Pharyngula

Posted by: Archaneus | September 17, 2009 8:14 AM

Well, to be fair PZ, toast is a power greater than Jesus. It's not necessarily saying a whole lot say something has more power than a fictional deity.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 8:20 AM

Aetre, #3:

The problem is that it is the "sluts" who are getting pregnant, so who cares? I suspect (and I hope I'm wrong) that if slightly fewer girls (yes, I suspect boys are considered less of a problem) are having sex even while the pregnancy rate among "bad girls" is higher, then "abstinence only" will be seen as a success.

But one can also hope that even the more religious states will have enough reasonable people in them to seriously consider some changes.

Posted by: aineolach | September 17, 2009 8:24 AM

That table confused me, stupid DC.

Posted by: Itspiningforthefjords | September 17, 2009 8:26 AM

The thing is, many of the "modern" fundies pass on the clear message to their kids that "hidden" sex is OK, but contraception - much less abortion - is "evil". Tied down by a too-early marriage, kids, and cut off to access to anything outside their "community", they have no choice but to join in promoting the lies.

Witness the absurd, sad, sick episode of Sarah Palin's daughter.

There is nothing the typical fundy doesn't do out of a contempt for honesty.

Posted by: Savage | September 17, 2009 8:28 AM

The sexual instinct of humankind was (unfortunately for the fundies) moulded by evolution. No Jesus teaching is going to stop the urge to screw when the “evolution spirit” is with us.

Posted by: Hillary Rettig / www.lifelongactivist.com | September 17, 2009 8:41 AM

here's one important cause:

"When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15mind.html?em

"In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L. Deci, a leading American expert on the psychology of motivation, in asking more than 100 college students whether the love they had received from their parents had seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and fear.

"It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.

"...The studies found that both positive and negative conditional parenting were harmful, but in slightly different ways. The positive kind sometimes succeeded in getting children to work harder on academic tasks, but at the cost of unhealthy feelings of “internal compulsion.” Negative conditional parenting didn’t even work in the short run; it just increased the teenagers’ negative feelings about their parents."

Posted by: Carlie | September 17, 2009 8:43 AM

Chiroptera - I grew up with this fundie mindset; it's actually the opposite. See, the sluts are the ones who don't get pregnant, because they go out and get contraception because they're dirty girls who plan on having sex (and dirty boys who plan on having sex). That's the real problem with contraception among fundamentalists; it's not the "every sperm is sacred" mantra of the Catholics, it's that getting contraception means that you're admitting that you might indeed have sex. That's planning to sin, which is a bad thing.

Giving in to temptation, though, is quite understandable. Therefore, from the fundamentalist point of view, it's much less sinful to plan not to have sex, then get lost in the heat of the moment (which would necessarily cause that sex to be unprotected), than it is to get contraception "just in case". And of course, if the girl does get pregnant, all they have to do is get married and everyone rejoices, or give it up for adoption and she's viewed as damaged goods, but with a little ameliorating tick of piety for giving a good Christian baby up to a good Christian home.

Posted by: Mike Wagner | September 17, 2009 8:57 AM

@Carlie #14
Oh wow. That actually makes sense. In a completely batshit insane way, but I can totally see people I went to school with swallowing the entire bit hook like and sinker.

Posted by: Sleeper | September 17, 2009 9:16 AM

Pregnancy, god's punishment for having sex and ENJOYING it!

Posted by: KemaTheAtheist | September 17, 2009 9:22 AM

@Carlie #14 That's the way I was taught too. I'm glad my high school health classes taught me differently though. I pin my ability to break away from religion on a proper education.

It's sad how religion turns sex into a dirty thing when it should be viewed (in my opinion) as one of the greatest human experiences.

Posted by: Jim | September 17, 2009 9:29 AM

I'm constantly amazed at the stable Christian upbringing I had. I seriously feel like I must have been the only one. I was taught to abstain and, yes, for religious reasons, but the social ones were held up as being just as important, and likely the source of the reason for the religious prohibition. In grade seven I received sex education at my private Christian school that was more comprehensive than wha I received in my secular high school, and they did cover contraception, including its history in Christian circles.

Of course, my church branched off from the Dutch Reformed church and had a heavy, heavy emphasis on practicality.

Posted by: Stewart Cowan | September 17, 2009 9:40 AM

I think this is very dishonest, as is the whole 'sexual health' industry.

For a start, believing in the literal truth of the Bible (those parts that are written as narrative, such as Genesis) and having sexual intercourse outside of wedlock - what's the connection? If the survey had been conducted along the lines of strength of faith and closeness to the Almighty, then that would be different.

"Fancy that. The adolescent sex drive is a power greater than Jesus."

I can guarantee you, from my own experience, that this is a lie. Cheap bit of blasphemy + lies = a professor??

Your followers deserve better?

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 9:44 AM

Stewart Cowan, #24: If the survey had been conducted along the lines of strength of faith and closeness to the Almighty, then that would be different.

Sounds like faith healing. "You failed to heal that person, you fraud!" "I'm not a fraud; that person didn't have enough faith, is all."

As someone once said, religion is the only product where product failure is always assumed to be user error.

Posted by: Alverant | September 17, 2009 9:46 AM

Carlie #14
I have to agree, that's twisted enough to make sense. Planning to have sex is a sin but getting caught up in the moment isn't as bad. It's the same sort of logic that says if a woman takes birth control pills she's planning to have sex instead of taking a precaution against being raped.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 9:54 AM

Stewart Cowan, #24: If the survey had been conducted along the lines of strength of faith and closeness to the Almighty, then that would be different.

Oh, and another thing: did you just imply that the more overtly religious a state is, the fewer people have a strong faith and are close to God? Does the Religious Right have it wrong? Should they be promoting a godless and immoral society in order to increase the number of faithful people close to God?

Posted by: Stewart Cowan | September 17, 2009 10:01 AM

Chiroptera,

I think the survey is flawed for a number of reasons.

Someone else wondered about those who are married?

Contraception use may be lower in so-called religious states, so perhaps intercourse is less common.

If you look at the 'sexual health' industry, they nearly always seem to talk about rates of 'teenage pregnancy'.

Why?

So they can sell their products and 'services'?

Posted by: Don | September 17, 2009 10:04 AM

Hey everyone,

I have a creationist commenter on my blog, making assertions about genetics to argue that evolution is impossible. I know he's full of it. However, I know jack-squat about genetics, so I am at a loss in terms of responding to his specific claims. If someone with a background in genetics could stop by and put the smackdown on this guy, I'd be grateful.

Posted by: Matt Heath | September 17, 2009 10:05 AM

I didn't mean that at all. What I meant was that you can believe in, say, a literal creation yet not have high moral standards.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 17, 2009 10:11 AM

From Cowan's blog:

So what is the answer? It’s easy: promote marriage between a man and a woman and consider all other ‘lifestyles’ to be of lesser value. Ditch the blasted PC agenda once and for all and start teaching children the truth. See through the fake charities like Stonewall and stop them using their ‘bullying’ campaign to get access to schools to recruit by process of normalising homosexual behaviour.

Nice he so readily outs himself as a homophobe. If only the racists opposing Obama were as willing to self-identify.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 10:14 AM

Stewart Cowan, #32: Contraception use may be lower in so-called religious states, so perhaps intercourse is less common.

Who cares whether rates of intercourse is lower? I don't. What you are suggesting is that the overtly religious states have solve a non-problem while increasing a real problem.

-

Someone else wondered about those who are married?

And this makes it better? Back when I was a member of the Religious Right, even we thought that teen marriages were bad. In fact, even the Religious Right people I hung out with would not have suggested that pregnant teenagers should get married -- it would just make a bad situation worse.

Was that unusual? Or have the Religious Right taken a giant step backwards?

