The Nones have slipped, too!

I had heard about the big PRRI survey of religious attitudes and issues this summer, but it happened right before I went on vacation, and I hadn't had a chance to unpack it. But, an actually interesting person at Medium, originally blogging elsewhere, talked about it. That said, David Gamble got one thing a bit wrong, as I told him in a comment. And, it's time to talk about that.

For my take, the biggest issue is NOT the decline of fundagelical Christians, discussed a week ago, but what this graph below says, from his post, but actually from a Pew study, not PRRI:

 

And, that's why I have the header.

Because they HAVE slipped.

So, why?

Are some nones now "nunya" and not answering? Did some of them, like fundagelicals, go to mainline Protestant churches because of COVID existential fears?

There's other stories to pull out of the full PRRI survey. The biggest is, whether in part from more diversity in US immigration patterns or what, the rise in belief in "other world religions," that is, anything besides the Judeo-fig-leaf-Christian America.

PRRI's presser also has interesting facts. The most religiously diverse spots in America are greater NYC, and Montgomery County on the Maryland side of DC, no shocks, even more so than the Bay Area ...

And ...

Navajo County, Arizona!

That's actually no shock to me. Per its name, it had the heart of the "Big Rez," plus the Fort Apache reservation AND part of the Hopi reservation. Hopis are among the most traditionalist of Pueblos. The western side of the Navajo Nation contains many of its most traditionalist peoples. It's about 50 percent American Indian.

The Nones are NOT Dan Dennett's "Brights" nor are they most likely to come from Whites

Gnu Atheist types like to sell the idea that the religiously unaffiliated in the US, the so-called Nones, are primarily atheist.

And, decades ago, Dan Dennett, with an assist from Richard Dawkins, tried to sell the idea of their brilliance when he invented the word "Brights."

Well, per religious polling organization PRRI, they'd be wrong.

Hindus would be the "Brights," if we go by post-graduate collegiate education:

Per the graph, they'd be followed by Unitarians, and the typical Unitarian church any more can include Unitarians ardent for Western deism or theism, New Agers, Wiccans, atheists or others. Jews, many of whom are not metaphysical if they're Reform, are third. Orthodox Christians are fourth, interestingly.

The Nones? Tied with mainline Protestants and behind Mormons and Muslims as well as the other above groups.

This, in line with previous blogging of mine about the new PRRI research, should also put the kibosh on claims that the Nones are atheists or even close. Their education profile in general most closely parallels White mainline Protestants.

They're likely "unaffiliated" because they've simply drifted. Other religious sociology research says that a major predictor of church going is having children or not, and how many, if you do. With better-income families, especially, having one kid and no more in many cases, church as a place for potential moral development of kids just doesn't have the same call. Plus, in an ever more mobile society, these mainline Protestant denominations probably have less hold. And, since most of them are in theological fellowship with one another, more White mainliners probably figure they don't need to identify as Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian. I suspect that of the total amount of Nones, one third are theist mainline Protestants, one third are deist mainline Protestants, and only one third are really something else, or else "seekers" who just aren't sure.

And, a later graph partially confirms this indirectly, but also says I shouldn't push this too much. Asians and the multiracial are most likely to be Nones. American Indians are third, which indicates that Nones includes indigenous religion. The percentage of Whites who identify as Nones is only two points ahead of Blacks, which in turn is two points ahead of Hispanics.

An alleged Beethoven's 10th? Really? Boo or yay?

The Conversation reports that a team of musicologists, in conjunction with a team of artificial intelligence researchers, recently completed the first realization of what they call Beethoven's 10th Symphony.

Or Sym-phony? 

Pardon my skepticism. But, the manipulators have well earned it.

First, on the AI side, I've heard computer-generated music before. That includes computer-generated classical music. And, without knowing in advance it was computer-generated, in some cases. It sounded nice. Or rather, "nice."

Second, on the musicologist side, I've heard Barry Cooper's realization of the first movement before. Didn't like it. Sounded more like Schubert than Beethoven, among other things.

Third, on the music theory side, Beethoven left a lot less for "his" Tenth than Mahler did for his.

On the positive side?

