Education and Religion

[O Latin]

I know there are studies and statistics that point to a correlation between higher levels of education and lower levels of religiosity, and I’m curious if anyone has any theories on why that is. My personal theory is that very religious people are less likely to acquire higher levels of education for a variety of reasons (younger marriage, the areas of the country they tend to live in, etc.). But is a person more likely to lose their faith the more school they go to? That doesn’t make sense to me because, while my faith has been challenged while I’ve been in college, it hasn’t been a direct result of college itself. But obviously, my experience is not the only one.

[debrand]

I wonder if it could be that people are less likely to engage in black and white thinking when they have higher levels of education.

[sacrilicious]

I suppose being exposed to different types of people and more education in the sciences. I don't know, though. My beliefs have evolved over time and I can't say that anything I learned about in college or graduate school affected me in that way. My beliefs have been shaped much more by just living life in general.

[xDreamerx]

I would tend to think this is a trueism for the reasons you all have said. I have to say this is kind of foreign to me because the sort of "faith culture" that the U.S. has just isn't here. I mean, there are religious people obviously, but it isn't as mainstream and insidious. You don't have debates over creationism here or "evolution is a theory" stickers on textbooks. We don't have abstinence only classes. We just...don't. That's kind of OT but I'm trying to get at the idea that there's fundies and sort of radical seclusion because of faith and then there are the faith elements that bleed into the mainstream because of the wider right and it's influence. I wonder how those things impact people's decisions regarding education.

It's not surprising to me that people of faith are less likely to have higher education. It seems like the religious culture in general, well no the conservative religious culture, is very anti intellectual and suspicious of Enlightenment thinking and values. They don't seem to have the same criteria for something be "true".

[Rosa]

I blame the churches, actually. There are churches that value intellectual growth and curiosity, but there are so many that don't, they skew everything. If you're raised on a literal Bible, all-or-nothing, then you only have to learn a little bit about the world and Pow! No more literal Bible. Or you are raised on women's submission and antifeminism and you take up a career and don't marry, you stop being able to go to church without being made to feel really bad about yourself. Therefore, no more church. I know a ton of no-longer-churchgoing former Baptists & conservative Lutherans because of this. The churches could stop that by not being so black and white on scientific & social issues that aren't religious at all.

Also, crazy Catholic bishops who aren't in touch with their parishioners and start witchhunts inside the religious orders. We have congregations of political justice & gay-accepting Catholics here. One of them is now "independent Catholic" because they got kicked out. Every time the Bishops decide to investigate & pressure the social activist orders of nuns, a bunch of Catholics I know stop going to church because they can't cope with stuff like those nurses getting kicked out for allowing an abortion to save the mother's life.

[latraviata]

I know there are studies and statistics that point to a correlation between higher levels of education and lower levels of religiosity, and I’m curious if anyone has any theories on why that is. My personal theory is that very religious people are less likely to acquire higher levels of education for a variety of reasons (younger marriage, the areas of the country they tend to live in, etc.). But is a person more likely to lose their faith the more school they go to? That doesn’t make sense to me because, while my faith has been challenged while I’ve been in college, it hasn’t been a direct result of college itself. But obviously, my experience is not the only one.

http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelli ... ligion.htm

[bananacat]

Well I can give my own personal experience. I had been raised Methodist and we weren't obsessed, but I went to church every Sunday and VBS in the summer. As a teenager, I really started to get into religion and got more involved, reading books on Bible prophecy and stuff like that outside of church. But then I decided that since I had only had exposure to one religion, I couldn't really know that that was the one true religion without knowing about any others. What if some other one seemed more correct? Because of evil public school, I learned the very basics about some major religions in a social studies class, and because my parent's aren't jerks I had never been spoon-fed the idea that other religions are evil. But by looking at other religions from an outside perspective, I was able to look at my own religion from an outside perspective even though I was an insider. Over time they all looked so similar and figured either all of them are right or none of them are. This wasn't an overnight thing and it took 11 or 12 years for me to really define myself as atheist. I was agnostic for a very long time.

There was also the issue of my church pushing me away. I was Methodist and the official church stance is that evolution is compatible with the faith. But that doesn't mean all the church members believe that. I was always good at science and in high school I even considered genetic engineering as a career choice, but I couldn't be myself and still be accepted within the church. I had to hide my ambition and my intelligence, and I had to be very careful about who was listening when I mentioned the dreaded E-word. I only got one heated lecture about how YEC is completely true, but I got plenty of stares and dirty looks and I figured out soon enough that it was my dirty little secret, along with being pro-choice and politically liberal. These are all things that had nothing to do with Christianity the way I saw it, but I still had to hide all these things. So it made me less inclined to go back there whenever I was visiting home from college. Without the constant reinforcement, it was harder to convince myself that it really is true.