-

While I agree that further information will be good, the possibilities that you suggest don't make the situation any better; the two possibilities that you mention, even if true, are either irrelevant or indications of other problems.

Posted by: Marc | September 17, 2009 10:17 AM

#13 - Do not make the Marmite anrgy. Marmite smash.

Posted by: Ranson | September 17, 2009 10:18 AM

@ Robert Thille #37

That reminds me of something funny from the old OSC book Speaker for the Dead. No one in the heavily Catholic society really blinked at the long-term adultery, but the idea of using contaception during the adultery was rejected outright.

I can't wrap my mind around it. It's like saying, "Well, I hit him with a pipe and took his money, but I didn't kick him while he was down. That would be bad."

Posted by: Stewart Cowan | September 17, 2009 10:19 AM

Hank Fox - But you're so wrong. Many of the greatest thinkers have been and are believers. Using Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin as examples is incredibly dishonest of you.

Matt Heath - In the modern world, you need moral courage to go against the grain and intelligence to know what to say.

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | September 17, 2009 10:20 AM

fundie kids are getting pregnant

*cough* kids of fundie parents *cough*

More fundie babies = more fundies. Praise Jebus.

See above.

If you look at the 'sexual health' industry, they nearly always seem to talk about rates of 'teenage pregnancy'.

Why?

So they can sell their products and 'services'?

Is there a reward for "most gratuitous use of scare quotes" or something along those lines?

Posted by: JefFlyingV, Walkin' Blues | September 17, 2009 10:26 AM

Chiroptera, it is simply a flawed study that simply draws conclusions from religion and pregnancy in red states.
How many 18 and 19 year old wed mothers are included in the study?
Again, I expected more depth from the study.

Posted by: Traveler | September 17, 2009 10:27 AM

I've seen similar results among adults. All of my friends who had unplanned pregnancies outside of marriage were fundies. The problem wasn't that their religion had taught them that contraception was wrong. The problem was that they thought unplanned sex was less of a sin that premeditated sex. Using contraception would have meant admitting to themselves that they knew all along that they would be having sex. Unprotected sex let them rationalize it as giving in to temptation.

Posted by: freelunch | September 17, 2009 10:31 AM

Stewart Cowan wrote "Many of the greatest thinkers have been and are believers."

I'll grant the strength in the past, but I'm not sure your argument is still accurate unless you are arguing that anyone who is vaguely deistic counts as a believer. Even some of those we recognize from the past don't necessarily meet standards of quality and integrity. St. Ignatius of Loyola comes to mind as an excellent example of someone who not only found brilliant ways to engage in mental sleight of hand, but also founded a group that does this to this very day.

Posted by: Matt Heath | September 17, 2009 10:32 AM

In the modern world, you need moral courage to go against the grain and intelligence to know what to say.

Posted by: Fleegman | September 17, 2009 10:39 AM

This is what Pastor Tom Estes has to say about studies like this:

If they defy common sense, it's because they are false.

And we wonder why this guy has a hard time grasping even the simplest parts of scientific endeavor?

*facepalm*

Posted by: william e emba | September 17, 2009 10:44 AM

Fancy that. The adolescent sex drive is a power greater than Jesus.

Exactly why most pre-industral cultures married kids off in their early- to mid-teens.

Posted by: raven | September 17, 2009 10:44 AM

stewart cowan braindead, evil xian troll:

If you look at the 'sexual health' industry, they nearly always seem to talk about rates of 'teenage pregnancy'.
Why?

Teen age pregnancy is highly correlated with life long poverty. If you start out with a massive liability, it is hard to catch up.

The other reason to concentrate on teen age pregnancy is real simple. How many teen agers who get married do so because some relative is pointing a shotgun at the kid's heads? Happens a lot. Those marriages tend not to last. The divorce rate among fundie Death Cultists is higher than normal people too.

Forced marriages among kids who are often near strangers isn't a great idea.

The sad, sick episode of Sarah Palin's daughter is just typical. She only went out with the guy 5 times with an abstinence only sex ed. mentality. Next thing you know she is on TV, engaged to someone she barely knows, and pregnant. A recipe for disaster. If you noticed, none of kook Palin's older kids have enrolled in college.

Fundies, higher in abortion, divorce, teen age pregnancy, lower socioeconomic status, education. Legendary for hypocrisy, evil, stupidity, and fascism. What a mockery of what xianity was.

Posted by: Matt Heath | September 17, 2009 10:55 AM

Fundies, higher in abortion, divorce, teen age pregnancy, lower socioeconomic status, education. Legendary for hypocrisy, evil, stupidity, and fascism. What a mockery of what xianity was.

Posted by: phantomreader42 | September 17, 2009 10:57 AM

Stewart Cowan @ #29:

What I meant was that you can believe in, say, a literal creation yet not have high moral standards.

In my experience, people who believe in a literal creation tend to have impossibly high moral standards for others, complete with sick fantasies about any who fall short being tortured without end; but no moral standards at all for their own behavior. Creationists lie without the slightest hint of remorse, deny reality, slander nonbelievers constantly, steal other people's money to teach lies to other people's children, create forgeries to support their lies, obtain interviews under false pretenses, commit vandalism, rape piglets, make death threats against scientists, and occasionally engage in acts of terrorism, and yet still hold themselves up as morally superior to all those evil people who dare look at the evidence.

There is no such thing as morality to a religious nut. Morality is for other people. This survey just proves it yet again. They threaten murder and neverending torture for anyone who fails to follow their bulshit rules, yet they themselves don't even bother obeying the simplest of them.

Posted by: Steven Dunlap | September 17, 2009 10:59 AM

This topic reminds me of this gem from Bill Maher back in 2005:

Abstinence pledges suck - literally

A new eight-year study just released reveals that American teenagers who take "virginity" pledges of the sort so favored by the Bush administration wind up with just as many STDs as the other kids.

But that's not all -- taking the pledges also makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex, and a boy four times more likely to get anal. Which leads me to an important question: where were these pledges when I was in high school?

I missed out on this too. Darn.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 17, 2009 11:03 AM

I kind of struggled with this over on the Curse of Eve thread: Forcing preteen girls into "marriages" that are in fact little more than institutionalized child sexual slavery is clearly horrific... but I must acknowledge that plenty of preteens and early teens are sexual beings, and have a desire to explore their sexuality.

The Netherlands seems to have a pretty good attitude. The age of consent there is 16, but if both parties are under 18 no action is taken if a couple have sex as long as both are over 12. The emphasis is much more on harm prevention: good sex education, making to clear it is OK not have sex, and making it clear sex without contraception is irresponsible unless a woman is actually trying to become pregnant.

The result is that the Netherlands has one of the lowest rates for STDs and pregnancies in teens in all of Europe.

Posted by: raven | September 17, 2009 11:03 AM

hate to be the party pooper here... but this study is completely irrelevant.

???? Probably not. There have been many such studies over the years. It is always the same result.

Social problems including teen age pregnancy are highest in red states of the south, lowest in New England. We all know where the death cult heartland is.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | September 17, 2009 11:05 AM

Social problems including teen age pregnancy are highest in red states of the south, lowest in New England. We all know where the death cult heartland is.

Be careful with regard to your definition of "social problems." Urban education, for example, tends to be pretty dreadful in many parts in Massachusetts.

Posted by: KemaTheAtheist | September 17, 2009 11:09 AM

@34

Done.

Posted by: Optimus Primate | September 17, 2009 11:13 AM

@ #17

If I recall that study you mentioned, the actual results were that abstinence pledges worked in very small groupings of teens (less than 15) as long as there was a pervasive feeling of being a minority and suffering oppression.

Other than those instances, they were virtually meaningless according to the data.

Posted by: Hank Fox | September 17, 2009 11:16 AM

Stewart Cowan #46: "Many of the greatest thinkers have been and are believers. Using Pat Robertson and Sarah Palin as examples is incredibly dishonest of you."