The musicologists involved included Robert Levin, author of a renowned realization of Mozart's Requieum.

Second, in a test run, piano score, for an audience, supposedly, listeners couldn't tell where Beethoven ended and AI began.

I don't know if there's a recording of the full thing on YouTube, but there is a link to a snippet, audio only, at the end of the piece.

Still sounds as much like Schubert as Beethoven. Maybe not "more than," but still "as much as." And, to some degree, sounds like neither one totally. It sounds a bit like what Mozart might have done had he lived another decade. (That said, the snippet is from that same first movement that I critiqued above.)

Better, as least as far as something to listen to, but not actually better? I found the ALLEGED "full audio" on YouTube.

It AIN'T really "full audio," as Beethoven never would have written a 10th Symphony clocking just 21:30. I've left comments to that effect. This is like a master's of music thesis composition. Not even a doctor of music. Master's of music.

(At the YouTube page for the embedded video, people are chiding me for not understanding the project. Look, folks, unlike Barry Cooper, this isn't marketed as a "movement," and "full audio" can at least be interpreted as "the full enchilada." Don't blame me for perceiving a marketing attempt that backfired.)

Other commenters say it sounds like middle Beethoven, not late. I can halfway buy that, but even then, it doesn't sound THAT much like Beethoven. Compare it to, say, the 4th Symphony or 3rd Piano Concerto. 

Or, like a master's of music thesis composition!

There's the added problem, which Cooper admitted he faced, in that Beethoven's own sketches contradict each other, not a problem with the Mahler 10th. The new realizers appear to have taken a different fork at times, but I still think they have too little to work on.

It doesn't jazz me up a lot more than Cooper.

Finally, on an arrogance issue? Having the general public, music or other journalists or even musicologists allegedly not able to tell where Beethoven left off and where AI begins means little, for two major reasons.

First, there's so little in the way of Beethoven sketches beyond the first movement that it's mostly AI.

Second, given that the AI composers (I refuse to call this a "realization") say they used basically the entire Beethoven corpus, that means the trained listeners can't compare it to just late Beethoven. And, given that Beethoven, a la Prokofiev, never decided to write "A Symphony in Baroque Style," or per Schnittke, never wanted to write "A Suite in Baroque Style," using his whole corpus as an AI writing guide is a "fail." A necessary one, given the paucity of actual sketches, but one that just further illustrates the problem.

Third? As for the claim that journalists and musicologists even, couldn't tell where Beethoven stopped and AI started? I could tell where Beethoven stopped and bullshit started — when the organ comes in the first time, just after the 7-minute mark.

That's also a mark that this is bullshit by the modern pseudo-realizers. Given that Beethoven wrote almost nothing for organ, no way AI says "organ here." Humans did that. Humans writing something like ...  a master's of music thesis composition!

(Also at the YouTube page, one respondent to me says, imagine Beethoven dying earlier and never writing a choral symphony, but yet, somebody coming along and brilliantly saying ... "voila." Bull. First, as I noted, Beethoven lived to 57; he didn't die at Schubert's age. Second, we can play all sorts of games with such silly counterfactuals.)

And, feeding on that? I Twitter-searched "Beethoven's 10th," and see that the artistes and the recorders-engineers are touting this with the #BeethovenX hashtag. I Tweeted to a group:

Seriously this so-called #BeethovenX is like a thesis composition somebody would write for a master of music degree, and not even a PhD, and don't blame AI for that. This is ultimately on humans at the end, making overblown claims about #AI and about themselves.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 13, 2021

And Deutsche Telecom's account responded:

If you didn't like the result, it's totally fine. The perception of arts is always very individual. #BeethovenX was an experiment to find out if AI and arts can match. I'm pretty sure that Beethoven himself as a visionary would have curiously followed this approach. ^susann

— Deutsche Telekom AG (@deutschetelekom) October 14, 2021

To which I said:

>>I'm pretty sure that Beethoven himself as a visionary would have curiously followed this approach<<
I'm pretty sure not. Plus, don't blame AI for inserting an organ in a middle. IMO, this gets to the real issue. This wasn't even a "realization," as normally understood.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 14, 2021

C'mon, we're now entering the land of intellectual dishonesty. Humans ultimately wrote this up, and since this is orchestration, not a keyboard score, chose the instrumentation.

