It’s not just Switzerland. Pick any of his other vacation destinations. The vast majority of them are in secular countries. Hardly surprising: one of the things those studies he’s always mentioning show is that high religiosity correlates with poverty. I mean, I hear there are beautiful sights to be seen all over the globe. But he wants all the creature comforts that (apparently) go hand-in-hand with secularism. Otherwise, why not a vacation to Pakistan or Honduras, where a huge percentage of the population regards religion as “very important”? I hear there is a lot of natural splendor to take in—including mountains!—in those places.He says that my love for Switzerland, which has become a relatively unchurched country over the past few generations, shows my hypocrisy. Why, if I claim religion is such a good thing, am I so in love with a comparatively irreligious place like Switzerland? But this is brazenly disingenuous. Have I ever praised Switzerland’s decline in church attendance? Pick one, based on your reading of my blog entries here: Do I (a) go on and on about the natural beauty of the Swiss mountains and forests and lakes and meadows? Or do I (b) praise trends toward secularism in Swiss society?
Meanwhile, there is a lot of mileage one could get out of this:
Wasn’t he just saying something about deaths and “secularist regimes”? Or about how religious people are healthier and happier?It reminds me of a comment from Andrew Lang: “Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination.”