Many of our greatest thinkers were believers because they had no choice about it. They lived in times when you were brainwashed from the cradle to BE a believer. Many of them lived in times when the alternative was ostracism, or even torture and death.

And you're right, great thinking and religion CAN exist in the same brain. But as far as real-world effectiveness, religion is never the main component. Compare the real-world accomplishments of religious thinkers over the past 3,000 years or so to those of science-minded people over just the past 300. The difference is like trying to form a mental image of infinity -- you just can't get your mind around it.

The computer you're using right now is the result of exactly zero percent religious thought by its many inventors. And if you're talking about softer issues such as, for instance, peaceful co-existence in a multicultural society, the greatest solutions to the problems that arise are ones based on Reason and not on Religion.

Sorry, but it's not dishonest to use Robertson and Sarah Palin -- at various times they've been in the news on a daily basis. They themselves project religiosity as a core part of their public image, and their fans accept religiosity as a cornerstone of their popularity and authority.

Seems to me you're verging on a "No True Scotsman" fallacy by trying to deny them as known public representatives of the religious mindset.

It doesn’t even matter if they’re total phonies. The hook they have in their followers’ brains, the source of their poisonous effectiveness, is RELIGION.

Posted by: shonny | September 17, 2009 11:19 AM

| Posted by: Don | September 17, 2009 10:04 AM #34

Don,
You are fighting against a Stupidity Black Hole (SBH^TM.
Nothing you or anybody else ever say or prove against that desi-critter will ever result in an increased understanding for him/her/it (most likely the last).
Just ignore the stoopid, don't try to argue sensibly against it, your head will ache and your ears bleed to no avail.

Posted by: Grook | September 17, 2009 11:24 AM

I actually did do a linear regression on the data, and I'd say that there is a definite correlation, with a few outliers of course. Unfortunately, I didn't save my work so I'd have to do it again to figure out what the specific numbers were.

Posted by: shonny | September 17, 2009 11:28 AM

| Posted by: Marc | September 17, 2009 10:17 AM
|
| #13 - Do not make the Marmite anrgy. Marmite smash.

I know Vegemite is made from fermented kangaroo poo, so is Marmite made from ditto produce by marmots?

Posted by: Jeeves | September 17, 2009 11:30 AM

Completely shameless threadjack! Have you guys heard about this?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/panama/6201333/New-Montauk-Monster-spotted-in-Panama.html

Posted by: Mu | September 17, 2009 11:33 AM

Just to point out, New Mexico's apparent outlier position of 2 vs 22 is probably a fault in the polls. NM has a large native population, which probably will not answer the religious based questions the same way as pollsters expect, and might screw up their interpretation of religiousness.
No surprise on the high pregnancy rate so, large catholic influence in a part of the state with absolutely nothing else to do for the kids but retreat for a bit of quiet fun. Actually, taking that the SE part is a lot like Texas which ranks right up there, it probably has a baptist factor too.

Posted by: shonny | September 17, 2009 11:41 AM

Posted by: Peter | September 17, 2009 10:12 AM #39

name three things the adolescent sex drive is NOT more powerful than.
--------------
There is only one thing to name: NOTHING!
Parking the porky is the ONLY thing at that age, if you're normal and male.

Posted by: Riaan Moll | September 17, 2009 11:50 AM

"No Jesus teaching is going to stop the urge to screw when the “evolution spirit” is with us."

Hehehehe. "Your biosphere or mine, baby?" :-D

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | September 17, 2009 11:55 AM

One other thought about...

The Netherlands seems to have a pretty good attitude. The age of consent there is 16, but if both parties are under 18 no action is taken if a couple have sex as long as both are over 12.

No system is perfect: Because I had a birthday late in the school year and I skipped a grade in elementary school, I was always notably young for my school year. At the time of my junior (11th grade) prom, I was still only 15, and I could easily have had a 19 year old senior as my date to the big dance¹. If I'd gotten lucky that night, it would count as statutory rape even under the enlightened Dutch law... but it's hard to really think of a high school junior and a high school senior getting it on (consensually) in the back of Dad's station wagon as rape, isn't it?

¹ Well, I couldn't have, but somebody else with my birthday, school history, and, you know, actual social skills could've. I'll do well enough as a hypothetical.

Posted by: Bobber | September 17, 2009 11:56 AM

He's also a gigantic, gaping butthole.

When will people learn? Fireworks are terrible for enemas.

But sometimes, very much necessary. Unless dynamite is called for, in the extreme cases. Like the fortunately deceased Jerry Falwell, for instance.

Posted by: Riaan Moll | September 17, 2009 12:00 PM

How do these figure correlate with HIV infection statistics? It should be reasonably straightforward to see if it's indeed a lack of contraception and not necessarily an increased tendency to fornacatun'.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 17, 2009 12:03 PM

No system is perfect: Because I had a birthday late in the school year and I skipped a grade in elementary school, I was always notably young for my school year. At the time of my junior (11th grade) prom, I was still only 15, and I could easily have had a 19 year old senior as my date to the big dance1. If I'd gotten lucky that night, it would count as statutory rape even under the enlightened Dutch law... but it's hard to really think of a high school junior and a high school senior getting it on (consensually) in the back of Dad's station wagon as rape, isn't it?

I think the Dutch system is a bit more intelligent than that. I do know they that in the case of someone over 18 having sex with someone under 16 they will look at how old each party is, and how mature they both emotionally. In the example you cite I suspect the authorities would just be concerned about STDs and pregnancy rather than any legal issues.

Posted by: DaveL | September 17, 2009 12:04 PM

The r^2 value is only 0.51.

Isn't that actually pretty high for the social sciences?

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 12:09 PM

techskeptic, #95: The r^2 value is only 0.51.

It's been a long while since I taught a statistics course, but I vaguely remember that r^2=0.51 is generally considered to be reasonably high. I might be wrong, though.

-

I was talking about that you cant say that religiosity is the cause.

Well, it doesn't do much to support the notion that the Religious Right has that greater involvement of religion in society correlates strongly with certain positive social outcomes. That's what I find interesting.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 12:16 PM

techskeptic, #103: Based on the data in the table, 0.71.

Strange, I got 0.51, far worse, for an r^2 value. What linear regression did you use?

I think he is reporting r while you are reporting r^2. Same information, just a different presentation.

Posted by: Rob W | September 17, 2009 12:20 PM

Put THAT in your religious paradigm and smoke it.

Posted by: raven | September 17, 2009 12:27 PM

Why is it necessarily religiosity rather than poverty?

They are all interconnected. Fundie kids get pregnant as teen agers, get married, no college. Low wage jobs as unskilled labor competing with illegals. Repeat every generation.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | September 17, 2009 12:45 PM

Anyway, its still a pretty irrelevant article for the reasons i mentioned before (at around 37). It leads to presumptuousness and with that low of an r, its hardly useful in making generalizations.

Unfortunately, given the multiplicity of factors that impact such things, the difficulty in controlling for confounders, and the unavailability of data, social scientists have to make do with far less than, say, bench scientists do.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | September 17, 2009 12:50 PM

Hey, PZ, they were saying rude things about you today on NRP. Some idiot has a book out decrying the "tone" of atheists and he picks you out for special attention.

He wasn't called Chris Mooney by any chance ?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 17, 2009 1:00 PM

I grew up with this fundie mindset; it's actually the opposite. See, the sluts are the ones who don't get pregnant, because they go out and get contraception because they're dirty girls who plan on having sex (and dirty boys who plan on having sex). That's the real problem with contraception among fundamentalists; it's not the "every sperm is sacred" mantra of the Catholics, it's that getting contraception means that you're admitting that you might indeed have sex. That's planning to sin, which is a bad thing.

