At least according to lefties like Al Hunt (otherwise known as Mr. Judy Woodruff). Remember his jibe in the Wall Street Journal back in the mid-nineties about Evangelicals being ‘poorly educated and easily led’? Well, Al (and Chris [Hitchens] and Richard [Dawkins]), it seems that you’re about 180 degrees out.
Baylor University recently published the results of a detailed survey of American religious practices. The university’s Institute for the Studies of Religion commissioned the Gallup organization to apply the survey, which was designed by the Baylor ISR.
One of the key findings of the survey was that, contrary to leftist dogma, conservative Christians were far less credulous than their irreligious neighbors:
The Baylor Survey found that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, as measured by beliefs in such things as dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses, communicating with the dead and astrology (Ch. 15, “Credulity: Who Believes in Bigfoot”). Still, it remains widely believed that religious people are especially credulous, particularly those who identify themselves as Evangelicals, born again, Bible believers and fundamentalists. However, the ISR researchers found that conservative religious Americans are far less likely to believe in the occult and paranormal than are other Americans, with self-identified theological liberals and the irreligious far more likely than other Americans to believe. The researchers say this shows that it is not religion in general that suppresses such beliefs, but conservative religion.
“There’s an old saying that a man who no longer believes in God is ready to believe in just about anything, and it turns out our data suggests it’s true. That is to say, religious people don’t believe this stuff, but there’s no education effect,” Stark said.
Among other interesting findings on paranormal or occult beliefs: People who have read The Purpose-Driven Life or any book in the Left Behind series are less likely to believe in the occult and paranormal, while those who have read any book on dianetics or The Da Vinci Code are more likely to believe.
Note the key finding: that it isn’t just ‘religion’ in general that protects the mind from superstition, but conservative religion.
I find this unsurprising. Like de Tocqueville, I accept that sound religious belief is a necessary ingredient both to human happiness and the maintenance of republican institutions. In Chapter V of the second book of Democracy in America (‘How Religion in the United States Avails Itself of Democratic Tendencies’), de Tocqueville discusses at length religion’s utility in the preservation of democracy. While he acknowledges that some religions are ‘false and absurd’ and that all religions should remain within their circumscribed bounds ‘without pretending to go beyond it’ he is bound to admit as an Enlightenment Frenchman that religion ‘imposes a salutary restraint on the intellect; and it must be admitted that, if it does not save men in another world, it is at least very conducive to their happiness and their greatness in this.’ Especially in free countries:
This is especially true of men living in free countries. When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Every man accustoms himself to having only confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defended and easily abandoned; and, in despair of ever solving by himself the hard problems respecting the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more about them.
Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. Not only does it happen in such a case that they allow their freedom to be taken from them; they frequently surrender it themselves. When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence. The constant agitation of all surrounding things alarms and exhausts them. As everything is at sea in the sphere of the mind, they determine at least that the mechanism of society shall be firm and fixed; and as they cannot resume their ancient belief, they assume a master.
For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire political freedom. And I am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe.
It looks like the good people at Baylor are merely confirming what de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s. I suppose that’s progress.
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