits of many Haredi men. Between then and now a social revolution of some sort is inevitable. Details to be worked out.

But 2050 is a long way away. How much of 2010 could you predict from 1970? In general I have to admit that I skip over projections of the year 2100. On the other hand, projections of the year 2030 are of great interest, as a 20 year window seems small enough that trends would be robust enough to absorb any shocks. 2050 is a gray point for me, I’m generally skeptical, but don’t think that such projections can be dismissed out of hand. But the details matter. Kaufmann quotes some scholars who assert that ~20% of Americans will be of mixed racial heritage heritage by then as defined by the Census. Depending on how these individuals classify themselves, and how society views them, will turn the answer to the question of whether the USA will be majority non-white in 2050. Trends can change very quickly, as can their interpretations.

The author admits that an “optimistic” scenario, from his perspective as a liberal secular Westerner, is of equilibration. That the fecund religious will birth the future generations of secularists. In some ways this has been occurring for a few centuries now, starting with the first explicit and public anti-clericalists who came to the fore during the French Revolutionary regime. In Kaufmann’s own data set he shows that secular Dutch women were below replacement before World War II. And yet Dutch society as a whole went through massive secularization after World War II. The point here is that even though religion is heritable, it is not purely so.

But the current regime is different from the previous one. Before World War II secularists were a rather small minority. In Germany in the mid-1930s around 96% of the population still had affiliation with the Protestant or Catholic confession.  Some of the remaining 4% were Jews. Today 35% of Germans register “no confession.” Secularism in Europe today is a robust cultural phenomenon, and in its Northern and Western European cores it seems to have peaked among the youth. There is still some secularization to be had as older generations pass on, but over time the fertile religious will trigger the second demographic transition. And here Kaufmann argues that conservative anti-worldly religious groups have become better and better at inoculating their offspring from the temptations of the secular world. Retention is now much higher than it was in the past. Though he doesn’t quite come out and say it in such a manner what is being alluded to here is cultural evolution, so that fundamentalist groups are much better prepared in the ideological battle with mainstream secular culture. God lost the initial battles, but he may still win the war.

If so Kaufmann sees a dark future from what I can gather. At least dark as judged by what secular liberals think is right, true, and good. The precedents in Israel are not heartening to secularists. Demographically robust Haredi have been marginalizing non-religious Jews across much of the country. Though Tel Aviv remains a European Mediterranean city, in many ways Jerusalem has become distinctively Oriental-Haredi in flavor. The fusion between religion and nationalism can lead to explosions of violence, such as that of Yigal Amir. I don’t need to elaborate on the specifics, as that ground has been fruitfully covered elsewhere. The question Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth poses is whether this century will be the great glorious age of secular liberal democracy; the century when history stood still and the gods slumbered. If the religious become numerically preponderant it may be that the atavistic battles of the past will come back to life. Already there have been accusations that American foreign policy in the aughts was driven by evangelical Christian fervor. Though I find Robert Pape’s arguments as to the secular origins of religious terror persuasive, I also believe that the supernatural-communal aspect of the acts makes them all the more powerful in their impact, and the enterprise more sustainable.

Eric Kaufmann ends Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth on a wistful, almost existential, note. He observes that the religious believe they have a reason to be, and to procreate so as to produce the next generation of humans. In contrast many non-religious folk lack such a drive or inclination, and are satisfied with consuming and enjoying the present. Secular ideologies have by and large disappeared as major animating forces in our culture. There is no Marxian dialectic driving us to some end point, rather, it seems that modern secular man yearns for a future with successively more flashy and functional iPods and iPads. But in nations such as Israel the secular population is still the primary engine of economic growth; like Atlas it holds both the Haredi and Arab sector up with its subsidy derived from its industry. What will the future hold if the worldly folk are shunted aside by their own self-indulgence? Can a technological civilization persist if the world is dominated by stark sectarian cultural commonwealths? Though the demographic answers are provisional, and I only have a modest confidence in their validity, these more philosophical questions which Eric Kaufmann poses leave me uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is a book that every data-driven culture-nerd should pick up. It requires a few read throughs, and a great deal of rumination.

Image Credit: Ricardo630

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About six months ago I read a history of modern Italy and was struck by a passage which observed that during the early years of the Italian state none of the prominent political leaders were practicing Roman Catholics. Part of this was specific to the history of the rise of modern Italy, Umberto I fought the Papacy, and so alienated the institution of the Church from the royal house and the state over which it ruled. But more generally many of the nationalists of the 19th century in Catholic Europe were of an anti-clerical bent. Only with the reconciliation of the Roman Catholic Church with the modern liberal democratic nation-state in the 20th century, and universal suffrage, have the political elites come to resemble the populace more in their religious sensibilities in these nations. And before you dismiss this as a European matter, observe that Andrew Jackson, our sixth president, was the first to have personal religious views in line with the American majority. As late as William Howard Taft in the early 20th century the United States had a head of state who rejected orthodox Christianity (he was a Unitarian Christian). Can we imagine that such a thing would come to pass without much controversy today? Mitt Romney has famously had to elide the yawning chasm between Mormonism and Nicene Christianity to be a viable candidate.

The point I’m trying to make here is that the paths of the arrows of history are more complex than we perceive them in our own moment in time. It is ironic that we in the United States are living through a period of secularization at the grassroots, while at the same time having to deal with the fact that all high level politicians have to pass through a de facto religious litmus test of relatively stringent orthodoxy. The complexity of this sort of social phenomenon makes it exceedingly difficult to analyze and characterize in a pithy fashion. Too often when scholars and intellectuals speak of the history of religion they impose their own visions on the flux of human belief and behavior. Eric Kaufmann’s Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is not such an argument. Rather, it is a cautious work which makes recourse to both robust theoretical models as well as a wide and rich set of empirical data. Kaufmann casts a very wide net in his attempt to retrieve a useful catch in terms of plausible and robust predictions. The central idea of the book is derived from the fact that the endogenous growth rates of religious segments of developed societies can often be rather high. The broader implication is that history moves in cycles, and that the current age of secularism is nearing its peak, and inevitable demographic forces will see the tide retreat.


