I flatter myself as having a fairly good knack for empathy, the ability to emotionally identify with others. That’s not to say I’m necessarily motivated to act on that understanding. My tendency toward sympathy is more limited. However, I’ve notice that, in matters of faith, my capacity for empathy is diminishing (that doesn’t mean my sympathy toward believers is necessarily moving one way or another). I just have a hard time getting into a believer’s head and seeing the subject of religion and God from their perspective. For my part, the supernatural beliefs of humanity over the millenia have been so varied and at odds, I don’t grok the mind that is so certain any of them are right – let alone one of them in particular – that one ought to conform their life’s behavior to that belief.
Ed Brayton has a blog post entitled Scholars Study Secularism. Apparently, there may be cognitive differences between the minds of believers and unbelievers.
Boston University’s Catherine Caldwell-Harris is researching the differences between the secular and religious minds. “Humans have two cognitive styles,” the psychologist says. “One type finds deeper meaning in everything; even bad weather can be framed as fate. The other type is neurologically predisposed to be skeptical, and they don’t put much weight in beliefs and agency detection.”
Caldwell-Harris is currently testing her hypothesis through simple experiments. Test subjects watch a film in which triangles move about. One group experiences the film as a humanized drama, in which the larger triangles are attacking the smaller ones. The other group describes the scene mechanically, simply stating the manner in which the geometric shapes are moving. Those who do not anthropomorphize the triangles, she suspects, are unlikely to ascribe much importance to beliefs. “There have always been two cognitive comfort zones,” she says, “but skeptics used to keep quiet in order to stay out of trouble.”
That last bit about keeping quiet struck me as an interesting line. I think the cultural status quo remains in place by socially isolating views outside of the mainstream. The weakness of those non-conforming views is probably out of proportion to its actual prevalence. The Internet is probably changing that; where holders of even the most marginal viewpoints can find a like minded community. Anyway, defined broadly enough, nonbelievers appear to be a non-trivial segment of the population:
But the most significant target of Kosmin’s research is the consumer group most likely to shy away from such commercial products: secularists. “The non-religious, or Nones, hold the fastest-growing world view in the market,” says Kosmin. “In the past 20 years, their numbers in the United States have doubled to 15 percent.”
. . .
This umbrella [of non-believers] covers various groups including atheists, agnostics and humanists, as well as those who are simply indifferent to religion.Secularists make up some 15 percent of the global population, or about 1 billion people. As a group, this puts them third in size behind Christians (2.3 billion) and Muslims (1.6 billion).
One of the fun parts, they tend to know more about the God they don’t believe in than believers. “Even when the higher education levels of the unreligious were factored out, they proved to be better informed in matters of faith, followed by Jewish and Mormon believers.”
This kind of thing will do nothing to rest the minds of those who feel like the country is going to hell because of our decadent culture.
So you have a dichotomy. On the one hand, you have the more intelligent aspects of the population, who are going to more naturally question matters of faith, and apply logical standards like Doug oh so loves to do.
On the other hand, conscientiousness and conformity are heavily correlated with intelligence. So those same folks are going to feel compelled to go along with the religious norms they were generally brought up in.
I think that there are a lot of powerful second order effects that come along with religious attendance that are discounted by people like Doug. Much social capital is provided by organized religion, and societies that become more secular tend to be more raw and harsher. And no matter how intelligent you are, you are unlikely to figure out for yourself all the social wisdom that has built up in religious doctrines over time.
Then, when you start looking at the less intelligent sectors of society, the folks who have very poor future time orientation, that is where the loss of the second order effects of religiosity, the loss of the social capital, really starts to hurt.
That has a Brave New World feel to it. Even if, for the sake of argument, we knew as Truth that there was no God; we might need to create him simply for the utility of having lesser minds do for Him those useful things they won’t do for their own sake.
I guess that is one way to put it.
Look, the most shocking takeaway from Charles Murray’s new book is that the poor are actually less religious than the middle class. You might think the opposite to be true, but that is not the case.
Poor people are poor because they have poor future time orientation. They have little self control, and expecting them to be coldly logical like you is not realistic. But to have societal norms that they feel pressure to comply with, enforced by a higher power, that might impart better behavior.
I seem to recall a discussion – NPR interviewing someone maybe? – where an author was suggesting something like that as the survival benefit conferred by a disposition toward religion. Societies where people are better behaved tend to be more cohesive, and more cohesive societies tend to be stronger and more durable than less cohesive societies. People who believe they are being watched at all times are better behaved than people who think they are unobserved.
Something like that anyway.
