Prompted by Paul Bloom's piece in Slate, Does Religion Make You Nice? Does atheism make you mean?, I went out and read Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment , the book which which Bloom references. It's a very slim volume, and though the author is a sociologist its is very thick on ethnographic observations and personal interviews. The societies in question are Denmark, and secondarily Sweden (the author lived in Denmark, but drew upon a great deal of surveys of Sweden as well). Perhaps I'll have more to say later, but there are three major points which I thought deserve to be noted:
1) Of Danes who avow Christianity as their religion and identify as such, a large proportion, on the order of 50%, lack supernatural beliefs.* Conversely, in the United States, about a similar proportion of those who have "No Religion" avow belief in god. In fact, it is not implausible that Danes who assert a Christianity affiliation have fewer supernatural beliefs, on average, than Americans who assert total lack of religious identity.
2) Danish lack of religious intensity is likely aided by a communitarian sense of immediate and implicit belonging indicated by a homogeneous shared ethnicity. The author explicitly suggests this at several points, and observes that perhaps with the rise to the fore of Muslim populations of some size and religiosity in Denmark that orthodox Danish Lutheranism will likely see a renaissance. Diversity is strength! (for god)
3) I think despite the survey data on offer, it is important not to accept the contention that Denmark is the absolute inverse of the United States. When Danes were asked to identify the nature of their belief in God in 1999, the results were:
21% said "A personal God"
31% said "A spiritual force"
19% said "I don't know what to believe"
23% said "I don't believe there is a God"
6% did not respond
In the United States generous estimates would suggest that 5% do not believe in God, and on the order of 80% believe in a personal God. Denmark is not as secular as the United States is religious. At least on paper by this metric, though the author does make a compelling case that God has been driven into the private domain almost totally across Danish society.
* The sort of Trinitarian orthodoxy which conservative Christians in the United States would demand is probably held by about 5% of Denmark's population, in which case you have the paradox that 85% of the population voluntarily supports the Lutheran church via taxes without acceding to Christian orthodoxy.
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Bloom's Slate piece seems poor to me - I found no evidence of incisive or critical thought at all, a mere potboiler.
Yet this is a very interesting and important topic - not one for scoring points.
A the heart of it is IQ. Many positive traits and socially-desirable outcomes correlate with IQ - and countries with high average IQ are usually better than those of lower IQ in most respects.
But IQ correlates negatively with religiousness both within and between nations. IQ also correlates negatively with fertility. I think these are two big things that we need to understand.
Happiness in relation to religiousness is a mere distraction - and (from personal experience) current happiness research is of extremely uncertain validity - happiness surveys are mostly measuring personality traits.
More important to understand is how religiousness (of various types - which need separate analysis) affects social cooperation when controlling for IQ and personality.
You know, I could've sworn that japan had significantly lower % of religious belief (measured in various ways) then even denmark when you were showing those surveys a while ago.
Or is it that Japan doesn't count as a country in the author's eyes?
I do wonder if they aren't on to something with the homogenous society thing. I can't think of a counter-example of a very homogenous society that is extremely religious off the top of my head, but I'm guessing there is one. Maybe Saudi Arabia?
(I didn't read the Bloom article, but I saw the Bloggingheads video)
Scandinavian culture has never been good at exporting itself.... which countries outside of Scandinavia speak a scando language?... but it is good at importing things that are worth keeping, and discarding any ideological idiocy. Think of feminism... while the rest of the world was full of ranting hairy feminists, Scandinavia had already implemented all the policies quietly and without fuss.
The same its true with Christianity. Denmark is maybe the most christian country in the world, in terms of people's behaviour to each other, except that it has shed all the supernatural aspects.
But IQ correlates negatively with religiousness both within and between nations. IQ also correlates negatively with fertility. I think these are two big things that we need to understand.
danes are not high IQ enough to explain this, seeing as how germans are just as smart and more religious, or american scandinavians are way more religious. this is a norm of reaction, so you have to appeal to "multiplier effect."
Or is it that Japan doesn't count as a country in the author's eyes?
i don't know why he didn't include this either. japan in many ways is VERY MUCH like scandinavian in its attitude toward religion. everyone is buddhist or shinto nominally, but have generally little or no interest in religion.
