As long as I'm feeling sick, let's make everyone miserable

Is it wrong that the books thing scares me the most?

Because ... uh ... yeah, there's little chance of explaining it to folks without a love of books already. (And anyone who's here is reading, so you all probably get it.)

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school; 42% of college graduates never read another book; 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year; 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

Numbers like this make me cry.

70% of US adults haven't been in a bookstore in the last 5 years? Just think how crowded my local bookery would be if this was a literate country.

Given that you are feeling sick, and given Ed's post on health and gay marrige...the obvious experiment is there to be carried out.
;)

Get well soon, and in the interim, at least you can be cheered by the good news from Ohio.

That 80% number floors me. I feel like I'm accomplishing something if I don't buy a book for myself or someone in my family during a given week.

Wonder how these numbers break down by age strata.

This is just another symptom of the underlying problem.

We not only tolerate stupidity in our society, we inculcate it. This is the sort of thing that results.

I would take these literacy numbers with a grain of salt. While I agree that our literacy numbers could be better I don't think they are that bad. See Reading At Risk (http://www.arts.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf) published in 2002 for a in depth look at literacy statistics.

70% of US adults haven't been in a bookstore in the last 5 years? Just think how crowded my local bookery would be if this was a literate country.

Does the fact that I haven't been in a video store in the last 5 years mean I don't know how to watch movies?

Seriously, folks, keep your hats on. Remember that the US is an aging population and old folks. That's just one caveat out of, oh, hundreds we could think of if we spent a few minutes ... thinking.

Americans may or may not be literate but polls describing how many books they've read lately or how many stores they've wandered into are probably the least accurate way of assessing the situation.

I myself would rather create art or watch a movie by Mikio Naruse or John Ford than read a book. Does that mean I'm not literate?

Nope. It means I'm fucking busy.

"Because ... uh ... yeah, there's little chance of explaining it to folks without a love of books already. (And anyone who's here is reading, so you all probably get it.)"

Not entirely. I'm a book reader myself, but other people (such as my girlfriend) read a lot but rarely read a book. Instead they are news junkies who read several newspapers a day and several news magazines a week, not to mention lots of blogs. There's a difference between a non-reader and a non-book reader.

Since I just posted that book list thing, I should admit exactly how much I get from that.

For the 4th quarter of 2005, Amazon sold $4956.59 worth of books on my referrals. They sent me a gift certificate for $278.07, which of course was immediately spent on more books for me. We're dealing with a rather different slice of the American population here than the average guy--and they're the ones who need the edumacatin'.

How about this one: Most parents think that the state of science education in America is just fine.

WASHINGTON - Science and math have zoomed to the top of the nation's education agenda. Yet Amanda Cook, a parent of two school-age girls, can't quite see the urgency. "In Maine, there aren't many jobs that scream out 'math and science,'" said Cook, who lives in Etna, in the central part of the state. Yes, both topics are important, but "most parents are saying you're better off going to school for something there's a big need for."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060215/ap_on_sc/science_math

"There's a difference between a non-reader and a non-book reader."

Perhaps - reading can have many purposes. But I'm not surprised some forms of communication or studying are becoming less frequent since the number of forms are steadily increasing. Different forms fits different goals or personalities better.

One can look at it as an evolutionary process - and books aren't as fast on it's feet or procreative as electronic medias. :-)

I'm glad I don't fall into any of those categories. And even if I'm not reading a book, I'm reading blogs... Or writing for one. Wish there were more hours in the day.

Heck, as an anime fan, even when I'm watching TV, I'm reading, since I prefer subbed over dubbed, but I don't think that really counts for all that much.

Sorry to be a bore, but does anyone have a real source for these numbers? They seem to be on a lot of blogs, but the lack of any proper attribution raises warning flags.

Literacy is a measure of intellectual health, and it looks like our country is very sick: 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school; 42% of college graduates never read another book; 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year; 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

Since the ultimate reference for this particular tidbit is a now-defunct web site (www.JenkinsGroup.com), I'm extremely skeptical of any of their "statistics." http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm has some more, second hand, that don't exactly jibe with these. (E.g., "81% of the population feels they have a book inside them.")

One can look at it as an evolutionary process - and books aren't as fast on it's feet or procreative as electronic medias.

Yes, but on the other hand, a book can entertain you throughout the entire flight of an airplane. You can't do that with computers or e-books. ;-)

(I'm on vacation right now, so I consider that a pretty important feature.)

