Talk:Religiosity and education

Krauss Box

Greetings IRWolfie, I hope you are doing well. The reason why I said this was out of place, is that this is more of an opinion/rhetorical question than actual research studies, which is what most of the article has. Furthermore, the opinion, if it is to be kept for any reason sure does not require a big box around nor should it be highlighted since most of the studies in the article so far do not support what it says either. It should be integrated into the article if anything. I will remove it since it does not really do much here. But if you wish to keep then you can stick it in without the highlighting. What do you think? Ramos1990 (talk) 17:44, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

actually this article has a complete lack of studies, and is almost all subjective opinions. The conclusions are demonstrably false, and the sources aren't up to scratch. If you look at the Irish census for example you will see that "In "western" countries, the higher the level of education, the more the religious practices increase, while certain religious beliefs decrease." is nonsense. IRWolfie- (talk) 14:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

This article is pretty new, so one cannot expect that it would have a grip of studies. But the ones are available in the positive and negative sections are pretty good studies as they are from pretty reliable academic sources. If you think they are incorrect, then you can try to put in studies that show the opposite. This would be good as it would make the article bigger and more diverse. I disagree with your understanding of the quote above. It is not nonsense at all since practices and beliefs are not the same thing nor does it follow that they would have to be congruent. For more on this one can read - Chaves, Mark (2010). "SSSR Presidential Address Rain Dances in the Dry Season: Overcoming the Religious Congruence Fallacy". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49 (1): 1–14. That statement seems to be based on the main study from the negative correlation section since religious attendance (practice) increases while actual "belief" decreases, meaning that the well educated go to church often but they are not "zealots". I am iffy about that phrase in the intro. --Ramos1990 (talk) 17:17, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

"Christians are hate-filled hypocrites-- and other lies you've been told : a sociologist shatters myths from the secular and christian media" published by a "Christian publisher of historical and contemporary fiction, Christian living, family, health, devotional, deeper life, children's, and theology", is not a reliable source. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:35, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

How is this not a reliable source? The author is a professional sociologist at the University of Connecticut. Here is his credentials [1] and here is his university link [2]. Simply saying the source is unreliable does not demonstrate much. You need to provide reasonable justifications for removal of content. Hope this helps clarify.--Ramos1990 (talk) 17:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

The book written by the Christian Publisher is not an academic book, and appears to be written from a christian point of view. Just because he's a sociologist does not mean it's reliable, particularly when it's not peer reviewed and outside of the normal channels. IRWolfie- (talk) 00:10, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Greetings once more, where in the source does it say something about education? Page 51 is cited for this claim. Here is a link [3]. Perhaps this can be clarified. --Ramos1990 (talk) 23:25, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

It seems I copied the wrong Zuckerman source over, cheers for the correction. IRWolfie- (talk) 23:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Bell/ Dawkins quote

We have a citation of a study in a Mensa magazine, cited by Dawkins. I don't think it belongs for a couple of reasons:
I don't know if Mensa magazine is a reliable source.
When it appeared quite some time ago in the Religiosity and intelligence article, it was quoted as talking about both intelligence studies and educational studies, so is probably not relevant here for that reason either.
It might not have been sighted- when it was discussed at length at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Religiosity_and_intelligence/Archive_2#Removal_of_Bell_.28Dawkins.29 , it couldn't be found. (If someone has actually seen the article, this might not be a valid issue. Otherwise, no.)
I've copped some flack from people thinking I delete too much from that page, so won't do the same here. If anyone agrees, though, they should act accordingly.WotherspoonSmith (talk) 05:24, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey thanks for bringing this up and the relevant discussion too WotherspoonSmith. Its seems like this one is tricky. I saw it as something awkward when I first saw it. A quote within a quote, the issue of reliability, and the ambiguity of the claim (is it about IQ or education?) is truly an interesting case. Even Dawkins notices the slippery language of the Mensa source and how the supposed meta-analysis as not really specific about the studies it supposedly reviewed. The claim in Mensa sounds more like a hasty generalization than an empirical claim if this is the case. It seems like the IQ club is very exclusive and an original copy of the source is hard to get. You might want to know that the aforementioned citation is also in the Atheism article in the demographics section. I leave it to you to do as you think is best since you have dealt with this before. Don't feel ashamed to add or remove stuff in this article. If you feel something is reasonable and helps make the article better then please go for it. This article is very young and is in need of improvement anyways. --Ramos1990 (talk) 06:22, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Gross/Simmons article and correlation

