Why does education tend to make people less religious?

We can certainly agree that there are genuinely thoughtful and brilliant people on every side of this debate, and we are all just trying to figure out the answers together.

Yet, studies have shown that every year of education “reduces the propensity to attend religious services at least once a month by about 14 percentage points.” (1)

So *why* does education tend to make more people less religious?

Is that not counter intuitive? If we can be certain this world was created by God, should not those who study the natural world, or logic/reason, be even more inclined to believe? Yet we see the opposite.

Why?

There are diverging traditions in the bible, like the two stories of Judas death

There are many cases where multiple traditions are interwoven in the Bible. Sometimes we know why these developed, other times, we can only guess.

One example of diverging traditions is the death of Judas, which has two different biblical accounts or traditions that cannot be fully reconciled. While some have tried to reconcile it (indeed one can find many conservative Christian pastors focus on one of the many differing elements of the story, the death itself, and try to hypothesize how a person can both hang himself, and die by falling head first, at the same time) yet most scholars generally agree these are different accounts. This discrepancy is acknowledged by academics from all traditions (Catholic, Evangelical, Protestant, & Secular), see below.

Kim Paffenroth, Catholic scholar:

“The actual details of the two accounts are irreconcilable. This difference in content creates quite a different meaning for Judas’s death in Acts. Luke’s version of Judas’s death does not include the poignancy (or notability) of suicide (as in Matthew), but rather portrays the death as the kind that should (or must?) happen to wicked people. He shows an interest in relating the death more graphically and grotesquely when he adds the detail that “all his bowels gushed out.” (1)

Bart Ehrman, secular scholar:

“According to Matthews Gospel, Judas hanged himself, and that after his death the chief priests used the betrayed money to purchase a field in which to bury strangers in Jerusalem. They called it the Field of Blood, because it was purchased with “blood money.” The book of Acts has a different account of Judas’s death and its relationship to this field. It is probably impossible to reconcile the details of these two accounts.” (2)

Craig A. Evans, Darrell Bock, Andreas J. Köstenberge, Conservative evangelical scholars:

“The two accounts appear to be independent traditions. A point often overlooked is that the existence of two distinct traditions suggests that Judas’ scandalous death was a widely known fact in the early church. Clearly we are not certain of all the details given the differences between Luke and Matthew.”  (3)

 

Religious drug/alcohol rehab programs start off less effective, cause depression, and may encourage relapse

A few studies of drug/alcohol rehab found that religious rehab programs start off worse and cause more depression/anxiety than secular psychological treatment.

In two clinical trials, published in the Journal of Substance Abuse, “Some of the patients received spiritual guidance as part of the treatment… others received secular psychotherapy. Because of the enduring popularity… programs that involve a spiritual component, Miller and his team expected the patients in the spiritual group to do better than those in the secular group. They were wrong — at least in the short term.

While both groups eventually benefited relatively equally from their treatment — abusing substances on fewer days — it took *longer* to see improvement among those in the spiritual group.

What’s more, those who received spiritual guidance reported being significantly more anxious and depressed after four months than those who got secular help. Those problems abated at about the eight-month point, but because substance abusers are at high risk for suicide, some worry that it may not be a good idea to put them through demanding spiritual calisthenics in the early months of their recovery.

This amplifies a fascinating 1997 paper which found that patients who reported knowing that someone was praying for them used significantly more substances after leaving treatment than those who didn’t know someone was praying for them.” (1)

Most scholars argue that the Pauline letters in the Bible are not all authentic

“A combination of philological, rhetorical, theological, and historical evidence has led most scholars to conclude that Paul did not write all letters attributed to him.

Nearly all scholars consider Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon as authentic.

Conversely, most would agree that Paul did not write 1 and 2 Timothy or the letter to Titus (the so-called Pastoral Letters), although a few scholars maintain that these letters are also authentic.

With regard to Ephesian, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians there is an ongoing discussion regarding authorship, but most scholars think that Paul did not write Ephesians, and the same is the case for Colossians. The authorship of 2 Thessalonians is still an open question.

Thus the Pauline letters may be divided into three groups
(a) almost certainly genuine letters (authentic)
(b) letters concerning which there is an ongoing discussion (disputed)
(c) letters almost certainly not written by Paul (pseudonymous or deuteropauline)”

–The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible

Religious violence can be the result of overly aggressive generalization

Religious violence is wrong, regardless of who is involved, but the reasons are often more difficult that simple hate, often it involves money and politics, for example consider the situation of Pentecostals in India.

Butler University professor of religion, Dr. Chad Bauman recently visited India to understand the violence against Pentecostals. He writes: “A lot of the hostility to Christianity that’s found in India today is related to their evangelism and what’s seen as a predatory form of evangelism that targets vulnerable and marginalized people. It’s also seen as an evangelism that’s funded to a considerable degree from abroad, and that is true—about $1 billion a year goes from the United States to India to mission and service organizations.”

Bauman said Christians are seen by some of the more conservative elements of Indian society as a threat to tolerance and secular society “because they don’t respect other people’s faiths… Christians are seen to be intolerant,” he said, “and so the question is: To what extent can Indian society tolerate these aggressively evangelistic Christians before the secular fabric of the nation falls apart?

“Of course, in an irony that one sees sometimes in the American treatment of Muslims, some Hindus respond to that challenge by themselves acting in extremely intolerant ways towards India’s Christians, including, occasionally, with violence.”

Why is God not more clear about his identity and his message?

