Truth
Classifying Nations by Religious Opinion
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, 11 November 2003
Is Religion Genetic?
George Bishop, Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati, in Free Inquiry 19:3 presented some figures collected by the 1991 International Social Survey Program survey which show remarkable variations in belief across countries. This might be a surprise to many Americans who are convinced that so many of their compatriots are religious that the trait must be genetic. But then Americans in general know so little about the rest of the world, it ought not to be a surprise at all.
The Gallup Poll traditionally samples the belief of US citizens with the question, “Do you believe in God, or a universal spirit?” Around 95 percent of US adults have said they did for many decades. Presented with the statement, “I know God exists and I have no doubts about it,” NORC (The National Opinion Research Center) invites respondents to agree or not, offering them degrees of confidence as multiple choice answers. A much smaller majority of Americans—62.8 percent—were able to agree unequivocally with this. Questionnaire construction is important in understanding the results from surveys. They cannot be uncritically believed and have to be considered as a whole.
Survey Questions
The data from the ISSP surveys shows that the degree of religious belief is not as widespread, persistent, and universal as Americans think. Religion is therefore more likely to be a cultural phenomenon than a biological one as some people try to persuade themselves. The survey results Bishop presented were to the answers to the following statements in 17 countries across the world:
- I know God exists and I have no doubts about it.
- I definitely believe in Life after Death.
- I definitely believe the Bible is the actual word of God and it is to be taken literally, word for word.
- I definitely believe in the Devil.
- I definitely believe in hell.
- I definitely believe in heaven.
- I definitely believe in religious miracles.
- In your opinion, how true is this? Human beings developed from earlier species of animals.
Results
The two data files in the download show the percentage responding affirmatively and the rankings of the seventeen nations (Slovenia, East Germany, US, Philippines, Northern Ireland, Poland, Irish Republic, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, GB, West Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Russia, Hungary).
The original data can be had from Professor Bishop’s article on the Council for Secular Humanism website. The data files are only text files, so can be opened with an editor like Notepad and changed for testing. These line charts and the following block chart show the variation of the eight religiosity measures by country:
The following chart is a perceptual map of the data. It is based on mutual correlations between all of the measures for all of the nations, two principle components (PC1 and PC2) being chosen as the best correlates and then used as references for correlations with all the rest of the data. Broadly PC1 here gives a range of religiosity from low to high, which is why all the religiosity measures are near the top of this axis, and PC2 seems to relate mainly with the spread of beliefs from a common level of agreement on broad measures to specifically belief in God and the bible.
Perceptual map for 17 nations based on religiosity measures
The perceptial map is useful for showing how the elements group. Some data seem to be missing because they are obscured by those shown. The vertical scale seems to be general religiosity, all of the measures being towards the top of it. The horizontal scale shows distinctions among the measures among the nations. Measures such as belief in heaven, hell, miracles, and the Devil seem to be less strongly held than accepting the bible and God. Most nations are in the lower left quadrant. They are generally skeptical. The US and NI are highest on the vertical scale of general religiosity, all being near the top of this scale. The Philippines are also high, but are over towards the right perhaps showing some spread in religiosity on the different measures that apply to them, belief being dominated by belief in God and the bible. Poland is similar.
The US and Northern Ireland stand out as being so closely similar their data points coincide on the perceptual map, and because their people have strong beliefs on all the measures. Cairns (1991) reported that almost everyone in Northern Ireland claimed church membership, and 62% attend church at least weekly, yet for almost a century since its foundation Northern Ireland has been divided along religious lines, and murder and violence has been the result.
Using the AW! program Cluster Analysis yields the following dendrograms, based respectively on the actual answers and then the rankings. (Download data and cluster analysis program.)
Cladogram based on Percentages
Cladogram based on Rank Order
Discussion
The dendrograms are sensible outcomes of the data in that they seem to reflect generally the religion and situation of the respective countries. The remarkable thing is that the US is shown to be astonishingly like Northern Ireland in its religious outlook. These two countries are quite distinct from the other fifteen nations based on actual percentage answers. There has been a vast sectarian divide in Northern Ireland over many decades, and a civil war between bigoted Catholics and even more bigoted Protestants. The Catholics have called and implemented a truce but the Protestants, named Orangemen, would not accept it. Prospects were dim for a settlement between these religious nuts, but there has been an uneasy truce lately. Is the US really deeply sectarian like NI in its religious belief, and what does it mean for the future if it is? Should we envisage a sectarian war in the US, a new civil war based on religious intolerance? It looks possible.
Based on rank order, the US and NI remain most closely linked to each other, but do cluster with some other countries. These countries are the Irish Republic, the Philippines and Poland, all strongly religious countries, but Catholic! The next nearest to them are a surprising linked pair, Italy and Israel, and then there is the wide gap between these and the rest. The rest split more or less into two barely distinct blocs, the former communist countries, and the western European countries in the Protestant tradition with a few small exceptions like Austria whose outlook is similar to that of the Western Germans. New Zealand is part of this bloc too. Great Britain is closest to Norway, then the Netherlands and New Zealand. Nothing really surprising there. All of the countries in these two blocs seem to be essentially secular, or at least religiously liberal, though the recent New Labour government in the UK, under the directorship of Tony Blair has begun to foment religious differences by favouring the so-called “faith” schools.
Conclusion
The variation in religious opinion across these Christian countries shows that the religious life is more likely to be cultural than biological as some Christians would like to believe. The US is classified with the strongly Catholic, and often, until the last century, backward countries like Northern Ireland and Ireland, Poland and the Philippines, and Israel comes out as if it were a Catholic country in religious outlook, which must be a severe disappointment to US Fundamantalists who aim to convert the Jews to Protestantism in anticipation of the Second Coming! But secularists in the US should watch out for the simmering sectarianism in the country, doubtless fostered by extreme Protestant fundamentalism.
- More about religion and psychology at 323Psychology.php and succeeding pages.
