Tramps I would have to see all the data they used to help create that graph to say anything of real use, but as it is displayed it is appears to be quite misleading. For example, China and Russia are both relatively low-income, low-"religiousity" (assuming the term means what it appears to mean, fraction of the population attending formal services at some rate) countries and both appear to be missing from the graph. Also missing is Saudi Arabia which is a high-income high-religiousity country. It is also misleading for them to list as separate several countries from Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe. These areas are all demographically very similar. It is like listing each U.S. state separately and then claiming that this shows if wealth gets high enough then religiosity starts to increase again. Regions should be clustered by demographic characteristics and not country since the latter is quite arbitrary. Once you do that it seems likely the evidence would be much weaker for their thesis than they appear to claim in that graph. I am not saying the basic point the graph is designed to convey is right or wrong, I lack the data at hand to know and I am not planning to dig it up either. But, absent something more, that graph is of questionable statistical value.

A couple of quck comments here this morning: Thanks for the comments Spareribs. There is no problem. Tramps.......good job on this however, I hope you have E & O insurance. You have left me enough space in your statements to drive a Mac truck through. There definitely is another side to some (not all) of your statements. While I don't want to necessarily get into a debate going back and forth, I would like to let you understand some of what "the other side" would think. I am no where near as educated as you, so it will take me a few days to form my statement to get back here with. So bear with me........my silence is not from a lack of interest or an avoidance. My hope is to explain my statements from the other day. Your comment about our "lack of clarity and precision in language" is at issue here. Anyway, I will be back for my final statement. Joey

Twocat--actually, if you pop over to the full report you'll see Russia and China were included among the countries sampled. Russia is one of the six Eastern European nations that group closely together (the others were Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Czech Rep and Slovakia). China is included too but Asian countries, as you see, are quite diverse and spread out across this graph. Neither country is low-income in global terms; both would rank in the middle third or so of world nations in terms of per capital GDP, with Russia being higher on that list. If there's contradictory data out there, I'd be interested in seeing it. BTW, more limited studies (fewer countries, different ways to measure "religiosity" etc) have found similar things for years; the basic point about education/wealth being inversely correlated with religiosity is widely acknowledged amongst scholars in this area. The pattern is not quite as dramatic, but still clear, when you look at variation within the US, for example in this graph: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/11/religiosity_and.html The real debates are about precisely why this is the case and about how particular national characteristics can create outliers--the US and Kuwait's high religiosity despite their wealth, for example. I have theories about that, but no solid data. P.S. Ugh. I seem to have trouble posting links for some reason. If you cut and past the link it works. P.P.S. Vista, look forward to your thoughts. I suspect we agree about more of this than we disagree. That's the nice thing about sharing thoughts.

... oops, double click Well, since I'm here, there's an extra space in the earlier link (extra %20)

The real debates are about precisely why this is the case

That certainly is were it gets interesting. Wealth (to me) seems easier to understand. People have all their needs taken care of and develop a false sense of control/security. It isn't until the end of life, or some type of disaster or crisis comes that people are forced to realize that the control they thought they had was just an illusion. It doesn't make everyone suddenly religious, but it does make people think a little bit more about how they got here and is there any purpose to it all. Education is different. I've read people like Dawkins (The God Delusion, etc.) and they try to make the point that educated people are too smart for religious beliefs. Trouble is that some of the most educated people have deep religious beliefs. On a wide scale part of the correlation could be due to the type of education people have been getting the last 50 years or so. At the unspoken foundation is an illogical form or naturalism. Somehow, energy and matter exist either popping out of nothing, or they are somehow self-existent. It isn't really "taught" that way, but that is the hidden assumption. Any attempt to teach about a Creator or even Aristotle's First Cause are shot down as mixing religion and state. But leaving the discussion out all together is not logical. Once you think everything just "is", no thought of religion is necessary. Just my 2 cents worth. Or I guess I'm up to a dime's worth by now. I do understand that no matter what anyone believes - Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Objectivist (Ayn Rand), etc. - that more than half the world is going to disagree with you. I don't mean to offend anyone with my thoughts and it is impossible to offend me in this area.