There are currently 11 major world religions, though if we break this down into groups (like Unitarian Pentecostals vs Trinitarian Coptic Christians) and include new religious movements, this number reaches 4,200. To further break it down it’s estimated that there are 33,000 Christian denominations, of these 8,000+ are Protestant denominations that arose a few hundred years ago. But wait, there is more, there are thousands of religions that have existed throughout history and thousands of Gods that were once worshiped by millions, but are now long forgotten.

 Why is God not more clear about his identity and his message?

1. Humans throughout history who uses their intuition, logic, heart, or “spirit” to search for God, have reached completely different conclusions, gods, and religions.
2. Humans who try to reach God using revealed texts (Bible, Quran, Vedas) not only have the problem of many texts that all make the same claim, but also the fact that there are dozens of radically different interpretations of each text. Many of these interpretations are held by others to be formally heretical, and exclude one from heaven.

Atheist are the most hated group in the US

While prejudices exist in all groups, according to one study, the worst kind of prejudice and animosity exists against the non-religious.

If you are religious, and you see two people, an atheist and a member of your religion, doing the same *exact* action, you will always rate the atheist worse.

Philosopher Paul Draper writes: “The most robust prejudice correlated with religiosity is prejudice against atheists. [In a study by Jennifer C. Wright] Christian and atheist actors were portrayed in one condition as performing IDENTICAL immoral actions. Those actors portrayed as atheists were appraised significantly more negatively than those actors portrayed as Christians.

In another condition, atheist actors portrayed as performing supererogatory [morally good] actions were regarded as less praiseworthy than their Christian counterparts performing IDENTICAL actions.”

This is consistent with other ratings given by the US public, as seen in this 2014 Pew survey.

 

Just like Jesus, Fidel Castro also had a dove descend from heaven and land on his shoulder

In 1959, Cubas dictator Fidel Castro gave one of the most importation speeches in Cubas history. During this rousing speech, a dove descended from heaven and landed on Castros shoulder. (A second landed on his podium).

These doves remained there for two hours of his speech and caused millions of Cubans to believe that their dictator was divinely chosen for his leadership role.

This religious imagery came from two influential religions in Cuba at the time.

1. In Matthews Gospel story, a dove also descended from heaven upon Jesus to authenticate his mission, thus, Catholic Cubans saw this same symbol as confirmation of Gods favor upon Castro.

2. Also “in Cuban Santería, a religion derived from the Yorùbá people brought to Cuba as slaves, a white dove represents the divinity Obatalá, a divine king who molds humans from clay in heaven.” This caused Cubans to see Castro embodied with divine power.

Jesus was not killed for claiming to be the Messiah, for messiah claimants were often approved by the Jewish religion

It’s often assumed that Jesus was killed for declaring himself the Messiah, because such a declaration was “illegal” in Jewish religion. But this is certainly not the case.

There are at least twenty examples where human beings in the ancient Jewish context, before and after Jesus, that were called the Messiah, and none were killed by the Jewish religious leaders (while many were indeed killed by political rulers scared of an usurper taking their kingdom).

A few of these Messiahs were even affirmed by the masses or important Hebrew religious leaders.

a. One example is from the famous Cyrus prophecy of Isaiah 45 which refers to the Persian king Cyrus the Great at the Lords Anointed (messiah). Cyrus is called the messiah by Isaiah for he liberates the Jews in exile and returns them to their home.

b. A second example is Judas Maccabeus who led a successful revolt against the Greek Seleucid empire that occupied Jerusalem. Many Jews considered Maccabeus to be the Messiah and the “Prince of princes” alluded to in the book of Daniel.

c. A third example is Simon bar Kokhba a Messiah claimant who was born a few decades after Jesus. His surname, “Bar Kokhba” meant “Son of the Star” in Aramaic, from the Star Prophecy verse in Numbers 24:17- “There shall come a star out of Jacob.” And he was thought to be the Messiah by at least a leading Jewish leader, Rabbi Akiva

Charles Darwin was not an angry, evil, God-hating, atheist

When I was younger, I was a staunch young earth creationist who feverishly hated Charles Darwin. I considered him a liar, fraud, and an angry atheist. I even created a website, called “Darwin’s Deception.” Yet real story of Charles Darwin shows that he was not a villain, in fact, I would gladly call him a friend.

Darwin grew up in a religious family, went to religious schools, and even studied theology in college with the intent of being a Christian minister. He learned and accepted Creationism in his studies, and decided to take an excursion to “study God’s creation” and chronicle the evidences of God in nature. He was so immersed in Christianity that during his voyage, he would frequently quote Bible passages to the ill-mannered sailors, in hopes of leading them to repent.

During his studies of nature, he began to see that the real world did not reflect theology; there was bad design in nature, where he expected the perfect handiwork of a Creator, there was so much senseless and horrific suffering, where he expected a loving God who took care of his creation. This eventually culminated in Darwin abandoning his traditional Christian views, though he never became an atheist..

The pivotal moment in his life was his young daughter became seriously ill, and after many desperate prayers, she died. This sorrow crushed Darwin’s heart, and the hope in a God who answers prayers died in Darwin’s heart. Nonetheless for many years he continued giving alms to the poor, donating money to the church, and walking his family to their Sunday service, during which he would walk a beaten trail outdoors and contemplate the world around him.

Rather than being the angry, spiteful, God-hating atheist I expected, Darwin was a kind, humble, quiet man, whom rarely replied to the many attacks on his character; it was even said “dear Darwin never could nor would defend himself.” (1)