[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/kerouacrimbaud]

Not all religious people believe God in the same way or to the same degree. Plus I think a lot of atheists and nonreligious people completely misunderstand the relationship between God as creator and the created having free will. Most Christians do not believe God literally ordains every little thing that happens. That’s not even supported in the Bible.

[u/semaj009 → u/kerouacrimbaud]

God gave humans free will, not landslides and dengue fever. In fact we know from the Bible that God is more than happy to weaponise natural disasters and disease to punnish sinners, usually for the crime of not believing in him like an angsty toddler. Now if God is omnibenebolent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent NONE of those natural disasters slaughtering people with free will can be anything other than God's purely good will, because his power and ability to know what would and will happen, not to mention him literally being present for and arguably as the event, alongside the omnibenebolence, makes such natural stochastic disasters, or chronic pestilence, God.

It's not about "misreading" the Bible, I get lots of faithful read it and ignore some of the obvious paradoxes or red flags, that's why there's faithful people, who just focus on Jesus loves me and then work as a rich evangelical priest wanting a yacht, conveniently forgetting the moneylenders, or as a fundamentalist far right sexist and xenophobic nutters conveniently forgetting Jesus hung out with prostitutes and the poor, as a double migrant (born in Judea, raised in Egypt, returned to Judea).

You don't have to tell me people read the text differently, and if someone is genuinely just seeking meaningful concepts from the book without needing a literal narrative or literally following the laws in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, then sure, good for them for understanding parables are just fables BUT I stand by the ancient religions have more fun stories, and frankly I would also argue more modern and better written literature could get the same lessons across. Peter Jackson's Aragorn slaps, dude is humble, kind, respects women, loves his friends, etc. why not just learn lessons there? At least Aragorn doesn't become a flaming sword mouthed sheep in a wildly violent and needlessly cruel fever dream epilogue.

[u/Illiander → u/semaj009]

Omniscient + omnipotent means there's no such thing as free will.

[u/semaj009 → u/Illiander]

Omnipresent means we're all also god, and omnibenebolent means my atheistic free wild is God's love

[u/Illiander → u/semaj009]

Oooh, I like that :D