Giving in to temptation, though, is quite understandable. Therefore, from the fundamentalist point of view, it's much less sinful to plan not to have sex, then get lost in the heat of the moment (which would necessarily cause that sex to be unprotected), than it is to get contraception "just in case".

yup, I've encountered a similar mindset permeating Poland, but they go even one step further (or at least, they're albe to openly admit this to themselves):
abortion is a lesser sin than contraception in their minds, because abortion is the result of "the mind is willing, the flesh is weak", an oopsie, a one time weakness. Contraception on the other hand is premeditated sinning.

Religious crazies are the obvious extreme example, but I think much of America underestimates the degree to which young people both have sexual feeling and act on them... and we overestimate the age at which this starts.

very true. when I was in school, most teens were fully sexually active by the time they were 14-16, and the pre-actual-fucking sexuality started emerging as early as 10. But now that I'm an adult, it seems like I'm not allowed to talk about this because it's "pervy" to think of such young kids being sexual. This taboo is really not helpful to anyone.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 1:04 PM

This is a feature, not a bug.

Remember when almost no one on the fundamentalist right judged Sarah Palin an irresponsible mother for not keeping her daughter away from the boyfriend, even though many of us had expected them to go crazy over it?

We misunderstood fundamentalism. They aren't opposed to teen pregnancy. They are opposed to teen sex that doesn't lead to pregnancy. That's why they hate contraception and sex ed classes. They don't believe that girls should be allowed to have sex without proper punishment.

But a baby is the good Lord's punishment. If a girl has sex and gets pregnant, and she doesn't avoid the punishment by getting an abortion, then she's done nothing particularly wrong. She's just another sinner like everyone else, and God gave her her just deserts. Bonus, it's another child for Joel's Army.

Sometimes God's ways are not so mysterious.

Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites | September 17, 2009 1:08 PM

Agreed, Chiroptera. I don't think techskeptic is necessarily wrong in questioning the conclusions based on the data given in the news article, but it is good to keep in mind that what might be considered significant in one field might not necessarily be significant in another.

Here is a link to the actual paper [embargoed].

It's easier to be a mocking atheist these days than anything else, unless you're from a very religious family.

Anytime the religious want to start producing actual evidence for their claims, they'll cease being so damn mock-worthy.

Posted by: Stewart Cowan | September 17, 2009 1:14 PM

phantomreader42 #66

A lot of people claim to be Christians, but this is the Saviour's warning to those who are charlatans:

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

"And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

Posted by: apost8n8 | September 17, 2009 1:19 PM

if only god where better at Texas Hold'em ;)

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 17, 2009 1:22 PM

You have it the wrong way round. It's easier to be a mocking atheist these days than anything else, unless you're from a very religious family.

You are wrong.

BTW, if you don't follow the Almighty then you will be consigned to the Opposition. "Whoever is not for me is against me."

"I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures, and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, then to hell I will go."

Posted by: raven | September 17, 2009 1:27 PM

stewart the braindead fundie troll:

BTW, if you don't follow the Almighty then you will be consigned to the Opposition. "Whoever is not for me is against me."
It's easier to be a mocking atheist these days than anything else, unless you're from a very religious family.

This clown is a wealth of muddled non-thinking. Real xians don't have sex or get pregnant=No True Scotsman fallacy. Tells everyone they are going to hell. Now claiming persecution by those evil atheists who are at most 20% of society while xians are 76%.

Last step, death threats. So pedictable

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak | September 17, 2009 1:33 PM

You have it the wrong way round. It's easier to be a mocking atheist these days than anything else, unless you're from a very religious family.

Stop claiming oppression. For fuck sakes you're over 3/4 of the damn country.

BTW, if you don't follow the Almighty then you will be consigned to the Opposition. "Whoever is not for me is against me."

Well, I am against your books barbaric and immoral laws.

Posted by: 386sx | September 17, 2009 1:39 PM

Bible troll person thinks he's going to convince people by quoting Bible verses that don't make any freakin sense. Way to go. Lol.

Posted by: Stewart Cowan | September 17, 2009 1:41 PM

I'll make this my last comment as I am not wanted here. I know the reason you get upset. You know the truth because it's in your heart. You have a soul, but still deny it. You look to people like PZ Myers because there is a war going on in your soul, so you try to legitimise fighting on the side of the worldly things over spiritual things. That's the real battlefront in this world. I'm just the messenger. The wages of sin is death. Hell is real. Please, don't end up there. It's not like they show you in films. It's not a Roman orgy, but unquenchable punishment. There is only One who has ever conquered death and Hell on our behalf. He is the Way, the Truth and the LIFE.

Posted by: AJ Milne | September 17, 2009 1:45 PM

...It's not like they show you in films. It's not a Roman orgy, but unquenchable punishment...

'This is a public service announcement: your local power authority is now having serious overloads in grid segments fed by the S&M population...'

(/'So could everyone please turn on a fucking electric dryer or somethin'...)

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 17, 2009 1:50 PM

Steward honey, I don't have a soul (and if I did, I'd trade it in for pizza. And the only thing that's in my heart is lots and lots of blood; and some nerves.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 17, 2009 1:50 PM

You know the truth because it's in your heart.

Posted by: techskeptic | September 17, 2009 1:54 PM

I know the reason you get upset. You know the truth because it's in your heart.

Colossal FAIL.

If I had a nickle every time I heard that stupidity. We get upset because in this country, we have laws, hardships, and social and financial burden thrown at us for no other reason than a bunch of thick skulled morons like you think their fairy book is real.

Posted by: Jamie | September 17, 2009 2:03 PM

Do you know why people like you upset me? Because you go against REALITY! Things that are REAL. Things like your hell are not. How do you even know it exists? Because someone/the bible says so? Because you feel like it should exist? As a consequence of ignoring reality, you harm countless people. That, to me is evil. We can see that abstinence-only sex-ed is destroying lives. It doesn't matter if other people are having more protected sex, no one is passing on diseases or bringing a child they can't care for into the world. Abstinence-only sex-ed doesn't work, and to make the world a better place, we need methods that do.
I'm not against the religious, only against the dogmatic that are doing real harm to people.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 17, 2009 2:04 PM

I'll make this my last comment as I am not wanted here. I know the reason you get upset. You know the truth because it's in your heart. You have a soul, but still deny it. You look to people like PZ Myers blah blah blah blah blah blah legitimise fighting on the side of the worldly things over spiritual things. That's the real blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah messenger. The wages of sin is blah blah blah. Hell is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Please, don't end up there. It's not like they show you blah blah blah. It's not a blah blah blah, but unquenchable blah blah blah blah blah blah. There is only One who has ever blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

hat tip to MAJeff (or is that NDJeff now?).

Posted by: Irism | September 17, 2009 2:17 PM

Hell is real.

Yes, yes it is. It exists on earth presently, as well as historically, wherever Abrahamic religions are particularly pervasive.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that in this case the correlation does in fact point to causation.

Posted by: kermit | September 17, 2009 2:26 PM

Stewart Conan -
No, the only war I had in my mind on these issues (like you, I only have a soul in the metaphorical sense) I wrestled with when I was 13. That was 45 years ago, and I have been considerably more confident and relaxed since then.

You are no more the messenger of God than is any Muslim cleric or Hindu missionary or street corner schizophrenic. Nor do you have any more evidence, which seems to consist largely of a fervent belief in fantastic things without evidence.

Hell for me would not be a Roman orgy (this tells me more about you, BTW, than it does about atheists), nor a lake of fire (Pain? Meh.) but rather an eternity with Southern Baptists, sitting in a church built like a traffic court, telling God for all eternity how wonderful he is. A god who would torture forever honest and decent folks, who make best guesses on metaphysics based on incomplete and ambiguous data, is a sick fuck. The worst kind of sociopath; were he human we would consider him a monster.

Truth is not determined by your childhood nightmares. Come out of your self-imposed prison into the light. Show some courage and think.