As indicated above Eric Kaufmann does not simply present one with qualitative verbal arguments, he actually goes over the projections of quantitative models which his research team generated! In this area this is gold, for pure conjecture and speculation tend to abound. But Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is not purely a theoretical treatise, it is rich with thick empirical data and references the broader literature. Eric Kaufmann is not sloppy with detail, and tends to couch assertions carefully. Unlike many who have a thesis he does not ignore or mitigate trends which go in the opposite direction of his broader argument. He admits, for example, that secularization continues in some regions of the world; in particular the United States, Southern Europe, and southern Latin America. There may even be some juice left in secularization in Northern Europe as the older generations which fill the pews die off to be replaced by the cresting wave of irreligious born since 1960. He also admits that societies which have gone through secularization have not swung back to irrevocable religiosity. For example, France in the early 19th century was characterized by a situation of highly fecund Catholic immigrants arriving to reinforce the conservative Catholic faction among the native-born. And yet nearly two centuries later France is as secular as ever, and in fact getting more secular.

These caveats aside, the demographic parameters of growth and decline do significantly shape the destiny of the future. In regions such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Netherlands the religious makeup of a society has slowly shifted purely through differences of fertility. This has had long term social-political consequences of varying degrees. This is not speculation or prediction, rather, we know the present conditions, and can see the hand of demography shaping the path of the past. His attention to specific details and their nuance is where Kaufmann wins my respect. He notes that the seemingly inevitable Catholic ascendancy in the Netherlands was never to be, because that sect experienced the same collapse in popular support which the mainstream Reformed Church did a generation before. The parameters of demographic destiny can be quite variable, so the details must always been approached with caution. Similarly, the fertility gap between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland has closed, so the likely inevitable shift to a Catholic majority has slowed to a crawl and is only proceeding by demographic inertia. The long-term winners of the demographic game may not always be who we perceive to be most salient in the present, as engines of activity bubble underneath the radar.

The outline of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is simple. A few initial general chapters lay out the parameters, probabilities, and projections. Then a series of specific sections focus on particular regions; the USA, the Islamic world, Europe, and Israel. Finally Eric Kaufmann reviews the general outline of his thesis, its implications for secular people, of whom he is one, and the caveats that must be made.

In a nutshell, here’s the power of endogenous growth.

changegrowthrates

Russia currently has a -0.50% growth rate, while Afghanistan has a 3.85% growth rate. Projecting outward on a yearly basis and you see the power of compounding. Assuming current rates of growth (or shrinkage) the two nations will cross paths sometime in the year 2050. Do I believe that that will come to pass? No. There’s no reason that these growth rates have to stay constant. I believe Afghanistan’s will decrease, while Russia’s will increase. In the former case I don’t think Afghanistan’s Human Development Index could get any lower, so I think fertility is  going to go down almost as an iron law of modern existence. For Russia, fertility collapsed relatively recently, so it may bounce back with a cultural change. Also, there are likely more fertile minorities within Russia would will bring back median fertility.

Let’s use a toy example to illustrate what I’m alluding to here. Imagine that 10% of Russian citizens are very fertile. If a nation of their own they’d have growth rates of 5% per year. In contrast 90% of Russians have a negative population growth rate of -0.6% per year. This produces about -0.50% per year when you weight by population for Russia as a whole, what we have right now. Let’s take the projections from the first chart, and add a new value for Russia which consists of the total population assuming these two sub-Russias are viewed as distinct populations. In other words, they don’t intermarry, and continue at their current pace of population growth.

changegrowthrates2

So what happened? The new scenario for Russia still has population decline for the next 20 years, but eventually it stops and reverses. That’s because of the subsegment within the Russian population which is fertile keeps increase its proportion, and the aggregate rate of change shifts along with that. In fact, projecting outwards, in 2109 the fertile Russian group will be 94% of the population of Russia, as opposed to 10% in 2009. Because they’re the preponderance of Russia’s population in this toy model Russia they’re actually outpacing Afghanistan by then.

I wanted to show you a very simple toy model to give a good sense of the power of endogenous population growth and projection. This is the core axiom at the heart of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth. Demography influences destiny. I say influence because as Kaufmann himself will admit, and I always want to emphasize, fertility differences between populations can invert. In the 19th century in Rumelia, the Balkan regions under Ottoman rule, Christians had higher fertility than Muslims. Today the situation is very different. Some historical scholarship indicates that until very recently what we know of as Bosnia actually consisted of two populations, Muslims and Catholics, whose dialect of South Slav was more similar to Croatia than Serbia. The rise of Bosnian Serbs may then have been a function of migration due to population growth in Serbia proper. The subsequent conflict in the Balkans can be traced to Serb fears of Muslim hegemony in a nation in which that element became a larger and larger fraction due to higher fertility.

Before we move to specifics, a few general trends highlighted in Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth. First, the simple one: the highly fertile religious nations are waxing in population, while secular regions are stagnant, or even in decline. In general Europe and European dominated societies are in the second class, along with East Asia. Basically the two regions of the world which most people reading this weblog would consider at an advanced state of modernity. In contrast, in the Islamic world, and in the more religious nations of Latin America (exclude the southern cone), Africa, and South Asia, secularism is weak as a mass phenomenon (though it has some purchase among elites in Latin America and India), and fertility is still high. Even in nations which are now sub-replacement, such as Iran, will grow in population because of demographic inertia. The young have not entered their peak childbearing years. Here are some examples:

Of course one can imagine that secularization will kick in in these societies at some point. But generally there needs to be a particular level of development, and in many of these nations it will be a very long haul indeed. If we’re taking about the scale of 2-3 generations it seems plausible that the proportion of atheists and agnostics in the world will decline as East Asia and Europe become a smaller and smaller fraction, and secularization does not immediately initiate in developing world. Examples of “snap secularization,” where societies go from being very religious to very secular in a decade or so, like Quebec, seem to have a bit of affluence under their belt (Spain today may be an example of this).

