Yes, that’s what I
suggested, too. But really, we don’t have any data here;
just a lot of scattered points that leave the conclusions up to
your
prejudices, imagination, and any statistical tricks you know. I have
no
confidence in this sort of pseudodata.
Gosh, if this is pseudo data (or no data at all) then what was your
tracking data that showed just a lot of scattered points (no
correlation) when you plot handle position against cursor
position?
It’s just a way of trying
to salvage
something from a badly-conceived and badly-executed experiment. The
same
time and effort devoted to getting good data from a good experiment
will
make this kind of guesswork unnecessary.
First, this wasn’t an experiment.
Second, what is badly
conceived and executed about it? The conception was simply to look at the
relationship between aggregate measures of religiosity and social
problems.
This seems like a
perfectly reasonable first step in looking
at whether there is a relationship between religiosity and social
problems.
Many religious leaders say
religious belief improves
society. The execution of the study involved getting some measures
of
religiosity and social problems over different countries, either
from
surveys or archival sources. The lack of a high negative correlation
between religiosity and social problems across counties seems to
argue
against the idea that increased religiosity causes lower social
problems as strongly as the lack of a high negative correlation
between cursor and handle argues against the idea that the cursor is
the cause of outputs in a tracking task. And since you think it was
such a poorly conceived and executed experiment, what would you
recommend be done to make it better?
In the USA today, if
a stranger asks questions about
your belief in God, prayer, creation, evolution, and so on, you will
get the
least hassle if you portray yourself as devoutly religious.
That’s possible but it seems to me that it’s highly unlikely. I
think
it’s highly unlikely that anyone was present when the survey was
given. I would imagine the surveys were done by mail or
e-mail.
I can’t think of any
reason why a person would not honestly answer a
private, anonymous survey about their degree of religious
belief.
I don’t believe
Americans are anything like as religious as the polls seem to show.
A few
penetrating questions, I maintain, would show that the claimed
adherence to
Judeo-Christian doctines is not reflected in actions…I’d say that
God commands
about the same practical degree of belief as $anta Claus, however
loudly people
announce themselves to be among the blessed.
Americans who say they are religious are surely religious in
different
ways. But what the religious leaders (in our ecumenical society say)
is that what is important is being religious, what ever that means
to
the person.
Some people who call themselves
religious Christians care
mainly about abortion and gay marriage (two things that didn’t
concern
Christ at all) and think the rich are great, poor deserve what they
get and that when someone slaps you on the cheek you bomb the hell
out
of some irrelevant country. Others are more like what I would call
Christians. But the question addressed by the survey was whether the
proportion of people who consider themselves religious is related to
the rate of social problems. Again, the point being addressed was
whether having a large proportion of people who consider themselves
religious is necessary in order to have a decent society. I think
the
data show clearly that it is not.
I don’t think there is anything to gain from blaming everything on
religion;
Nor do I. And I wasn’t. The person who wrote the article may be but
that wasn’t my aim in posting the data. Religion is a system
concept,
no? And I seem to remember you once saying that the way to make
society better is to find system concepts that work
better.
Many people have said the
same thing and the system concept that they think
will make things better is a religious one. I presented this data as
a
way of evaluating the success of the general idea that a religious
system concept is important for social betterment. The data
suggest
that having a large proportion of one’s population considering
themselves religious is not necessary to having a decent society.
That’s not blaming religion for anything. That’s just saying that
religious system concepts are irrelevant to improving
society.
Religions go to extremes
because they don’t
work. Let’s just get on with the job of devising a better approach
to fixing
the headache.
Right . You are saying that religions don’t work based on your own
intuition, which is based on your observation that religion has been
around for a long time but things are just as bad as ever. I
am
saying the same thing – religions don’t work – but I’m basing it
on
the observation that there is no relationship between the
proportion
of people in a country presenting in some way or another as
“religious” and measures of social dysfunction in that
country.
I think my basis for
saying that religions don’t work is much better
than yours.
