The Volokh Conspiracy is ruminating over why so many academics are hostile to some religions rather than others. Todd Zywicki cites data:
According to a study by the Institute of Jewish and Community Research, 53% of professors have an unfavorable view of Evangelical Christians but only 3% have an unfavorable view of Jews. A summary of the study is here. 33% have unfavorable views of Mormons. Muslims, Atheists, and Catholics all score in double-digits.
He goes on to express his astonishment…
It is almost impossible to imagine any identifiable group of Americans today who would hold such a reflexively negative view of other groups of Americans. I can’t imagine that any degree of racial bigotry by any group toward any other group would even approximate this degree of bigotry and prejudice.
Until, of course, his commenters point out an inconvenient fact: this “prejudice” pales next to that against atheists.
Co-blogger Ilya Somin then chimes in with a theory — it’s all just bias against conservatives.
Overall, I think the data confirm my theory that most academics are not hostile to religion as such, but merely to those religious groups that they perceive (for the most part correctly) as politically conservative.
The study Todd cites shows that 53% of academics have an “unfavorable” view of Evangelical Christians and 33% say the same of Mormons. By contrast, only 13% have an unfavorable view of Catholics and 3% towards Jews. As Todd points out, Evangelical Christians and and Mormons are generally seen as politically conservative, while Jews tend to be liberal, and Catholics somewhere in between. Todd may well be right that academics’ views of Evangelicals and Mormons are based on stereotypes rather than personal experience. However, the stereotype that these groups tend to be politically conservative is actually correct.
I have a different theory. What if academics had an unfavorable view of evangelicals and Mormons, and a generally favorable view of Catholics and Jews, because of how those groups view academia? Crazy, I know, but bear with me here. Catholicism and Judaism, whatever their other faults, have long traditions of valuing learning and scholarship, while Mormonism and evangelical Christianity … not so much. (Those are wild generalizations, of course, but the trends are clear.) Perhaps these unfavorable views are not actually prejudices at all, but informed opinions based on empirically verifiable realities?
Just a theory.
Might it not also be that Mormons and evangelicals seem more goofily credulous than Jews and Catholics? I mean, they all technically believe some silly things, but those two groups in particular seem like loonies.
That all may be true. Maybe there is some fear of the unknown here as well. Beliefs of Jews and Catholics are more widely known (and understood?) than those of Evangelicals (many little groups lumped into one word) and Mormons. We look up Mormonism on the Wikipedia and consider ourselves educated on the subject. I would guess that many reasonable Evangelicals get classed in our minds with the vocal, crazy Evangelicals. Mormons may get classed with fundamentalist polygamous groups. Plus, just based on numbers, academics are more likely to personally know and work with Jews and Catholics than with Evangelicals and Mormons. I have always found that nothing breaks my biases like actually getting to know people.
Whatever the reasons, it is disheartening to think that so many prejudices exist among us.
Interesting study, and good point.
In the quotes above I see no evidence of distinction between holding an unfavorable view of particular religions and holding an unfavorable view of the people who belong to those religions (though the quotes are worded to imply that academics hold unfavorable views of the people). This is a crucial difference. Holding an unfavorable opinion of a religion for whatever reason is not bigotry, while holding an unfavorable opinion of the constituents of that religion could be construed as such.
Perhaps the reason that there is only a 3% unfavorable rating towards Jews is because unlike “Evangelical Christians” and “Mormons”, people often identify themselves as Jewish even though they are not religious (I consider myself an Jewish atheist, for example). If the academics were asked their opinion of “Orthodox Jews” then maybe the results would be different. (i.e. Judaism can be considered an ethnicity rather than a religion)
I was just browsing through the study. I don’t understand the difference between “those with no religion” and “atheists”.
Sometimes I’m prejudiced by conclusions drawn from the evidence.
I propose a slightly different theory that unfavorable views held by academics towards religious people are based on a lack of respect for the religious world-view in general. Religious people tend to put enormous stock in faith — or belief without evidence — which goes directly against central themes of respectable academic pursuits. This, in turn, shows a lack of respect by religious people for a more analytic belief structure, and can be manifest as an unfavorable view of academics. So, I suspect that many academics just don’t respect faith of the religious kind, rather than just reciprocating a mutual, unfavorable view.
It is clear that you actually have no idea what you are talking about. Your claim that mormons do not value education and scholarship is not just a wild generalization, it is completely wrong. I wonder if you even know any mormons, or where you have observed such a trend that is, in your words, clear.
When was the last time a Catholic or Jew came to your door to let you know you were going to hell? That might have something to do with unfavorable impressions of Evangelicals and Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses for that matter.
I actually find implicit tarring of entire groups of people like this a bit offensive, Sean. What if people’s skull shapes were empirically verifiably correlated with intelligence? Things like this border on prejudicial stereotypes masquerading as science, and are outside of what science is intended to do (i.e. benefit humanity).
This study illustrates yet another example of strange American culture. In European societies, Mormons and Evangelicals are not even on the radar. They are rightly viewed as extreme fringe lunatics, and very few European academics would have even met a Mormon or an Evangelical.
I cannot believe that only 3% of academics hold negative views of Jews in reality: left-wing academic anti-Semitism is distressingly pervasive. I say this as a liberal, secular Jew who has an ambiguous name and doesn’t “look Jewish:” I’ve heard some pretty vile things said in academic company on the assumption there weren’t any Jews around.
The fact that most of these comments are cloaked as opposition to Israel while “open” anti-Semitism remains socially unacceptable may have skewed the survey results.