Some evolutionary psychologists believe that religons may have been positively selected for. So they may have had some evolutionary cultural advantages. That says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of a supreme being or the value of religions in todays western societies.
Being watched all the time. Nothing like life in the Panopticon.
On the other hand, conscientiousness and conformity are heavily correlated with intelligence. So those same folks are going to feel compelled to go along with the religious norms they were generally brought up in. I have high concietousness and intelligence but seemed to miss out on that conformity thing. Well, two out of three should get you get you into a few parties at the CYO.
Social capital is provided by organized religion, and societies that become more secular tend to be more raw and harsher.
Western Europe and Canada are far more secular than the US, and far less raw and harsh
Organized religon often produces drones, theocrats and a worldview uncorrupted by inquiry, the need for objective truth, and life manual the size and complexity of a Watchtower pamphlet.
.
Western Europe and Canada are far more homogeneous societies. It is not an apples to apples comparison to compare them to the larger US society.
But if you take homogeneous sectors of the US (compare, say, Minnesota to Scandanavia, for example), you have a much better comparison.
While organized religion may very well produce drones and whatnot, they’re peaceful drones who take care of their own and others in the community. And they do it with people who, sociologically speaking, would not be so peaceful and helpful were it not for that religion.
So its the black and mexicans that make this society more raw and harsh. But I will bet you are OK with Asians, Indians and Pakastanis. I am sensing an “ism” implicit in your comments?
Peaceful drones? So athiests, agnostics and the unchurched are just more violent because they are not inculcated with Bronze age mythology.
Oh, yeah, that’s right, if people do not get water splashed on their head, memorize the Ten Commandments and get a new confirmation suite or dress, smudge dirt on their head one day of the year, they will become violent misanthropes and and refuse to take their trays up when they are done eating at a fast food restaurant. Or talk during movies.
Homogeneous? Where? Finland?
“Much social capital is provided by organized religion, and societies that become more secular tend to be more raw and harsher.”
I agree with the first phrase, but not the second. Can you give an example of a raw and harsh secular society, one that I can’t counter with the example of the harsh vilification of homosexuals (and women) by Fundamentalist Christians, or for that matter, the Jonestown debacle?
Such amazing societal insight in two sentences. You singlehandly overwhelm hundreds of thousands of paper of sociological researh with a sweeping generality or two. Could you do your post on two stone tablets for posterity. I will post a pair outside the Cadillac parking at the welfare agency.
“God” forbid poor people could be coldly logical like Doug and I. And of course lacking social norms they spend all of their time having sex, breeding like rats. drinking, committing crimes, watching daytime TV and undermining the financial integrity of the nation.
Nothing like the ant on the leaf condemming the multitude of their brothers starving in the sand below.
Perhaps if we send poor people to church they may become a thrifty working class instead of a discontent rabble.
Here you go. Got my copy reserved at the Lake County Public Library.
Interesting that humans seem to have a “need” for paying homage to some higher power. This has occurred in most societies throughout time.
Generically selected humans with a predisposition to supplicate themselves will continue for some time, but as the west becomes more secular, this propensity may be selected against.
Religion may have had some evolutionary advantage, but the science of evolutionary psychology is in its infancy and not well developed.
Most societies secularize becuase the “god of the gaps” gets steamrolled by scientific inquiry and knowledge. I think that is a positive development for society and for religion. As religion becomes more an exploration of ultimate meaning and less of a manual for misguided historical inerrancy, faith is elevated to a higher place in the human experience.
Charles Murray is a racist crank.
Be that as it may, is he wrong?
In the words of Bryan Caplan, “Another important mechanism that helps impulsive people reach decent long-run outcomes is tradition enforced by social pressure. The impulsive are swayed more by guilt and shame than careful calculations about the distant future. In Coming Apart, Murray shows that over the last few decades, this tradition/social pressure mechanism has gradually broken down for the working class – and transformed the working class into a dysfunctional leisure class. The welfare state is an important underlying cause of this transformation: Removing short-run feedback led to worse behavior, which undermined traditional norms about work and family, which reduced social pressure, which led to worse behavior.”
I do not accept the premise that Caplan puts forward. It is weak correlation boot strapped to a rationalization of a general contempt for the “discontented rabble.”
This country has nothing that resembles a welfare state. TANF, SNAP, SSI, and SS Disability are niggardly relative to other Western democracies.
A dysfunctional leisure class? This is between comical and contemptible. Poverty is America is grinding, more commonplace and will likely be “less comfortable and leisurely” as the Safety Net is further shredded.
Weak correlation? How so? How high would the correlation have to be to convince you?
Recall my Household income regressions. Those correlations are very high for social science data.