Eric Kaufmann has a specific thesis as to how modern secularization occurs: as societies develop nominal believers in religious societies eventually fall away. In Saudi Arabia, or Thailand, the connection between religion, culture, and nationality, is such that there are vast numbers of people who are affiliated and religious, but who don’t have any strong individual drive to be so. Rather, in their particular social environment some level of religiosity is the only option. Also, in the high fertility fraction of these societies there does not seem to be much fertility difference between the more and less religious. Rather, the fertility difference becomes stark once a society goes through demographic transition, and having children becomes a discretionary choice, rather than an expectation. The choice seems to be made in particular by individuals affiliated with strongly communitarian religious groups.

In the United States the fertility differences between religious groups can be stark. Muslims have a TFR of 2.84, while Jews have one of 1.43. The long term consequences of these between group differences are obviously interesting, but I believe that the more important data in Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is the documentation of within group differences. Aggregate Jewish fertility is low, below the 2.08 natural average. But Orthodox Jews are above the national average, while “ultra-Orthodox” (haredi) Jews are two to three times the national average! While the generic conservative white Protestant TFR is 2.13, there is a core group of radical conservative Protestants who have a TFR of above 2.5. Small sects such as Foursquare Gospel have Mormon-like rates of fertility. While the average American Catholic is around the same fertility as the non-Catholic, conservative traditionalist Catholics are much more fertile. Antonin Scalia has nine children.

Because of the relatively advanced state of the world Ashkenazi Jewry some of Eric Kaufmann’s predictions seem to be especially born out in them. Haredi Jews are the most ‘conservative’ of Orthodox Jews. We gentiles would probably recognize them as the Jews who ‘dress weird.’ The Hasidic communities are famous, but there are also non-Hasidic Haredi Jewish groups. In Britain the Haredim are 17 percent of the Jewish community. But shockingly they’re currently 75% of the births currently in Britain to Jews! Kaufmann also claims that the Haredi are now ~10% of American Jews in 2010, which would mean that the Orthodox as a whole are now gaining. The patterns in Israel are also striking, though more complex.

Israel is on of the world’s most ethnically diverse societies, with broad ethno-national categories of Ashkenazim, Mizrahim, and Sephardim, though even within these categories there is variation. In addition to this, there are divisions between secular Jews, religious, but not strictly Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Jews of a modern bent, and finally, the Haredi. In this framework arguably the Ashkenazi are bimodal, concentrated among the secular and Haredi segments, while the non-Ashkenazi Jews tend to be religious, but not hyper-observant. On top of this there are also hyper-secular Russian Jews, many of whom are only partly Jewish in origin, as well as the non-Jewish minorities, mostly Arabs. In 1960 15 percent of elementary age students in Israel were Arab or Haredi. In 2010 ~50% are. It is because of the Haredi that Israel does not face an immediate demographic crisis as a Jewish state:

…In 2001, there were around 95,000 Jewish births in Israel and 41,000 Arab births. Just seven years later, in 2008, Jewish births had risen to over 117,000, but Arab births had declined to less than 40,000. In a period that constitutes barely a quarter of a generation, Arab births had fallen from around 30 percent of the total to around 25 percent. This has been a steady trend and, should it continue, it will only be a very short time before Jewish and Arab births each year are broadly proportionate to the overall balance of Jews and Arabs in the population as whole – that is, 4:1, or 80 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The Haredi fertility is stable, somewhere in the 6-10 TFR range depending on the community, while Arab TFR has dropped to 4 or below. Interestingly the secular Jewish TFR has also increased in the past generation, from 2.1 to 2.6. This is a reminder to be very careful of average values of fertility for a group. It seems that for ideological or cultural reasons the Haredi in Israel remain fertile, even after allowances for children were cut back, which had an immediate effect on Arab fertility. The lower Jewish aggregate fertility ignores the motive force of the Haredi within the larger community. Assuming current trends the Haredi will likely become the majority within Israel by about 2050.

Shifting to Europe, the same dynamic may be at play. It is well known that much of Europe has a Muslim minority, though perhaps less well known that Russia has a larger proportion than any Western European nation, at ~10-15%. In the European Union as a whole the total number of Muslims is on the order of ~5%, and this includes traditionally Muslim groups in the Balkans (Slavs, Albanians, and Turks). But the key is the future. Kaufmann assembled data from nations where there was information on fertility changes by religion, migration rates, etc. Here are some numbers for Western European nations:

euroslam1

Some of this is not too surprising. The problem in the area of statistics about Muslims in Europe is that ignorance, fear, and stupidity is rife. As someone with an aversion and dislike for Islam in particular of all the higher religions I have been known to be susceptible to that tendency. But the reality is that Islamic populations are modest, but very concentrated, in much of Europe. So, for example the fact that in Rotterdam the majority of births may be to Muslims is conflated with the fact that the majority of births in the Netherlands will be to Muslims! Americans who travel to Europe and visit Amsterdam, London, and Paris, may get a very skewed view as to the ethnic diversity of Europe. Even then, London, that most diverse of cities, is actually about as white as the United States as a whole.

There are several parameters which will influence Islam in the future. Primarily, intermarriage, conversion & defection, immigration, and fertility. Outside of the French Muslim community intermarriage with non-Muslims is low in Western Europe. This is in contrast to traditionally Christian groups; more than 50% of second generation black Britons intermarry, vs. less than 10% of Muslims (though the number for South Asian non-Muslims is nearly as low). Though there are prominent instances of conversion, the reality is that numerically they are few and far between. Though outright defection to Christianity or other religions seems uncommon, in part because of social ostracism from the community, in some regions secularization is common (e.g., France). Finally, there is immigration and fertility. Some of the source nations of Muslims to Europe, such as Turkey and Algeria, are near replacement or sub-replacement in fertility. Additionally, even though European social benefits are generous, one could assert that Turkey presents a more favorable medium-to-long-term prospect in terms of labor opportunities than Germany for a Turk. With the likely curtailment of the most generous aspects of the European welfare state in the age of austerity one presumes that that magnet for immigration will be less powerful. Finally, there is the issue of fertility. Here there is wide variance, with very fertile South Asians and Somalis, and far less fertile North Africans and Turks. The source nation of the ethnic group seems to matter quite a bit. Nevertheless, there are two factors to highlight here. First, there is almost always a gap in fertility between Muslims and non-Muslims. In the German-speaking world and Italy the fertility of non-Muslim populations (excluding Roma) is so low that even modestly fecund Muslim minorities have a great advantage. Second, Muslim fertility rates do tend to converge with non-Muslim ones after a few generations.

