How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [163]
Finally, to relate all this to a practical matter of concern to us all, Sulloway has shown that even seemingly small correlations of, say, .10, are “equivalent to improving your chances of surviving a potentially fatal disease, assuming that you take an effective medication, from 45 percent to 55 percent. This improvement represents an increase in survival of 22 percent over the base rate (55/45 = 1.22).” Sulloway’s point is that if our lives were threatened by a deadly disease, most of us would gladly take a drug that would give us a 22 percent probability of improvement. A correlation of .30 represents a near doubling of survival probability from 35 percent to 65 percent, while a correlation of .50 is equivalent to a tripling of the probability of survival, from 25 percent to 75 percent. In this manner, small correlations often represent real and powerful effects. In other words, significant correlations matter, even if they appear small.
In the scientific study of religion—mainly involving three fields of the psychology of religion, the sociology of religion, and, to a lesser degree, the anthropology of religion—correlations, multiple regressions, and probabilities are the tools wielded by social scientists who want to better understand the nature of Homo religiosus. Strangely, however, these fields are almost wholly neglected by social scientists studying psychology, sociology, and anthropology in general—strange, considering how deeply important and vastly universal is the religious impulse. You will find only a couple of textbooks in these areas, and rarer still is the college course covering the scientific study of religion (with the possible exception of some seminaries and theological departments). I attribute this paradoxical dearth to the hands-off nature of religion in general—religion is something to be followed, God is someone to be worshipped. To focus the narrow and intense beam of scientific light into this often dark and murky corner of the human condition can be blinding at first. As I have discovered in conducting this empirical study, to most folks there is something mildly unsettling about being asked personal and penetrating questions about their most deeply held and cherished religious beliefs. Still, if you want to understand the human condition the study of religious belief cannot be neglected, and since science is the best method yet devised for uncovering cause-and-effect relationships, we must apply that method whenever and wherever possible.
APPENDIX II
Why People Believe in God—The Data and Statistics
The source of the general survey sample was Survey Sampling, Inc., in Fairfield, Connecticut, the same organization that provides random samples of Americans for many of the most notable political, social, and cultural surveys conducted by social scientists and the media. Before the mailing we tested numerous versions of the survey on approximately a thousand people, refining the questions so that the answers accurately reflected what we hoped to measure. Based on the feedback from these test surveys, we believe that the instrument we used to collect the data provides an accurate reflection of what Americans believe about God, some of the most important influencing variables on their belief, and why they believe. The statistics were run on BMDP and SYSTAT. The graphics in this appendix were initially produced by Frank Sulloway using SYSTAT. These graphics were subsequently redesigned by Skeptic magazine art director Pat Linse using Adobe Illustrator. The footnotes that follow are linked to the discussion of this survey in Chapter 4.
END NOTES CORRELATIONS, DATA, AND STATISTICS
Click here The correlation between religious conviction and belief in God, in the skeptics survey, is r = .46 (N = 1650, t = 20.82, p < .0001).
Click here The correlation between religious conviction and belief in God, in the general survey, is r = .63 (N