[Rachel333]

Interestingly, Mormons actually have the opposite trend. I think that's the only religion of which that's true, and I'm not really sure why. They do really emphasize education, and leaders tend to be very successful, but I imagine there are other groups that are the same way.

[Wolfie]

Interestingly, Mormons actually have the opposite trend. I think that's the only religion of which that's true, and I'm not really sure why. They do really emphasize education, and leaders tend to be very successful, but I imagine there are other groups that are the same way.

I seem to remember that the study that most emphasized this was a Mormon sponsored study. This has come up before.

[xDreamerx]

Interestingly, Mormons actually have the opposite trend. I think that's the only religion of which that's true, and I'm not really sure why. They do really emphasize education, and leaders tend to be very successful, but I imagine there are other groups that are the same way.

Could also be because there are Mormon Universities? I'm not sure about the University of Utah, but BYU is obviously Mormon and expects the attend there to reflect a certain standard. Wasn't there news recently of a student being suspended for breaking the schools honour code? I'm not saying this unique among Mormons, I'm just saying faith based Universities or Universities that are very religious could skew the stats.

[Rosa]

Well, also they get to say all the weird splinter groups aren't really Mormon.

If you could only count ELCA and not any other Lutherans, I bet you'd see better percentages there.

Though I bet the focus on having kids early helps the Mormons too - educated people typically put off parenting later, and lots of people go back to church when they have kids.

[Lainey]

I would tend to think this is a trueism for the reasons you all have said. I have to say this is kind of foreign to me because the sort of "faith culture" that the U.S. has just isn't here. I mean, there are religious people obviously, but it isn't as mainstream and insidious. You don't have debates over creationism here or "evolution is a theory" stickers on textbooks. We don't have abstinence only classes. We just...don't. That's kind of OT but I'm trying to get at the idea that there's fundies and sort of radical seclusion because of faith and then there are the faith elements that bleed into the mainstream because of the wider right and it's influence. I wonder how those things impact people's decisions regarding education.

It's not surprising to me that people of faith are less likely to have higher education. It seems like the religious culture in general, well no the conservative religious culture, is very anti intellectual and suspicious of Enlightenment thinking and values. They don't seem to have the same criteria for something be "true".

Re: the bolded

I know quite a few creationists, sadly. There's even a creationist museum not that far from me. :( As far as in school, no we don't...at least not officially. I suspect some stuff goes on behind the scenes, though, because I can't remember evolution being mentioned in school at all.

[BlackHawk]

Re: the bolded

I know quite a few creationists, sadly. There's even a creationist museum not that far from me. :( As far as in school, no we don't...at least not officially. I suspect some stuff goes on behind the scenes, though, because I can't remember evolution being mentioned in school at all.

Yeah.. I'm right there with you. http://creationmuseum.org/ is up the way from me. This is one reason my partner and I refuse to educate any future children we may have in KY. I don't remember ANY evolution taught and I went to a "progressive" school in the big city. I was a science major for heaven's sakes and I can not remember anything other than my SR Anatomy teacher going "You'll have to do your own research on creation and evolution. It's not worth my job".

[xDreamerx]

Re: the bolded

I know quite a few creationists, sadly. There's even a creationist museum not that far from me. :( As far as in school, no we don't...at least not officially. I suspect some stuff goes on behind the scenes, though, because I can't remember evolution being mentioned in school at all.

Seriously?! So then my perception of Alberta being conservative and bordering on fundie light in some places is not so unfounded? (If I remember correctly that you are from there). Crazy. In my high school bio classes we were taught evolution and natural selection and all of that stuff. Not so much the complex details in grade 9 and 10, those were more general but if you took bio in 11 and 12, it was in there. I think we spent a good couple of weeks on it. On the first day the teacher said something like, "Today we're going to start on evolution. Now, I know this is controversial among some people, but even the Catholic Church has said evolution is not incompatible with faith. I'm going to be teaching you from a strictly scientific point of you and if you have questions about God go to your priest, your minister, your rabbi or whatever religious leader you like. That's not my job."

I have a friend who lives in Kentucky and recently they were debating whether or not the Bible could be used as to supplement textbooks. She's liberal, not Christian, fairly agnostic and she said she didn't see the problem with it. Seriously?! C'mon! It bothers me to think that there may be others in the mainstream who have this "live and let live" attitude to education. It cheapens education and knowledge. It makes facts relative.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/1 ... 22040.html

[Eponine]

I think all the reasons people have said so far are factors.