euroslam2

The assumptions in the model:

- Convergence between Muslim and non-Muslim fertility by 2050

- The same rates of immigration between now and 2050

- No secularization for Muslims between now and 2050

None of these are realistic assumptions, but the deviation from reality of the first would have the opposite effect as the latter ones. That is, fertility will probably not totally converge, but it is also likely that some secularization will occur, and that immigration rates may decrease because of the global demographic transition. Taking the projections further the models indicate that the Muslim proportion of Europe will stabilize at around ~20% by the second half the 21st century. I find it interesting that Sweden may have the highest fractions of Muslims in Europe in my lifetime, excluding areas with traditional Muslim majorities (Albania), or large minorities (Macedonia, Bulgaria, etc.). Perhaps by 2050 a “Swedish Burqa Team” will be more appropriate than a “Swedish Bikini Team.”?

euroslam3The exception in Europe in regards to the Muslim vs. non-Muslim gap is France. This has long been evident to me in the survey data. French “Muslims” are more religious and fertile than French non-Muslims, but the gap is far smaller than between British Muslims and non-Muslims. The figure to the left is from The Gallup Coexist Index 2009. It’s immediately evident that though French Muslims are far less gay friendly than the French public as a whole, the gap between them and the broader society is far smaller than between British Muslims and the British in general. Literally 0% of British Muslims believe that homosexuality is morally acceptable. I guess the British can take pride in their multicultural society, which has allowed for diverse values to flourish.

In any case Eric Kaufmann argues that there’s a relatively understandable reason why French Muslims are more integrated than their co-religionists in Britain and Germany. It isn’t because of France’s ideological demand that immigrants assimilate to “French culture.” Rather, he points out that a disproportionate number of French Muslims, the majority, are of North African origin, and that North Africa has a relatively large secular population in relation to the rest of the Muslim world. Additionally, a disproportionate number of North Africans in France are of Kabyle Berber stock. This non-Arab minority in Algeria has long been subject to discrimination from the Arab majority, especially in the nationalistic era. In response Kabyle intellectuals have espoused an aggressive separatist identity, which has pushed Islam somewhat to the side because of its association with the Arab conquest and the Arab majority. Though Muslims, I believe one would see the same trend with the Alevi Turkish Muslims in Germany, who are reputedly more open to assimilating into German society. A group which has been persecuted and marginalized in Turkey itself by the Sunni majority, it seems plausible that the Alevi Turks have a less strong attachment to a separate identity as Turks because of their fraught history.

But what about the presumed Christian majority? European societies have been traditionally Christian, and today are nominally so. In nations like Finland most people are members of the national church, but it is an expression of their national identity, not their belief in the truth claims around which the institution was built. In other words state-sponsored Scandinavian Lutheranism is rather like a facade, with all the trappings of outward religion, but generally lacking in substantive dynamism. But there are exceptions to this in all European societies where a lax and nominal majority is ascendant. In Finland there is a branch of the sectarian Laestadian Lutherans. Their fertility is awesome. In the 1980s while the TFR of the majority Finnish Lutherans was 1.5, that of the Laestadians was 5.5. I met an individual whose family was from the Laestadian tradition last spring. Though he himself is not a religious believer at all, I was struck by the fact that he and his wife (also irreligious) were enthusiastic about the prospect of having a rather large family, definitely above replacement. In the United States such a sanguine attitude toward family planning, and pro-natalist enthusiasm, is pretty much unknown among secular professionals of my acquaintance. In contrast, in Italy the whole society is strongly skeptical of the sustainability of large families in terms of maintaining levels of individual affluence, though they are rather ill-at-ease with the importation of West African, Filipino, and Bangaldeshi servitor castes.

These sorts of within society fissures and divisions lead us to consider the wide gap in fertility and religiosity which has now emerged in Western developed societies. Eric Kaufmann points out that it is precisely in these secularized developed nations that the correlation between religiosity and fertility is strongest. The religious invest their surplus economic productivity in children in a classic Malthusian manner. Secular and moderately religious folk tend to practice family planning, and many have delayed child-bearing so long that they will not replace themselves (being childless or only having one child). It is in the wake of the first demographic transition that Eric Kaufmann believes a second demographic transition will emerge. The cultural and social realities which enjoined high fertility in the pre-modern world no longer hold. Now that people may choose when to have children, many choose not to. Those who choose to have children do so for ideological and normative reasons. The natural inference then is that the correlation between values and fertility is driving rapid cultural evolution in these societies.

From all the data surveyed it seems that Israel is the nation which is closest to the second demographic transition.

In many ways it is a peculiar nation. Though the Haredi are the primary vehicles of the Jewish demographic renaissance, they are also famously less economically productive on a per unit basis than non-Haredi Israelis. They also tend to avoid national military service at much higher rates than the rest of the Jewish population. It is clear that in some ways Israel is facing a crisis of national identity because of the demographic decline of its core Zionist ethnos, the secular Ashkenazi Jew. These are the intellectuals, politicians, and military officers of the Israel state. But if current trends pan out, by 2050 Haredi Jews will be a majority of Israel’s population. If that is so then without a massive gain in per capita human economic productivity the Israeli state will not be able to subsidize the scholarly pursuits of many Haredi men. Between then and now a social revolution of some sort is inevitable. Details to be worked out.

But 2050 is a long way away. How much of 2010 could you predict from 1970? In general I have to admit that I skip over projections of the year 2100. On the other hand, projections of the year 2030 are of great interest, as a 20 year window seems small enough that trends would be robust enough to absorb any shocks. 2050 is a gray point for me, I’m generally skeptical, but don’t think that such projections can be dismissed out of hand. But the details matter. Kaufmann quotes some scholars who assert that ~20% of Americans will be of mixed racial heritage heritage by then as defined by the Census. Depending on how these individuals classify themselves, and how society views them, will turn the answer to the question of whether the USA will be majority non-white in 2050. Trends can change very quickly, as can their interpretations.

