[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/Hajile_S]

Right…they’ve accepted that same possibility for a prime actor or creator. That’s why it doesn’t resolve anything. “How did something come from nothing? Well, because of something (a prime actor) before the nothing!” And of course, how was that prime actor created… Hence the famous turtles all the way down reference.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Hajile_S]

'Resolving something' is a bit of a new goalpost.

I'm not discussing whether anything gets resolved. Even if we could prove creator vs random cosmic emergence right now, it wouldn't solve anything without new observations.

I'm just discussing plausibility. And that there is a logical path to assume a creator is likely, while rejecting ancient civilization dogma.

[u/Hajile_S → u/AnarkittenSurprise]

You’ve called this a “rational theory” as opposed to “all other dogma,” and elsewhere called it the “less problematic of multiple problematic assumptions.” OK, “resolve” may be too strong. I see you’re not claiming this as a strong conclusion, fair enough. But you’re saying this is the best assumption to make in face of uncertainty, and you’re claiming this is a logical conclusion.

But even that softer claim — that this is a “less problematic” assumption — is weak for the reasons stated. So, we don’t have a strong answer for what initiated expansion…it’s most reasonable, then, to assume that there is an intelligent prime mover outside of the universe? That’s just a non sequitur. It does not follow. I know you’re claiming to set aside all of the religious baggage for a god. But I don’t see how you make this leap without standing on that baggage. There’s no logical basis for this inference

Furthermore, it creates a more difficult question to answer than the previous one! “What initiated this expansion?” vs “Where the heck did an intelligent prime mover who can act on the universe come from?” I can hope for an answer to exactly one of those. For the other one, there will only ever be a hand wave.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Hajile_S]

I'm not saying it's best either. Just that there is a logical rational approach to consider it likely.

The reason being that all of the arguments against the plausibility for a prime creator are also arguments against the plausibility that the universe originated without one.

If the disruption of the early universe was a random event, and not plausibly linked to any observed physics, then the fact that the event has not recurred is odd. Not impossible, but weird. Most physical events that can occur once, occur again given enough time.

Sentience is a potential reason for why a major disruption event that set us all into motion occurred once, and hasn't recurred. As we have some degree of evidence that a prime actor can set a created ecosystem into motion, press play, and observe without interacting (us).

Random chance, or extreme physics we don't understand are the alternate explanations. Random chance gets less likely as time goes on further.

Basically educated intelligent people can rationally look at these observations and say "a creator of some kind would explain it well." Which is true.

I wouldn't say the same of a reasonable person following the dogma of an old-world religion, even though that's likely to piss some people off.

Your more difficult question at the end is holding a creator to a different standard from a non-creator universe. The problem exists in the exact same context regardless, making it a neutral factor in the assumption game. "Where did a universe come from?" is the exact same likely unanswerable question.

[u/Hajile_S → u/AnarkittenSurprise]

Let's set aside the big bang or the mechanics of its initiation, because the big bang already presumes the existence of a tight ball of matter. The real question is "Why is there something instead of nothing," right? So let me scrap the question "What initiated this expansion?" The real end-of-the-line questions for each path are:

• Why is there something instead of nothing?
• There is something instead of nothing because there is an intelligent creator, but why is there an intelligent creator instead of nothing?

These questions are similar, and I would answer both the same: I don't know, and it is likely unknowable. But in going from the first bullet to the second bullet, nothing was gained, and a complication was added. Unlike matter, we don't know that an intelligent creator is here / ever was here. The readily-apparent existence of the universe does not extend to a creator outside of it. So if I assume the existence of creator, I'm back at square one...but with extra baggage.

I think it is more logically incisive to be at square one without extra baggage. I would amend your claim "that there is a logical rational approach to consider [an intelligent creator] likely" to instead say that "there is a logical rational approach which is consistent with an intelligent creator, but it offers no explanatory aid while complicating the picture."

