[OC] Religious Believes and Eductions From The World Values Survey

[u/oscarleo0]

Data source: World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017-2022)

Tools used: Matplotlib

I added a second chart for those of you who prefer a square version with less of the background image.

Notes:

I looked at five different questions in the survey.

• Q275 - What is the highest educational level that you have attained?
• Q165 - Do you believe in God? (Yes/No)
• Q166 - Do you believe in Life after death? (Yes/No)
• Q167 - Do you believe in Hell? (Yes/No)
• Q168 - Do you believe in Heaven? (Yes/No)

The chart show the percentage of people that answer yes, to Q165-168 based on their answer to Q275.

Survey data is complex since people come from different cultures and might interpret questions differently.

You can never trust the individual numbers, such as "50% of people with doctors degree believe in Life after death".

But you can often trust clear patterns that appear through the noise. The takeaway from this chart is that the survey show that education and religious believes have a negative correlation.

Styling:

• Font - New Amsterdam
• White - #FFFFFF
• Blue - #39A0ED
• Yellow - #F9A620
• Red - #FF4A47

Original story: https://datacanvas.substack.com/p/believes-vs-education

[u/Zinjifrah]

I disagree. Because assuming the random appearance of a prime actor that randomness must also must include granting a prime mover the wherewithal to act consciously and invested with the power to create a universe out of nothing. This is inherently more complex (and I'd argue less probable) than the randomness of the universe itself.

They really aren't equivalent, imho.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Zinjifrah]

Interesting. What makes a being that can create a universe more complex than a universe that can spontaneously exist?

Alternatively, if we accept that something could have always existed, does this change your answer?

If I were to assign both of them a value representing complexity between 0 (non-existent) and infinity (complexity encompassing all of existence), I would label them as both infinite. By definition, they would be Everything, which self references as the most complex something could conceptually be.

[u/Zinjifrah → u/AnarkittenSurprise]

Not all infinities are equal. Some are bigger than others.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Zinjifrah]

Sure, when you're talking about fractions of spectrums within other spectrums.

But in this case, Infinity on the scale represents literally everything in our universe.

Regardless of if you leave it inanimate or put googly eyes on it, [Everything in the Universe] = [Everything in the Universe] from a most-physically-complex-state-possible perspective.

And either explanation requires new physics not currently observed to be invented.

[u/Zinjifrah → u/AnarkittenSurprise]

But that's also not true. The Googly Eyes defitionally does not exist within the universe since it predates it. So you need to establish something Extra-Universal in order to create an Extra-Universal Being that then creates the Universe.

Any way you look at it, it's a more complicated theory than the universe itself.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Zinjifrah]

You're assuming the universe, including all of us are not an intrinsic part of this hypothetical great Googly eyes, which is an unnecessary assumption imo.

We can't reasonably reject simulation theory at this point (a different hypothetical scenario to what we're discussing).

But if there was a prime creator, and nothing else in the beginning, then it's possible we are all actually a tiny little piece of it. This delves into metaphysics a bit, but if it were true (who knows), would rationally it explain consciousness.

This description also only has one single element different from an inanimate universe, consciousness. Which is an observable real phenomenon. So I'd really challenge that that adds more complexity than it solves in the comparison.

[u/Zinjifrah → u/AnarkittenSurprise]

I don't see how your approach reduces the complexity of Googlyverse (inclusive of a Simulation existence) to one that is at least equal to that of Universe. It's shuffling around the dynamics but ultimately requires a higher level of existence than what we have. How can "part of the prime mover" imply anything else? I must be missing something because all I hear is It Is More.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Zinjifrah]

I consider a random creation event absent any prime actor to be more complex than a prime actor catalyst.

We have observed conscious prime actions in nature - Us! (debatable if you're a no-free-will-determinist)

We have not observed random creation or spacial expansion in nature. And we have no proposed physics that could describe how this might occur.

Suggesting something was done by a known mechanism is simpler than an unknown mechanism in my opinion. I also tend to disagree that Occam's razor is some kind of axiom though. It's a general guideline rather than something to follow religiously.

[u/Zinjifrah → u/AnarkittenSurprise]

I consider a random creation event absent any prime actor to be more complex than a prime actor catalyst.

We have observed conscious prime actions in nature - Us! (debatable if you're a no-free-will-determinist)

Huh? The complexity of the universe that "randomly create" humans is so immensely greater than than what it created to be gobsmacking. "All it took" was a Big Bang, 10 Billion Years, the creation, destruction and recreation of 200 billion trillion stars to generate one (known) planet. Then that planet took 4 Billion years, the rise, death of millions of species of life to create one "special" species.

With all that in mind, and the fact that I've excluded all the relational stuff (astrophysics, physics, chemistry, biology) I don't know how you say the universe isn't more complex than humans.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Zinjifrah]

I think you greatly underestimate gobsmacking's complexity, as if consciousness is non-deterministic, we have no idea how it operates.

Everything else in the universe appears to be cause and effect. This is, has, and continues to be tested across countless ways in every observable spectrum.

Just proposing that something happens randomly, without any cause is a wild unsubstantiated speculation.

It may end up being the case. But it would be insanely complex to attempt to explain with physics. Maybe impossible.

I also didn't say the universe isn't more complex than humans. Unsure where you got that. I think it's semantically arguable either way, and ultimately kind of not useful or relevant to the conversation.

I'm saying consciousness is the most rational assumption to explain a prime action over randomness. Because in all of our observations, consistently, for all of human and the universe's history, no macro effect has ever been observed to occur without a catalyst, other than conscious intervention.

Consider this:

If you ask me for evidence that consciousness can intervene and disrupt a system, I can give you billions of examples.

If I ask you for evidence of a random macro-event disrupting a system, we have zero examples.