The author admits that an “optimistic” scenario, from his perspective as a liberal secular Westerner, is of equilibration. That the fecund religious will birth the future generations of secularists. In some ways this has been occurring for a few centuries now, starting with the first explicit and public anti-clericalists who came to the fore during the French Revolutionary regime. In Kaufmann’s own data set he shows that secular Dutch women were below replacement before World War II. And yet Dutch society as a whole went through massive secularization after World War II. The point here is that even though religion is heritable, it is not purely so.

But the current regime is different from the previous one. Before World War II secularists were a rather small minority. In Germany in the mid-1930s around 96% of the population still had affiliation with the Protestant or Catholic confession.  Some of the remaining 4% were Jews. Today 35% of Germans register “no confession.” Secularism in Europe today is a robust cultural phenomenon, and in its Northern and Western European cores it seems to have peaked among the youth. There is still some secularization to be had as older generations pass on, but over time the fertile religious will trigger the second demographic transition. And here Kaufmann argues that conservative anti-worldly religious groups have become better and better at inoculating their offspring from the temptations of the secular world. Retention is now much higher than it was in the past. Though he doesn’t quite come out and say it in such a manner what is being alluded to here is cultural evolution, so that fundamentalist groups are much better prepared in the ideological battle with mainstream secular culture. God lost the initial battles, but he may still win the war.

If so Kaufmann sees a dark future from what I can gather. At least dark as judged by what secular liberals think is right, true, and good. The precedents in Israel are not heartening to secularists. Demographically robust Haredi have been marginalizing non-religious Jews across much of the country. Though Tel Aviv remains a European Mediterranean city, in many ways Jerusalem has become distinctively Oriental-Haredi in flavor. The fusion between religion and nationalism can lead to explosions of violence, such as that of Yigal Amir. I don’t need to elaborate on the specifics, as that ground has been fruitfully covered elsewhere. The question Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth poses is whether this century will be the great glorious age of secular liberal democracy; the century when history stood still and the gods slumbered. If the religious become numerically preponderant it may be that the atavistic battles of the past will come back to life. Already there have been accusations that American foreign policy in the aughts was driven by evangelical Christian fervor. Though I find Robert Pape’s arguments as to the secular origins of religious terror persuasive, I also believe that the supernatural-communal aspect of the acts makes them all the more powerful in their impact, and the enterprise more sustainable.

Eric Kaufmann ends Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth on a wistful, almost existential, note. He observes that the religious believe they have a reason to be, and to procreate so as to produce the next generation of humans. In contrast many non-religious folk lack such a drive or inclination, and are satisfied with consuming and enjoying the present. Secular ideologies have by and large disappeared as major animating forces in our culture. There is no Marxian dialectic driving us to some end point, rather, it seems that modern secular man yearns for a future with successively more flashy and functional iPods and iPads. But in nations such as Israel the secular population is still the primary engine of economic growth; like Atlas it holds both the Haredi and Arab sector up with its subsidy derived from its industry. What will the future hold if the worldly folk are shunted aside by their own self-indulgence? Can a technological civilization persist if the world is dominated by stark sectarian cultural commonwealths? Though the demographic answers are provisional, and I only have a modest confidence in their validity, these more philosophical questions which Eric Kaufmann poses leave me uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth is a book that every data-driven culture-nerd should pick up. It requires a few read throughs, and a great deal of rumination.

Image Credit: Ricardo630

";}i:8;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:51:"Glenn Beck, Evolution, Global Warming & Tea Parties";s:4:"link";s:95:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-evolution-global-warming-tea-parties/";s:8:"comments";s:104:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-evolution-global-warming-tea-parties/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:04:29 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:71:"CultureData AnalysisGSSGlenn BeckGlobal WarmingTea Partycreationismdata";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7305";s:11:"description";s:353:"Glenn Beck said some dumb, but unsurprising, things about evolution: How many people believe in evolution in this country? I’d like to see. I mean, I don’t know why it’s unreasonable to say this. I’m not God so I don’t know how God creates. I don’t think we came from monkeys. I think that’s ridiculous. I [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:11022:"

Glenn Beck said some dumb, but unsurprising, things about evolution:

How many people believe in evolution in this country? I’d like to see. I mean, I don’t know why it’s unreasonable to say this. I’m not God so I don’t know how God creates. I don’t think we came from monkeys. I think that’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen a half-monkey, half-person yet. Did evolution just stop? Did we all of sudden — there’s no other species that’s developing into half-human?

It’s like global warming. So I don’t know why it is so problematic for people to just so, I don’t know how God creates. I don’t know how we got here. If I get to the other side and God’s like, “You know what, you were a monkey once,” I’ll be shocked, but I’ll be like, “Whatever.”

First, Glenn Beck is an adult convert to the Mormon religion. Therefore if he is exalted to godhood he could create a universe of half-monkeys/half-men for kicks. Second, note the details of Beck’s background. He was raised Roman Catholic, and secular for most of his adulthood, before coming to the Mormon church. None of these affinities entails a rejection of evolution. You are probably well aware that the Roman Catholic church has made its peace, broadly speaking, with evolution. And there’s nothing about secularism which necessitates a rejection of evolution. But what about Mormonism? This is the peculiarity. Mormons are broadly sympathetic to Creationism, but there’s nothing in the religion’s teachings which imply this as being the orthodox position. This is why Mitt Romney can robustly support the teaching of evolution. So what’s going in?


In The Creationists Ronald L. Numbers reports survey data from BYU students which shows a radical drop in acceptance of evolution over 50 years. I think what you are seeing is the mainstreaming of Mormons culturally, and, their identification with conservative Protestants for whom rejection of evolution is a significant aspect of their rejection of modernism. Still, I don’t think that this cultural dynamic can explain all of this shift among Mormons, or Glenn Beck’s specific view. Nor do I think it can explain the robust resistance which conservative Protestants exhibit toward integration of the fact of evolution into their model of reality .