That includes the "master's of music theses" alleged creativity of adding an organ line in the middle. I'm pretty damned sure that, because Beethoven wrote little for organ, he would NOT have "curiously followed this approach."

So, per the header? "Boo!" And, in spades. And, why I added "An alleged" at the start of the header.

And, it's sad that a Robert Levin, with his great realization of the Mozart Requiem, would be part of this dreck.

IF fundagelical Christianity is dying, why?

 In a piece a couple of days ago, looking at comments by resigned Southern Baptist Convention ethicist Russell Moore, I said that if fundagelical Christianity is dying, its wounds are self-inflicted in ways that Moore's prescription won't heal.

Moore in part worries, basically, about "Trumpism" infecting his denomination. With a sister who's a preacher's wife in the main conservative wing of Lutheranism, I know that's becoming a problem there, too. Sidebar: German-Americans, among white ethnic divisions, broke harder for Trump than anybody else.

But, in the last few years, mainline Protestantism has ticked up even as the fundagelical world has declined:

Is that in any way connected to Trumpism in religion?

An actually interesting person at Medium, originally blogging elsewhere, talked about it. That said, David Gamble may be wrong on this one.

First, the fundagelical decline has been happening for a long time, at least among Whites. And, already pre-Trump, it was sharper than the White Catholic decline.

Second, White mainline Protestants trending upward in 2017? Trumpism may have been a factor, but probably not the only one. It's likely that the majority of "leavers" of fundagelicalism were becoming Nones.

Third, and in anticipating a future post? One thing about this is problematic.

The line graph has "White" for everything but the unaffiliated, the "Nones." 

That said, that's partially rectified later with further information and additional graphs.

Asian Americans and the multiracial are most likely to be Nones. American Indians are third, which indicates that Nones includes indigenous religion. The percentage of Whites who identify as Nones is only two points ahead of Blacks, which in turn is two points ahead of Hispanics.

Is fundagelical Christianity dying?

 "Fundagelical" is an ever-more-common mashup for "fundamentalist" and "(conservative) evangelical," for the unfamiliar. The two groups may differ in some doctrinal emphases; for example, evangelicals like Pat Robertson can be old-earth creationists without any problems, and fundamentalists may worry less about evangelism.

However, their overall largely literalist focus on doctrines and beliefs is pretty much the same. Their politics definitely are.

That said, the "conservative" in parentheses is important. Readers of Sojourners magazine or people like Jimmy Carter, liberal evangelicals who aren't liberal mainline Protestants, still exist in numbers.

With that, let's dig in.

Ex-Southern Baptist Convention ethicist Russell Moore (I don't know if he's ex-SBC by church attendance or not) talks about whether or not Christianity is dying, or will be.

Actually, that's not true.

He talks about whether his version of Xianity is dying, or will be.

And, the rise of the so-called "nones" say that he's probably whistling in the dark more than he'd like to admit.

To riff on Paul and turn him upside down, Christians who have belief in the next life only, and when people are long-term unemployed, can offer nothing more than a Calvinist "will of god," or even a Christian Social Darwinian "maybe you're still a sinner," don't have anything to offer Millennials.

To riff on Russell Moore?

If your witnessing is only a gospel that fails to include a social gospel, it's tohu wevohu, per the Hebrew opening the Torah. 

If your witnessing is a gospel with less tolerance and toleration than Pope Francis, then it's only a clanging cymbal, to go back to Paul.

So, if your Christianity is, if not dying, continuing to decline into a basket case, it's because you're helping strangle it, Moore.

Harvey Whitehouse: Right on defining what religion is, until he went way wrong

Via Pocket, I saw this Nautilus piece, written by Steve Paulson, that at first looked very interesting.

British anthropologist Whitehouse, who has been to hunter-gatherer or mixed subsistence cultures in places like New Guinea, talked about how the power of rituals, especially initiation rituals, and their creation of social bonds, are a key item to the development of religion.

