Sep 24 2009
Religion is a Rotten Variable
Religion is a horrible variable. Terrible. As is atheism, to a lesser extent. Why? Because they are general (nonspecific), imprecise terms — particularly religion – referring not to a single easily measurable attribute but to a potential grab-bag of traits and behaviors. When using these terms it is easy to infer that a god and/or the supernatural is central to the issue. But that’s not the case. Absolutely not, as I will argue. The use of these terms often disguise the real issues.
Example #1
As Tom Flynn pointed out in his Free Inquiry article, “It’s Amazing What You Can Find By Looking” (Oct/Nov 2009), for years it has been assumed that terms such as religious and non-religious tell us something important about people. In a study into life satisfaction he parses, Flynn notes that it is not bald belief in a god or a lack of belief in a god that matters, but the strength of belief. It seems that people with strong convictions are happier than those without. (Do confusion and ambivalence contribute to less satisfying states?) This is not terribly surprising, as beliefs/convictions are cognitive events/characteristics that certainly can and do influence other aspects of human psychology (particularly emotion and behavior).
Example #2
Over at ScienceDaily I recently ran into this news release:
Teenage Birth Rates Higher In More Religious States
Can states be religions? No. People are religious. How are people religious? That is a very important question. In fact, that’s the nut-meat that needs to be better exposed. The lead sentence is more precise but still questionable.
Rates of births to teenage mothers are strongly predicted by conservative religious beliefs, even after controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion.
“Teen mothers” — good, we know what those are, no vagueness here. “Controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion” — good. Those can be measured. But what of the “religious beliefs” part. What does that truly mean in terms of real-world attributes?
Interestingly, the article’s closing paragraph contains a “speculation” that is less speculative than the use of religious as a variable.
[I]f we may speculate on the most probable explanation, we conjecture that religious communities in the US are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”
Communities, contraception, sexual intercourse . . . these are real world properties that can be isolated and measured.
I have long held that in studies on religion and belief, there should always be secular controls. Without it we can’t know if we are really measuring any strong belief (or community involvement) vs. weaker or no beliefs (or lack of community involvement). If those non-super-natural characteristics are truly being measured, these are the terms we should use. The purely religious part might just be fully irrelevant. Real things.
Good scientists keep religion and other vague terms with other-world connotations out of their work. They stick to variables that can be isolated and measured.
It seems to me that “liberal” and “conservative” are no less vague than “religious”. In each case one would have to infer them from measured quantities such as churchgoing, choice of newspaper, party membership… Or of course responses to a questionnaire, which would have to be quite detailed. The simple question “how religious/liberal/conservative are you?” would hardly be enough.
David -
Excellent point. Many people, including myself, hold a set of values with some more liberal, others more conservative. Terms can be a short-cut to meaning. But you can’t trust short-cuts when you are doing good science. Or are engaged in critical thinking.
[...] mean the same thing to a scientist and a creationist. So The Evolving Mind says that Religion is a Rotten Variable; define your terms. Our own prolific Philly Chief makes the same sort of connection pointing [...]