Swerve Left (where I first found the stats) gives the following age breakdown:

The mean age of book buyers
1997: Age 15-39: 26.5% of the books bought
2001: Age 15-39: 20.8% of the books bought

1997: Age over 55: 33.7% of the books bought.
2001: Age over 55: 44.1% of the books bought
--Ipsos NPD reported in Publishers Weekly, January 6, 2003

I wonder if parents of college students are credited as purchasing student books. At any rate, it could suggest that as the population ages, reading books will continue to decline. This could also correlate with a loss in critical thinking and evaluation skills.

(ps--thanks for the link and trackback)

Well, these days, most Americans are online. The Internet is a great source of reading material, which includes downloadable books and online libraries, as well as websites which are devoted to all sorts of research subjects. In today's world, it's not necessary to go out and buy books in order to stay literate, even though actual, physical books do add to the reading experience.

90% of statistics are 50% made up. But that's only true 40% of the time.

Geez, I feel bad if I haven't been in a bookstore in the last five DAYS.

The Fundamentalism Kills article misses the point. While ignorance and fear do kill, the religious have done a far better job of killing people off when they know exactly how deadly the results of their actions will be and proceed anyway.

Case in point is the vatican and HIV. The Catholic Church knows that condoms would go a long way to preventing the further spread of AIDS in Africa, but continues to discourage Africans from using them. There is no ignorance of the consequences, and no fear of God's wrath.

Another example based in Africa would be Bush's policy of refusing aid to organisations that provide abortion sevices. Even a man as moronic as George Bush should be able to see how important abortions are to keeping the populations of developing countries in check, and his actions were certainly not motivated by fear.

I know people who read books avidly who haven't bought a book in years.

And I know people who buy more books than they can really afford, and haven't been in a bookstore in years.

That said, this is frightening as hell.

Idiot America indeed...........

I couldn't believe the John Frum thing was true when I saw it a few years ago on an ABC news magazine special. It was right around the same time they were (I think) doing a faux news magazine spoof show and I thought it simply had to be an episode of that... I guess not.

It seems that the "book store" thing is the hot topic.

Does Amazon count? How about Sam's Club? Between those two, I've probably spent 200-300 dollars on books in the last year (paperbacks when possible).

And my kids send me gift books from Amazon as well.

Disclaimer: I'm over 60, and I read myself to sleep every night (usually takes about an hour).

With respect to the woman who killed her child. I hadn't heard about this story before, because it happened while I was in school, and my college was a bit of a bubble. But after a doing some reading, it sounds like she was unstable, and likely to harm someone whether or not she also happened to be a religious nut.

It seems like a differnt thing to kill someone because your religion tells you to do so is appropriate, and to kill someone and to say, "Well, at least she's with God now."

Also, w/r/t those numbers, they look really bogus. Following the links a few levels, they're supposed to have come from the Jerrold Jenkins group, a vanity press.

Further, the collection of numbers at Swerve Left (the source one level beyond PZ's source) is suspect for being self-contradictory. For instance:

--People reduced their time reading between 1996 and 2001 to 2.1 hours/month.
--The time Americans spend reading books.
1996: 123 hours
2001: 109 hours

Which is it, 24 or 109? Clearly, neither would be "enough," but it just seems like a bad idea to draw conclusions from such disembodied statistics.

...42% of college graduates never read another book...

There are that many MBAs?

Sorry, I only left half of the comment I had in mind before.
---
[T]hey're supposed to have come from the Jerrold Jenkins group, a vanity press....

But they don't actually appear on any of that group's websites, that I can find. The websites are pretty generic sales sites, and very poor ones at that. There's virtually no information at all, much less any well-defended claims with data and collection methods.

Here's a real study, and if it's at all reliable the quoted numbers above are bogus. It has 56.6% of the U.S. adult population reading a book during 2002 and 46.7% reading a literary work (p. ix). Lots of breakdowns in the document.

http://www.nea.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf

"In Maine, there aren't many jobs that scream out 'math and science,'" said Cook, who lives in Etna, in the central part of the state. Yes, both topics are important, but "most parents are saying you're better off going to school for something there's a big need for."

This ties in, I think, with the discussion about public perception of science and scientists. It may sound fairly stupid (because of course all children in the area a) are not move away and b)can't waste valuable school time preparing for work in the potato-growing and blueberry-picking industries learning science or math! - But people tend to think and plan based on 'reasonable' expectations, giving what they know and are familiar with. We need PR, exposure, etc. - and fast!

of course
"are not move away"
should be "are not going to move away "
probably with an "ever" thrown in somewhere too . . .