To Ramos1990: You keep claiming that the finding that non-believers aren't a majority among the professoriate implies a positive correlation between education and religiosity. This is incorrect. Correlation is not about the individual values, considered alone; it's about the relationship between the variables. The question is not "are the majority of professors religious / nonreligious?", as you are asking, but rather, "does increasing education go hand-in-hand with a change in religiosity?" The answer to the latter, as framed by the survey in question, is yes: Increasing education (as measured by academic reputation) corresponds to decreasing religiosity (less belief, and more non-belief). This is the definition of a negative correlation.

The reason that the authors make a big deal about the nonexistence of an unbelieving majority is that they're concerned with the numbers themselves, as you are, rather than the correlation. I'm afraid I don't have access to the full article itself, but where their concern lies is evident from the abstract:

"Contrary to the view that religious skepticism predominates in the academy, we find that the majority of professors, even at elite research institutions, are religious believers."

as well as another article (http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Gross_Simmons.pdf) by the same authors along essentially identical lines:

"... the story goes, academe has now become, in the words of historian George Marsden, 'a haven largely freed from religious perspectives.'

"In broad brushstroke this story is not wrong, but it leads too readily to the conclusion that, as a result of secularization, most college and university professors today are irreligious."

Now, we could put their findings in the language of correlations; it would be that "the negative correlation is not as steep as is commonly believed." Nonetheless, the correlation in their data is most definitely negative. There isn't a positive correlation to be found here. Symplectic.Nova (talk) 20:31, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Symplectic Nova, thanks for raising your points. The issue seems to be in the term "correlation". Originally the wikipedia article had "relationship", not correlation. Perhaps we can change it to that because relationship can include correlations, but is not bound by it. Of course, what you originally wrote "A survey by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons of professors at institutions in the US that grant either bachelors or associates degrees found that 22.9% of the professoriate were atheists or agnostics, compared to 7.1% of the public. This proportion increased to 36.5% among those at "elite" doctoral universities." does not mention anything about higher education being corrosive at all and it mischarcterizes what the source says in terms of religion and higher education since the majority of the source shows that, percentage wise, the majority are religious believers by various measures. Undue weight on what the source says is the issue.

Religiosity is measured in different ways and is not only based on beliefs, like you are assuming. The same goes for secularity. Like the article mentions in the abstract,"Contrary to the view that religious skepticism predominates in the academy, we find that the majority of professors, even at elite research institutions, are religious believers." If religious skepticism does not predominate in the academy then it surely means that the academy is not a main source for irreligiosity and, in the reverse, is a place where religiosity can and does thrive. If this were not so, then religious believers would likely be in the minority. There is a difference between being "less" religious than the general population and being non-religious or even irreligious of course. There is also a difference between less and decreasing too. In know that some are fearful of increase and stability, but it is what it is. By the same token, Barry Kosmin's article acknowledges the lack of success of atheism existing, flourishing, and advancing in the academy. In fact according to him, elites are looking as diversely religious as the normative religious public. So we have a few trends showing the opposite of what you claim. Education is not really an opposing force to religiosity according to these "mixed" studies - they really are positive and many previous trends with your view, have been reversed by newer and more open generations.

