Chart of the Day - 12.09.2008
| Tue Dec. 9, 2008 3:33 PM PST
CHART OF THE DAY....Adapted from Secular Right, here's a graph showing frequency of prayer plotted against strength of partisanship. The data is from the General Social Survey. Apparently, strong political partisans also tend to pray a lot. Weak partisans and independents, not so much. The effect is roughly the same if you confine the analysis to whites only.
Why? Is it just a reflection that some people are strong believers and others aren't, and this temperamental cast applies to everything they believe in? Or is it something else? Speculate away!
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Continued From Above
Comments
A few comments?
1. Asking people about their religious practices is like asking them about their sex lives: we can be sure that many of them will lie. In this case, we can be certain that frequency of prayer is exaggerated across the board.
2. Jasper is surely right in his explanation of the high prayerfulness of strong Dems and strong Republicans. (Strong Dems are an exception to Kevin's observation that the results are similar when just whites are considered.)
3. Libertarians and leftists probably include a disproportionate number of atheists and agnostics, and may also be heavily inclined to weak or no party identification, since neither party is entirely acceptable to them. That would help explain the high numbers of non-prayers in the middle columns.
4. None of this explains Joe's observation that the non-prayers are apparently fewer than atheists, as reported in other surveys, since self-reporting atheists aren't likely to be shy about reporting that they don't pray. So sampling error in one or other of the surveys is a likely explanation.
Submitted by cleek (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 3:40 PM PST.
independents realize it's all a bunch of crap.
The problem is that they asked how often people prayed, but not what they prayed about. If I were strongly partisan, my frequency of prayer would also increase. But the additional prayers would mostly be "I pray I'm not crazy for believing in a political party."
Praying all the time is like your crazy uncle calling you every hour or two.
Think about it. How often would you actually respond ?
"...A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it's true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt...." - Thomas Jefferson
Is this claimed prayer, or prayer?
Click the link. This is based on NSA prayer intercepts cross referenced with political affiliation (determined from safeway clubcard purchases) and skin tone reflectance standardized to the new Google satelite standard.
Ah, then. Thank you for clearing that up Monroe.
I am glad I signed up to swap my Safeway club cards with others. http://safewayclubcardswap.org
Submitted by Maynard Handley (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 4:45 PM PST.
Prayer means what exactly? The god as father christmas model of the world?
"Hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking space"?
As far as I can tell, the people who are going around praying a lot are the people who are praying for their football team to win.
In other words, the correlation is pretty much:
stupidity = praying a lot = being a strong partisan
My speculation: The more religious, and thus the more likely to pray, a person is, the stronger their belief is in their faith construct. With that as their guide, these people see issues as more black and white and become more strongly partisan.
Submitted by Chris Brown (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 6:54 PM PST.
My response? It's the same as when I read of the latest drug trial report in a medical journal or the latest survey result related to any subject, it's BS.
Submitted by Maynard Handley (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 7:02 PM PST.
"Maynard Handley: stupidity = praying a lot
One of the things I love about the liberal blogosphere is the strong message of tolerance."
Great Alex. So do we have you as going on record as agreeing that the role of god is to provide goodies to the people who whine most aggressively? By the way, do you happen to believe that this is the official position of most established churches?
After all I assume, given the way you're so aggrieved by my post, that you don't have a problem with my characterization of prayer --- after all you did not in any way comment on it, did you.
I have to agree with the post from Jerry. This seems to be another example of the Kevin Drum "thing that makes you go Hmm" fetish. Another pretty graph that shows a correlation between two dissparate things and seems to speak something profound about our society. But it's probably more junk science than anything else. Surveys are notoriously unreliable and the information can be massaged to pulp. Kevin, I love you, and I know you have to make several posts a day, but you could try to be a little more relevant sometimes.
Maynard Handley: I assume ... you don't have a problem with my characterization of prayer
Was I too subtle? In the quixotic spirit, I'll try again.
Anybody who writes "stupidity = praying a lot" is being narrow-minded and intolerant. You know, the hallmarks of an autocratic mindset, of the sort whose insecurities are often assuaged by childish denigrations of anyone whose beliefs differ from their own. Ironically, theocratic tendencies are one manifestation of this mindset.
Is that clear enough?
Submitted by Maynard Handley (not verified) on Tue Dec. 9, 2008 8:19 PM PST.
alex, do you not understand how sarcasm works?
Read my fscking first post. Read the WHOLE thing. Read especially the part where I ask "Prayer means what exactly?"
Are you too damn stupid to understand the point the post is making?
Or, to put it in words of simple english:
(a) Do you consider it to be a prayer when someone says
"Dear god, please cover the point spread on the lakers tonight"?
(b) Do you consider the people who make such entreaties to be, on average, in the higher or the lower half of the IQ distribution?
This graph does not say much because it is stacked. If you look at the orange, green and yellow blocks - they are the about the same size across the board which means people who pray moderately are evenly split across the political spectrum. The only thing that shows a variance is people who pray many times are hard core in their political beliefs as well as their religious beliefs.
This also depends on how a person defines "prayer." Prayer does not have to be a formal "Dear God" with bowed head. Prayer can be action as well as words. The way you live and interact in your daily life can be be a prayer. I'm sure the way a person defines prayer affects their answer, and that certainly skews the chart. I'm guessing that the more religious would have a broader definition of prayer than those defined as "less" relirious. But a "less" religious person may live a life of prayer and not think about it as such.
Am I the only one who's noticed that the survey results produce a smiley graphic?
And perhaps that's ALL this survey is good for. Who cares if people who pray more have more extreme beliefs?
Oh wait... that leads to religious extremism. Hmmm... we don't really want that, do we? So maybe there IS a point here.
A few comments
1. Asking people about their religious practices is like asking them about their sex lives: we can be sure that many of them will lie. In this case, we can be certain that frequency of prayer is exaggerated across the board.
2. Jasper is surely right in his explanation of the high prayerfulness of strong Dems and strong Republicans. (Strong Dems are an exception to Kevin's observation that the results are similar when just whites are considered.)
3. Libertarians and leftists probably include a disproportionate number of atheists and agnostics, and may also be heavily inclined to weak or no party identification, since neither party is entirely acceptable to them. That would help explain the high numbers of non-prayers in the middle columns.
4. None of this explains Joe's observation that the non-prayers are apparently fewer than atheists, as reported in other surveys, since self-reporting atheists aren't likely to be shy about reporting that they don't pray. So sampling error in one or other of the surveys is a likely explanation.
I'd be curious to see if Democrats and Republican define prayer differently. For example, some folks think prayer is asking God for something... for others, just talking with God is also prayer.
Second, I don't think that Democrats and Republicans are necessarily more or less religious. I think that they participate and believe differently. For example, I observe that Christian religious Republicans discuss more old testament stuff... homosexuality, creationism, how the Sabbath is kept. While Christian Democrats tend more towards new testament stuff like helping poor and needy people, forgiving transgressions, loving those that are hard to love.
Just my observations...
Pray,n. To ask the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. - Ambrose Bierce
"Roger, all prayers are answered. She just didn't get the answer she wanted." Nick Nolte as Bob in The Good Thief.
