People who are more intelligent and more politically liberal tend to be less religious. Jews (i.e. Ashkenazi Jews, if they're American) are both, so we'd expect them to be more atheistic. And everyone knows they are. But what about if we compare them to their white Gentile counterparts who are also smart and liberal?
The three graphs below show the responses of people who are white, identify as liberal in their political views (from "slightly" to "extremely" liberal), and score at least 120 on an IQ test (or, for the first graph where that didn't give a big sample size, an IQ of at least 114). That's what used to be called "college material" before everyone got into college. They are then split up by religious preference.
First, here's a graph showing how confident you are in the existence of god:
Christians are exactly the same, with just over 40% knowing god exists without a doubt, and less than 10% being atheists or agnostics. Remember that these Christians are white, college-material liberals. Not surprisingly the "no religion" group are much more doubtful of god's existence. Jews are in between, with just over 20% being sure and nearly 30% being atheists or agnostics. Even controlling for brains and liberalism, Jews are noticeably less religious than Christians.
The next graph shows attitudes about the Bible, not specified as the Old Testament or both it and the New Testament. Possible responses are, "1. The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word. 2. The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word. 3. The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men."
Again the Christian groups are identical, with about 25% saying it's legends, etc., not the inspired or actual word of god. No shock that the "no religion" folks hold that view overwhelmingly, about 85%. Again the Jews are in between, though closer to the "no religion" group, with a little over 60% holding the non-divine view.
Finally, there's how often people attend religious services (which type of services is left open and unspecified -- so, any services). The less frequent bars are lower down in each column:
Here we find a subtle but noticeable difference within Christians, reflecting the greater orientation among Catholics toward church ritual, compared to Protestants. The "no religion" people hardly go at all, those who do attend presumably not being "out" or accomodating the wishes of their religious friends and family. Jews once more are in between Christians and "no religion" people, closer to the latter. Those who attend services nearly every week, every week, or more than once a week make up about 30% of Protestants, 40% of Catholics, 2% of "no religion" people, and 7% of Jews.
Looking only at whites who are pretty smart and politically liberal, Jews still come out as far less religious regarding their beliefs about supernatural higher powers, their attitudes toward sacred texts, and their participation in ritual practices. If anything, they're more like those who profess no religion, making phrases like "Jewish atheism" somewhat redundant.
This uniquely Jewish tendency toward atheism must reflect some other difference between them and the goyim, not race, IQ, or liberalism. The ecology that the Ashkenazim are adapted to is white-collar financial work, often in the service of the state. So the religious lobe of their brain has evolved to take as its object of worship the technocracy and technology that can deliver him into paradise, not something superstitious like the grace of god, or something less supernatural but still transcendental like loving thy neighbor as thyself.
And of course there are differences in the religions that the Jew and the Christian are exposed to growing up. Both religions build on the Old Testament, but the New Testament has an exciting new cast of characters who illustrate moral points during dramatic narratives, whereas the Talmud can only come off to youngsters as pointless grown-up bickering about whether grandpa is allowed to clean out his earwax on the Sabbath or has to hire a shabbos goy to do it for him.
It cannot surprise us that what we call "Judaism" -- i.e., Rabbinic Judaism -- hasn't gone anywhere, while the world has been taken over by Christianity and Islam, the other successful Abrahamic religion that also stars a dramatic new figure not found in the Old Testament. What makes Judaism unappealing to would-be convert outsiders probably makes it unappealing to in-group members too. So, Jews' lack of enthusiasm for religion is understandable, apart from their low baseline as shaped by their managerial ecological niche.
All that really is left for them to get excited about is the stuff that would only appeal to insiders, and perhaps explicitly turn off the outsiders. But that shades so easily into ethnic, rather than religious, chauvinism that they'll just get excited about their ethnicity instead of their religion. And sure enough, "proud to be a Jew" refers to the accomplishments of those in their ethnic group, not the beliefs and practices of their religious group.
GSS variables used: race, polviews, wordsum, relig, god, bible, attend.
It depends on how you define "religious." If being religious includes believing in an anthropolomorphic supernatural being, then many people will consider themselves atheists.
ReplyDeleteBut if "religious" simply means having a supra-rational set of governing beliefs about reality, then almost everybody is religious. Most atheists simply substitute god with liberalism, with its subsets feminism, environmentalism, anti-racism, et al.
I call it supra-rational, because, like with traditional religions, whenever their liberal ideology comes in conflict with empirical facts, liberalism wins.
i know that jews are really really smart because they have yet to figure out their own leadership herded 'em into the camps
ReplyDeletejoe
Could this be due in part to the fact that atheist who was raised Jewish will probably still self-identify as Jewish, whereas an atheist who was raised Christian will be more likely to say "no religion"? There are ex-Christians, but there's no such thing as an ex-Jew.