No offense, but...

Since I startedworking, I haven't had time or money to go to bookstores. Seriously. They're so expensive. I buy used books if I can, but more and more the money needs to be spent on food. I borrow books where I can, but 12-hour workdays mean I don't have eye strength to read.

Oh, and that's with a full-time, relatively ok-paying job. What about the hundreds of people who, oh, live in inner-cities where they don't even HAVE bookstores? New York has very few bookstores north of 125th street, where Columbia University is; even Riverdale, where my father has retired, only has libraries, which are mostly geared to kids and school projects these days, because school libraries? Useless. (University libraries in the States I'm not so sure about. My sister went to U. West Virginia, and their college bookstore was run by Barnes and Noble.)

On the plus side, I have first-edition hardcovers of almost all the Gould essay collections, which I get to read and reread. But if I hadn't had a book in the house when I was a kid - I have no idea if I'd be the way I am now. Literacy truly starts at home.

I think I'm the only person to not comment about the literacy part of this post, but I just wanted to say something about the woman that dismembered her baby:

Um, if you cut off your babies arms because you think god told you to, YOU ARE INSANE. What better example of insanity could there be? The point of the insanity defence is that insane people, like this woman, just aren't going to be deterred by regular punishment like prison or the death penalty, because, well, THEY'RE INSANE! So instead they get put in an asylum and get therapy. But really there ain't much intervention-type stuff you can do to stop this kind of thing.

"Yes, but on the other hand, a book can entertain you throughout the entire flight of an airplane. You can't do that with computers or e-books. ;-)"

Different forms fits different goals or personalities better. ;-)

But that said, I do believe LANs and private screens currently are finding their ways into planes.

My own objections are usability in bed or bath. A paper allows a wide range of viewing angles and is safe to submerge. (Or is a last resort for wiping or drying. :-)

"81% of the population feels they have a book inside them."

But most refused to explain how it had got there . . .

um...yeah, I haven't been to a bookstore lately because I'm a librarian and I work in a library. which has books. for free. and I'm a broke, so free is good. library circulation has skyrocketed since the economy has tanked. just 'cos we ain't sending our cash to PublishingMegalopoly don't mean we ain't readin'.

The Dena Schlosser case is horrific, but she is clearly severely mentally ill. The most horrifying part of the story, to me, is that she ran away from her apartment and children, cut herself with scissors, had episodes of fainting, and made only slightly veiled threats to kill her baby -- and her husband and church did nothing but, presumably, try to exorcise her "Jezebel spirit". Her psychiatrist doesn't seem to have been on the ball either, but it's also quite possible that her family wasn't forthcoming with her history when she was less than able to speak for herself.

It makes me feel sick too. One would think that after the Andrea Yates case, people would be aware of this kind of thing. Then again, fundamentalists don't particularly value logic. And, we'd rather call this woman a monster and lock her up than interfere with the "sacred right" of a family to fall apart because no one in it believes that mental illness is a medical rather than a spiritual problem.

70% of US adults haven't been in a bookstore in the last 5 years?

Guilty as charged, unless you count me going into the college bookstore to yell at them for not buying enough books for my freshman chemistry class (again) or going tnto the used book/dvd/cd/video game shop. This is mainly because the bookstores around here have to special-order most books I'd be interested in, and partly because I've lately been into buying 150+ year old chemistry books online to compare the science then with the science now. Try doing that at Barnes and Noble! :)

Oh, and about e-books. That's all I took with me on my last 10 hour plane flight. If your reader won't last that long, you've got the wrong reader. (I use a HP 200LX, which will run for about two to four weeks on a set of two AA batteries.)

Two comments:

God and psychotic disorders have a well established association.

The lack of literacy is associated with more belief in supreme beings.

God and psychotic disorders have a well established association.

But the fact that people with mental disorders imagine crazy things says nothing about why sane people should not indulge in the same delusions.

The cargo cults are rather different animals from the other examples and the version of them preached, eg, on US TV shows, is as mythical as the cargo cults themselves.

There are, indeed, cargo cults, but the practitioners do not worship John Frum.They seek his intercession, something different.

Considering the social/cultural level of the cultists compared with ours, there is considerably less justification for us believing in our version of the myth than for them believing in theirs.