Posted by: death adder | September 17, 2009 2:30 PM

The adolescent sex drive is a power greater than Jesus.

Biology always is more powerful than ideology. Always.

Posted by: Don | September 17, 2009 2:34 PM

"I'm just the messenger."

Now I'm confused. I thought Muhammad was "the messenger."

Or was it Joseph Smith?

Crap.

Posted by: Mu | September 17, 2009 2:36 PM

Sounds like Terry Prachett's version where the incorporeal souls used to fried in hell fire for eternity (to no effect, lacking a body), and it only got bad when the new boss introduced bureaucracy, and torture by means of reading the tax code to the condemned.

Posted by: Dale Mulder | September 17, 2009 2:38 PM

Maybe there is an upside to fundie teen pregnancies. I understand these creatures oppose abortion, so most of these pregnancies will come to full term. Teenage mothers normally do not produce very healthy babies, so if the fundies keep this up - in a few years time their ranks will be full of frail, stupid people and this will drive their cause to the ground.

Just a speculation. I could be wrong.

- Dale

Posted by: AJ Milne | September 17, 2009 2:49 PM

Maybe there is an upside to fundie teen pregnancies. I understand these creatures oppose abortion, so most of these pregnancies will come to full term.

Actually, strangely enough, I'm not sure you can assume that.

I don't have statistics either way... that's not the angle. The point is: just because they *say* they're agin' it, it doesn't mean they won't do it...

You can probably hear it coming, but there does seem to be a huge amount of raging hypocrisy on this point. There's a story out there from a clinic worker (think it mighta been Salon) about a girl who was picketing her place, intoning the frequently rather extreme rhetoric that tends to go with that territory. Then she actually shows *up* in the place for her own procedure, *still* saying nasty things to the staff throughout..

After which, she goes right back out to hoist her placards again.

Mentality seems to be: mine's different. *Mine* was just a mistake. *I* need this, and *I'm* still a good person. Those *other* folk, they're the monsters... And *you're* monsters because you enable *them*.

(/See also the ongoing assumption of these good Christian folk how this is all about irresponsible sluts who don't even try to do the right thing... That's not *them*... It's those *other* folk...)

Posted by: AJ Milne | September 17, 2009 2:55 PM

... Doh. HTML fail. The cite:

The only moral abortion is my abortion.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 3:00 PM

Stewart Cowan, #136: I'll make this my last comment as I am not wanted here.

Well, one of the reasons you're not wanted here may be because you've just gone way, way off-topic.

Just a thought.

Posted by: Last Hussar | September 17, 2009 3:06 PM

I would caution with the thought that a phrase often seen on these pages is

Correlation is not Causation.

Maybe there is a gene that means the children of those most open to irrational belief are just a bunch of sluts.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | September 17, 2009 3:15 PM

rr:

The idea that correlation does not mean causation isn't all that controversial.

Indeed, it's a popular idea right here in this very blog/commenter community. But, as I think Tulse was trying to get through to you, it does not follow that correlation is useless. Correlation does not equal causation, but it does equal correlation, and it can lead us to form useful, testable hypotheses about causation. And even when you can't learn anything about causation, correlation can be useful information in and of itself: For example, if you know that two different physiological symptoms are very strongly correlated, the presence of one of them can serve as a signal to look for and treat the other, even if you have no idea what, if any, causal relationship exists between the two.

If you just want to make a simplistic polemical argument (the apparent intent of the author of this post) that in all cases religion=bad and irreligion=good, then by all means, abandon logical consistency with these two examples.

As near as I can tell, the author of this post (whose arguments are rarely "simplistic" by any fair reading) does in fact believe that religion is nearly always socially harmful, and conversely that "irreligion" (understood as the lock of religion, rather than some active attack on religion) is generally good¹... but I haven't seen him do anything as foolish as trying to construct that case from a single set of correlative data alone.

IOW, take your strawman and go play in traffic.

¹ PZ, if I've inadvertently mischaracterized your position, I trust you'll apply any needed corrective.

Posted by: Chiroptera | September 17, 2009 3:20 PM

europeanhistorian, # 139: I had to agree with techskeptic about the issue of causation/correlation. This study is ultimately irrelevant.

Huh. I thought that historians were required to know more about statistics and scientific methodology these days; I would have thought that Europeans, especially, would be more inclined to understand statistics and scientific methodology. My bad.

Anyway, we've now determined that there is a good correlation. A skeptic, namely techskeptic, himself has calculated a correlation coefficient of r^2=0.51, which is a quite good correlation. So the correlation is there.

Second, we don't have to assume cause and effect for the correlation to be interesting or useful. Seeing that this one study indicates there is a correlation, the next step is to do further studies to determine why there is a correlation. There may be a direct cause and effect, there may be another phenomenon that results in both high religiosity and high rates of teen pregnancy, or this might just be an accident. Or it could be that this particular study is flawed and further study will show that there is no correlation after all.

At any rate, the results of this study are useful. The Religious Right has claimed that our social problems in the US are the result of society becoming less religious and more "liberal", and raising families on social conservative and evangelical Christian values will result in these problems lessening. This study seems to show that the Religious Right is incorrect on this.

Observe Stewart Cowan's break down as the he had to deal with the fact that in real life, his preferred mythologies don't necessary lead to preferred outcomes. With this refusal to deal effectively with real life, one can see how certain US states keep trying to do the same wrong things over and over again despite that they just don't work.

Posted by: MrFire | September 17, 2009 3:24 PM

Bible troll person thinks he's going to convince people by quoting Bible verses that don't make any freakin sense. Way to go. Lol.

It's like those horror movies, y'know, where the man-of-god pulls out his crucifix, or other talisman, thinking it'll be his ace-in-the-hole, and the monster just eats it, or spears him through the head with it, or something.

I'll make this my last comment as I am not wanted here.

In my short time here, I've found that to never be the case. They always come back...

you try to legitimise fighting on the side of the worldly things over spiritual things.

We're not fighting anything 'spiritual'. We're not Don Quixotes around here.

We are fighting abject stupidity, however.

It's not a Roman orgy,

As long as Beelzebub gives me a reach-around, I'm happy.

but unquenchable punishment.

Way to confuse your metaphors. I thought it was unquenchable fire.

There is only One who has ever conquered death and Hell on our behalf.

This has rapidly ascended to the near the top of my peeves. The scapegoat meme has been around since the dawn of superstitious thought. The idea of the blood sacrifice, and that you can load your crimes onto someone or something else is cowardly, and open to all sorts of disturbing interpretations.

In the case of Christianity, it's also a complete sleight-of-hand, even on its own terms. He doesn't stay dead! The whole concept of the Resurrection takes any real meaning out his so-called sacrifice.

Posted by: techskeptic | September 17, 2009 3:57 PM

Tulse

In this instance, these results at the very least rule out some of the naive hypotheses that individuals might have had regarding religiosity and teen pregnancy

But that is one of the three reasons I originally pointed at with regard to why I thought this study was useless. It said nothing about teen pregnancy, only birth rate. It didnt report anything about how they accounted for abortions, only that they did (and then what happened to the r-value?). It said nothing about miscarriages. It only talked about birthrate and religiosity, when the far more interesting statistic would be pregnancy or even just age of loss of virginity. Those would have been more important as it would be a more relevant metric by which to measure how well sex ed programs, or religiosity, or whatever, works

[how did the comment thread get borked?]

Posted by: Tulse | September 17, 2009 4:16 PM

It only talked about birthrate and religiosity, when the far more interesting statistic would be pregnancy or even just age of loss of virginity.

I agree those would have been more interesting, but also far more difficult to obtain. In the social sciences one deals with the data one has or one can practically collect.

This study is no more the final word on this issue than any study is, and I agree that there are some methodological weaknesses. But it is ridiculous to say it is "useless", unless one is willing to toss out all correlational studies.