I’ve been a lurker on the blog for a while…Doug, I believe I appeared opposite you in a case several years ago (2006?) in Newton County. I came to your blog through the Indiana Law Blog, and I really enjoy your posts.
A book that seems to speak to this (can’t remember the author) is “Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.” The central premise is that our brains are hardwired to believe…in something. I read it several years ago, and can’t remember much more, but it made sense.
Thanks for your insights and updates on the craziness that is the current political and ideological climate.
I looked at your claims. Where to start?
The working poor work 46.2 hours per week against 49.1 for the non-poor. No doubt they earn less income because of the more tenous hold they have on employment.
The poor “not pulling their weight?” Most working poor and unemployed poor would like to work more at a higher paying wage. Seems axiomatic.
It is equally axiomatic that a education generally correlates with higher incomes. Poor eductional opportunities presage a lower standard of living. The rational lesson to bet drawn is that better educational opportunities must be provided to everyone. The US was formerly a leader in education, beginning with public schools, even in frontier areas, compulsory education, and th GI bill coming out of WWII that created a large and stable middle classs, a class that is being decimated because productivity gains are not translated into higher wages.
Not sure where you got 46.2 hours per week for the poor. And they are not the working poor, the households on the low end don’t have anyone working. If you look at the lowest income quintile, the MEDIAN household has no income earners in it.
You have a lot of assertions here, and I don’t think that they can be supported in the data. When members of most households on the low end don’t even have a high school education, I don’t see how “expanding educational opportunities” is the answer. 25% of all males are still dropping out of school before the high school degree is attained. How do you address that?
Something else needs to be done, something independent of public policy, which has been a dismal failure in addressing poverty in America, other than making sure that the poor don’t starve, where it has been a resounding success. But it has been a failure getting the long term poor out of poverty, because the cause of their poverty is not a lack of money, it is their own actions and personality (lack of future time orientation).
I have heard the arguments advanced by Murray and reiterated by you before. They divide the poor into two categories, the undeserving poor (mscreants, substance abusers, and the promiscuos) and the deserving poor (elderly, the disabled, and the chroncially ill.) The undeserving poor lack ambition, spend most of their day in a soporific state and favor short-term reward over delayed, but larger, rewards. Or, if I may draw a vulgar analogy, they live for their genitals, their couch, and their buzz.
These conditions do exist in some people, but I am apparently not omnisicent like researchers such as Murray. So I question the breadth of his psychological insight into the problem of the intractable poor. If people are individually responsible for all that befalls them, we must see them all as individuals.
The right wants to further reduce the safety net. The left wants to tweak it or enlarge it. The right would call in the Salvation Army, the left would fund a surge in the war on poverty. Neither is politically palatable to all factions. So let’s look to what has worked, albeit not ideally.
Many salient facts can be drawn from the following article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-great-recession-in-five-charts/2011/09/13/gIQANuPoPK_blog.html
By numerical measures, “throwing money” at poverty has been a great “success.” Percentageses of those living in poverty have dropped substantially between 1959 and 2010. The percent of elderly poor, according to Census Bureau statistics has fallen from 35% to 9%. Poverty for those under 18 has fallen from 27.3% to 13.7%. Poverty for people 18-64 has fallen from 17% to 9%.
I would like to hear a solution to long-term poverty that is neither moralistic or paternalistic. But I suspect, at the end of the day, we can only reduce poverty and never erradicate it. It is simply a peice of the human experience.
We can absolutely eradicate poverty, if poverty is properly defined. The US says that the poverty line is $2 a day. By that measure, there is no poverty in America.
I also agree with your second to last paragraph. We have lowered poverty. But was it economic growth that did it, or was it welfare? Since government benefits don’t count towards measures of poverty, the answer is the former, not the later.
Why should we expect a solution that is not moralistic? If behaviors drive poverty, which is the case, morality is exactly what is needed.
$2 per day the US poverty line. Surely this is hyperbole.
Your second point incorrectly analyzes the relationship between the poverty threshold, government benefits and economic growth. The poverty threshold is a formula based upon the size of a household and the cost of basic neccessities. It is adjusted for regional differrences and annual inflation. It is an absolute threshold and does not consider government benefits received or anything else beyond the formula.
If a household has an income above the threshold, they are no longer “living in poverty.” They could have acheived this status through several ways. An increase in earned income, an increase in government benefits, a decrease in the size of the household, or any combination thereof.
Further, the dramatic decrease among the elderly must be driven by government Social Security retirement benefits. Economic growth cannot account for a meaningful decrease in poverty among retirees.