Besides, Professor Myers should be grateful to the Melanesians. They have produced the only known society with no priests, no gods, no kings, no religion and no supernatural rituals. Called the Baining, they live in New Britain and are well described in a book called 'They Make Themselves.'

Besides being the most advanced society in the world, from the professor's viewpoint, otherwise they are about as primitive as it is possible to get.

And they keep slaves.

Be careful what you wish for.

42% of college graduates never read another book

And while I'm recovering from my bout of sinusitis and feeling grumpy, what about the 42% of students who haven't yet graduated college and haven't read any books?

I refer to the student-posted signs I routinely see on campus: "[Some class's] book for sale! Never used! Still in shrinkwrap!"

Like LilLeaguer, I followed the links to the ParaPublishing site, and I must say, they've got a mess of statistics that simply don't add up.

For example, the quoted:
80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
is followed by:
63% of adults report purchasing at least one book during the previous three-month period.

Also the Jenkins Group is not defunct, it was just a bad link. The appear to be a book publishing and marketing firm, the correct link is Jenkins Group.

70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

A lot of people use libraries to get books, so not buying a book doesn't mean they don't read. Also a lot of e-books in pdf form are shared on file sharing networks. Over the past six years I have downloaded gigabytes of e-books. In addition to file sharing networks there are website like Project Gutenberg which has thousands of classics. Another problem with this statistic is that you don't have to go to a bookstore to buy books anymore. Lots of people buy books online.

As a poor student I can't afford to buy many books. I download them (if available) or get it from libraries or read at the bookshop without buying the book. I am not in US, but I think there will be plenty of people in US who do the same.

I refer to the student-posted signs I routinely see on campus: "[Some class's] book for sale! Never used! Still in shrinkwrap!"
It may be that they dropped out of the class.

"But the fact that people with mental disorders imagine crazy things says nothing about why sane people should not indulge in the same delusions."

By what standard are those people sane? (Let's not bring the ridiculously wishy-washy DSM definition of 'sanity' into the discussion, please.)

By what standard is any given religious person sane? All else being equal, how about "by any reasonable standard"? Confused and insane are pretty distinct concepts.

My point was only that you can't use the fact that a lot of crazy people are also religious to argue that religion is silly. It's silly for a set of other, more important, reasons.

"Literacy is a measure of intellectual health, and it looks like our country is very sick...."

I had to dig down about four layers of links to figure out at least even vaguely where these figures come from; I know how people just love to believe this stuff, and typically the cited stats are complete bullshit.

In this case, we get here, and find:

Most statistics are dated. Some are not new but are the latest we could find. Figures are for the United States unless otherwise noted.

You may repeat any of these numbers as long as you cite http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm and the reference, if noted, as the sources. Remember, without this site, you would not have found the statistic.

So, first off all, the people violating this are screwing these folks, and violating the terms of permission.

Second of all, if you read it, many of the cites are many years old: 1998, 1988, 1996, etc. It's a big pile 'o mess.

So, yeah, the typical crap bullshit about U.S. reading habits and book-buying, more than not. But people want to believe. The past was always better (bullpucky; only if you compare old elites to current masses, at best, more than not).

P.Z., tsk, tsk. Not good to pass on this sort of unchecked, incorrect, dated, misinformation. Perhaps a correction, maybe?

"By what standard is any given religious person sane?"

Statistics alone. When a delusion becomes popular enough, it is considered normal and clear-sightedness is considered deviant.

Books is really depressing - it is another step on the sleepwalk to Gilead, I presume.

As for "fundamentalism", well I'll say it again:
propositions 2 and 5 are the especially relevant ones here.

1. No god can be detected - OR - God is not detectable
2. All religions are blackmail, and are based on fear and superstition.
3. All religions have been made by men.
4. Prayer has no effect on third parties.
5. All religions kill, or enslave, or torture.

At least some of those books statistics -- the really frghtening ones -- seem to me phoney. If you go through to the Poynter.org site where most have been lifted, the really shocking ones are credited to one Jerrold Jenkins. Who he? A shill for his own publishing racket: from his own web site --

Jerry is known for delivering creative marketing solutions to public relation firms and Fortune 500 corporations. The company's success in utilizing books for the pharmaceutical and manufacturing industry has cultivated repeat business from many of the top corporations in the world. Jerry and his staff work strategically to create or customize the perfect corporate promotion according to the client's marketing needs.