[From Bill Powers (2008.01.31.0219 MST)]
Rick Marken (2008.01.30.2130) –
That is lack of evidence of a causal relationship. Anyone who thinks
there is a relationship (causal or otherwise) would have to use a lot of
imagination, or rely on extremely uncertain indications of one. Plot the
handle position against the disturbance, however, and you will get nearly
a straight line or (if time is included) a nice ellipse, very strong
evidence of a relationship. That’s good data.
The null hypothesis was that religion does not affect social welfare. The
experimental test was to ask people what their religious ideas were and
see if the answers correlate with social welfare. They didn’t (not in my
book).
What was badly conceived was the definition of “religiosity”
and “social problems.” What was badly executed was the survey
– how can you find out what people meant by their answers if you don’t
ask them, and pursue the lines of questioning until you’re sure you know?
No wonder the correlations are (probably, I didn’t calculate them) so
low. The kind of information needed here can’t be obtained by the simple
inexpensive means of mailing out questionnaires. You get what you pay
for.
I think it’s a sloppy and ineffective first step as the scatter plots
reveal.
If I were looking at effects on changes in societies, I would measure
changes in each society, not compare static samples from different
societies.
Make up your mind about what your point is. I have said that
I think the data about effects of religion on social welfare fail to show
any relationship. You were arguing previously that the data show a
negative relationship: that religion causes social evils. Now you’re only
saying what I’ve already agreed to, and said from the start: religion
does not improve social life. If there’s no relationship, that means
there is no negative relationship as well as no positive
relationship.
The first job is to show whether social problems have improved in any
countries. If they haven’t changed measurably in any country, then
there’s no point in looking for correlations of changes in social
problems with anything else. The correlation of a constant with any other
variable is zero. And if one country has social problems, you don’t look
for their causes by looking at a different country’s social problems. You
don’t calculate economic growth by subtracting my income last year from
your income this year.
But somebody saw the results, obviously. If you got emails or letters
asking you questions about your loyalty to the United States, would it be
it your policy to fire off honest answers to whoever the sender says he
is? A lot of people I know would reply, when asked about their religion,
“None of your business.” How many people said that to these
surveyors or their sources of data?
It’s a good thing you don’t live in the Bible Belt. Come on,
try.
The things that are wrong with societies are the things that go wrong
with individual people and are caused by ignorance and conflict. It is
not lack of religion that makes bad things happen, but problems inside
people’s heads. Some people are religious in ways that end up doing lots
of good for people in need of help. Others cancel them out by doing lots
of harm to people in need of help, like locking children in closets for
months, treating women like inferior beings, and persecuting social
nonconformists. If we could select which religious people would be
allowed to continue in their ways, we could arrange for religion to seem
to do a lot of good. Not that the same amount of good, or even more,
couldn’t be accomplished in other ways, too. But just by looking for
localized social improvements or degradations we could probably pick out
the “good” religions from the “bad” ones.
However, it still wouldn’t be religion that causes the social changes.
The social changes are caused by fixing what’s wrong with people, not by
sitting quietly and believing something.
Now I think that the way to make society better is to help people
reorganize their system concepts until the result is a better life rather
than a worse one. I have my own preferences and recommendations, but
obviously I don’t know what would work if everyone lived under the same
concept. Or how you could even tell if it was the same concept.
You’re now arguing the same point I’ve been making all along. But you
were saying that religion makes things worse. You’re still officially
saying that until you officially retract it.
If things are just as bad as ever, how could there be any relationship?
Actually, all parties concerned agree that things are at least as bad as
ever, and possibly that they are getting worse. Religious people agree to
this, too, but the activists say that this means we should try even
harder to spread and apply religious ideas. That’s what I mean by saying
failure leads to extreme actions: when what you’re doing fails to correct
the error and even lets it increase, and you don’t reorganize, all you
can do is produce more of the same action. The only effective thing to do
when control is not working is to change what you’re doing, not do more
of it.
I think mine’s just as good as yours. Nyah.
Best.
Bill P.
