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[Servant Corps]

If we are to establish that theist atheism shares 'similar' cultural beliefs with that of atheist atheists, does that mean that they share the same religious beliefs too (other than their belief in a god/universal spirit, or course)? I've only looked at a few questions for now, due to me being busy...but I seem to have extremely high R^2 for these answers (though not high enough to be considered significant).


Correlation: 0.4178
Rē = 0.2167


Correlation: 0.4007
Rē = 0.2686


No Correlation and Rē calcuated for the Hell question due to lack of time (and the fact it would seem to be similar to the correlation and Rē for Heaven).


0.2777
Rē = 0.2082

EDIT: Er...I forgot the toplines for these question, so here they are:
Afterlife Question:
Q33. "Do you believe in life after death?"

Heaven Question:
Q35. "Do you think there is a heaven, where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded?"

Hell Question:
Q36. "Do you think there is a hell, where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished?"

Bible Question:

Q.37    Which comes closest to your view? [READ, IN ORDER]

   [Holy book: If Christian or no religion (Q.16=1-4, 9, 10, 12, 13 OR CHR=1) insert “the Bible”; If Jewish (Q.16=5), insert “the Torah”; If Muslim (Q.16=6), insert, “the Koran”; If other non-Christian affiliations (Q.16=7,8,14 OR (Q.16=11 AND CHR=2,9)), insert “the Holy Scripture”; IF DK/REF IN RELIGION (Q.16=99) AND CHR=2,9, insert "the Bible"]

1   [Holy book] is the word of God, OR
2   [Holy book] is a book written by men and is not the word of God.
3   Other (VOL.)
9   Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)

IF BELIEVE HOLY BOOK IS WORD OF GOD (Q.37=1), ASK:
Q.38   And would you say that [READ, IN ORDER]?

1   [Holy book] is to be taken literally, word for word, OR
2   Not everything in [Holy book] should be taken literally, word for word.
3   Other (VOL.)
9   Don’t know/Refused (VOL.)

[Servant Corps]

I am going to bump this post to ask if anyone is paying attention to this thread or if I should move onto examining other Heterodox belief systems (such as Muslims who disbelieve in God). If they are people paying attention to this thread, tell me what you like to know about these people.

[Gearskull1]

The problem with using polling and data to understand religion is that different words mean different things to different people. So when I say god, i might be thinking of a different thing, or talking about a different thing than you are. For you god might be the christian model. For me some nebolous energy life force. So you might have a religion such as buddisim that has budda as its central figure, but if you called buddah god, they would not consider that right. Even though he holds the same structural place as god or jesus in a christan religion.

I think the problem with this issue lies in effective polling, and wording so that views can be effectivly expressed. An issue this complex is very hard to understand from the view of mass polling, and multiple choice questions.

I used the word different 6 times in this post.

[Fayrik]

I am going to bump this post to ask if anyone is paying attention to this thread or if I should move onto examining other Heterodox belief systems (such as Muslims who disbelieve in God). If they are people paying attention to this thread, tell me what you like to know about these people.

If Muslims don't believe in God, who is Allah?
"God" is a general term, it doesn't just apply to the Christians' deiety...Who's actual name seems to be some sort of taboo, I think?
...Looking at Gearskull's post, I think that's the point he was going for too.
Anyway, maybe someone could find the long forgotten name of the Christian god, so that the results are clearer.

And yes, I think adding more data from other religious beliefs would only really clarify the statistical data.

[Rose]

I am going to bump this post to ask if anyone is paying attention to this thread or if I should move onto examining other Heterodox belief systems (such as Muslims who disbelieve in God). If they are people paying attention to this thread, tell me what you like to know about these people.

If Muslims don't believe in God, who is Allah?
"God" is a general term, it doesn't just apply to the Christians' deiety...Who's actual name seems to be some sort of taboo, I think?
...Looking at Gearskull's post, I think that's the point he was going for too.
Anyway, maybe someone could find the long forgotten name of the Christian god, so that the results are clearer.

And yes, I think adding more data from other religious beliefs would only really clarify the statistical data.

You mean Yaweh?

[Earthquake Damage]

You mean Yaweh?

As I understand it, the name is lost.  Ancient Hebrew didn't have written vowels.  All that remains is the tetragrammaton (sp?), which is written YHWH or thereabouts in English.  Supposedly, it was only spoken during certain rituals.  I'm guessing those rituals died out some time after they lost their temple.  Bottom line:  We're just guessing at the pronunciation, so Yahweh = Jehovah = .

That's my understanding, anyway.  I'm probably dead wrong on all counts.

[Servant Corps]

Houston, we have a problem.

See, for all of these studies, I used Rē, and I always have received low Rē values. Yesterday, I just talked to my political scientist professor who pointed out that in the social sciences, you are going to have low Rē values, and that Rē only tells how much the data points deviate from the trend line, it doesn't verify the results to be significant or not. Instead, the professor told me to use z-scores to test to see if the correlations are significant or not.

That's...that's going to take a while.

[Ampersand]

Perhaps you should switch to studying Carnivore Vegans. Or perhaps Conservative Liberals. Maybe People who lie on surveys.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, if you find an incidence of someone who says that they are both an atheist, and that they believe in a god, what you have evidence for is one of the following;

A faulty survey
The subject fundamentally does not understand the question at hand
The subject of the test has lied.