Thus he is selling fake books to people who would never read real ones. The statistics are bad, and I can well believe that 42% of college graduates never open another book, but they can't be as truly awful as this would make them seem.

Note that one of the Poynter stats is that 81% of the population feel they have a book inside them. They might change their minds if they ever opened one.

About the woman and baby:
Ironically up untill the time she chopped her babys arms off and probaly even afterwards, a lot of people would have judged her a better person than athiestic you and me because of her belief.

"They have produced the only known society with no priests, no gods, no kings, no religion and no supernatural rituals."

http://www.art-pacific.com/artifacts/nuguinea/nbritain/bainings.htm :

"The first man to arrive at the work site in the morning throws in a stick to chase off any spirits (aios) lurking about. The men purify themselves at a nearby stream before coming home."

http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/gallery/baining_gimi_people86/corbin_essay.h… :

"While there has been no archaeological research conducted in the Baining areas, a long period of residence in the Gazelle Peninsula is suggested by the lack of migration myths and preponderance of creation myths about Baining ancestors originating in the territories they inhabit."

"In some Chachet areas the lower sculptural forms also depict tree forks, animal and human bones, and other forms associated with ancestors or spirits."

"The tree is also thought to have magical curative powers."

Contrary to the claim it seems the Baining have creation myths, spirit beliefs, magical beliefs and supernatural rituals (warding off spirits, purification).

Be careful what you believe in.

Gary Farber--are you including the link as an example of better statistics or of bad ones? I'm assuming the latter because the link includes the Jenkins statistics. Also, it isn't clear to me why the fact that there are different dates on the surveys is a problem. What the differences in dates could suggest are changes over time or alert people that we should not assume an 8 year old survey is still valid. The nea study (linked to above by c) is interesting and useful; it's limit is that it focuses on reading literature rather than reading book more generally.

"Island of the Sequined Love Nun" by Christopher Moore is a great take on the Cargo cults and what they are like. Highly recommended for it's silliness.

The way "Cargo Cults" have been presented to modern popular culture is a bit misleading. Most anthropologists only agree that our interpretation and presentation of cargo cultism (with this Frum group as a specific example) is very poor, indeed.

In fact, there is a lot of evidence that this group is doing what a lot of so-called stone age groups have done when exposed to the outside world: they go through the motions of their "customs" to satisfy some notion of proscribed primitivism.

This island gets a fair amount of tourism, and has for several decades.

Some have compared what these guys are doing with those "see how our forefathers lived" tourist villages that North Americans love so much. That is, people may be acting out these strange rituals for much different reasons than a.) they say to us and b.) we are prepared to present on our TV shows.

All I'm saying is maintain a high level of thoughtful criticism when confronted with stories of anachronistic primitives.

Yes, cargo cults exist, but what do they mean?

"By what standard is any given religious person sane? All else being equal, how about "by any reasonable standard"? Confused and insane are pretty distinct concepts."

Actually, they're not.

Your inability to state the standards you're using to evaluate such an important concept as 'sanity' speaks volumes.

"81% of the population feels they have a book inside them."

Then Spencer said:

But most refused to explain how it had got there . . .

No, it's the Darwinists who have no explanation -- none -- for how these books, in all of their irreduceable complexity, came to be. I mean, what good would half a book be? Vellum, parchment, hardbound, paperback... this is just variation in kind. If books evolved from apes, why are there still apes? There are NO BOOKS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD!

Netcraft confirms it,Darwinism is dying.

I'm not evaluating anyone as sane. What I'm saying is:

-- Give me someone, call him X, who you think is sane. I don't care what criteria you use.

-- The claim "lots of crazy people are religious" has no bearing on whether or not X ought to, or ought not to, engage in religious practices.

"At any rate, it could suggest that as the population ages, reading books will continue to decline. This could also correlate with a loss in critical thinking and evaluation skills."

It's more likely to correlate with an increase in corneal opacity and eyestrain. bring on real Large Print Books.

When will we see something like Dennett's _Breaking the Spell_
in large print?

"As you'll see in the comments, the sources for those last statistics aren't just wobbly, they're downright dishonest."

Good show. Well done.

I'm liable to steal the Frum link when I'm more awake, after having gotten around to reading it last night, because I lurve cargo cult stories; I'm quite familiar with this particular one, but the article is new and nicely done, and thus a good excuse to be simultaneously amused and saddened by cargo cults.

