Anglo-Saxon attitudes

The March 29th issue of The Economist had some interesting charts showing how Britons and Americans differ on several issues:

It's not surprising how many believes in God and Hell and attitudes to Atheist presidents, but I thought it was interesting to see the differences on Creationism and Intelligent Design in USA. That 20 per cent of Americans believe in Intelligent Design while 40 per cent of them believe in "The Bible" is in a sense good news, because it just shows that the problem is a lack of basic education. Intelligent Design is in many ways more insidious, while the bible version is much more primitive. I think good education stand a better chance with Creationism than with Intelligent Design, because ID is stupidity on a much more abstract level disguising itself as science. You also see that in Britain, there's slightly more people who believe in ID than Creationism.


As for values, the only place they seem to concur is about death penalty.



This chart is a bit difficult to read, but I think it's a summary of how they responded in the other charts after party lines. Notice how even English Conservatives are much more liberal with regards to religion and values than American democrats.

Faith vs. the Faithless

"When this country was founded, James Madison envisioned a noisy public square with different religious denominations arguing, competing and balancing each other’s passions. But now the landscape of religious life has changed. Now its most prominent feature is the supposed war between the faithful and the faithless. Mitt Romney didn’t start this war, but speeches like his both exploit and solidify this divide in people’s minds. The supposed war between the faithful and the faithless has exacted casualties.
The first casualty is the national community. Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious. I’m assuming that Romney left that out in order to generate howls of outrage in the liberal press.
The second casualty of the faith war is theology itself. In rallying the armies of faith against their supposed enemies, Romney waved away any theological distinctions among them with the brush of his hand. In this calculus, the faithful become a tribe, marked by ethnic pride, a shared sense of victimization and all the other markers of identity politics."

David Brooks, NY Times, December 7, 2007

This is actually quite scary. It has an uncanny resemblance to how Hitler made the Jews an internal enemy. However, for Romney it's more of an attempt to say: "Look, they're more deviant than me!".

What's wrong with the religious right?

"Now, less than four years after widespread declarations that the religious right had taken over the Republican Party, these social conservatives seem almost powerless to influence its nomination process.
It isn’t because they lack numbers. Pollster Tony Fabrizio has documented that moralists remain the biggest slice of GOP voters. More than a third of 2004 votes for President Bush were cast by evangelicals.
Yet organizations designed to mobilize these voters have atrophied. The Christian Coalition is a shadow of its former self. Efforts to relaunch the defunct Moral Majority haven’t fared much better. Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy are dead, Pat Robertson past his prime.

[...]

When The Washington Post once described religious conservatives as largely “poor, uneducated and easy to command,” evangelicals protested that they weren’t poor or uneducated. Now, neither are they easy to command."

Politico.com, Sep 24, 2007

Good news!

By The Numbers

28 percent of atheists have post-graduate degrees or professional training, vs. 15 percent of non-atheists.
3 percent of atheists are "strong Republicans," vs. 16 percent of non-atheists.
Atheists have an average of 1.3 children, non-atheists 1.95.

Star Tribune, September 15, 2007 (2005 Baylor University Religion Survey and Barna Group)

[Opinion] Gov. Huckabee, Here's "What In the World" Evolution Has To Do With Being President

"But then [Mike Huckabee] said "I'm not sure what in the world that has to do with being President of the United States."

Maybe we can help.

You see, Governor, it was you and your fundamentalist buddies who dragged your religion into everybody's government. From evolution to abortion to stem cell research to abstinence-only sex education to HIV prevention to global warming to the Middle East, Republican policy follows the religious doctrine of right wing Christian extremists. It dictates policy on every single social issue.

[...]

Governor, in case you're still confused, your faith-based views on matters like evolution have everything to do with being President, because you won't stop trying to impose them on the rest of us. Your faith puts you on the wrong side of a lot of social issues; luckily, it looks like Darwin's theory is about to be proven again."

Huffingtonpost.com, 05.05.2007

[Survey] Is There Disdain For Evangelicals In the Classroom?

"Tobin asked professors at all kinds of colleges -- public and private, secular and religious, two-year and four-year -- to rate their feelings toward various religious groups, from very warm or favorable to very cool or unfavorable. He said he designed the question primarily to gauge anti-Semitism but found that professors expressed positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Roman Catholics and most other religious groups.

The only groups that elicited highly negative responses were evangelical Christians and Mormons.

[...]

Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians probably have two causes: "the particular kind of Republican Party activism that some evangelicals have engaged in over the years, as well as what faculty perceive as the opposition to scientific objectivity among some evangelicals.""

Washington Post, May 5, 2007

A whining article (In the Moonie-owned Washington Post), but interesting nevertheless. It seems being anti-science does not give Evangelicals much credit in classrooms. Probably as little credit as science get in their churches.

The Religious Right Has Had Its Day? Fat Chance

"A provocative essay in Time magazine raised more than a few eyebrows in mid-February with a headline that made a startling claim: "The Religious Right's Era Is Over," it blared. Moderate evangelical minister Jim Wallis, the author of the piece, confidently asserted that the Religious Right's day has passed.

[...]

It's a stunning claim that might have sold more than a few magazines. But is it true?

[...]

"Where I stand on abortion is, I oppose it," Giuliani said during the Feb. 6 broadcast. "I don't like it. I hate it. I think abortion is something that, as a personal matter, I would advise somebody against."

Alternet.org, April 16, 2007

[Stats] Women, Politics, Religion: A Correlation?

"Women are gaining increasing power in state legislatures in the United States, according to a study reported in the Feb. 15 New York Times. Although 24 percent of members of state legislatures nationwide are women, the percentages in the individual states vary widely. But the important difference is between the two major political parties."

Humaniststudies.org, Feb. 21, 2007