It is a well-known phenomenon that people overestimate their capacities on traits that are deemed to be socially desirable. In the US, since being religious is seen as a good thing, people seem to feel obliged to put on a facade.

But it is becoming increasingly clear that Americans are less religious that they claim to be. The Pew survey of religious knowledge in the US says that 4/7 (about 55%) attend church once a week but a University of Michigan examination of actual time diaries kept by people indicate that the figure is only about 25%, much like many European countries, while self reports were about 35-45%. The gap between self-perception and reality in the US was around 18% whereas the highest gaps elsewhere in the world were only about 4-8%, and these were in Catholic countries.

Given that fact, should we believe the Pew results that say that “more than a third (37%) say they read the Bible or other Holy Scriptures at least once a week, not counting worship services”? I find that really hard to believe. The Bible is not a great read, frankly. There are a few occasional well written and poetic passages but most of it consists of turgid prose dealing with dreary lists of rules.

My guess is that even if we use the same inflation factor of two that exists for church attendance to arrive at about 20% for weekly Bible reading, that would still be too high.

A survey of 1900 people in England and Wales found the interesting result that while 61% of respondents said they belonged to a religion, 65% also replied “no” when asked if they were religious.

The British Humanist Association conducted this survey to illustrate the fact that the British census, which is due to be carried out soon, gives a misleading impression by asking only the first question and thereby suggesting that people are more religious than they really are. They say that people check off the boxes of belonging to religious institutions for cultural, rather than religious, reasons but that the government uses this inflated data to advocate for funding of things like faith-based schools. They are urging people who are not religious to tick the ‘none’ box when asked which religion they belong to.

Another interesting result was that “Among respondents who identified themselves as Christian, fewer than half said they believed Jesus Christ was a real person who died, came back to life and was the son of God.” That alone would explain the above difference.

It would be really interesting to have a similar survey done in the US. I think the religiosity figures are inflated here too, though maybe not as much.

When I argue that science and belief in god are basically incompatible, religious people often respond by pointing to the fact that there are religious scientists. The evangelical Christian Francis Collins, who headed one team of scientists that mapped the human genome and is now head of the National Institutes of Health, is the poster child for this group.

Other scientists like Craig Venter, who headed the other team that mapped the human genome, is dismissive of religious people like Collins. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Venter was asked about this:

SPIEGEL: Some scientist don’t rule out a belief in God. Francis Collins, for example …

Venter: … That’s his issue to reconcile, not mine. For me, it’s either faith or science – you can’t have both.

SPIEGEL: So you don’t consider Collins to be a true scientist?

Venter: Let’s just say he’s a government administrator.

The idea that science and religion must be compatible because there are religious scientists is not an argument since it is quite possible for people to hold contradictory ideas in their heads and all of us are good at compartmentalizing our minds in order to do so.

As Jesus and Mo point out, that argument can be taken to argue for the compatibility of almost anything.

New polls confirm earlier results that for the first time in the US, those who favor same sex marriage now outnumber those who oppose it. “A whopping 68% of Americans under 30 now support marriage equality, but the percentage is nearly as high, 65%, for Americans in their 30s. A majority of folks in their 40s are on board, too.”

Recall that in the earlier poll, there was a drop from 73% opposition in 1988 to 56% in 2004, to only 40% opposition in 2010. So the rate of decline in the opposition has increased by a factor of 2.5 from 2004 to 2010 over that of the earlier period. I predict that opposition will stabilize to about 25%, which is usually the size of hardcore people on any issue.

These results are significant in ways other than the welcome one that the rights of gays for equality are now being recognized. Opposition to homosexuality has no rational basis but is almost entirely religion-based. It is religion that has locked itself into opposition to gay rights and same sex marriage, so this new acceptance is really bad news for religion as well, since it signifies that its hold on people, especially the young, is disintegrating as they reject its intolerance. And once again, as I said in my series on Why Atheism is Winning, it is young people who are leading the way.

It is not only Christians that have the headache of deciding which parts of their holy book they should follow and which parts they should reject. Jesus and Mo point out the same problem that Muslims have with the Koran.

For more examples of the intolerance and cruelty in the Koran, see here. It amazes me that people can claim that their god is a merciful and loving god when their very own holy books have such hateful passages.

The talk I gave at to the CWRU chapter of the Center for Inquiry on Why Atheism is Winning produced a lively discussion. The talk lasted for about an hour and was followed by a Q&A that lasted for almost 90 minutes with most people sticking around for the full period.

Both the talk and the Q&A will be posted soon for viewing.

UPDATE: The hour-long talk is now up on YouTube.

I will upload later the lively Q&A that followed the talk.

In an earlier post, I wondered how long it would take for religious nutters to say the recent earthquakes were due to god, who seems to be really cranky, getting ticked off about something or the other. I expected the usual suspects: gays, feminists, abortion, etc. But to my surprise it turns out that it is Japanese atheists who are the cause.

Senior pastor Cho Yong-gi of Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest Christian church in the world [my italics], has faced vicious public condemnation as he called the catastrophic Japanese quakes and tsunamis “God’s warnings.”

“I fear that this disaster may be warnings from God against the Japanese people’s atheism and materialism,” an online Christian press quoted the elderly religious leader as saying Saturday.

“I hope that these series of events will drive the Japanese to turn their eyes towards God.”

Of course, in the midst of the massive death toll there was the usual praise for god for not killing people in an in-group.

Meanwhile, Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo also came close to facing similar public blame with his Twitter remarks.

“I thank God and my ancestors for keeping the Korean peninsula safe,” the Catholic governor wrote on his Twitter on Sunday. “The disaster left more than 2,500 dead or injured and 10,000 missing.”

How thoughtful of god to single the Korean in-group for preservation while slaughtering those in the Japanese out-group! This must prove that Korea is god’s chosen country. Take that, America!

The woman in the following video claims that the events in Japan were in response to her prayers at the beginning of Lent (which was last Wednesday) to teach all the atheists who are around her a lesson. She is thrilled that god responded within two days and says that if more people pray with her during Lent, she is sure that by the end of Lent god will similarly smite those other hotbeds of atheism, namely Europe and the US. (She must have been reading my series on why atheism is winning.)

This was so over the top that I watched closely to see if there was any indication that this was an Onion-type parody but it seems genuine. She is actually taking delight in the massive death and destruction in Japan as answers to her prayers.

It is sad what religion can do to people.

(Via Pharyngula.)

I will be giving a talk on this topic on Wednesday, March 16 at 7:00 pm in the 1914 Lounge in Thwing student center on the CWRU campus. It is free and open to the public and free food is provided to compensate you for having to listen to me. The talk is sponsored by the Center for Inquiry.

In my talks, in addition to the tradition Q&A and discussion at the end, I also encourage people to question and comment during the presentation, so come along with your ideas.

We have had two natural disasters in quick succession that have killed and injured a lot of people and inflicted considerable damage: The earthquake in New Zealand and the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan.

I am wondering how long it will take before the religious nutters (and I am looking at you Pat Robertson) come out and say that this must be because god is angry with us about something. I am not sure what god could be angry about in these cases but you can be sure that it contravened something in the book of Leviticus or some surah in the Koran.

Since god tends to use very blunt instruments as punishments, indulging in mass killings and wanton destruction that destroy men, women, children, and the elderly indiscriminately, what ticked him off in these cases need not be due to anything that happened in those countries. It could well be that he was angry that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was repealed in the US, but didn’t want to hurt people here because as his chosen people and country, we are special in his eyes.

In an article titled Why evangelicals hate Jesus, Phil Zuckerman says:

White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message.