Posted by: Kagehi | September 17, 2009 4:20 PM

Love the, "But.. does it *cause* it", people here.. Lets put it another way. Dozens of people have burns. Some people are *told* the stove is hot, but touch it anyway. Some, use pot holders, and oddly, don't seem to be burned, like the rest. Dozens of different people do a statical analysis, all showing that, "People that get close to the stove all seem to have also have burns." The religious pro-abstinance, anti-birth control response? "How do you know its the stove causing it? It might be something like.. a sunburn, or something."

Its not one study, one group of people talking about personal experience on the matter, etc. Its **every** study, and **every** person that gets out of those hell holes, and admits to what is really going on. And, seriously, its been going on so long that even my parents have tales of catching my sister trying to sneak out, to join up with the preacher's daughter, so they could go party with boys, the same preacher's daughter that *everyone* knew slept with every person in sight, and that was at least 30 years ago, and even older stories of the same behavior from the daughters of preachers from 50-60 years back, which they knew when they where children. Its so common place, even from 100 years ago, that its because like blond jokes. Want to know who is sleeping with every boy in town, so you can get laid, find the nearest married priest, with a daughter.

All these studies show is that when the **entire** community buys into this BS, not just the church's priest and his family, ***most of them*** become the preacher's daughter. Duh!!

Posted by: techskeptic | September 17, 2009 4:39 PM

tulse,

I agree those would have been more interesting, but also far more difficult to obtain

But, again, my point was that people here, you included, were conflating "birthrate" with "teen pregnancy". We all really want to know teen pregnancy and religiosity, and it is certainly knowable as pregnancy is largely documented. But this study showed nothing at all about it. It only shows, to my "bench scientist" eyes, a noisy correlation. Hence, along with my other reasons, I called it useless.

That is not to say that correlational studies in general are useless.

Posted by: DaveL | September 17, 2009 4:50 PM

But this study showed nothing at all about it. It only shows, to my "bench scientist" eyes, a noisy correlation. Hence, along with my other reasons, I called it useless.

A 'noisy correlation'? All correlations in the social sciences are noisy.

Can you imagine if the R^2 was something like 0.9? That would mean that religiosity explains 90% of teen pregnancy rates. That wouldn't just confirm a link between religiosity and teenage pregnancy, it would call into question everything we know about the biology of human reproduction!

Posted by: techskeptic | September 17, 2009 4:56 PM

All correlations in the social sciences are noisy.

Well that goes more to the point that we should not make generalizations about human beings, doesnt it?

Posted by: jt512 | September 17, 2009 5:04 PM

PZ, your statement, "fundie kids are getting pregnant despite their stern, restrictive upbringing," is not justified by this study. The study was an ecologic design, comparing teen birth rates and religiosity at the state level. The correct interpretation of the data is that teens who live in more religious states are more likely to become pregnant than teens who live in less religious states. The results do not imply that it is the religious teens who are getting pregnant or that religiosity is the cause of teen pregnancies. It is plausible that, within state, there are no differences in pregnancy rates between religious and non-religious teens, or even that the relation between pregnancy rate and religiosity is the opposite of that found at the state level. In my field, nutritional epidemiology, it is surprisingly common, due to uncontrollable individual-level confounding, to see ecologic data show a relationship that is opposite of that at the individual level.

Jay

Posted by: Jerry | September 17, 2009 5:06 PM

I write from the trenches, the number one state on that list, my beautiful home state of Mississippi.

The preacher's daughter is indeed a phenomenom quite prevalent down here. I know first hand, having married one, and the stories she told about herself and her sisters, as well as the way our marriage went, demonstrated to me that they all made quite the sluts of themselves wherever their father was posted and afterwards.

But there are a multitude of reasons for these pregnancies. Getting away from home is one; the desire to be free and independent.

Then there's the welfare and food stamps reason. Let the state take care of some of your bills while keeping a boyfriend or two on the side to help with other bills.

Then there's the abysmal ignorance. A lot of these girls don't know the mechanism of getting pregnant, much less where to go for an abortion. There is, after all, only one abortion clinic in Mississippi, and it must fight constantly to stay open.

Mississippi gets a lot of bad press and a lot of it is deserved. But please remember that this is the home of Faulkner, Welty, Grisham, and Henson, and not all of us are backwoods Bible-barking Baptists. What this state needs, along with forty-nine others, is more and better education.

Posted by: europeanhistorian | September 17, 2009 5:37 PM

quote: "Who cares if priests can marry or not among fundies, I was talking about **priests/preachers in general**."

The distinction is actually quite important. Fundamentalists don't have priests and would never call their clergy priests.
Indeed, one hallmark of fundamentalism is a deep distrust of the Catholic church. Using the terms "priest" and "preacher" interchangeably makes it appear that you don't know much about religion, which in turn undermines your general argument. After all, would you trust the word of someone on a scientific matter who couldn't seem to tell the difference between a chemist and a biologist?

europeanhistorian

Posted by: techskeptic | September 17, 2009 6:17 PM

Jay,

This is what I have been trying to point out from the start:

The correct interpretation of the data is that teens who live in more religious states are more likely to become pregnant than teens who live in less religious states

That is not the correct interpretation either. The study only reports birthrate and specifically not teen pregnancy. The report leaves out how they handled abortions (only that it was dealt with in some way), and completely leaves out miscarriages.

Tulse,

So much for psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, medicine, ...

I am not saying that those areas of study are useless or irrelevant. Hardly. Nor has it been that correlational studies are useless or irrelevant. It's that making a vast generalization about a group of people is simply not founded by this or any social study. That's all. As it has been pointed out, r values for social studies are far lower than expected in other sciences.

[never mind that if you use Feymans definition of science...you are correct, none of those are actually sciences... :)]

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | September 17, 2009 6:38 PM

techskeptic:

The correct interpretation of the data is that teens who live in more religious states are more likely to become pregnant than teens who live in less religious states

That is not the correct interpretation either. The study only reports birthrate and specifically not teen pregnancy. The report leaves out how they handled abortions (only that it was dealt with in some way), and completely leaves out miscarriages.

This study is more useful than you're giving it credit for, for questions of interest to this community. Teen birthrate puts a floor on the teen pregnancy rate: The pregnancy rate can be higher than the birthrate, with the difference accounted for by abortion and miscarriage, but the pregnancy rate cannot be lower than the birthrate (counting multiples as single birth "events," that is). The pregnancy rate likewise places a floor on the rate of sexual intercourse (except for girls named Mary, of course). Thus, the fact that the teen birthrate is not substantially lower in religious areas than in nonreligious areas significantly refutes the notion that religious teaching is an effective way to reduce teens' sexual activity.

Obviously, if you want to support a more detailed causal model, you need more and better data... but I think what most of us here really care about is putting the lie to the constant claim that godliness promotes "good" behavior, along with the corollary claim that godlessness promotes "bad" behavior.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 17, 2009 7:51 PM

It could just be saying that religious people are less likely to get an abortion.Which is not backed up by other studies. Actually, this study meshes well with previous work that I've seen over the years.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 17, 2009 11:11 PM

Dang, block quote fail in #198. The first sentence should be quoted.

Posted by: europeanhistorian | September 17, 2009 11:17 PM

quote: "I'll stipulate the point, though I note for the record that simply bloviating about PZ's CV doesn't actually tell us anything about yours. Anyone who's read a book could style him/herself "a historian."

Anyone whose read a book could style him/herself a scientist as well. But that doesn't make it so anymore than reading a book makes one a historian. I'm not foolish enough to make my name public on a blog comment box. However, in the last three years I've published one article in a peer-reviewed academic journal, given one conference paper and have a chapter in a volume on book on European military history coming out in the coming months. According to PZ Myers' CV, he hasn't done anything of the sort in his field since 2002. That is very poor academic performance, even at a small teaching-focused college.

