Reading Time: 3 minutes After massive resources have been spent trying to assess spiritual fitness in the military, scholars now admit it is not a meaningful concept.
Analysis
Posted inEducation
Religion and education: Let’s be perfectly clear
Reading Time: 5 minutes Despite a long-time understanding among sociologists that certain forms of religious belief and identification undercut educational attainment, contrarian social scientists and religious apologists often argue that education and religion are completely compatible. Recent arguments by Ilana Horwitz and Ryan Burge go further to claim that religion may even enhance educational success. Such arguments wither under […]
Posted inAnalysis
Canadians say evangelicals hurt society more than any other religion
Reading Time: 3 minutes When it comes to religion in Canada, most adults believe Catholics, evangelicals, and Muslims do more harm than good. All three religions had a net negative score when people were asked if their members helped or hurt Canadian society. Evangelical Christians received the lowest scores. Those are some of the takeaways from a new survey […]
Posted inAnalysis
Does religion really improve educational outcomes?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Horwitz makes the claim that religiosity is beneficial for working-class young men when it comes to their educational attainment. The claims in the article are clear illustrations of two logical fallacies – faulty generalization and cherry-picking.
Posted inAnalysis
Church membership as a product in search of demand
Reading Time: 7 minutes Christianity itself became superfluous a while ago for a lot of Americans, and church leaders simply can’t deal with that fact. Well, most of them. Today, we’ll meet a Christian leader who has a better perspective on his religion’s decline.
Posted inAnalysis
Why secular Americans are pivotal allies in the fight for racial justice
Reading Time: 6 minutes New research from the Pew Center points to the powerful potential of secularism as an avenue for forging multiracial coalitions.
Posted inAnalysis, Religion
The decline of religion: the bad news
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the Western world, like a cornered, injured animal, religion is both weaker and more dangerous than ever.
Posted inAnalysis
The decline of religion: the good news
Reading Time: 4 minutes Religion is declining throughout the Western world – here’s why we should be glad about it.
Posted inCulture
The Cooperative Election Study Won’t Save Christianity
Reading Time: 7 minutes Solid information can only be good to have. If we can’t identify and describe something that’s happening, we’ll have very little chance of predicting outcomes from it or influencing it. That’s why I found Ryan Burge’s recent post on Religion News kinda frustrating.
Posted inHealth
Covid Statistics, and Damned Liars
Reading Time: 3 minutes I am tired of the people coming here insisting that the vaccines are killing us, and to support their position, take the published statistics apart, misinterpret them, cherry-pick them, and cite statements out of context from reports to support their position. The root cause of their problem is that they refuse to accept statements from […]