As a younger man I encountered individuals who expressed nearly the exact same views as Glenn Beck. When I was a thirteen my closest friend at the time expressed skepticism of evolution couched in Beckian terms; i.e., it was ridiculous on the face of it that man derived from monkeys. My friend was from a moderately liberal family politically who were nominal Roman Catholics (his stepmother was a self-identified feminist). He was above grade level in math, though not exceedingly so (there were three levels, he was in the second-tier). When my friend expressed his skepticism I was totally shocked, as I’d never considered that anyone would reject evolution. I was familiar with the idea from my early elementary years because of my fascination with dinosaurs, and I took it as a given as a background fact of the universe. This being in the pre-internet age I looked up the survey data in The World Almanac and was surprised to find that the public was split down the middle when it came to acceptance of evolution!

I think the root of my friend’s skepticism, and that of Glenn Beck, has to do with our psychology and the intuitions which we bring to the table. This thesis is articulated well in Paul Bloom’s argument that we’re wired for Creationism. Humans have an intuition about essences, and the idea of evolution contravenes our expectation of invariant essences. The image of the grotesque chimera which Beck brandishes is a pointer to this reality, and Beck isn’t alone in his incredulity.

So how does it come to be that half the American public accepts evolution then? (as well as say 80% of the population in Japan) I think the two classes of variables of note are individual dispositions (intelligence, aversion to conformity, level of education) and group wisdom. Here’s a quick & dirty from the GSS using the EVOVLED variable in a logistic regression.


EVOLVED
Variable B P-value
POLVIEWS 0.25 0.000
BIBLE(Literal vs. Non-literal) -1.34 0.000
WORDSUM -0.05 0.144
GOD 0.64 0.000
SEX 0.40 0.001
DEGREE -0.16 0.003
AGE 0.02 0.000
Pseudo R-squared = 0.260

Don’t take the values above too seriously. Please. But it does show you the determinative power of Biblical literalism in predicting whether you are likely to be a Creationist or not. Intelligence in terms of vocabulary actually tends to go away in this treatment when you control for other factors which are correlated with intelligence (Biblical literalists are less intelligent). GOD spans the range from atheist to those who know that God exists. Interestingly sex has a stronger effect than education (women are more likely to be Creationist). Political ideology has an impact, but once you control for religion it is far weaker (conservatism is correlated with Creationism). In the same range as education. These data would tend to support the contention that group identity markers are now more important than individual variables like education (or the two are confounded together in such a way that there’s no juice to be gained at looking at individual variables separate from group identity).

I decided to post on this topic because of a conversation I recently had with Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas. We were talking about the correlation of Creationism and anti-Global Warming with politics; specifically the right-wing association of both. I made the argument that there were deep qualitative differences between the two. Creationism is a shallow but broad belief, rooted in intuitions and imbued with symbolic valence. Is man a monkey or an angel? The stance toward Global Warming is different, and more explicitly a function of proximate politics and tribal identity (whether you’re an “expert” on either side of the scientific question, please admit that most people haven’t dug into the scientific details and simply go along with the cultural and political authorities whom they trust). Unlike Creationism Global Warming has concrete near-term implications. I am aware of the contention that rejection of the science of evolution kicks the legs out from under practical fields such as medicine, or, that the inferences that necessarily lead to evolutionary theory are entailed by the same axioms which lead to other practically relevant domains. Nevertheless, for most people medicine, pharmaceuticals, and science in general, are “black box” affairs. If they work, they work, and the philosophical issues are not particularly relevant to them. Anthropogenic Global Warming, and the specific public policy responses which people believe would be prudent to make in response to the validity of the hypothesis, are much more concrete and immediate. Thirty years from now we will not be discussing Global Warming, thirty years from now we will probably be discussing evolution.

But back to Josh.  He decided to do some structural equation modeling with the beliefs of the Tea Party segment of the electorate as predicted by demographic variables. Controlling for background variables he did not find that Tea Party identified Americans were any more, or less, Creationist than they should have been (they’re disproportionately religious conservatives, but they’re not more Creationist than you’d expect from that). On the other hand, they do tend to reject anthropogenic Global Warming to a greater extent even when Josh controlled for background variables. I think this tends to support my contention that the evolution controversy will be with us for a while, and to some extent is sui generis. Both because it as at some remove from immediate policy implications outside of the domain of education, and, because of the deep cultural and psychological soil which Creationism can take root in. It is more than just politics, and so not an necessarily epiphenomenon.

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:100:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/glenn-beck-evolution-global-warming-tea-parties/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:353:"Glenn Beck said some dumb, but unsurprising, things about evolution: How many people believe in evolution in this country? I’d like to see. I mean, I don’t know why it’s unreasonable to say this. I’m not God so I don’t know how God creates. I don’t think we came from monkeys. I think that’s ridiculous. I [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:11022:"

Glenn Beck said some dumb, but unsurprising, things about evolution:

How many people believe in evolution in this country? I’d like to see. I mean, I don’t know why it’s unreasonable to say this. I’m not God so I don’t know how God creates. I don’t think we came from monkeys. I think that’s ridiculous. I haven’t seen a half-monkey, half-person yet. Did evolution just stop? Did we all of sudden — there’s no other species that’s developing into half-human?

It’s like global warming. So I don’t know why it is so problematic for people to just so, I don’t know how God creates. I don’t know how we got here. If I get to the other side and God’s like, “You know what, you were a monkey once,” I’ll be shocked, but I’ll be like, “Whatever.”

First, Glenn Beck is an adult convert to the Mormon religion. Therefore if he is exalted to godhood he could create a universe of half-monkeys/half-men for kicks. Second, note the details of Beck’s background. He was raised Roman Catholic, and secular for most of his adulthood, before coming to the Mormon church. None of these affinities entails a rejection of evolution. You are probably well aware that the Roman Catholic church has made its peace, broadly speaking, with evolution. And there’s nothing about secularism which necessitates a rejection of evolution. But what about Mormonism? This is the peculiarity. Mormons are broadly sympathetic to Creationism, but there’s nothing in the religion’s teachings which imply this as being the orthodox position. This is why Mitt Romney can robustly support the teaching of evolution. So what’s going in?