For another example, if I ask on a survey "Is the sky blue? Is the sky red?" and a survey subject answers yes to both, I am not going to jump to the conclusion that the subject holds in his head both mutually contradictory statements as being true. Rather, I'm going to assume that the survey subject does not care about the survey and is just throwing out answers for the sake of taking the survey, perhaps even just to throw off the study.

In fact, professional survey designers will deliberately include the same question phrased different ways, such that surveys with contradictory answers can be discarded and ignored.

So until you can illustrate how exactly asking "Do you believe in God?" followed by, "Are you an Atheist?" is different from asking "Is the Sky Blue?" Followed by "Is the sky Red?", I find the details of the study sketchy at best.

Furthermore, the question "Q.30    Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?" may as well be, "Have you ever drank coffee OR murdered children?" There are two questions there, separated by that lovely word 'Or'. Pairing them together is disingenuous.

[Cheese]

By taking the Bible literally, do you mean reading it and taking it seriously or taking every word literally, disregarding any possibility of metaphors, even the parables?

[Heron TSG]

Aye, I think many of those people, if not all, were in fact nonreligious people who thought that atheism was the same thing.

[MorleyDev]

Also you are using "God" as in the big G, capital G. G. This would probably confuse people since generally God is a noun describing one deity hypothesised and believed to exist in the religion of Judaism and the religions that sprouted from Judaism: Islam, Christianity and probably some others I can't think of at the drop of a hat. It's a name, hence the capitalisation even when not at the start of a sentence. "god", lower case, however is a description that refers to any hypothetical supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force.

Yahweh is God.
Zeus is a god.
Christians believe in God, Hindus believe in gods.

See the difference? ^^

Random note: Heh, instead of Zeus I could have said "God is a god". Redundancy or what? ^^

[Servant Corps]

This is a post in defense of my, er, research, just all, though I really need to learn how to do z-scores to finally finish this research project:

Since God is being used as a capital G, and this excludes a wide variety of different beliefs that does not believe in this 'God' but believe either in pantheism or a variety of gods, I can see why the words "universal spirit" was added in addition to that of "God". Generally speaking, a "universal spirit" can be said to play the same role as "God", at least in terms of being a deity with absolute power.

As for the subject not knowing the subject matter at hand, that was the reason why I paid attention to education levels, to study Razib's ideas. If people are holding heterodox viewpoints due to lack of education, then we should see that in the data, and I may see that in the data if I ever learn how to use z-scores correctly.

Obviously I can't ensure people are not lying, but I cannot see any way to test that. I have to accept that their answers are genuine.

In fact, professional survey designers will deliberately include the same question phrased different ways, such that surveys with contradictory answers can be discarded and ignored.

I'm actually curious about this. Can you give me any evidence where this is the case? Pew is a professional survey designer, but I'm sure other survey designers could do what you have said.

So until you can illustrate how exactly asking "Do you believe in God?" followed by, "Are you an Atheist?" is different from asking "Is the Sky Blue?" Followed by "Is the sky Red?", I find the details of the study sketchy at best.

Well, you didn't define what atheism is in that second question, at least not in a manner that could be seen as self-explanatory. Part of the reason of the whole "cultural atheist" hypothesis advanced by Steven Waldman (and indeed by self-proclaimed atheist "DomE") was that these people have shared different definitions of "atheist" from that of the common definition (that is, no belief in dieties). I'm becoming convinced that if one defines what "atheist" means in polling questions, then we should see lower instances of, erm, this occurring.

Aye, I think many of those people, if not all, were in fact nonreligious people who thought that atheism was the same thing.

And if that's the case, that would be evidence of the whole "cultural atheist" hypothesis.

[Criptfeind]

I wonder how many people were Agnostic, and thus yes (in a only yes or no answer format, which I do not know if this was) was a acceptable answer to both questions.

Also, I wonder if any religious atheists caused any issues with this.

[Ampersand]

Obviously I can't ensure people are not lying, but I cannot see any way to test that. I have to accept that their answers are genuine.

In fact, professional survey designers will deliberately include the same question phrased different ways, such that surveys with contradictory answers can be discarded and ignored.

I'm actually curious about this. Can you give me any evidence where this is the case? Pew is a professional survey designer, but I'm sure other survey designers could do what you have said.

So until you can illustrate how exactly asking "Do you believe in God?" followed by, "Are you an Atheist?" is different from asking "Is the Sky Blue?" Followed by "Is the sky Red?", I find the details of the study sketchy at best.

Well, you didn't define what atheism is in that second question, at least not in a manner that could be seen as self-explanatory. Part of the reason of the whole "cultural atheist" hypothesis advanced by Steven Waldman (and indeed by self-proclaimed atheist "DomE") was that these people have shared different definitions of "atheist" from that of the common definition (that is, no belief in dieties). I'm becoming convinced that if one defines what "atheist" means in polling questions, then we should see lower instances of, erm, this occurring.

Honestly, I can't really give you much more information than what I've given. This is simply what I was taught in College level psychology; since it is hard to determine if a survey taker is being honest on all the questions, or even just answering randomly, sprinkle the same question phrased differently, or similar questions with answers that can be mutually contradictory in close proximity. This way, it is possible to, at the very least, have some indication when a survey taker is not answering accurately, honestly, or is answering randomly.

[devek]

"Is there any proof that a specific deity exists?"