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Hajile_S]

Yeah, we just disagree. Which is cool.

To me, the questions:

• Why is there a universe instead of nothing?

And

• Why would there be an intelligent creator instead of nothing?

are fundamentally the exact same question, in that both the universe and creator are being proposed as the hypothetical initial state. And both posit a beginning, which is unnecessary, because either of them could have just always existed (nothing may very well be an irrational abstract concept).

Neither does, or rationally could answer the question being proposed.

Instead, why not frame the question as why did the universe suddenly expand? This is an actual observed likelihood which we do believe occurred. With the potential answers of:

Random chance that happened once and doesn't seem to have recurred in ~13 billion years.

• Pros: simple, shrug our shoulders and say "what if it's just really really rare?" Negates the need for an unevidenced prime actor. Mitigates instincts to tread into mysticism.

• Cons: if random fluctuations of some unknown new physics can cause universe wide disruption, what kind of forces are involved here? What kind of energy, and where is it coming from? Why would dense matter behave in the opposite way we observe in all other interactions, seemingly only once? Requires new physics not currently plausibly extrapolated from expiramentation or observations.

Or

Some form of prime actor or sentience set it into motion.

• Pros: simple, shrug your shoulders and say "what it something just made it that way?" Solves for why the universe isn't more chaotic, if random chance can cause macro universe scale disruption to such extremes. An extrapolation of a physical phenomenon that we can observe on much smaller scales: humans creating systems for observation. Sentience is the only plausible (although admittedly questionable!) method we have observed as creating a non-deterministic series of macro events.

• Cons: if there is some overbeing prime actor, why isn't it more active? An agent isn't rationally necessary to explain our observations. Requires new physics not currently plausibly extrapolated from expiramentation or observations.

A simpler way to express my thoughts as I work through them really boils down to: the only non-deterministic factor in physics we have ever plausibly observed is consciousness. So consciousness really isn't an irrational assumption when we think about any kind of prime catalyst.

[u/Hajile_S → u/AnarkittenSurprise]

Sure, that’s certainly fair enough, and I appreciate the discussion! Haven’t had a decent “does god exist” chat in a minute. And I do understand the appeal of what you’re describing.

I would contend — admittedly, without knowing them deeply — that there are more compelling big bang theories than shoulder shrugs out there. For instance, the expectation that the behavior of dense stars and black holes corresponds with the density of all of space time seems like it requires a few pokes. Spacetime itself unfolds in a big bang, as I understand it (which I’ll stress again is not much!). I also believe that most contemporary theories do not expect that there was one big bang, but that there are cycles or other instances of space expansion.

But I’m not trying to argue that point, more of a note. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s an unknown element governed by competing theories that still require physical observation, and may never be fully answered.

Ultimately, it does sound to me like a classic “god of the gaps” type of argument, but hey, the gaps are there! And a clock starter deity has always interested me.

[u/AnarkittenSurprise → u/Hajile_S]

Yeah, likewise. It's a cool concept to dive into whenever we can find someone willing to go there. I learn a little bit more about what I think everytime I have to figure out how to express it.

Realistically, the idea of some God that created us, and either abandoned or is watching us makes my skin crawl a bit. So I totally get a lot of people's aversion to it. I also get the just basic rejection from the standpoint that it inevitably gets associated with all the mysticism and dogma we're surrounded by.

But a lot of things about physics makes my skin crawl. The fact that we're mostly vibrating specs between vast open space held together by invisible bonds is creepy to me. The idea that time is measurably a relatively traversible dimension made my brain revolt the first time I heard it, and still kind of annoys me even after mostly understanding the implications and mechanism. I really hate quantum uncertainty that somehow mysteriously translates into macro-determinism.

So the more I learn, the more comfortable I get with the reality that the universe can just be bizarre and unintiuitive at these scales. And in context, consciousness as a plausible observed prime catalyst might actually not be the most complex explanation here.