Most of the Scandinavians I've known have been secular, but were devout environmentalists. Would this count as a "spiritual force"?
Eh, the Scandinavians haven't done too badly in exporting themselves, they're just picky about latitude. Iceland, Greenland, tiddly islands, cultural influence on the UK and Russia...Norwegian is not completely unknown as a second language in areas of major US settlement (Pacific Northwest, Minnesota/Midwest)...part of Seattle celebrates Norway's constitution day.
Farming above the arctic circle, as some of my ancestors did, doesn't really support a hugely dense population.
current happiness research is of extremely uncertain validity - happiness surveys are mostly measuring personality traits.
I tend to agree. Many surveys blithely take subjective stuff at face value. If I'm sad, I'll answer that I'm happy because I don't want to be seen as a loser - or even if no one will ever know what I said, I still answer that I'm happy because I don't want to hear myself say that I'm a loser, or internalize it. And of course there is variance in the magnitude of those tendencies just as there is variance in happiness.
Another example is trying to measure the effect of "mood" on "pain." And god too. Two different countries where organized religion has withered, might have rather similar personal reverential and transcendent feelings, but in country A it is still cooler to say you believe in a god, and in country B it's not (perhaps because over there it's hip to be more provocative). Sociologists measure that and assume they are measuring the real feelings and secret thoughts. The best example is the study of dating and sexual relationships, where according to Matt Ridley (I haven't read the actual paper), people say they value personality and intelligence, but in actual dating experiments they want physical beauty and such.
If you really wanted to understand religious feelings in countries A and B, you might have to sort of intuit it, like Nietzsche or Stendhal did about different peoples and societies. This basically maps onto Mencius' debate with Razib over cliometrics. I'm incidentally a moderate in that debate (though actually I think Razib is too, or a pluralist anyway).
82% of Danes are members of the state church (as of 1 january 2008..82,1% actually). 82%! That is NOT a society without God. I live in Denmark, and the book has been criticized heavily here because of its useless methodology. For the record I haven't read it myself. But having read the criticism I don't think I want to spend the time reading it, really.
daniel, to be fair to the author, he admits that danes just don't "get" the way americans define religion and being christian. if he was writing to a danish audience, it would have been a different book.
The large amount of US scientists who state belief in god is kind of surprising, especially if you're used to seeing (or scrolling past) endless online polemic against intelligent design.
The large amount of US scientists who state belief in god is kind of surprising, especially if you're used to seeing (or scrolling past) endless online polemic against intelligent design.
Why? There isn't going to be much polemic against intelligent design in societies where intelligent design is marginal in intellectual circles, so of course you expect polemic in America and not so much in Denmark. Lack of debate is evidence that the society is in agreement (which of course might also be to the other direction, I bet they don't see much polemic against intelligent design in Saudi Arabia either).
Jaakkeli - yes, I guess you're right; it is surprising only on the surface.
This USA-Denmark comparison is interesting - it could be synergic to add to the survey variables that are more concrete: like, how often you pray for more than 90 seconds, and things like that.
Saudi Arabia and Somalia are two examples of homogenous highly religious countries. But with a religion that is explicitly totalitarian (I use the word without any intent to pass any moral judgments) its hard to say what being religious really means? Everyone in Saudi Arabia is Muslim, but everyone is not "spiritual". They believe in supernatural ideas per our definition, but given the low level of scientific literacy (until recently), we must be careful about what "supernatural" means to them...the distinction depends on there being a strong idea of what "natural" means in scientific terms...i dont think they had that until a few years ago. And today, the educated class has a fair sprinking of irreligious people (I lived there for 6 years), but given the extreme penalties in place (apostasy is punishable by death, I am not kidding) they are not likely to identify themselves as such.
But with a religion that is explicitly totalitarian (I use the word without any intent to pass any moral judgments) its hard to say what being religious really means?
yes. the "market based" model has little value for primitive societies.
Razib: methodology should be the same no matter what, and defining religious people as non-religious for the purpose of a book seems dishonest to me. It is ridiculous to claim that God has been driven into the private domain, when we have a STATE CHURCH here, that is partly funded by every tax payer (and partly by a voluntary church tax). They also teach christianity in schools here. The author of the book is either ignorant or dishonest. I think he probably is the first of the two, since Denmark does seem very secular to the outsider.