For the purpose of the article and for wikipedia, I think we can change the "correlations" to "relationship" on all 3 sections and this would solve the issue as it would be broader. What do you think? --Mayan1990 (talk) 21:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Negative relationship and positive relationship still has the same connotation as negative correlation and positive correlation, respectively (ie. it's mathematical/statistical in nature). And doesn't the rest of this Wiki article, including the intro, do everything to suggest that the article is about the correlation between the two variables?

Several of your points are addressed by the the other article (http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/Gross_Simmons.pdf) that I linked to earlier (and I apologize for not bothering to read in detail before). The final paragraph begins with

"Finally, although our research suggests that professorial religiosity has been previously underestimated, it is clear that on the whole, and measured various ways, that professors are less religious than the general U.S. population."

The survey didn't just determine the difference in the proportion who believe or not believe in higher powers, but also:

• No doubt about the existence of God (compare to 60.6% general population): 35.7% professors, 20.4% elite
• Born-again Christians (compare to 41% general population): 18.8% overall, 1% elite
• The Bible consists of...

	General population	College-educated	Professors	Elite professors
Literal words of God	30%	13%	6.1%	?
God-inspired words	49.2%	56.8%	42%	?
Fables	17.5%	25.9%	51.6%	72.9%

• Traditionality of belief: There isn't much data for a proper comparison, but here's the conclusion of that paragraph: "At [non-community colleges], religious moderates are more common, suggesting again that while believers can indeed be found in the upper echelons of academe, there is either less interest there or less space for more fervent forms of religiosity."
• Attendance: 48.6% of the general public attend once a month or more, compared with 39.9% of professors, and 27% of those at the elite institutions

I think that samples a pretty wide gamut of the various aspects of religiosity.

Next, I'd like to address your claim that "If religious skepticism does not predominate in the academy then it surely means that the academy is not a main source for irreligiosity... If this were not so, then religious believers would likely be in the minority." First of all, the data I quoted above shows that your premise is false: Those who have no doubt about the existence of God constitutes a minority of the American professoriate, and an even smaller portion of the elite. The view of the Bible is even more damning. And even if we go back to the belief/disbelief data, you'll find that at elite institutions, the proportion who believes in God full-time drops to ~34%. The difference is made up by an increase in those who "believe in Higher Power or God some of the time" and especially those who are atheists and agnostics (see the graph on p.5 of the Gross/Simmons article linked above).

Moreover, your reasoning that education is the main cause of irreligiosity (in academia? or wider society?) if and only if the non-believers constitute a majority of academics is a false dichotomy: It's entirely plausible that education can explain the statistically significant difference in religious attitude among the various demographics. You also seem to believe that the effect of education on increasing irreligiosity, if it exists, should be as strong as, say, the effect of propaganda on political opinion in stable dictatorships. Why should it?

Finally, the Kosmin article has little to do with the academia, because it's dealing with the far larger group of those who have postgraduate education. And remember that we are discussing the Gross/Simmons article. How does what Kosmin says affect the content of the Gross/Simmons article? (By the way, Kosmin notes that "the recent proliferation of religious and sectarian colleges may have offset some secularization trends." What constitutes "education" might an interesting aspect of the correlation between religiosity and education, and it's not addressed in this Wiki article at the moment.) Symplectic.Nova (talk) 02:16, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Appreciate your comments. The wikipedia article is pretty broad so it is not bound to be only about statistical correlations. Also keep in mind that we as editors cannot really insert our own analysis into the Wikipedia article as that would be WP:SYN or potentially WP:OR. Nor can we combine sources like you did in your table from different sources (NORC, Gallup, Gross/Simmons) as this is clearly WP:SYN and WP:OR (you are making claims and comparisons that the 3 sources did not make). We have to understand our limits as editors and keep in mind that this is an encyclopedia, not a place for original research. In terms of the sources, we are bound by what the sources say and can only provide basic highlights in the actual Wikipedia article. In the article you can certainly add that university professors, though being majority religious believers, have a milder religiosity compared to the general population. Gross/Simmons do mention that so it should not be a problem. By looking at the SSRC essay graph by Gross/Simmons, on elite universities, its odd that the only way the numbers reach 36.6% for atheists/agnostics is by lumping atheists and agnostics together. However, if you lump the rest together, then clearly non-atheists and non-agnostics do make up a majority still. Gross/Simmons probably make the comment you cited there is either less interest there or less space for more fervent forms of religiosity because it is not an issue of higher education, but in other factors involved such as political correctness of the institution and more fellowships with international professors rather than domestic.

