A recent poll of bigotry among religious groups managed to expose another level of bigotry in a certain unthinking tool, one David Briggs, who reported on it. It’s fine that they’re examining the problem of prejudice, but the last sentence at the end of this quote makes it clear that the virtue isn’t seen in terms of ending prejudice, but in promoting religious adherence.

A new study by Michigan State sociologist Ralph Pyle presented at this month’s joint meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association in Tampa, Fla., shows how all sides in the conservative-liberal religious divide have work to do in combating prejudice and promoting tolerance.

Pyle measured nearly 3,000 responses from General Social Survey data from 1998-2004 on several issues such as openness to racial intermarriage and racially mixed neighborhoods and ranked religious groups on a scale of anti-black and anti-immigrant attitudes.

He found that moderate Protestants held the strongest anti-black attitudes. The next most prejudiced group? Liberal Protestants.

As expected, black Protestants were the least prejudiced against blacks. But they were the most prejudiced against immigrants. Conservative Protestants were the second most prejudiced group against immigrants. Jews, Catholics and other religious groups showed less prejudice to both groups, being particularly open to immigrants.

The good news for religious groups: People who go to church regularly were less likely to be prejudiced, Pyle said. The bad news is people with no religious affiliation were also much less likely to be prejudiced than individuals showing modest levels of commitment to their faith, those who attend services monthly or less.

Whoa. It’s “bad news” to discover that atheists and agnostics are more tolerant than modest church-goers? I guess it’s bad news for the church that’s trying to pretend they have the one true path to righteousness and goodness, but it sounds like good news for the people who are being discriminated against that there are many ways people can reduce their biases.

That is the goal, right?

And it’s a good one, too.

I was dismayed to read that MIT has decided, after a hundred years without, that it needs a chaplain.

MIT is about science and engineering and mathematics. There is no place for belief in those disciplines. Only doubt: we accept evidence but constantly test it.

Our students, especially the ones from America, have grown up in cultures saturated with religiosity. We should give them a little break from it while they’re here.

MIT needs religion like a bull needs mammaries.

Sincerely,

(Professor) Joe Haldeman

I have to take exception to that last line, though. I can think of many situations where male contributions to nursing would be useful. I don’t see that believing in baseless superstitions has any virtue at all in modern civilizations, so Haldeman is being too generous in his assessment.

Revere makes a bunch of good points in his Sunday Sermonette. One is the sheer insanity of current American politics:

Enlightenment thinking is taken for granted by modern Europeans, so it’s no surprise they are aghast when the leaders of a 21st century power think Divine Guidance is a good reason for exercising overwhelming power over its own and other peoples.

And another is the importance of secularism and reason in any Democratic nation.

Democracy without rationality — or in my terms, Enlightenment values — is a hollow promise, or worse, mob rule.

Religious values are intrinsically autocratic and irrational, relying on ignorance for their propagation, and are therefore anti-democratic.

It’s a little bit of an oversimplification of the history of atheism, but it’s funny anyway…and the diagram for religious history is also grossly simplified.

People have actually tried to argue to me that science is so complicated, but “god” is simpler and should be the preferred explanation…but isn’t “no god” even simpler than “god”?

Timothy Sandefur has an excellent quote from H.L. Mencken on how we ought to be responding to creationists.

This actual conflict is joined, and it is the height of absurdity for the…compromisers to seek to evade it with soft words. That conflict was not begun by science. It did not start with an invasion of the proper field of theological speculation by scientific raiders. It started with an invasion of the field of science by theological raiders. Now that it is on, it must be pressed vigorously from the scientific side, and without any flabby tenderness for theological susceptibilities. A defensive war is not enough; there must be a forthright onslaught upon the theological citadel, and every effort must be made to knock it down. For so long as it remains a stronghold, there will be no security for sound sense among us, and little for common decency. So long as it may be used as a recruiting-station and rallying-point for the rabble, science will have to submit to incessant forays, and the same forays will be directed against every sort of rational religion. The latter danger is not unobserved by the more enlightened theologians. They are well aware that, facing the Fundamentalists, they must either destroy or be destroyed. It is to be hoped that men of science will perceive the same plain fact, and so give over their vain effort to stay the enemy with weasel words.

Mencken sure was right — his prediction came true. It’s the 21st century. Let’s finally get around to demolishing the old superstitions.