I am curious (but not suffienetly so to follow and read the survey results), what the result of a similar study targetting non-academic would show regarding bias. This might give a better relative skew to see how much *more* biased (or less, I am assuming) are towards these religions/belief systems.
To classify opposition to some of Israel’s policies as anti-Semitism is a leap.
I think that left-liberal criticisms of Israel, which would surely run much higher than 3%, are precisely that, and are quite distinct from traditional anti-Semitism. They have much more in common with criticisms of British rule Northern Ireland, or apartheid in South Africa.
Re: evangelicals, surely one does have a right to judge someone for the actions of the groups they choose to belong to, in this case the continued battles of the evangelicals against evolution, however keen individuals may be for little Jimmy to get an education as an engineer or lawyer?
“Just a theory.”
ARRRGGHHH!!! To say this on a science blog no less! You mean, “just a conjecture”, right? 🙂
It may also have to do with the dogmatism of each of those particular religions when it comes to actually dealing with reality. I once gave an astronomy talk at a multi-faith conference on creation, and I came away impressed with the rabbi who spoke. He emphasized that Judaism is first and foremost a religion of practice, and he was quite happy to accept observational evidence about things like the origin of the universe, age of the earth and so on. I think people may be responding to the fact that jews emphasize their cultural identity and really don’t make much noise about there being any conflict between science and their religion. This is in contrast to the endless litany of boneheaded evangelical christian positions on issues like evolution etc. When you get right down to it, Science is about honesty and humility before the facts – some religious movements are consistent with that philosophy and some are not. If you go around saying the earth was actually created in seven days and no more, then you deserve to be treated like a cretin…
The term “unfavorable view”, perhaps, has at least two components. Some religious people perform or condone acts that I find repulsive – bigotry against homosexuals, for instance. I have a deep-seated “unfavorable view” of such actions.
I have a different sort of “unfavorable view” of those religious people who (defensively, I suppose) try to deny any finding which challenges their cherished beliefs. I feel that life is short, and if those beliefs help them enjoy it: fine, OK. I really don’t care if someone believes that the world was created by a four-headed tomato. But denial of scientific observation will invite a rebuttal by the scientists. So, if I say that this second group should keep their beliefs if they enjoy them, in what way is my view unfavorable? Well, just this:
if there is a creator, he (she) created the universe the WAY IT IS; he (she) did NOT create it the WAY IT ISN’T. If there is a God, he will be found in reallity, not in unreallity.
Well, Steven, I grew up in the Mormon church, and while I wouldn’t exactly say Mormons do not value education at all, I do think there is a general sense among the faithful that the “wrong” kind of education can turn someone away from the True Path (I’ve been told this almost verbatim a number of times). I think it’s fair to characterize the Mormon position as something like “faith is more important than education” (especially for women, I’m sorry to say). One example is the missionary tradition that interrupts college for many young people — I’d be interested to see statistics on how many return to finish their undergraduate degrees. Another is the fact that most clergymen (bishops, etc.) are laypeople with no seminary training.
To assert this is not to ignore the fact that there are many Mormon scholars; it is only to recognize that a formal education is not emphasized as strongly among Mormons as in some other religions. I suspect this difference is partly a result of Mormonism’s more recent origins among working-class people who were not themselves well educated, as opposed to older religions with a long monastic/rabbinical tradition.
Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard, also tackled the issue of the public perception of Mormonism. You may find his observations useful.
You may be interested to know that for a time BYU was producing the second largest number of undergraduate physics degrees and by far the largest number of physics teachers per year.
Oh, I almost forgot…. Kip Thorne is a very well known ex-Mormon and has said that he became interested in astronomy/astrophysics/cosmology/gr etc. after he attended a sky viewing session held at his church. Kip Thorne also coauthored a text (a warm-up exercise, really for MTW) with B.K. Harrison (of Harrison-Wheeler equation of state fame…) on gravitational collapse. Wheeler describes Harrison as one of his best students in his book “Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam”.
I guess if there was once an ex-Mormon who became a successful physicist, I was wrong.
Look, I said very explicitly that it was a wild generalization. Mormonism is not distinguished by a history of cultivating scholarly achievement, and instances where academic freedom have been suppressed are not at all hard to find. Simple as that.
Ellipsis, I confess that I don’t get your point. If there was an empirically verifiable relationship between skull shapes and intelligence, then … such a relation would exist. So what? I think I’m making a pretty straightforward observation here: people who highly value a certain set of traits tend to “look unfavorably” on groups of people who, in broad brush, don’t value those traits as much as they do. Not sure where skull shapes come in.
Certain groups do not come associated with ideas like “fierce advocates of intellectual and scholarly freedom.” If members of those groups would like to cast off such pernicious impressions, then fiercely advocating for intellectual and scholarly freedom would be a good place to start.
ollie, I really did mean just a theory, although it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.
In the interest of fairness, I would say that Catholics have a significantly longer tradition of not fiercely advocating for intellectual or scholarly freedom 🙂 Examples are not that hard to find….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
As someone who bought your book (full price! and quite good by the way), I must say I’m somewhat surprised to see you prone to “wild generalizations”. But I am curious to know how many counterexamples you need to overturn a theory.
Well, I see *all* adult, religious people as trapped in delusions, even if I am forced to be often silent on the subject for social reasons.
And I can’t understand how can you call it bigotry. It is no more bigot than thinking one with regular hallucinations has some mental problem. It’s practically the same thing.