In The Creationists Ronald L. Numbers reports survey data from BYU students which shows a radical drop in acceptance of evolution over 50 years. I think what you are seeing is the mainstreaming of Mormons culturally, and, their identification with conservative Protestants for whom rejection of evolution is a significant aspect of their rejection of modernism. Still, I don’t think that this cultural dynamic can explain all of this shift among Mormons, or Glenn Beck’s specific view. Nor do I think it can explain the robust resistance which conservative Protestants exhibit toward integration of the fact of evolution into their model of reality .

As a younger man I encountered individuals who expressed nearly the exact same views as Glenn Beck. When I was a thirteen my closest friend at the time expressed skepticism of evolution couched in Beckian terms; i.e., it was ridiculous on the face of it that man derived from monkeys. My friend was from a moderately liberal family politically who were nominal Roman Catholics (his stepmother was a self-identified feminist). He was above grade level in math, though not exceedingly so (there were three levels, he was in the second-tier). When my friend expressed his skepticism I was totally shocked, as I’d never considered that anyone would reject evolution. I was familiar with the idea from my early elementary years because of my fascination with dinosaurs, and I took it as a given as a background fact of the universe. This being in the pre-internet age I looked up the survey data in The World Almanac and was surprised to find that the public was split down the middle when it came to acceptance of evolution!

I think the root of my friend’s skepticism, and that of Glenn Beck, has to do with our psychology and the intuitions which we bring to the table. This thesis is articulated well in Paul Bloom’s argument that we’re wired for Creationism. Humans have an intuition about essences, and the idea of evolution contravenes our expectation of invariant essences. The image of the grotesque chimera which Beck brandishes is a pointer to this reality, and Beck isn’t alone in his incredulity.

So how does it come to be that half the American public accepts evolution then? (as well as say 80% of the population in Japan) I think the two classes of variables of note are individual dispositions (intelligence, aversion to conformity, level of education) and group wisdom. Here’s a quick & dirty from the GSS using the EVOVLED variable in a logistic regression.


EVOLVED
Variable B P-value
POLVIEWS 0.25 0.000
BIBLE(Literal vs. Non-literal) -1.34 0.000
WORDSUM -0.05 0.144
GOD 0.64 0.000
SEX 0.40 0.001
DEGREE -0.16 0.003
AGE 0.02 0.000
Pseudo R-squared = 0.260

Don’t take the values above too seriously. Please. But it does show you the determinative power of Biblical literalism in predicting whether you are likely to be a Creationist or not. Intelligence in terms of vocabulary actually tends to go away in this treatment when you control for other factors which are correlated with intelligence (Biblical literalists are less intelligent). GOD spans the range from atheist to those who know that God exists. Interestingly sex has a stronger effect than education (women are more likely to be Creationist). Political ideology has an impact, but once you control for religion it is far weaker (conservatism is correlated with Creationism). In the same range as education. These data would tend to support the contention that group identity markers are now more important than individual variables like education (or the two are confounded together in such a way that there’s no juice to be gained at looking at individual variables separate from group identity).

I decided to post on this topic because of a conversation I recently had with Josh Rosenau of Thoughts from Kansas. We were talking about the correlation of Creationism and anti-Global Warming with politics; specifically the right-wing association of both. I made the argument that there were deep qualitative differences between the two. Creationism is a shallow but broad belief, rooted in intuitions and imbued with symbolic valence. Is man a monkey or an angel? The stance toward Global Warming is different, and more explicitly a function of proximate politics and tribal identity (whether you’re an “expert” on either side of the scientific question, please admit that most people haven’t dug into the scientific details and simply go along with the cultural and political authorities whom they trust). Unlike Creationism Global Warming has concrete near-term implications. I am aware of the contention that rejection of the science of evolution kicks the legs out from under practical fields such as medicine, or, that the inferences that necessarily lead to evolutionary theory are entailed by the same axioms which lead to other practically relevant domains. Nevertheless, for most people medicine, pharmaceuticals, and science in general, are “black box” affairs. If they work, they work, and the philosophical issues are not particularly relevant to them. Anthropogenic Global Warming, and the specific public policy responses which people believe would be prudent to make in response to the validity of the hypothesis, are much more concrete and immediate. Thirty years from now we will not be discussing Global Warming, thirty years from now we will probably be discussing evolution.

But back to Josh.  He decided to do some structural equation modeling with the beliefs of the Tea Party segment of the electorate as predicted by demographic variables. Controlling for background variables he did not find that Tea Party identified Americans were any more, or less, Creationist than they should have been (they’re disproportionately religious conservatives, but they’re not more Creationist than you’d expect from that). On the other hand, they do tend to reject anthropogenic Global Warming to a greater extent even when Josh controlled for background variables. I think this tends to support my contention that the evolution controversy will be with us for a while, and to some extent is sui generis. Both because it as at some remove from immediate policy implications outside of the domain of education, and, because of the deep cultural and psychological soil which Creationism can take root in. It is more than just politics, and so not an necessarily epiphenomenon.

";}i:9;a:13:{s:5:"title";s:38:"Daily Data Dump – October 20th, 2010";s:4:"link";s:81:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/daily-data-dump-october-20th-2010/";s:8:"comments";s:90:"http://www.gnxp.com/2010/10/daily-data-dump-october-20th-2010/#comments";s:7:"pubdate";s:31:"Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:43:20 +0000";s:2:"dc";a:1:{s:7:"creator";s:10:"Razib Khan";}s:8:"category";s:19:"BlogDaily Data Dump";s:4:"guid";s:46:"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=7298";s:11:"description";s:336:"My DonorsChoose page. Compared to previous years I’m kind of under-performing. I haven’t done any PBS-like incentives before, but perhaps I should. For example, anyone who gives $250 is owed a post from me on a topic of their choice of at least 2,000 words excluding quotations within the next 3 months. Those are just [...]";s:7:"content";a:1:{s:7:"encoded";s:4896:"

My DonorsChoose page. Compared to previous years I’m kind of under-performing. I haven’t done any PBS-like incentives before, but perhaps I should. For example, anyone who gives $250 is owed a post from me on a topic of their choice of at least 2,000 words excluding quotations within the next 3 months. Those are just stray numbers thrown out there, but anyone interested? You’d have to rely on my good faith obviously, as I’m the final arbiter as to whether I’m gaming the metrics, but I’m an honest person about these sorts of things. It would probably be reasonable to do a graduated scale above a minimum threshold too.