Jodi: "Gary Farber--are you including the link as an example of better statistics or of bad ones?"

Neither; that's the pentultimate source of the stats PJ originally posted, which you'll see if you bother to look. Which is what I said.

"Also, it isn't clear to me why the fact that there are different dates on the surveys is a problem."

A) It wasn't just the dates, but the fact that they were a complete hodgepodge of sources and methodologies, most of which weren't even remotely transparent, and therefore most of which weren't remotely trustworthy or reliable.

B) The subsequent sources depending upon that site all implicitly or explicitly asserted they were descriptive of our present. You can't use data scattered from a bunch of different years to back an assertion as to what the current situation is, or was last year.

c) if one is actually familiar with actual literacy and book-buying statistics and trends in the last decade, and prior decade, it's a bunch of crap. It's classic "Things Used To Be Better"-ism.

However, feel free to look into it yourself, if you wish to devote the time to the research.

My two cents on literacy in America: we are in the deep waters, folks.

Children of the Code

Approximately 100 million American adults are living lives diminished by how poorly they learned to read:

"In the early 1990's we estimated that there were about 90 million adults with low literacy skills; about half of them at the lowest level. There has been substantial corroboration of these numbers since then coming from different quarters. In November of 2003 we estimated that those numbers will increase sharply." Robert Wedgeworth, President, ProLiteracy (COTC interview)

Our children are more at risk for life-harm due to reading difficulties then from all other diseases, disorders, disasters and crimes combined.

Children of the Code

Gary, I did look. That's why I asked the question. Some of the statistics on that site were reliable; some were not. The inclusion of dates seemed to provide some context.

Torbjorn, a 21st century art historian is not a reliable source for chthonic Baining society.

Since the 1950s, some Baining have become Protestants.

When first encountered by westerners, about a century ago, they were as I described. They did, indeed, dance in masks, but not to anything. Like my friends in high school, they just danced.

Notoriously among anthropologists, Bateson said, 'The Baining broke my heart,' because their lack of ritual or supernatural belief wrecked his -- and everybody else's -- attempts to devise a general theory of social evolution.

I got this out of a book. You won't find it on Google.

Be careful of your sources.

(Somewhat ironically, given the overall theme of this thread, I am one of those people who seldom enters a bookstore.)

"Torbjorn, a 21st century art historian is not a reliable source for chthonic Baining society."

Those are two presumably independent sources.

Chthonic - I'm not sure why you call them an underworld society?!

"Since the 1950s, some Baining have become Protestants. When first encountered by westerners, about a century ago, they were as I described."

I have a hard time reconcile christian beliefs and beliefs in spirits, magic and local creation myths.

"Be careful of your sources."

Yes. I have two and you have one. Who do you believe I trust?

http://newssearch.looksmart.com/p/articles/mi_qa3654/is_199906/ai_n8833…
"Within anthropology they have, however, since Bateson's unsuccessful fieldwork amongst them and his subsequent pronunciation that they were 'unstudiable', been rather more infamous for the difficulty in getting to 'know' them well at all."

http://www.gwu.edu/~asc/people/Bateson/bio.html
"Bateson refers to his anthropological field work among the Baining as a failure because he felt he "didn't know what he was doing.""

Be careful of your sources.

My source is Jane Fajans, who lived among the Baining, not Bateson.

Two bad sources are just as good as one bad source, you know.

I know Europe is pretty well secularized, but I cannot believe even in Europe people have a hard time reconciling Christianity with magic, spirits and creation myths.

Which would bring us back around to John Frum. But Baining are not cargo cultists.

"My source is Jane Fajans, who lived among the Baining, not Bateson."

Why didn't you say so then?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226234444/102-1068087-5459310?v=glanc…
"In a new work sure to evoke considerable repercussions and debate in anthropological theory, Jane Fajans courageously takes on the "Baining Problem," arguing that the Baining define themselves not through intricate cosmologies or social networks, but through the meanings generated by their own productive and reproductive work."

So let's see how the new work, that breaks with all the old research, will be treated. Meanwhile I stick with those two observers, that while not professional, agree that Bainings have, and probably always had (ancestor creation myths), religious behaviours.

"I know Europe is pretty well secularized, but I cannot believe even in Europe people have a hard time reconciling Christianity with magic, spirits and creation myths."

I'm not sure what you mean; when you say "Since the 1950s, some Baining have become Protestants" that means they are influenced by christians. Christians frown upon magic, spirits and ancestor creation myths. (While the two first elements, and another type of creation myth, sure appears in their books. But religion isn't logical.)

