People Tend to be Less Religious When Government is Better

[Guest]

Government vs. God?
People are less religious when government is bigger, research says.

Researchers call it an exchange model of religion: If people can get what they need from the government (be it health care, education or welfare) they’re less likely to turn to a divine power for help, according to the theory.

But are people actually more likely to drop religion in places where governments provide more services and stability? In a new paper, psychology researchers crunched the numbers — and found that better government services were in fact linked to lower levels of strong religious beliefs.

Those findings held true in states across the U.S. and in countries around the world, researchers said.

The article, “Religion as an Exchange System: The Interchangeability of God and Government in a Provider Role,” was published April 12 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Authors Miron Zuckerman and Chen Li of the University of Rochester and Ed Diener of the Universities of Utah and Virginia wrote that their findings suggest “that if the function that religiosity provides can be acquired from some other source, the allure of religion will diminish.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article209279189.html
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If true, then the Trump administration and white evangelicals may have already formed a runaway feedback loop.

And that would bee too bad for the country. Author Zuckerman reminds readers that metadata analyses of research findings over nearly a century clearly showed that religiosity was negatively correlated with intelligence.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/13/4618388/study-finds-intelligent-people-less-religious

There could hardly be a better example of this phenomenon in modern times than Trump and his followers.

[_DoubtingThomas]

Very Interesting.

[_Dr Exiled]

I think people look for parental figures to fulfill their needs. So, it isn't surprising to me that the more government fills a parental role, religion loses its luster. Perhaps the individual should be freed to provide these needs for him/herself and maybe more adults will emerge?

[_Meadowchik]

Burn it all down so we can be more dependent on our prejudices than ever before!

[_Tuna_Surprise]

Perhaps the individual should be freed to provide these needs for him/herself and maybe more adults will emerge?

If you take government out of the equation, very few people will be able to provide all of their needs for themselves. America is a perfect example that without state-sponsored healthcare, far too many people cannot afford healthcare. Prior to the days of government sponsored education (from free primary education to heavily subsidized collegiate/graduate education), most people did not go to school. Sure, most people can provide for their food needs, but it wasn't too far in the distant past that places like Ireland and Sweden had major famines that killed millions.

So while I don't love government, I would rather live with it than the alternative we can read about in the history books.

[_Meadowchik]

Perhaps the individual should be freed to provide these needs for him/herself and maybe more adults will emerge?

If you take government out of the equation, very few people will be able to provide all of their needs for themselves. America is a perfect example that without state-sponsored healthcare, far too many people cannot afford healthcare. Prior to the days of government sponsored education (from free primary education to heavily subsidized collegiate/graduate education), most people did not go to school. Sure, most people can provide for their food needs, but it wasn't too far in the distant past that places like Ireland and Sweden had major famines that killed millions.

So while I don't love government, I would rather live with it than the alternative we can read about in the history books.

Yes, the idea of "living off the grid" is a very attractive fantasy for many in the USA, but it is ultimately impossible to replicate the modern quality of life without the cooperation of others. Perhaps the most important role of governments is just ensuring some threshold of rule of law that allows us to achieve interdependence.

I like the story of the pencil, it takes thousands of people to get one pencil on a school desk. Materials come from atleast 3 continents and require very specific processes and transportation. You might be able to buy 1000 pencils, but eventually you or your posterity (if you're fortunate enough to keep any alive without modern infrastructure) will run out. Same/similar for so many other things.

[_Dr Exiled]

I don't advocate not having any government whatsoever. There are certain services to which government is the best organization to provide them and I certainly do not what to live off of the grid so to speak. We need a central authority for some things for sure. Too many times "privatization" is just a way to allow private individuals or companies monopoly rights and prices go up for the rest of us. Also, government regulation sometimes is just a barrier to entry in order to protect another monopoly.

I guess I was reacting to having another parental influence telling me how to live. I just don't want to substitute one parental church organization for a parental government organization. I've had enough of authority

[_Physics Guy]

If you trust the government to give you food if you're starving then you'll be less likely to pray to God for food instead. You don't need double insurance. But I don't think the trade-off between God and government is only about that kind of crass calculation.

If you believe that humans can be wise and good then you'll be more willing to trust human sources for ethics and information in general, even apart from government as such. That leaves less need for divine revelation. And if your experience of human government is generally positive then for you that will be substantial evidence that humans can be wise and good.

Conversely, my experience of talking to very conservatively religious people is that they have a lot of distrust for human wisdom and morality. Cynical statements about how unreliable human beings are come up much earlier in the conversation than I would expect. And that kind of judgement would be natural in people whose experiences of human judgement and justice have been poor.

The causal arrow may also run the other way. A lot of religions seem to have developed in historical circumstances of weak or bad government, perhaps for the reasons above, and therefore have opposition to human government baked into their world views. While this may sometimes enable healthy critiques of political power from a moral perspective, even this can make the best be the enemy of the good. I understand that it's a trope in Islamic hagiography, for example, to record that a holy man refused to participate in the government of his day because it was insufficiently righteous. That may have been admirable up to a point but I'm not sure it made government better.

[_moksha]

People Tend to be Less Religious When Government is Better.

This has been going on since the Renaissance. Those studying the classics yearned for the Republic rather than the Empire. However, the true causation for both of these effects is due to learning and thinking.

[_I have a question]

Sheep need a shepherd, they prefer one they can see but will magic one up if necessary.