Achievement gap achieved household status a decade ago. Seems like the rise of high-stakes testing means that “the gap” is now in widespread circulation as a meme…but I doubt most people know the quantitative details. According to the The Journal of Black Education in 2006 ~48,000 whites scored above a 700 on the Verbal SAT, while ~1,200 blacks did. For the math the figures were ~55,500 and ~1,100. A 700 is about at the 25th percentile of a Harvard undergraduate.


American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. ” But after 1980, both churchgoing progressives and secular conservatives became rarer and rarer. Some Americans brought their religion and their politics into alignment by adjusting their political views to their religious faith. But, surprisingly, more of them adjusted their religion to fit their politics.” It’s notable that politically conservative Jews such as Frank Meyer and Howard Phillips embraced Christianity during adulthood (Meyer just before his death). Similarly, Mortimer J. Adler joined the Catholic Church at the very end of his life. I think that to some extent these religious affiliations are a signal to emotional tribal loyalties. So I’m not that surprised. I have known of very liberal Roman Catholics who left the church eventually because the juxtaposition of their radical politics and the limits of their faith became too difficult for them to reconcile. Of course there’s the issue of psychological disposition. There are atheists I’ve met who I generally peg as likely to become religious at some point because they seem to be rather “weak-minded” in the manner that Jesse Ventura implied years ago. When such individuals later tell me about their conversion and ask if I’m surprised they seem confused as to my general lack of curiosity as to the details. The reality is that for such individuals it isn’t a matter of whether they’ll join a religion or movement, it’s which one. Religion has good psychological coping mechanisms for the mentally unstable, and it provides communal affirmation for even the “least among us.” And there are many people out there who are very “least,” both in their morals and objective measures of worth. And I say all this as one of the few atheist conservatives out there. I’m not going to be bending my knee to tribal gods anytime soon.

Gene Activity in the Brain Depends on Genetic Background: Implications for Individual Differences in Drug Safety and Efficacy. So is the efficacy of psychoactive drugs confounded by the fact that different segments of a treatment group may react in opposite directions?

Astronomers Find Weird, Warm Spot on an Exoplanet. “Observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant planet with a warm spot in the wrong place.” Uh, aliens?!?!?! Am I the one who has to say it?

";}s:3:"wfw";a:1:{s:10:"commentrss";s:86:"http://www.www.gnxp.com/2010/10/daily-data-dump-october-20th-2010/feed/";}s:5:"slash";a:1:{s:8:"comments";s:1:"0";}s:7:"summary";s:336:"My DonorsChoose page. Compared to previous years I’m kind of under-performing. I haven’t done any PBS-like incentives before, but perhaps I should. For example, anyone who gives $250 is owed a post from me on a topic of their choice of at least 2,000 words excluding quotations within the next 3 months. Those are just [...]";s:12:"atom_content";s:4896:"

My DonorsChoose page. Compared to previous years I’m kind of under-performing. I haven’t done any PBS-like incentives before, but perhaps I should. For example, anyone who gives $250 is owed a post from me on a topic of their choice of at least 2,000 words excluding quotations within the next 3 months. Those are just stray numbers thrown out there, but anyone interested? You’d have to rely on my good faith obviously, as I’m the final arbiter as to whether I’m gaming the metrics, but I’m an honest person about these sorts of things. It would probably be reasonable to do a graduated scale above a minimum threshold too.

Achievement gap achieved household status a decade ago. Seems like the rise of high-stakes testing means that “the gap” is now in widespread circulation as a meme…but I doubt most people know the quantitative details. According to the The Journal of Black Education in 2006 ~48,000 whites scored above a 700 on the Verbal SAT, while ~1,200 blacks did. For the math the figures were ~55,500 and ~1,100. A 700 is about at the 25th percentile of a Harvard undergraduate.


American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. ” But after 1980, both churchgoing progressives and secular conservatives became rarer and rarer. Some Americans brought their religion and their politics into alignment by adjusting their political views to their religious faith. But, surprisingly, more of them adjusted their religion to fit their politics.” It’s notable that politically conservative Jews such as Frank Meyer and Howard Phillips embraced Christianity during adulthood (Meyer just before his death). Similarly, Mortimer J. Adler joined the Catholic Church at the very end of his life. I think that to some extent these religious affiliations are a signal to emotional tribal loyalties. So I’m not that surprised. I have known of very liberal Roman Catholics who left the church eventually because the juxtaposition of their radical politics and the limits of their faith became too difficult for them to reconcile. Of course there’s the issue of psychological disposition. There are atheists I’ve met who I generally peg as likely to become religious at some point because they seem to be rather “weak-minded” in the manner that Jesse Ventura implied years ago. When such individuals later tell me about their conversion and ask if I’m surprised they seem confused as to my general lack of curiosity as to the details. The reality is that for such individuals it isn’t a matter of whether they’ll join a religion or movement, it’s which one. Religion has good psychological coping mechanisms for the mentally unstable, and it provides communal affirmation for even the “least among us.” And there are many people out there who are very “least,” both in their morals and objective measures of worth. And I say all this as one of the few atheist conservatives out there. I’m not going to be bending my knee to tribal gods anytime soon.

Gene Activity in the Brain Depends on Genetic Background: Implications for Individual Differences in Drug Safety and Efficacy. So is the efficacy of psychoactive drugs confounded by the fact that different segments of a treatment group may react in opposite directions?

Astronomers Find Weird, Warm Spot on an Exoplanet. “Observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant planet with a warm spot in the wrong place.” Uh, aliens?!?!?! Am I the one who has to say it?

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