It's Not Just Ignorance

Very interesting post at Mahablog that starts off with climate change deniers and goes some very interesting places:

For many, faithfulness to the doctrine of climate change denial is an integral part of their ideological tribal loyalty, and tribal loyalty in turn is part of self-definition. A threat to the doctrines of the tribe is experienced as a threat to oneself. Admitting to the truth would bring on a massive existential crisis. So the more evidence for climate change, the more angrily, and frantically, they will denounce it. . . .

At the Guardian, Sue Blackmore writes about the often-noted correlation between high levels of religiosity and societal dysfunction — the “strong positive correlations between nations’ religious belief and levels of murder, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse and other indicators of dysfunction.”

The 1st world nations with the highest levels of belief in God, and the greatest religious observance are also the ones with all the signs of societal dysfunction. These correlations are truly stunning. They are not “barely significant” or marginal in any way. Many, such as those between popular religiosity and teenage abortions and STDs have correlation coefficients over 0.9 and the overall correlation with the SSS is 0.7 with the US included and 0.5 without. These are powerful relationships. But why?

These results don’t necessarily show causality. Does religiosity cause dysfunction, or do people cling to religiosity as a way to cope with dysfunction? We see here in the U.S. that the “Bible belt” states long have had the highest rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, etc. Where is cause and where is effect?

Good question, but I think the part about ideology and identity comes very close to pinning it down: religious belief and ideology are not necessarily entirely separate phenomena, and as Maha goes on to point out, religious belief in this country often translates into religiosity:

I am using the word “religiosity” rather than “religion” because I think much of what passes for religion in America is really superstition (I make a distinction between religion and superstition at the other blog). The overwhelmingly Christian hyper-religious of America on the whole are remarkably ignorant of basic Christian doctrine. Few can recite the Ten Commandments if put on the spot, and I suspect most wouldn’t recognize the Sermon on the Mount if they bumped into it outside of church. Instead, much of the country is infested with a social pathology in which religious totems — the cross, the Bible, tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments — get mixed together with extremist political beliefs and magical thinking to create a toxic and impenetrable ignorance.

She is not the first to note the appalling ignorance of so many Christians about the basics of Christ's teachings, or for that matter the whole of the strictures in Leviticus. For my own part, I can't confess to any great surprise that when people don't know the basics of their own religion, they are so easily swayed into perverting its message.

The heartbreaking thing is that most of these people don't want to do better. They have their validation from their gurus and the reinforcement of their identity as teabaggers or whatever, and that's sufficient. I will confess that I don't understand the attitude -- it's incomprehensible to me that anyone would not want to learn something new or sample different points of view. If you don't give yourself that experience, how can you expect to judge what is right for you, much less for your society? And how can you hope to avoid becoming a dupe for some snake-oil salesman?

At any rate, read that post, and do follow her links -- it's worth it.