Another thing to consider is that higher education teaches critical thinking and for a lot of people religion doesn't hold up to critical scrutiny - particularly if they've come from very literal traditions. Also many go away to universities and it's the first time they've been able to really step outside of the world they grew up in, possibly the first time they've allowed themselves to question that world to any degree. Not to say that experience in itself would cause people to change their religious views but it allows in the possibility of questioning.

[clibbyjo]

Yeah.. I'm right there with you. http://creationmuseum.org/ is up the way from me. This is one reason my partner and I refuse to educate any future children we may have in KY. I don't remember ANY evolution taught and I went to a "progressive" school in the big city. I was a science major for heaven's sakes and I can not remember anything other than my SR Anatomy teacher going "You'll have to do your own research on creation and evolution. It's not worth my job".

[MonkeyMomma]

I blame the churches, actually. There are churches that value intellectual growth and curiosity, but there are so many that don't, they skew everything. If you're raised on a literal Bible, all-or-nothing, then you only have to learn a little bit about the world and Pow! No more literal Bible. Or you are raised on women's submission and antifeminism and you take up a career and don't marry, you stop being able to go to church without being made to feel really bad about yourself. Therefore, no more church. I know a ton of no-longer-churchgoing former Baptists & conservative Lutherans because of this. The churches could stop that by not being so black and white on scientific & social issues that aren't religious at all.

Also, crazy Catholic bishops who aren't in touch with their parishioners and start witchhunts inside the religious orders. We have congregations of political justice & gay-accepting Catholics here. One of them is now "independent Catholic" because they got kicked out. Every time the Bishops decide to investigate & pressure the social activist orders of nuns, a bunch of Catholics I know stop going to church because they can't cope with stuff like those nurses getting kicked out for allowing an abortion to save the mother's life.

I think this is right on, particularly the part about Catholics. My diocese has a notoriously conservative bishop, and guess where I go to church? Not in a recognized Catholic church!

[Stickers]

Personally, education was a big part of me becoming at atheist... at 5 years old. I was sent to a private catholic school* for my issues with loving god (he didn't seem very nice) and at the same time I was exploring my love for science on my own, by getting books from the library and watching every science documentary I could. I really loved paleontology (still do!) I really thought I was going to grow up to be one, and I took it very seriously. The theory of evolution is irremovable from paleontology, as a kid it made perfect sense to me (still dose).

When my school began teaching me biblical stories, they clashed with my scientific knowledge and the school never gave me any proof of what they were telling me. If I asked how they knew this, they'd tell me the bible, if I challenged them about something they said using my knowledge they'd get mad me :lol: and I had my "aha" moment when my after school teacher told me people and dinosaurs lived together after giving me a math sheet with baby Jesus, Mary and a Dino looking animal :think:

*that I ended up getting kicked out of, six months in :lol:

[Lainey]

Seriously?! So then my perception of Alberta being conservative and bordering on fundie light in some places is not so unfounded? (If I remember correctly that you are from there). Crazy. In my high school bio classes we were taught evolution and natural selection and all of that stuff. Not so much the complex details in grade 9 and 10, those were more general but if you took bio in 11 and 12, it was in there. I think we spent a good couple of weeks on it. On the first day the teacher said something like, "Today we're going to start on evolution. Now, I know this is controversial among some people, but even the Catholic Church has said evolution is not incompatible with faith. I'm going to be teaching you from a strictly scientific point of you and if you have questions about God go to your priest, your minister, your rabbi or whatever religious leader you like. That's not my job."

I hate to admit it, but basically yeah. :( Here's the funny thing, though: I'm from a small municipality (the Crowsnest Pass), and almost everyone there is a Sunday Catholic. There are some (Protestant) fundies, but they are few and they are seen as very strange. But when I moved to Calgary, I met a bunch of people who don't believe in evolution. It's weird. You'd think a big city would be more liberal, no? Especially one that's not far from the Royal Tyrrell. But it isn't.

In fairness, I may just not have been paying attention in class, because I had no idea there was controversy over evolution, and it wasn't that important to me at the time. I took Biology 20 (grade 11), but not 30 (grade 12). But my teacher just made us memorize a bunch of stuff, so I didn't really learn anything in that class. I did learn something about evolution somewhere along the line...I know I was horrified when I read in the paper that Stockwell Day believed that humans and dinosaurs lived together. That's how I found out one of my friends was a creationist--I told her how horrified I was, and she said, "Well, actually..." :shock: I had never heard of such a thing before.