(Somewhat ironically, given the overall theme of this thread, I am one of those people who seldom enters a bookstore.)

Yeah, me too: I prefer Amazon, or going into Borders and buying 6 books in one go, because I hate leaving my apartment.

I did say so. I named her book.

If you really believe that Christians frown on magic, spirits and creation myths, you must not get out even as much as Alon.

As I mentioned on another thread here, I have been present at dozens of Assembly of God exorcisms. Check out www.csnradio.com/tema for the views of Calvary Chapel.

I cannot, off the top of my head, guide you to a Roman Catholic website about demons and spirits, but my Italian grandmother certainly believed in them.

"I did say so. I named her book."

Yes. But you made it sound like your support were Bateson.

"If you really believe that Christians frown on magic, spirits and creation myths, you must not get out even as much as Alon."

Those are my years of experiences of both regular and cultist christians hereabouts, and what I read about them in other parts of the world. It ususally, especially other creation myths, threaten their organised religion.

"exorcisms" "demons"

Interesting, according to Wikipedia exorcisms are part of many religions. But my experience has been that the ideas of angels and demons prohibits christians to acknowledge other spirits.

I still believes there are doubts that the case of the Bainings are as clearcut as you described it. I can find antropologists that say there are cults there with ancestral reincarnations: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/?view=usa&ci=0198279817

I have also doubts about how Fajans treated spirits: "Therefore, the act of divination does not serve simply as an explanation of death in terms of wrong, misfortune, carelessness or the malevolence of people and spirits in the past, and the relegation of the deceased to the realm of the spirits as Fajans (1997:159) argued for the Baining, but it also rearranges temporality and the ways of life and death in the future." http://newssearch.looksmart.com/p/articles/mi_m2472/is_1_12/ai_72299822…

Until a professional antropologist pitches in and explain the latest view on their virgin culture, I guess we will have this difference in opinion.

Now you have completely lost me. If angels are not spirits, what are they?

As for the ability of Christians to maintain a variety of creation myths,in addition to the Garden of Eden, again I recommend 'To Every Man an Answer,' especially its Noachic recreation myth that proposes that until the Flood the Earth had a population as large as today's.

And as for views of the Baining's 'virgin culture,' what can be observed today tells us little about that. They have endured about 50 years of intense and sudden exposure to unBaining ideas. That is as great as the distance the Hawaiians traveled between 1819 and 1869, and no one would propose that Hawaiian spiritual beliefs in 1869 bore any more than a distant relation to their preContact ideas.

Anyhow, my original point was that Professor Myers, perhaps because of cultural unfamiliarity, wrongly lumped cargo in with other religious excesses.

It is unfortunate that ignorant westerners named it the cargo cult, because originally it was neither a religious cult nor a political party, though lately it has picked up aspects of both.

Cargo was a purely naturalistic response to the appearance of desirable goods, around 1944, and the cargo 'airfields' to attract cargo were no more religious in nature than the DarDevl fishing lures that Professor Myers's neighbors use to attract fish are.

I threw in the Baining because Professor Myers is a militant atheist who had not -- I'm willing to bet -- heard about an entirely atheist society until last week. And also as a corrective to the idea, which he was unwittingly spreading, that black-skinned Melanesians are backward and ignorant savages.

In some ways they are, in some ways they are not. Their sailing equipment was more advanced than anything Europe had before the 1890s; and Douglas Oliver, a tough critic, considered them to be the finest gardeners in the world.

"If angels are not spirits, what are they?"

Probably not the spirits that the Bainings throw sticks at. (Properly, I think they are rather demigods, but the difference may be rather arbitrary and not to the point you raised.)

"Anyhow, my original point was that Professor Myers, perhaps because of cultural unfamiliarity, wrongly lumped cargo in with other religious excesses."

Okay.

"an entirely atheist society"

Well, my personal doubts about the validity of this claim remains, so as I said, we have a difference in opinion here.

In the South Pacific, villagers worship an American named John Frum who lives in a volcano and has promised them much cargo.

There's also an offshoot of this group who believe that he went off to England and married a powerful woman there - they're now worshiping Prince Phillip (husband of the Queen). They sent him one of their ceremonial spears, and he returned the favour by sending them an photo of himself holding said spear.

(Here's the only definite news story on this I could easily find)