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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (17475)	4/25/2000 1:29:00 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

The article is interesting, in a number of ways. First, it strikes me (not for the first time) as odd that something which is so totally irrelevant to my life can be so vitally important to some others. And while I certainly would not deny them what is important to them, I do wish they would do me the courtesy of not assuming that what is necessary to them must therefore be necessary to me. On the rare occasions when I visit sites which are identifiably "liberal" or "conservative", I amuse myself by reading the first paragraph and guessing what the rest of the content will be. I did this with the article you cited, and I was not wrong. A few surprises, though, this one among them (under the heading "Congress Should"): Ask the General Accounting Office (GAO) to review the evidence on the beneficial effects of religious practice in the relevant social science literature and report its findings to a national commission formed to promote the consideration of religious practice among U.S. citizens. Are we sure we're talking about conservatives here? All that would happen if we do this is the expenditure of a few tens of millions to produce an enormous document which nobody will ever read. The article also reminded me of an area where I would really like to see some government intervention. I would like the government to pass a law requiring all people who cite statistics and use the word "correlation" to disclaim their statements by announcing that correlation is not causation, and should never ever be interpreted as being causation. As we all know, though, if you cite a correlation to an audience which is ideologically predisposed to equate that correlation with causation, they will perceive causation without question, and consider their point proven. Liberals do it too. It would be interesting to run a correlative study on the same criteria: marital stability, probability of juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, welfare dependency, etc., only changing the variable. Instead of religion/no religion, use lives in small/medium town to lives in large city. Do you doubt for a moment that the correlative evidence would line up behind the small towns in the same way that it lines up behind religion? Do we want to have the federal government studying the virtues of the rural life, and coming up with ways to convince us to move to small towns? I'm not saying correlative evidence is useless, only that its value is limited, and that any study which cites correlative evidence without giving due consideration to external variables is fundamentally flawed. More play with correlation: we all know that there is a strong inverse correlation between education and religious activity. The higher a person's educational attainment, the less likely that person is to be religious. Does that mean we should discourage higher education? Another very interesting section: UNDERSTANDING "INTRINSIC" AND "EXTRINSIC" RELIGIOUS BEHAVIOR Recent advances in the investigation of religious behavior have led social scientists to distinguish between two distinct categories or orientations: "intrinsic" and "extrinsic." Intrinsic practice is God-oriented and based on beliefs which transcend the person's own existence. Research shows this form of religious practice to be beneficial. Extrinsic practice is self-oriented and characterized by outward observance, not internalized as a guide to behavior or attitudes. The evidence suggests this form of religious practice is actually more harmful than no religion: Religion directed toward some end other than God, or the transcendent, typically degenerates into a rationalization for the pursuit of other ends such as status, personal security, self justification, or sociability. Aren't the manifestations we've been talking about, such as prayer or moments of silence at schools, public events, etc., classic manifestations of extrinsic religion, and therefore "actually more harmful than no religion"? I could say a good deal more, but I have to get some work done, and SI is giving me weird "internal server error" messages. I will say, though, that I think religious leaders spend too much time blaming liberals and government for the decline in faith and not enough time asking themselves what they can do to make their message more relevant in a skeptical world.