Sounded interesting. That's definitely the case as he further discussed the sociological aspects of this.

Until ... he went wrong.

He first went wrong with the word "transcendence," which he seemed to use even more loosely than Rudolf Otto's "numinous," and which, like the word "ineffable," comes off in his account as "anything that seems unexplainable." So, at that point, we've moved kind of New Agey. (Hold on to that thought.)

That was bad enough, until he went really wrong.

He claimed that footy (football, in the UK) fandom was itself a religion. Oh, wrong, wrong, Not.Even.Wrong. And, not just about footy, but US football or any other sport.

And, I suppose we're at the point of needing to offer my definition of religion.

First, I agree that religion is a group, sociological and social psychology function.

Second, rituals in general and initiation rituals in particular, may be part of religion's coherence. (Etymologists still debate whether or not the word comes from the Latin "religere," which means "to tie together.")

But, that's where we part company.

My definition of religious starts in the world of philosophy, where he seems not to visit, per the story:

Whitehouse directs the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University. For years he’s been collaborating with scholars around the world to build a massive body of data that grounds the study of religion in science. Whitehouse draws on an array of disciplines—archeology, ethnography, history, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science—to construct a profile of religious practices.

And, that means that right there, he's going to be lacking, IMO. (I also wonder if, or fear that, "evolutionary anthropology" could wind up coming off like some of the current worst of "evolutionary psychology," but that will be a blog post or three for another time, if necessary. OTOH, it may be something like Scott Atran, who Wiki says, on its Whitehouse page, helped found another institute at Oxford with him. I digress.)

My definition, which I think I've uttered here before, is something like this.

Religion is about:

Metaphysical matters of ultimate concern, within a social group setting; and 

How one orients oneself within that group to a better relationship to these metaphysical matters of ultimate concern.

First, note that "metaphysical" shows we're clearly into philosophy. It means something that "transcendence" does not.

Second, note that "of ultimate concern" shows we're not talking about footy fandom. UK fans who would believe that they can conduct magic rituals to revive the career of a current player, let alone actually revive a dead star of the past, would be considered mentally ill by psychologists, and ministers, and presumably by Whitehouse.

Third, note that I did NOT say "god," or "deity/-ies" or "divinity/-ies." 

This means that Theravada Buddhists who do not believe in a personal deity are still part of a religion. They ARE, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Wright, and Buddhism flirter John Horgan. I also did NOT say "soul." Western monotheisms, and generally Hinduism, believe in some sort of personal soul, as in "your immortal soul," in the Western tradition, but Theravada claims to believe only in a "life force."

And, "karma."

To put it another way, Tottenham fans have not devised a god called "Spurs," have not devised a karma about relegation, have not recruited a community to believe this, and have not developed a cultus of worship, prayers, etc.

Rabid fandom is an "-ism," like Nazism or Communism. Neither of those is a religion, either.

And, that leads us to point the second, of the two main parts of my definition.

Karma is itself a metaphysical entity throughout Hindu and Buddhist belief, and basically similar among Jains, from what I know. Given that these religions claim one can be reincarnated as a piece of shit, or more literally, a dung beetle eating that shit, without knowing what one did wrong in a past life, or, per Theravada, even having a personal soul from a past life that COULD remember, is why I've said that karma is more offensive than original sin, following on an earlier post. But I digress.

Anyway, ethical actions, and beliefs and doctrines, are, as defined by the religious-sociological group (that's how religion is not individual) are how one "orients oneself to a better relationship" with these metaphysical entities, whatever they are in that religion. (Buddhism and Judaism have doctrines as well as ethical practice, as I said before, let's not pretend otherwise, it's called "orthodoxy" vs "orthopraxis" in philosophy of religion and critical religion, and refusal to accept that is stereotyping.) Speaking of that, Whitehouse himself, per this "modes of religiosity" Wiki page, differentiates between what he calls "imagistic" vs "doctrinal" systems. Frankly, seeing that he's also missing scholars of religion and philosophers of religion from that institute, I think this is poor language usage. It's also not good division, per a follow-up to my "as I said before"; for many a Catholic, the ringing of the transubstantiation bell is NOT Pavlov's dog, which IS what it reminds me of, nor just doctrinal, but is "imagistic," aural division. The elevation of the host certainly is imagistic. I could also mention Catholic Penitentes, Protestant "holy rollers" and "speaking in tongues," Shi'ite flagellators and more. 

