I generally never watch Bill O'Liely, but...

[trotsky]

...flipping channels last night I had the misfortune of coming across his program just as the word "atheism" was mentioned. He had a "fair & balanced" discussion group consisting of him, a Karl Rove protege, and Monica Crowley. Now that's a nice wide swath of the political spectrum for ya! Anyway, they spent about 10 minutes totally dismissing the results of that recent survey showing that America is losing its religion. The blond Rove said by far that 90+% of Americans believed in god, that the outfit that conducted the survey is a bunch of secularists (Billo's favorite punching bag), etc. Anyway, IMMEDIATELY after dismissing the survey and reaffirming America's strong religious roots, they turn to the next topic: how teachers who rape children are the result of secularism taking control of the country. (No mention of how pedophile priests fit into that equation, unfortunately, or any evidence that the teachers who commit these crimes aren't religious.)

Now having lived through the last 8 years I'm not fazed all that much by the right wing's doublethink. It's pretty standard. But cripes, they USED to at least wait until the commercial break before launching into their contradictory rant. This went straight from dismissing the rise of secularism to bemoaning it! Not even a missed beat!

Crazy.

[WillParkinson]

1. Well, you do know....

That the right-wing attention span is notoriously short.

So even if only the space of a few moments happened between segments they'd already forgotten everything they heard in the first part and were immediately rallied to denounce it in the second.

[ihavenobias]

2. Sad, but true. n/t

[immoderate]

3. I remember writing him to ask...

If he is in a "no spin zone" how come a fetus is an "unborn child?"

--imm

[moggie]

4. You're probably familiar with Bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians"

One of his research findings was that authoritarians are more likely than others to have poorly integrated beliefs: they can hold mutually contradictory beliefs and flip between them at will:

As I said earlier, authoritarians' ideas are poorly integrated with one another.
It's as if each idea is stored in a file that can be called up and used when the
authoritarian wishes, even though another of his ideas--stored in a different file--
basically contradicts it. We all have some inconsistencies in our thinking, but
authoritarians can stupify you with the inconsistency of their ideas. Thus they may say
they are proud to live in a country that guarantees freedom of speech, but another file
holds, "My country, love it or leave it." The ideas were copied from trusted sources,
often as sayings, but the authoritarian has never "merged files" to see how well they
all fit together.

It's easy to find authoritarians endorsing inconsistent ideas. Just present slogans
and appeals to homey values, and then present slogans and bromides that invoke
opposite values. The yea-saying authoritarian follower is likely to agree with all of
them. Thus I asked both students and their parents to respond to, "When it comes to
love, men and women with opposite points of view are attracted to each other." Soon
afterwards, in the same booklet, I pitched "Birds of a feather flock together when it
comes to love." High RWAs typically agreed with both statements, even though they
responded to the two items within a minute of each other.

But that's the point: they don't seem to scan for self-consistency as much as
most people do. Similarly they tended to agree with "A government should allow total
freedom of expression, even it if threatens law and order" and "A government should
only allow freedom of expression so long as it does not threaten law and order." And
"Parents should first of all be gentle and tender with their children," and "Parents
should first of all be firm and uncompromising with their children; spare the rod and
spoil the child."

(RWA = right-wing authoritarians)

He also refers to research by Mary Wegmann showing that RWAs "had more trouble remembering details of the material they'd encountered", and "the authoritarians had lots of trouble simply thinking straight". To a normal person watching that show, the contradiction would be glaringly obvious, but the target audience are used to holding contradictory ideas, have a short attention span, and just plain don't think very well.

[trotsky]

5. Actually, no, I was not.

Fascinating work - gotta throw that book on my "to read" list. Thanks for the excerpt!

[EvolveOrConvolve]

12. You can find the entire book online in PDF format

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

It's a fascinating read - so much so that I printed out the entire PDF and put it in a big three ring binder on the shelf next to my computer.

[ihavenobias]

13. Thanks for the link. n/t

[trotsky]

14. Excellent - thanks! n/t

[and-justice-for-all]

6. "how teachers who rape children are the result of secularism" ?

That's just stupidity. Only fucked Noise and dipshit o'liely could come up with such trite nonsense.

They facted is, it is far more likely that us nonreligious folks have higher moral standards then most of the religious nutters.

[trotsky]

7. Lower divorce rates, lower incarceration rates bear that out.

As if a silly thing like a fact would make a bit of difference to a rabid right-winger.

[moggie]

9. Correlation does not imply causation

Intriguing though the divorce and incarceration figures are, I'd hesitate to say that they show that the non-religious are more moral without looking closer. Three things I think you can say about prisoners (in the US, at least):

* A lot of them have done nothing immoral (I'm thinking of drug "crimes" in particular)
* A lot (most?) of them are poor
* A lot (most?) of them have low educational attainment (what's the figure for functional illiteracy among prisoners? Something shocking, I think)

Religious belief is known to correlate with educational level (the less educated you are, the more likely you are to be religious). I think I've also read that it correlates with poverty (the poorer you are, the more likely you are to be religious).

As for divorce, apart from the fact that it's not immoral in itself, there's again the question of whether there are factors other than religion there. For example, I'd guess that the non-religious are more likely to cohabit before marriage, so more likely to know that they're well-matched before tying the knot. And I'd guess that religious people tend to marry younger than non-religious people, and are thus less experienced all round. If you looked at random at 100 teenage Christian marriages, and 100 teenage atheist marriages, would the outcomes be similar?

[trotsky]

10. True, but they disprove the opposite.

If the non-religious were LESS moral, you'd expect to see more of us in jail and more divorces (since one would assume adultery and other trust-based problems would be more frequent).

[and-justice-for-all]

11. We are suppose to be 'animals' with NO morals you know...

All because we do not have invisible friends; But, I have only seen the opposite. Just a little observation, how true it really is is anyone's guess.

I think I will stick with: (Nonreligious people appear to have a higher moral standard then most religious people)until I see something to the opposite..

[moggie]

8. You know the number two predictor for child sex abuse in the US?

Number one is substance abuse, if I remember correctly. Number two is conservative religious belief.