[xDreamerx]

I hate to admit it, but basically yeah. :( Here's the funny thing, though: I'm from a small municipality (the Crowsnest Pass), and almost everyone there is a Sunday Catholic. There are some (Protestant) fundies, but they are few and they are seen as very strange. But when I moved to Calgary, I met a bunch of people who don't believe in evolution. It's weird. You'd think a big city would be more liberal, no? Especially one that's not far from the Royal Tyrrell. But it isn't.

In fairness, I may just not have been paying attention in class, because I had no idea there was controversy over evolution, and it wasn't that important to me at the time. I took Biology 20 (grade 11), but not 30 (grade 12). But my teacher just made us memorize a bunch of stuff, so I didn't really learn anything in that class. I did learn something about evolution somewhere along the line...I know I was horrified when I read in the paper that Stockwell Day believed that humans and dinosaurs lived together. That's how I found out one of my friends was a creationist--I told her how horrified I was, and she said, "Well, actually..." :shock: I had never heard of such a thing before.

My friend recently moved to Calgary for grad school...but she denies the conservative Christian element. She said most people were United, if religious at all. I don't believe her. One of my high school friends moved there because her father got a job. She left a nice Sunday Protestant, open minded girl and came back born again telling me my beliefs were unture and of "the Devil". She said, I didn't have proof for my beliefs whereas she had the tomb of Jesus. I said, "Really? Were you there when he died? Did you see it with your own eyes?" She obviously said no and I told her then it is belief, something she has faith in but no proof of. She stopped talking to me. She recently added me to FB and is nice enough. She isn't fundie in the sense of legalism, gender roles, dress code etc. She's had a job and things. But she believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible and no sex before marriage. Her sister is my age and has had a kid nearly every year so I'm not sure their stance on birth control. I know she is anti choice though.

A lot of people from here go out West for work in the summer. My friend was working on a construction site in Alberta a couple summers back. He's an atheist and someone mentioned religion. He's not the lying type so he told the truth. He said everyone dropped their shovels and stared at him. He felt really nervous about it.

I mean obviously this is only one section of the population, but they DO exist.

[alysee]

Could be they moved away from a small town and realized there were other ways to think? That was my case. In my town everyone is Catholic. It was just the way it was. I moved for school and realized how dumb some things were about the faith and lost my religiousness.

[pomology]

I blame the churches, actually. There are churches that value intellectual growth and curiosity, but there are so many that don't, they skew everything. If you're raised on a literal Bible, all-or-nothing, then you only have to learn a little bit about the world and Pow! No more literal Bible. Or you are raised on women's submission and antifeminism and you take up a career and don't marry, you stop being able to go to church without being made to feel really bad about yourself. Therefore, no more church. I know a ton of no-longer-churchgoing former Baptists & conservative Lutherans because of this. The churches could stop that by not being so black and white on scientific & social issues that aren't religious at all.

I also think this is very perceptive. I don't think highly educated people as a whole have a problem with religion if religion isn't telling them how to think (I mean, yes, all religions do this to some extent, but some are much more open to questioning and doubt and critical thinking than others.) But I do think that highly educated people do have a problem with the black and white thinking demonstrated by so many religions.

I think it would be interesting to see a survey on more highly educated people and religiosity taking into account whether the religion they were raised (if they were raised in a religion) was open to shades of gray or not.

[QueenMother]

I was raised in a semi-aldenti fundie home. Church 2x's a week. Only friends were siblings and other church families that my parents personally knew. To give an example of my family, we had a pool in the backyard and boys and girls were not allowed in the pool, or even in the backyard, at the same time.

I am one of six daughters and the only one interested in college. My parents picked 5 nearby Christian universities I could apply. I snuck in an application to UC Berkeley. I was accepted at Berkeley and sent back my card that I would be enrolling. My parents were not happy, but they did let me go.

By my junior year I was questioning everything. That summer I took off with a group of friends and followed the Grateful Dead to NYC. I married after graduation and we were both in grad school at Berkeley. We stayed on after grad school and raised our children.

We took our children to church in Berkeley. A church that is OPEN and WELCOMING to ALL. Our youth director, for my children, was lesbian and she and her partner great.

I am thankful that my parents gave me the opportunity to see another side of life, and did so knowing it would change me a bit. Life is not black and white thinking. It is a rainbow of color and thinking and feeling.

[Maggie Mae]

I'd say it's a combination of factors - geography, social isolation, lack of new thoughts and ideas in very small towns. I'm speaking from a U.S. Centric view, as that is what I know best. I also tend to make more sense to myself than others. Most people who claim no religion live in urban areas. Urban areas are also considered to be more educated.