I've served on search committees and his CV reads like someone who couldn't make it at a research one institution, then moved to a small college and despite having a lot of time on his hand (running this blog for instance), hasn't done much in the way of scientific research since then. That strikes me as a bit odd for someone who professes to care so much about science. You can attack me all you want. I could care less. But unless Myers updates his CV to show recent research, in which case I retract all I have written on this, what I've written above stands. Facts are stubborn things. The fact is his CV indicates he hasn't presented at a conference since 2002 and hasn't published in this decade. Any way you cut it, that is poor performance. He's lucky he already has tenure.

quote: "That said, I stand by my formulation. Note that the claim is not that religious people or organizations never do good things, nor that all social ills (historical or present-day) have their roots in religious belief. Rather, the claim is simply that, all other things being equal, when people put their trust in unfounded superstitious beliefs instead of facts and reason, the net result is usually negative."

I doubt anyone disagrees with the statement that putting ones trust in unfounded superstition is negative. So what? The disagreement is over what is superstitious in the first place. No doubt there are some religious people who see your views as superstitious. So this statement proves nothing.

quote: "As for the question of teen pregnancy that started all this hoo-hah, the really interesting thing is that there's apparently not any correlation between religiosity or religious approaches to sex education and lower rates teen pregnancy, which deals a blow to those who would claim that abstinence-only sex ed, chastity pledges, and other similar religious approaches are effective in reducing teens' sexual activity."

Actually, I've yet to see research that shows that ANY particular approach to sex ed is incredibly effective in America. But then again, many subjects aren't taught all that well in many of America's secondary schools. So that's no real surprise.

europeanhistorian

Posted by: jt512 | September 17, 2009 11:48 PM

Europeanhistorian wrote

However, in the last three years I've published one article in a peer-reviewed academic journal, given one conference paper and have a chapter in a volume on book on European military history coming out in the coming months. According to PZ Myers' CV, he hasn't done anything of the sort in his field since 2002.

Of course, the same could be said of that other loser biologist, Dawkins.

Jay

Posted by: europeanhistorian | September 17, 2009 11:53 PM

Kagehi,

You missed my point entirely. If you want to convince a fundamentalist of your argument, you don't careless use terms in a manner that shows you are grossly ignorant about one of the most basic facts of their beliefs, i.e. they do not have priests and in fact do not generally like or trust priests. Things such as that don't exactly help your credibility. But maybe you aren't interested in that. Maybe you think appearing ignorant about religion will help you with religious people. Yeah, that's the ticket.

europeanhistorian

Posted by: jt512 | September 18, 2009 12:05 AM

Dauphin wrote

"...the fact that teen birthrates among the religious are at least comparable to those among the less/nonreligious...."

For the third time, that is exactly what the study does not show. This is aggregate data. You cannot infer anything about the relative birth rates of religious and non-religious teens from it. Doing so is, as the authors of the paper itself point out, committing the "ecologic fallacy." Read the paper, go back and read my last two comments, or google "ecologic fallacy" for a better explanation.

Jay

Posted by: techskeptic | September 18, 2009 12:42 AM

Jay,

It took me a while, but now I understand what you are getting at. It makes the conclusion even worse than I had originally thought.

I never said or implied that there was no correlation, only that it was noisy and couldn't be used to make any generalizations. you pointed out a further reason, aggregate data, why the same generalizations can not be made.

I never tried to imply that the correlation did reverse, only that it could change and we dont know how much. I know the report accounted for abortions, but it didnt account for miscarriage, nor did I see how they accounted for abortions. I do not expect that this would create a reversal of the correlation either, only that missing data is still important because as you add it, the correlation may get even worse.

As for me being a knucklehead for doing my own regression on the data presented... well lets just say that if I have the data, I'll check for myself, if thats ok with you. This wouldnt be the first paper that I found math errors in.

Bill Dauphin,

Then why are you arguing about it?
Just because I feel a certain way, and have seen tons of other papers on a subject, doesnt mean that false conclusions made from this particular study are right to make. Making the conclusions about teen pregnancy and individual religiosity, as most of the people here did, is the same wrong headed attitude that we scream about when people get suckered into say, the conclusion that acupuncture is good for anything (or that "three forms of acupuncture works better than medicine alone!"). We should be wary of all news reports of any study, we should strive to understand exactly what it actually says, not just what we want it to say. That is the exact behavior we chastise woo-mongers for.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | September 18, 2009 1:32 AM

jt512:

You are missing the bigger point. The report says nothing about religious people at all. You can't take a correlation between two variables that have been aggregated (at the state level, in this case) and draw a conclusion about the variables at the level of the individual.

The point you think we're all missing is unrelated to the point we're talking about. Of course the reported correlation based on aggregated data can't be applied to individuals... but who's trying to do that? Why would we want to? What I care about (and I suspect this is also true of others in this thread, though I'm loath to put words in their mouths) is the social impact of religiosity across a community... so data aggregated at the community level (state level, in this instance) is perfectly appropriate to my interest.

The study simply does not imply anything about the relation between a teen's religiosity and the likelihood that she will have a child.

No, it says something about a correlation between the religiosity of a community and the rate at which teens within that community will have children. I'm perfectly clear on that point, and can't imagine why you think I'm not.

In fact, the ways in which the religiosity of a community might be expressed — school curricula, state laws and local ordinances, prevalent public messages, peer pressure, etc. — might potentially affect nonreligious individuals' behavior similarly to the effect on religious individuals' behavior. They key question is precisely what the aggregate impact of social religiosity is, not the impact of any person's own religiosity on their individual behavior.

"...the fact that teen birthrates among the religious are at least comparable to those among the less/nonreligious...."

For the third time, that is exactly what the study does not show. This is aggregate data. You cannot infer anything about the relative birth rates of religious and non-religious teens from it.

What part of among do you not understand? I was always talking about what happens within groups; the terms "religious" and "less/nonreligious" characterize the communities, not the teens themselves. No doubt there are some atheist teens among the religious communities studied, as well as some fundy teens among the nonreligious ones; that in no way affects the aspects of this report that interest me.

For example, in a hypothetical study comparing teen pregnancy rates in states with an abstinence-only sex ed curriculum to those in states with comprehensive sex ed, I wouldn't care in the slightest whether the individual girls getting pregnant were Baptist or Wiccan or atheist; the question at hand would be whether there was a positive or negative correlation, in the aggregate, between abstinence-only sex ed and the societal concern of teen pregnancy.

That's not to say there aren't other reasons to study correlations between individual religiosity and individual behavior; it is to say that I know the difference between that kind of study and this one.

Doing so is, as the authors of the paper itself point out, committing the "ecologic fallacy." Read the paper...

Presumably you're referring to the Discussion section (pp. 15-17), which cautions in detail against drawing individual inferences from aggregated data, and against making causal inferences from the reported correlation? Nothing in that section is inconsistent with the comments I've been making, nor is the authors' ultimate conclusion:

"At the level of states in the U.S., conservative religious beliefs predict teen birth rates highly and significantly; the correlation remains high and significant after controlling for income and estimated rates of abortion."

Posted by: europeanhistorian | September 18, 2009 8:57 AM

quote: "Now you're playing word games. The fundamentalists certainly do have priests, very powerful and influential priests -- they just don't use that word. They prefer to call them preachers. But they are exactly the same thing: people with a special privilege to interpret and disseminate the words and commands of a god to his followers."

No, this isn't word games. Priests also offer sacrifices. Fundamentalists don't believe their clergy offer sacrifices and in fact often view the Catholic mass as sacrilegious because it is considered a sacrifice by Catholics. At any rate, it probably isn't worth arguing over this with you.

