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How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

technologyreview.com

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Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#21

Post by mullingitover »

Alex3917 wrote: post #19
gwern wrote: post #8

Really weak result. One factor over a short time period in a single country without throwing in the dozens of other variables? This is exactly the sort of result you expect to go away in subsequent time periods. (Also, the OP's confusion about correlation/causation in the hilarious bit about logistic regression certainly doesn't increase my confidence in this result.)

I agree, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were true right now. The Internet is undoubtedly the greatest tool that has ever been created for spreading religion, but in the short term it probably just magnifies whatever the larger social/religious fads are, e.g. new atheism.

It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something that is very destructive to religious belief.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#22

Post by azakai »

pradocchia wrote: post #18
danbruc wrote: post #13

But what of the other 50 percent? In the data, the only factor that correlates with this is date of birth—people born later are less likely to have a religious affiliation. But as Downey points out, year of birth cannot be a causal factor. “So about half of the observed change remains unexplained,” he says. Increasing year of birth means increasing human knowledge. While it was convincing a long time ago to have a go…

Increasing year of birth means increasing human knowledge. What, since the 1990s? No, don't be silly. There may have been a bump due to improved access to basic human knowledge. Is this what you mean?

And the improved access is likely mostly due to the internet.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#23

Post by azakai »

gwern wrote: post #8

Really weak result. One factor over a short time period in a single country without throwing in the dozens of other variables? This is exactly the sort of result you expect to go away in subsequent time periods. (Also, the OP's confusion about correlation/causation in the hilarious bit about logistic regression certainly doesn't increase my confidence in this result.)

The link appears to have been edited - the current link does not mention logistic regression at all, and gives a very valid description about the relationship between correlation and causation.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#24

Post by danbruc »

pradocchia wrote: post #18
danbruc wrote: post #13

But what of the other 50 percent? In the data, the only factor that correlates with this is date of birth—people born later are less likely to have a religious affiliation. But as Downey points out, year of birth cannot be a causal factor. “So about half of the observed change remains unexplained,” he says. Increasing year of birth means increasing human knowledge. While it was convincing a long time ago to have a go…

Increasing year of birth means increasing human knowledge. What, since the 1990s? No, don't be silly. There may have been a bump due to improved access to basic human knowledge. Is this what you mean?

Good point, raw increase in human knowledge is probably not a good explanation. But it is almost a quarter of a century since 1990, the rate at which new knowledge is obtained is constantly increasing, the Internet made access to this knowledge easier than ever before, people have - I guess - more time available to spend on such topics, the Internet enabled discussions in a way not possible before, ... Therefore a better explanation is probably easier access to knowledge than raw increase in knowledge.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#25

Post by jaredsohn »

jmspring wrote: post #6
icpmacdo wrote: post #3

I think that there is much more of a culture of admitting to things these days that would be more socially unacceptable than even back in the 90's. I also think that they are low balling it saying "Downey predicts the most likely changes between now and 2040 are that the percentage of people without a religious preference reach 25 percent. " I expect that number to be reasonably higher in the united states, it would…

I think there will be regions where it will be much higher (the south, bible belt, etc), but there are parts of this country where it will also be much lower (New England/the west coast). If immigration is opened up at the farm labor/blue collar end of the skill spectrum, there will likely be an up tick in religious observance in areas that might otherwise trend downward (California).

I think you switched lower/higher around (the GP was talking about people _without_ religious observance.)

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#26

Post by pastProlog »

When my mother went to Catholic schools in the US in the late 1940s and 1950s, every teacher was a member of a religious order.

When I went to Catholic schools from the late 1970s to the 1980s, about half the teachers were in religious orders, half lay people.

My cousin goes to Catholic schools right now. None of his teachers thus far have been religious, all have been lay people.

Such a shift in the past half century, along with other trends, is bound to affect religious devotion.

The Internet probably has an effect. I think the effect it has is one of degree. Years ago, people seemed to be divided into fundamentalists, and those who might doubt, say, that Joshua made the sun stand still in order to prevent sundown so that the Israelis could defeat the Amorites, or that the pope as Vicar of Christ speaks infallibly on matters of faith, and so forth. On say Reddit's /r/atheism there are so many secular people, that doubting people become complete atheists as opposed to moderate or liberal Christians. Those who doubt stop believing things completely, whereas in the old days they may have stuck around and been part of a church's liberal/moderate wing.

There also seems to be a counter-trend where those who stay in the church become even more fundamentalist. Michael Harrington wrote about this in "The Politics at God's Funeral". It creates a cyclical effect - as the moderates leave, the fundamentalists make the churches more and more fundamental and fanatic, driving out the moderates still left, which gives the fundamentalists even more power and the church drives out those moderates still left and so on.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#27

Post by JackFr »

ds9 wrote: post #5

It is intuitive that exposure to a wider range of ideas than found in one's home area undermines religious faith, but interesting to have this confirmed. Anecdotally I have noticed signs of this worldwide. The phrasing "blame on the internet" (along with college, apparently) implies a bias for religion over more agnostic views, but I guess this is NPR reporting the religionists' interpretation rather than NPR's.

What's intuitive to you could also be called confirmation bias. And I don't believe this article really proves it at all.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#28

Post by dang »

azakai wrote: post #23
gwern wrote: post #8

Really weak result. One factor over a short time period in a single country without throwing in the dozens of other variables? This is exactly the sort of result you expect to go away in subsequent time periods. (Also, the OP's confusion about correlation/causation in the hilarious bit about logistic regression certainly doesn't increase my confidence in this result.)

The link appears to have been edited - the current link does not mention logistic regression at all, and gives a very valid description about the relationship between correlation and causation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7625435

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#29

Post by dang »

aaron695 wrote: post #17
dang wrote: post #9

I changed the url from [1] to the article it cites, which is more substantive. But should we link to the actual paper [2] instead? 1. http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/21/303375... 2. http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5534

I'd say most people definitely don't have time for the extra effort of reading original papers. Whenever this is important to me I'll get the link from the comments. Also given NPR also interviewed Downey so 'value added' I wouldn't have necessarily given Technology Review preference.

That's how I personally use HN too, which is why I didn't make the paper itself the primary link. Good point about it almost always being referenced in the thread.

> NPR also interviewed Downey so 'value added'

Fair, but I'm doubtful many people here listen to the audio.

Re: How the Internet Is Taking Away America’s Religion

#30

Post by jey »

mullingitover wrote: post #21
Alex3917 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were true right now. The Internet is undoubtedly the greatest tool that has ever been created for spreading religion, but in the short term it probably just magnifies whatever the larger social/religious fads are, e.g. new atheism.

It's also the greatest tool that has ever been created for destroying superstition and myth. We're in the golden age of critical thinking, something that is very destructive to religious belief.

> We're in the golden age of critical thinking

Source/citation/justification? Seems just as easy to make the opposing argument, that mass media technologies are being perfected to the point where it'll soon be possible to use highly optimized Skinner boxes for disseminating propaganda, something like Zynga plus Fox News. The victims would be voluntarily opting in to their own brainwashing.

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