Mollie Hemingway comments in her Wall Street Journal article that:
The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.
“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.
See the full article here Look Who’s Irrational Now – WSJ.com. (HT: Between Two Worlds)
great! empirical proof that one cult’s superstitions immunize its members against other superstitions better than another’s.
let’s invest generously in more studies like this!
every cult needs to obfuscate the facts into submission. evangelical christianity more than most.
the truth: actual standards for the formation of belief immunize absolutely against superstition! lets make sure we don’t invest in that!
@tmender: What “actual standards” do you propose that we use for the formation of beliefs?
Very interesting article.
A few musings…
- It’s hard to know what counts as superstition. “Superstition” is, in some ways, a loaded term.
-Given that we’re not given the full breakdown of responses, it’s hard to know what, exactly, evangelicals believe, according to this study. I hope, though, that most of them believe that demons are real and active!
-It’s still very interesting that a number of self-proclaimed atheists aren’t actual (or at least aren’t consistent) naturalists.