I would love to see this religion survey further broken down by field of study. Also by various measures of university quality, and by location. The number of religious faculty seems shockingly high to me.
my mother people would can be much easier for me to tolerate if she were when they are less nice, because it relieves us of the emotional and cognitive burden of feeling that we should be "nice" back.
Best is when you can drop the burden of being nice back without needing other people to be less nice. In fact the best of the best is when they keep being nicer in order to win you over, while you continue to be your nasty self. Bliss.
When missionaries come to my door, I try to get them to clean my house.
I was wondering how "faculty" was defined; it includes business and other professional programs, but I haven't looked thoroughly enough to run into the full account.
The number of religious faculty seems shockingly high to me.
America is a religious country. Even the atheists act like the evangelicals.
I was wondering how "faculty" was defined; it includes business and other professional programs,
You want to tell the people in the law, business and engineering schools that they're not on the faculty?
These numbers seem about right to me; lower than the numbers for the country as a whole, but not a whole lot lower.
Philosophy and economics too, Gonerill.
And not with a polite email or note. I want to send jackbooted thugs out with notifications in their boots and on their fists. It's time to crack down.
I wonder what number you get when you take out religious institutions. (I haven't clicked through; maybe they did.) The numbers don't sound that off to me, especially if "believe in God" is left vague.
6: they do break things down into categories like "humanities", "social sciences" and "science/math". I'm particularly surprised that "science/math" is so religious, but maybe it's just those pesky mathematicians they're throwing into the mix. (Also, according the appendix they surveyed engineers; I hope they didn't put them in the science category.)
I like sociology, especially the unfortunately recently late Charles Tilly.
Sociology departments -- including elite ones -- are full of practicing evangelicals, mainline protestants and mormons.
I read Gonerill's "mormons" as "morons" which seemed about right to me.
You people don't know who your real friends are.
Analytic philosophers can be such little bitches.
When missionaries come to my door, I try to get them to clean my house.
Oh, I like this.
Analytic philosophers can be such little bitches.
This is true, but given the personnel somewhat irrelevant.
especially if "believe in God" is left vague
Yeah, I'm not bestirring myself enough to go look, but my top questions would be:
1. Did they really ask "How often do you go to religious services?" or did they ask "Have you been to a religious service in the last 10 days?" The latter is likely to be a more accurate number.
2. How did they adjust for the differences between people who are (say) culturally Catholic versus observantly Catholic? I can think of two professors I know -- business and math -- who are as culturally Catholic as they come, but I'd be astounded if they are anything other than agnostics.
These numbers seem about right to me; lower than the numbers for the country as a whole, but not a whole lot lower.
Sorry, that's actually a HUGE differential. To find one non-theist in academia, you only need to interview about three people. To find a non-believer in general civilian life, you would need an average of almost twenty people. (Based on the 66/34 and 93/7 splits given.) Put in other terms, the college professor is almost five times more likely to be non-theistic than the equivalent civilian.
66% believe in God, and 66% identify with a particular religious denomination. Which means there is no significant number of adherents of Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Shinto or other non-Abrahamic faiths. That doesn't sound right.
The number of religious faculty seems shockingly high to me.
Not to me. 'Religious' does not mean 'evangelical.' And while evangelicals are thin on the ground, people who are religious aren't really. They're not generally obnoxious about it (you mean they aren't preaching in the classroom?shhhh.), but that's fortunately not a requirement of being religious, either.
Hey, wait... if 66% are religious, but they're ALL crazy leftist Democrat sheephuggers....
24: I read the 'such as' as giving examples of faiths, not being an exhaustive list.
Niceness as a virtue is a mean between the vices of being a flatterer and being standoffish.
I'd find the exact Aristotle quote and post under his name, but I am lazy.
A hundred years ago, Scientific American conducted a survey of working scientists, and found that about 50% were religious. For the 100th anniversary, they ran the survey again, and found levels of religiosity unchanged.
One interesting feature, though, was that the more theoretical and prestigious the field, the less likely the scientist was to be religious. High energy physicists and cosmologists are all atheists, people in practical fields like materials science resemble the rest of America.
Speaking of mothers, some rich doctor from Westchester which is the richest county in the country was an asshole to my mother because she didn't know all the stops on the train between Philadelphia and New York. And she was probably from flyover and voted for Bush, didn't she? It was so obvious.
Way to make my mom vote for McCain, rich doctor from Westchester which is the richest county in the country, because you didn't really convince anyone that being a Democrat didn't mean you were an asshole.
(How do we know he's a rich doctor from Westchester which is the richest county in the country? Oh, it just came up in conversation. Apparently rich people's dicks fall off if they don't mention their income twice an hour.)
The lady was incorrect.
Lizard lives in the second richest county in the US, and Ogged might live in the richest.
Yeah, I really wish my mom would have had the knowledge or presence of mind to say 'Really? Richer than Manhattan?'
But it probably would have gone over the head of the rich doctor from Westchester which is the richest county in the country.
27: High energy physicists and cosmologists are all atheists, people in practical fields like materials science resemble the rest of America.
Interesting! That must explain my surprise. Certainly among the former category, lack of religion seems to be almost as good a default assumption as Democratic voting tendencies, i.e. it is tacitly assumed at dinner conversations and then every so often one casts worried glances at the people one doesn't know so well to try to be sure they haven't been inadvertently offended.
almost as good a default assumption as Democratic voting tendencies
I met a physicist at the weekend who was regaling me with his political views, which were pretty much the diametric opposite. As far as I could tell, he was pro-eugenics, against any form of state benefits for the poor [encouraged them to breed], believed that doing so was diluting our gene pool, that some classes of people are just inferior, etc.
Who was trying to sell me the whole social-darwinist/eugencist/pretty-much-actually-Nazi line. Which was a bit disturbing coming from a very old man with a pronounced middle-european/german accent who was almost certainly of age to have taken an active, practical interest in that sort of thing.
Unsurprisingly, Bad Religion brings answers. The main point is that field of study makes a big difference--there are hardly any religious evolutionary biologists, for example.
Apparently rich people's dicks fall off if they don't mention their income twice an hour.
Guys like that lost their dicks a long time ago. They're attempting to make up for it, the poor confused dears.
The guy described in 29 is a well-known type, comes in Republican, Democrat and indifferent. Rich and not-so-rich, for that matter.