ReplyDeleteI would doubt American Jews are too different to British goyim here, or European goyim in general, particularly Northern European.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this has much to do with a "religious lobe" difference between Europeans and European Americans.
Both religions build on the Old Testament, but the New Testament has an exciting new cast of characters who illustrate moral points during dramatic narratives, whereas the Talmud can only come off to youngsters as pointless grown-up bickering about whether grandpa is allowed to clean out his earwax on the Sabbath or has to hire a shabbos goy to do it for him.
By the same token though, I'd imagine some Christian arguments about the "mystery" of the trinity or the Immaculate Conception or whatever obscure points of salvific logic Christians are concerned about that week, or how many "Hail mary" you need to say for X, or dour obsessions with working out what is a sin and what isn't, would probably seem inane to most youngsters.
Also, isn't Islam mainly orthopraxic and legalistic, like Judaism, rather than focused on the narrative and a human figure (they can't even draw Mo Hammed)?
This uniquely Jewish tendency toward atheism must reflect some other difference between them and the goyim, not race, IQ, or liberalism. The ecology that the Ashkenazim are adapted to is white-collar financial work, often in the service of the state. So the religious lobe of their brain has evolved to take as its object of worship the technocracy and technology that can deliver him into paradise
The other Jews are rabbinical but aren't shaped by the same niche.
The main precept of Judaism is that the other precepts shouldn't be taken seriously. They have "the loophole law" - that is, if you can find a loophole in one of the Judaic laws, you should exploit it, since God put the loophole there. This may be one reason that Jews don't take their own religion seriously - except perhaps as an ethnic marker, as you said.
ReplyDeleteThis uniquely Jewish tendency toward atheism must reflect some other difference between them and the goyim, not race, IQ, or liberalism. The ecology that the Ashkenazim are adapted to is white-collar financial work, often in the service of the state. So the religious lobe of their brain has evolved to take as its object of worship the technocracy and technology that can deliver him into paradise, not something superstitious like the grace of god, or something less supernatural but still transcendental like loving thy neighbor as thyself.
ReplyDeleteI was with you till this paragraph. To make this idea plausible, you'd need evidence that pre-Emancipation Jews were also weakly religious compared to Christians, and I don't think you'll find it.
IMO, Jewish religiousness declined for the same reason that tribal religions tended to collapse after contact with Western cultures. In both cases (though more so with tribal religions), religious practices were deeply embedded in a traditional way of life and were destabilized when it disappeared.
Cennbeorc
You're missing the really obvious explanation, which is that Jews live in a country where the vast majority tell them their religion is wrong and the true religion is Christianity. This gives Jews a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteObvious yet wrong. Western countries tell Muslims the same thing, only more broadly and intensely, yet Muslims are near the opposite end of the religiosity spectrum.
ReplyDeleteSame within Christianity, where most of the fire is directed at the more wacko fundamentalist groups, who are nevertheless far more religious than the respectable mainstream churches.
Islam doesn't have a history of coexisting as a minority religion, and tends to be more all or nothing.
ReplyDeleteReformed Muslims are probably less likely to admit being Muslim when they respond to surveys.
My Muslim friend from high school told me he was Episcopal because he was embarrassed about having Muslim parents.
Apparently you are not Jewish and you therefore just don't fully get what it's like to grow up when all the messages you get from TV contradict what your parents told you.
The other thing that's different about Judaism is that it's not an evangelist religion, which makes it that much more difficult to keep its members believing in the religion in an age of mass media.
You said it's about the messages you hear while you're alive, so the fact that Muslim minorities are new to the West is irrelevant. They hear the message loud and clear -- much louder and clearer than Jews hear about Rabbinic Judaism.
ReplyDeleteAnd strange fundamentalist groups within Christianity go back even farther than Jews as a minority in the Western Europe. So they've got the message growing up, plus any preserved message from their history, about how wrong they are.
Jews may grow up perceiving a contradiction between the mainstream message and their parents' message about religion. But if that causes them to lose faith, that only shows how low in religiosity they were to begin with. Other groups grow up perceiving the same contradiction, yet it emboldens their faith.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this perception should only weaken their faith in Judaism -- not weaken their religiosity in general. You make it sound like they're abandoning Yiddish in favor of English, but in the case of religiosity, they're not switching over to the mainstream. Instead they wind up not "speaking" any religious language at all. (Except for a handful who join Buddhism, which is disproportionately former-Jews.)
There's something else you have to consider,eastern european countrys with communist rule,where big percent of jews came from.
ReplyDelete"But if that causes them to lose faith, that only shows how low in religiosity they were to begin with."
ReplyDeleteAgain, the idea that Jews started out weakly religious does not fit anything I've read about pre-Emancipation Jewish, where everyday life was suffused by religious practices, rabbis were the dominant social leaders, religious study was a high-status activity, etc. etc.
I believe this is more about American assimilationism than Jews. Jews in Europe are much more religious.
ReplyDelete