Wiki then mentions a "cognitive science of religion," which has Whitehouse and another, like Atran, long-ago read, Pascal Boyer, mentioned. Cognitive science has in the past offered some insight for philosophy and probably can for religion, but its devotees often overrate it, too. That's especially true if, per Wiki, these ideas originate in ev psych. And, thus, my original worries about Whitehouse's evolutionary anthropology gain more foothold.

Yes, human psychology evolved; as a scientific and philosophical naturalist, I totally accept that. But, modern ev psych as a discipline, with its pseudoscience, sexist ideas and more? I reject.

And, with that, I'm more than done with Whitehouse.

Final sidebar note. If you claim to be "spiritual but not religious," but still follow religious leaders on social media, though not going to a church or temple, you're religious. If you claim to be "spiritual but not religious," but attend a Wiccan coven or a neo-Druid gathering? You're religious.

Actually, second sidebar note: Whitehouse reminds me a lot of James Harrod and his claim that chimps are religious, debunked by me here.

==

Update, May 10, 2024: Per a piece by Ed Buckner on Substack, where I posted a link to this, no, I do not at all think secular humanism is religious. Nor atheism in general. 

That said, certain types of Gnu Atheism that approach Camus' "antitheism" of "The Rebel"? They're close, to be honest. It's an "antibelief," or belief against, but it is a belief against metaphysical entities of ultimate concern, generally with all the communal aspects etc also listed above.

Unmaking the myth of the "white Christian worldview"

 Robert P. Jones, an ex-fundagelical of some sort, talks at Time about escaping the "white Christian worldview."

But, as two Tweets of mine say to him, to avoid typing twice, the piece is problematic and simplistic.

First, the reality of American Christianity today is more complex than his Mississippi birthland:

.@robertpjones .. several things in your piece are mix of fallacy & overstatement. Reality?
1. Not all white Xns are Protestant
2. Not all white Xn Protestants are conserv. evangelical or fundamentalist.
3. And, more and more whites are "nones" not Xn. 1/xhttps://t.co/ZWyJI9Bic2

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

My midwestern Lutheranism, while socially and religiously conservative, was nothing like his religious childhood. (I've been to white and black Baptist services, I'll add.)

Within the piece, he mentions the recent sharp decline of Southern Baptists. Yes, and mainline Protestants declined before that. And Catholics are declining as well. And, as time and motion studies have shown, Americans have long lied about frequency of church attendance, even before the rise of the "nones." (That said, the rise of the nones is NOT all it's sometimes cracked up to be.)

Second, the reality of American Christianity when he was a young'un and St. Ronald of Reagan was running for president was more complicated outside the South than he notes, which leads to this.

Even if dead weight of tradition makes point three nugatory? Especially outside the South, points 1 and 2 were in effect when you and I grew up. A better piece would separate out regional and cultural politics being fused with religion and nationalized.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

It's true that Reagan (maybe told so by his horoscope, and yes, he believed them, as he turned Nancy on to astrology, not the other way around) pandered to the Religious Right and helped fuel this fusion, but that helps make the point of my second tweet! Especially when you tie this to the lying about church attendance. It's cultural Christianism, a fundagelical version of Samuel Huntington's angle.

That said, in some way, shape or form, that's been the case in much of the Christian world since Roman emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of the empire nearly 1,650 years ago. Political types (and, yes, politics exists outside democracies) have long grifted on cultural Christianism. It hasn't had racism attached to it; "racism" as we know it today didn't really exist in antiquity, after all.

But, if he wants to talk about real Christian sins, he should deal with that.

Since I'm a secularist, I've written enough about another rescue attempt for American Christianity.

Note: This is part one of a three-part series. The second will expand on the decline of evangelical Christians. The third will note that the rise of the Nones has itself hit a speed bump. Both will rely on new polling and analysis from this summer by Jones' outfit, PRRI.