It wasn't very long ago that we didn't have a computer & the internet in almost every house. (when did it become normal to be online 24/7? Sometime in the 90s? Later? I honestly don't know.) The fact that pre-internet, people had to really seek out new ideas, new people, new ways of living unless you lived in a larger city. Is it at all surprising that most people who claim to be devout or religious do not live in urban areas? Not to me. Urban areas have more education, more diversity, different types of religion. So until, say 10 years ago, it was entirely possible to go most of your life and never meet someone of a different faith. Maybe you'd meet a Methodist when you are Baptist, or you'd meet a Catholic. If you were really lucky and you lived somewhere in the Midwest (rural), you'd meet a Jewish person or someone from another country. Many of those areas didn't have the same emphasis on education. As we progressed with the internet, ideas began to spread. At the same time, college became more affordable (during the boom) and much more necessary. Having an education was in reach for many many families that otherwise would have gone into a trade. (Downsides were that we started moving jobs overseas and labor became more costly) . So when these families started putting kids in college, these kids would go off - literally go off to another part of the state or country and learn about other people.

My personal experience - I grew up in a small city in Michigan, thought it was pretty awesome, hated how conservative it was. Went to Catholic School, which was actually a very good education. We reconciled evolution with creation, no one believed for a second that it was actually 7 days, because that would be stupid, God's time is not our time, and besides, there was ample evidence from science that the earth was much, much older than that. Went to college, had a professor who was chair of the Atheist Committee or Board or some sort of Yay! Atheism group; realized from him that I would never be a scientist, and that my state was much more backwards that I ever realized. Thought I would prove him wrong and that we weren't all dumb hicks who thought the Christian God create the world in a week and then hung out with his plants for a day before getting around to biology, and studied harder and longer than anyone else. I found out the next year when I was TAing that our textbooks were actually written for graduate students and he never expected anyone to actually read the entire thing. Which was kind of awesome. For a while I thought I could continue to reconcile the god thing with the science thing, but as I matured and found answers to questions, I always had that one nagging question, which I had since I was probably 4 or 5 -- if my grandmother was Jewish and my grandfather was Catholic and my dad grew up protestant and the guy down the street just moved here from Sudan and the new kid in our class is Hindu ... which one is right? Why can someone be all religions? Why? And if Christians, Jews, and Muslims all believe in the same God, why is there so much fighting? Why couldn't God have shown up twice and told both parties they were the chosen people? How do we know that Jesus was the Messiah? And what about all the people in Rome who were polytheistic? Did they go to hell? That didn't seem fair at all.

Anyway, so I tried really hard to believe in something because the idea of dying and just not existing anymore freaked me out. It still does, to be honest. (Keep in mind that my dad owns a funeral home.) The idea that one day I will die, and I won't know that I'm dead or that I ever lived and once everyone i know dies as well they won't know what I did or how awesome my life was or how much I experience or that I solved the mystery of life is really depressing. Then I read His Dark Materials trilogy and I realized that maybe it won't be that bad, my cells will go and make new life and so on. For me, losing the faith was hard and long. I know lots of people who still have faith. They are the same people who went to college in our hometown, married as soon as they were done, had a couple of babies and post on Facebook daily. They are happy (as far as I can tell) and there's nothing wrong with that. But I don't know anyone from my university days who still hold strong beliefs in a higher power. I don't think we were brainwashed or anything, I think it's the combination of being around so many people who have such different experiences , and being taught how to question everything.

[xDreamerx]

I was raised in a semi-aldenti fundie home. Church 2x's a week. Only friends were siblings and other church families that my parents personally knew. To give an example of my family, we had a pool in the backyard and boys and girls were not allowed in the pool, or even in the backyard, at the same time.

I am one of six daughters and the only one interested in college. My parents picked 5 nearby Christian universities I could apply. I snuck in an application to UC Berkeley. I was accepted at Berkeley and sent back my card that I would be enrolling. My parents were not happy, but they did let me go.

By my junior year I was questioning everything. That summer I took off with a group of friends and followed the Grateful Dead to NYC. I married after graduation and we were both in grad school at Berkeley. We stayed on after grad school and raised our children.

We took our children to church in Berkeley. A church that is OPEN and WELCOMING to ALL. Our youth director, for my children, was lesbian and she and her partner great.

I am thankful that my parents gave me the opportunity to see another side of life, and did so knowing it would change me a bit. Life is not black and white thinking. It is a rainbow of color and thinking and feeling.

This is completely OT but I have to ask. Were you a dead head? Was this during the Jerry years? Did you meet him? :D It must have been so freakin' cool.