Finally, I do not accept your premise that poverty is entirely behavior driven. There are a multitude of factors that create poverty. Some are mainly behavior driven, some are partially behavior, some povertyis caused by factors beyond control of the individual.
The definition of what is “moral” is not commonly agreed upon in America. I cannot speculate on how many would wish your morality to serve as the template for the next bout or welfare “reform.”
Sorry, I meant to say the UN, not the US. The UN says that the global poverty line is $2 a day.
Economic growth can’t account for a decrease in poverty among retirees? Really? Then what am I saving for? Why do I occasionally look at how much has accumulated in my pension?
So you admit that behavior can cause poverty. What percentage of poverty is behavior driven? Some? A lot? Most? To what extent is an individual responsible for his or her individual behavior? To what extent to government benefits drive behavior, perhaps in ways that increase poverty?
Economic growth can account for some decrese in elderly poverty. I do not know what you are saving for. But I am saving for retirement. But most Americans don’t at least in amounts adequate to maintain their pre-retirement style of living. It looks like a lot of working Americans share the deviance intrinsic to the undeserving poor, a failure to forego short-term rewards for a greater future benefit.
But with regard to the reduction of elderly poverty, social security explains the drops in elderly poverty. An exhaustive look at data from 1968 to 2001 demonstrates this. http://www.nber.org/papers/w10466.pdf
Finally, I don’t respond well to “so you admit…” Lose the attitude, drop what you are doing and get your PHD in Sociology. Get a tenure-track position, research your pet issues, and get published. Then you will confirm or refute your assumptions.
If Socialist Insecurity is such a great anti-poverty program, then lets means test it. Make benefits 100% taxable. Our progressive tax system will tax benefits at the high end and leave the truly poor with no tax liability.
It is problematic that so many people hit retirement without any savings, but to what extent is Social Security responsible for that? If somehow I had all the money I’ve wasted on Social Security taxes in my 401(k), I would be much better off than I am now, even with the two market crashes I’ve endured since beginning my working career.
Sociology is one of those academic subjects of which I am deeply skeptical. When I rag on “experts”, and how they don’t know as much as they think that they know, Sociology is one of the subjects that come to mind immediately. It is almost as bad as Macroeconomics.
Buzz: considering that social security withholdings are not tax- deductible, taxing social security receipts would be akin to double taxation. This is bad policy.
Yes, but is that unfair? My regular IRA has money that was income taxed (but grows tax deferred), and is then income taxed upon withdrawal. That is similar to what I propose for Social Security.
Right now, half the benefits are taxed, I believe.
This is what means testing is all about. The first step to fiscal accountability is to stop paying welfare to the middle and upper classes. Taxing 100% of Social Security benefits is one step towards fiscal accountability.
Buzz: my memory is a little fuzzy, and your description is vague, so let’s clarify a couple things. I used to do some personal tax work, but that was a long time ago… My understanding is:
If you contributed $100 in after-tax money to a traditional IRA, you can withdraw that $100 in your retirement without being taxed again. However, if that $100 has grown to $400, you will be taxed upon the $300 of growth.
Based upon the above, I would argue that there is no “double taxation.”
Social Security is generally only taxed if you have outside income. If you do not have outside income, it is income tax-free. I am open to argue arguments, but the policy seems good to me, because it provides a large incentive for older americans that do not need the money to retire, and allow employers to employ younger workers that do not have the savings accumulation many older workers have.
I hear what you are saying regarding the reduction of handouts to the wealthy (and less so for the middle class), however this is supposed to be the money these people paid into the system already. It seems like the equivalent of my lending $1,000 to you, then I land a new job where I receive double my previous compensation, and then you expect to no longer have to pay me back due to my good fortune in getting a new job.
You could be right about the IRA, I need to look into the issue more.
I like the idea of taxing 100% of SS benefits because it’s simple. We have a very progressive tax system, and it would really means test SS. The poor would really pay nothing, and middle class would pay a bit, and the rich would pay a lot. It is a lot more straightforward than other means testing schemes I’ve read about.
I understand the fairness argument you are making. I guess that, with a $1.3 trillion deficit this year, we need to move beyond mere fairness arguments. How do we increase taxes without killing peoples’ incentives to work hard and save? Taxing SS more is probably a lesser evil than other choices.
On taxation of IRA and SS—need to do some more research–there are different types of IRAs. Some are based on after tax deposits and some are deposited pretax and depending on type and when withdrawals taken influences what (if any) withdrawals are taxable.
SS benefits–are taxable if have defined amounts of other income, so for some it is already tax free, for some 50% or so is taxable, and for some up to 85% is taxable.
All of the above should be put into retirement planning plans.