My original point still stands. If you use terms about another persons beliefs in a flippant way that makes it appear that you are ignorant about the very basics of what THEY believe, you won't exactly improve your credibility among them. Then again, perhaps some on this blog are more interesting in venting their anger at fundamentalists instead of changing their minds. So who cares about credibility?

quote: "By the way, my online CV hasn't been updated since 2003. There have been several conference presentations, including a couple of keynote addresses, since then (and I'll be doing a keynote for an evo-devo conference in November). It really doesn't matter, though, since I'm not trading on the authority of my publication record. Happy now?"

Yes. I hereby retract everything I said earlier.

europeanhistorian

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | September 18, 2009 10:44 AM

I'm still seeing cosmic weirdness in the comments display in my at-work browser (settings of which I'm not free to change), so I probably won't be commenting much today. I did want to say, though...

Its why we discuss these things and I think this was a good discussion.

I agree. Peace.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 18, 2009 10:51 AM

It's not a browser issue, the commenting system at sciblogs is fubared

Posted by: jt512 | September 18, 2009 1:11 PM

Dauphin wrote:

[The study] says something about a correlation between the religiosity of a community and the rate at which teens within that community will have children. I'm perfectly clear on that point, and can't imagine why you think I'm not.

As I explained before, it is because you wrote this:

"...the fact that teen birthrates among the religious are at least comparable to those among the less/nonreligious....

Dauphin wrote:

What part of among do you not understand? I was always talking about what happens within groups; the terms "religious" and "less/nonreligious" characterize the communities, not the teens themselves.

No. In English, the phrases "the religious" and "the less/nonreligious" mean religious persons and less/nonreligious persons, respectively, not the communities in which those persons live. Even the context of the paragraph in which you used these phrases does not indicate that you were referring to communities. Perhaps it's what you meant; it wasn't what you wrote. I would not belabor the point, were it not for your sarcasm: "What part of 'among' do you not understand?". I can assure you that I understand the meaning of the word "among" quite well, as well as the meaning of the phrase "among the religious," which, apparently, makes one of us.

Jay

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, OM | September 18, 2009 3:35 PM

Jay:

I thought Techskeptic and I had come to a pleasant conclusion of this conversation, but since you insist on exhuming the dead horse to beat it some more...

No. In English,

Oh, English? You mean the language I hold two degrees in, and taught professionally for 5 years, and have edited professionally for the last 20 years? Oh, do tell me something about English, please.

...the phrases "the religious" and "the less/nonreligious" mean religious persons and less/nonreligious persons, respectively, not the communities in which those persons live. Even the context of the paragraph in which you used these phrases does not indicate that you were referring to communities.

Well... aside from your flat, unsupported assertion to the contrary, I don't see any reason to think it doesn't mean exactly what I said it means. The whole context of the discussion was about the rate at which a phenomenon — teenagers giving birth — takes place within communities that have been carefully, scientifically identified as "religious," according to well-defined criteria. Against that background, it's impossible for me to understand how you could've concluded in the first place that "among the religious" referred to particular religious persons rather than to the group identities we were all talking about.

Generally, you seem to have been working pretty hard to defend an interpretation that required you to think of people on the other side of the argument (not just me) as stupid, rather than assuming they were intelligent people writing in good faith (and despite the fact that stupidity has not historically been a distinguishing feature of the non-troll regulars around here).

Perhaps it's what you meant; it wasn't what you wrote.

Even if you thought this, why wouldn't you simply accept my clarification? It's a peculiarly intertoobzy affliction, this compulsion to argue with other people about what they mean to be saying. Ah, but you have your reasons:

I would not belabor the point, were it not for your sarcasm...

You were too wounded by my rapier-like verbal attack to think straight? Really? Have you read this blog? You think a bit of "what part of [blank] don't you understand" snark counts as deeply wounding around here?

Actually, I'm not typically all that sarcastic, but your very first words addressed directly to me were dripping with condescension, an exasperated "[f]or the third time..." even though it was the first time you'd addressed a comment to me specifically. (As an additional aside... I don't presume to know where you're from, but for your future reference, in the U.S. addressing someone by last name only, without either a first name or an honorific of some kind, is generally perceived as aggressive, a de facto assertion of your own social superiority over the person you're addressing. Absent some predicate relationship that makes it obviously friendly or joking, it's a distinctly obnoxious way to begin a conversation with anyone other than an acknowledged subordinate.)

I surmise that by the time you turned your attention to poor lil' ol' me, you were already so frustrated with the other presumptively stupid people you'd been forced to deal with that you lost track of who you were talking to. In any case, if you're waiting for me to apologize for responding to your haughtiness with relatively mild, nonprofane sarcasm, my advice to you is that you not wait underwater.

Posted by: jt512 | September 18, 2009 4:05 PM

Well, Mr. English, if you submitted that usage of those phrases to an epidemiology journal in the context of an ecologic study (which this is), your article would not be accepted until you corrected them.

I knew you wouldn't admit you were wrong. I didn't anticipate that you would write on the order of 100 lines not admitting it. Thanks for the entertainment.

Jay

Posted by: jt512 | September 18, 2009 4:46 PM

Well, half the participants in the conversation (including PZ, as far as I can tell) misinterpreted the results of the study to mean that the religious were more likely to have children as teenagers than the non-religious.

Get it, yet?

Jay

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 18, 2009 8:29 PM

Seeing that this one study indicates there is a correlation, the next step is to do further studies to determine why there is a correlation. There may be a direct cause and effect, there may be another phenomenon that results in both high religiosity and high rates of teen pregnancy, or this might just be an accident. Or it could be that this particular study is flawed and further study will show that there is no correlation after all.

At any rate, the results of this study are useful. The Religious Right has claimed that our social problems in the US are the result of society becoming less religious and more "liberal", and raising families on social conservative and evangelical Christian values will result in these problems lessening. This study seems to show that the Religious Right is incorrect on this.
- Chiroptera@172

I agree completely - except that research indicating an alternative and apparently more general explanation for state-level differences already exists: income inequality (Wilkinson and Pickett [2009] The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies almost always Do Better, Ch.9 "Teenage births: recycling deprivation"). Based on a number of studies, they claim that at inter-state level, and also at inter-county level in the USA, and internationally among rich countries, income inequality and teenage birthrate are correlated. Utah, which someone mentioned as religious but with low teenage birthrate, has low income inequality. See Evidence: Teenage Births for pointers to some of the studies they drew on. If anyone's sufficiently interested, I'll post the relevant citations from the book. Russia was also mentioned: massively increased income inequality was accompanied by a huge increase in social and health problems in Russia after the USSR collapsed.

In the USA, my hunch is that inequality and religiosity feed on each other. Religiosity correlates with voting Republican and hence to more extreme pro-rich policies - and this gives the rich a motive encourage religiosity. Completing a positive feedback loop, the insecurity and low self-esteem suffered by many in a society where economic gradients are steep, make people vulnerable to religion's promises of solace and special status. However, this dynamic may be specific to the USA, at least among rich countries (among which of course it is anomalous both for inequality and for religiosity). I'll see if I can find anything on how inequality and religiosity vary across western Europe.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 18, 2009 9:03 PM

Knockgoats, on that subject,

one comment: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/the_five_best_arguments_for_cr.php#comment-1919875

whole thread: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/06/the_trends_if_they_continue_ar.php

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 18, 2009 9:47 PM

I think religiosity probably reflects mainly the extent to which the Churches maintained their congregations and influence during the 1945-89 period

Interestingly, the pattern I've seen here in NZ and in French Polynesia is really based on taking advantage of the disadvantaged.

In NZ, as the congregations in white and Maori Churches have shrunk over the years, they have gone after poor Islanders just immigrating to the area.

Same thing in French Polynesia.

The common pattern seems to be to look for neighborhoods or groups with "troubled teens", gangs, alcohol problems, or domestic violence, and basically try to set themselves up as like a religious version of AA.