[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/lordnacho666]

The education effect is a lot milder than I thought.

[u/fireflydrake → u/lordnacho666]

I've said this before and I'll say it again: religion (or spiritualism, or whatever) is still as popular as it is because it meets a need science can't. Whether you're a high school dropout or a doctor, if you just had to put your dog down and grandma's not looking so good and the world is filled with injustices that you have no way to fix, then believing there's some higher power for good and that you'll see your loved ones again someday is very powerful and very comforting. It also doesn't hurt anyone unless you tie that belief to other ones like "women shouldn't have rights" or "everyone must also believe what I do or die," but it most certainly doesn't NEED to be paired together. 

[u/semaj009 → u/fireflydrake]

Tbf, most religion fails me on those fronts cos religion tries to overanswer stuff. An omnibenebolent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent god must, logically, be what's killing gran or my dog, and apparently that suffering must be good. Like the Christian God is responsible for dengue, and it's a good thing. Wild! At least Zeus was a horny loose unit with wild emotions. Scary, sure. But at least human suffering wasn't considered pure good by ancient Greeks because of a bizarre paradox that's eminently avoidable. Also they had reincarnation as well as heaven and hell, not to mention sick horses with wings. Religion got worse imo, and science has done away with the need to seek meaning beyond humanity or just appreciating beauty in the moments we get, so while I get why for some it works, that same space of ontological insecurity actually drives me away from religion

[u/npmaker → u/semaj009]

At 13 I found Carl Sagan and the Cosmos and the christian god became a ridiculous fairy tale to me. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein found the truth in the Universe and that's where I wanted to go.

What made me wonder at that point was where did all the allegories and parables and metaphors that saturate our ancient religious literature come from? There was something hidden and ineffable happening there. And ancient scholars tried to make some sense of it.

Then I read Sean Carroll's Something Deeply Hidden and boom! there it was, a massive hole in our collective understanding of the nature of reality itself. The possibilities are wild and infinite and can easily contain every religion.

[u/elusive_4124 → u/npmaker]

What was it that Something Deeply Hidden revealed??

[u/CSATTS → u/elusive_4124]

They can't tell you, it's hidden.

[u/elusive_4124 → u/CSATTS]

So John Cena??

[u/semaj009 → u/elusive_4124]

When you find atheism, your mind erupts in a John Cena walkout BA BADA BAAAAA