Just the group with belief in God is about the same as the atheist/agnostic combination group so at elite universities there is an even distribution of believers and nonbelievers to a significant extent. I could not find the % of atheists alone at elite universities, but usually the majority of the the atheist/agnostic combo is made up of agnostics, not atheists. With convinced believers being at 20.4% at elite universities it likely outnumbers the number of convinced atheists at elite universities. But there is probably more to it than that. Religiosity is not measured only by belief in God. There are other religious traditions that do not have belief in God, which should also be included in religiosity. The whole "believing in a higher power that is not God" demographic is a religious marker as well. So religiosity really goes a long way.

I think that if you want to add a section on what constitutes "education" you certainly can. I am sure there are numerous reliable sources that tackle that issue. Its probably a good idea. However, as editors, we can only say what the sources say and not extrapolate beyond that.

On a side note (nothing to do with the wikipedia article), I disagree with some of your interpretations of religiosity since belief in God or the Bible and lack of belief in God or the Bible, are not always good automatic indicators of religiosity and secularity. Religiosity is expressed in different ways via belief, belonging, and behavior globally. Literalness or lack thereof does not always indicate religiosity or irreligiosity since many components are usually involved and much of them are incongruent. In the US, the fact that atheists are almost always a minority in demographics may mean that only a few (even out of those who do lack belief in God) are willing to identify with that label due to disagreements with the stereotypes that befall atheism (such as irreligiosity, anti-religiosity, etc). --Mayan1990 (talk) 00:20, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Catholics in Spain

Jobas - This in my view is undue - you really need a secondary source providing context for that. Jytdog (talk) 13:28, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

NPOV July 2017

Tagged this for NPOV since it appears to be biased in favour of a positive correlation. Certainly the positive section is much larger than the negative one. There are also statements like "In terms of university professors, one study concluded that in the US, the majority of professors, even at "elite" universities, were religious" which are not balanced by a counter-view. Banedon (talk) 09:08, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm confused. Why should we balance things with a counter view; where in NPOV does it say we should do that? -Roxy the dog. bark 10:22, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

WP:NPOV policy does not mean 1/2 for and 1/2 against on any article. The article shows that the mixed and positive correlations are more prominent in the literature, than purely negative correlations. Of course, if there were more negative correlations, then they can be added to this article, but really there isn't much that shows that religiosity and education are fundamentally negatively correlated. Even the entries on the negative section are more mixed than purely negative. It seems that people from all backgrounds engage in education. Probably because it has nothing to do with religion or non-religion, but has more to do with the great benefits an individual gets with getting a higher education. Money is a great motivator.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 22:27, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Just as confused Roxy the dog - if things are not balanced with a counter view, how can it possibly meet NPOV? Banedon (talk) 01:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

In the article "The Shape Of The Earth" it says that the Earth is an Oblate Spheroid. Should we include the counter view that the Earth is shaped like a cucumber? -Roxy the dog. bark 10:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

@Ramos1990, some concrete examples of NPOV violation I see:

1. "In 1980, a study was conducted in Spain showed the more educated a person was, the more likely he or she was to be Catholic." This could be true, but also be meaningless for the purpose of this article, since Catholicism is but one of the world's many religions. It says nothing about religiosity as a whole.
2. "Statistical analysis of Nobel prizes awarded between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 65.4% of Nobel laureates were Christians, over 20% were Jewish and 10.5% were atheists, agnostics, or freethinkers." This uses Nobel prizes as a proxy for education. There are obvious problems with this. Not only is the relation not perfect, there are plenty of highly educated people out there who aren't Nobel laureates. This is already tenuous at best but the current article goes on to talk about Nobel prizes for several more sentences.
3. "According to a study that was done by University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1998, 60% of Nobel prize laureates in physics from 1901 to 1990 had a Christian background." That implies that if the Nobel laureate was born a Christian but converted out of it later, he or she would still be included in this 60%.

The current article is biased towards positive correlation, includes statements that at best tangentially support the positive correlation, and includes sentences that are not balanced by a counter view. All this adds up to a violation of NPOV. Banedon (talk) 01:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

There already is a section for your "counter views". If there are sources showing a clear negative correlation, then there is already a section for it available to insert any sources in there. The problem is that there are not really many studies that show purely negative correlations. Also, when it comes to studies on religiosity, there are certainly both narrow and broad studies which focus on specific religious traditions and education and broad religious distribution and education. Educations can also be studied in terms of specific things like # of PhDs or something broader like college degrees in general. Religiosity obviously encompasses many traditions and certainly can focus on specific traditions because each tradition is different in belief and practice. Some studies are broad and others are specific. Now your concern is mostly about the Nobel prizes, but the sources on those merely point out percentages, they do not imply that any one tradition is more educated than the other. Only that people who have achieved those prizes are also Christians or atheist or whatnot. Perhaps those can be removed since they are not about education, but about discoveries. In terms of Spain, most people there are Catholic so it is expected that many who get higher education would reflect the majority population - Catholics. Not sure what the issue would be if the source mentions that information. It may be a good idea to include a section about education and religiosity as background info as to what these are.

Now, WP:NPOV policy states, "As a general rule, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely on the grounds that it seems biased. Instead, try to rewrite the passage or section to achieve a more neutral tone. Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective, so such problems should be fixed when possible through the normal editing process." You are more than welcome to search for sources which do show negative correlations since there is a section for that, but if there are not many sources showing negative correlations, then one would have to admit that that is what is available.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 03:44, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Really, the bias is that material that does not support the positive correlation very well is nonetheless included in the article. The Spain / Catholic example is one of them. If there are only two religions in Spain, Catholicism and irreligion / atheism, then we can extrapolate from "in Spain, highly educated people are more likely to be Catholic" to "in Spain, highly educated people are more likely to be religious" (this is the statement that's relevant to this article). But there are obviously more than two religions in Spain. What if another statement like "in Spain, highly educated people are less likely to be Hindu" turns out to be true - would you add that statement to the negative correlation section? I don't see how that's even sensible - someone could easily tag the article as contradicting itself. Banedon (talk) 04:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I always felt unsure of the section titles as "positive", "negative", or "mixed". None of the negative one are purely negative either. There are lots of variables and they don't move in a congruent direction. But is there a way rename these sections or rearrange the information? I personally would not mind of the studies were to stand on their own in one big section and readers can see the diversity and nuances in each one. What do you think? Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 04:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I think that a more neutral tone can be achieved if we rename the sections by country or region and leave the studies to represent their findings with all the nuances an counter-intuitive insights. This will help avoid claiming studies as being "negatively correlated" or "positively correlated" in bulk - especially since the findings are usually mixed with somethings being positively correlated and other not. Education and religiosity are very diverse and there are too many variables to expect that they will all move in a uniformly positive or negative fashion across cultures and time. I have gone ahead and renamed the sections so that the studies stand on their own and readers can see the diverse and sometimes counter-intuitive findings. Hope this helps.Huitzilopochtli1990 (talk) 23:07, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit which I think was a great improvement. If I find the time I'll try to improve the article myself as well. Banedon (talk) 08:50, 24 July 2017 (UTC)