BACK WHEN I SPENT a lot of my time arguing with people who cited the made-to-get-publicity "studies" published by the Pew center on how religion was falling to atheism, I wrote the piece reposted below. It gives the definitive answer as to what is wrong with the social sciences as science, especially those that rely on the unverifiable testimony of a, generally, ridiculously inadequate number of people, not randomly chosen (sociology and its allies cannot get a true random sample to represent large populations) and of unverifiable reliability in their responses. That situation has not changed, it alone is enough to prove that the science of sociology is a flagrant violation of the stated, agreed-to methods of science in a way that should disqualify it from being called science but as scientists are the ones who get to decide what is included, it being allowed to get away with being called science further proves the inconsistency of the world body of scientists on their agreed to requirements.
I will have some further comments after the repost.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
Why Some, Not All, Atheists Go Nine Bubbles Out Of Level And Give Crap Advice 'yeah, It's Hate Mail
There really isn't any way to know how many members there are of a
group which doesn't keep track of its membership, not to mention groups
that are not groups but are defined as such by sociologists. A figure
I've seen used for atheists is that there are about 9,886,000 atheists
in the United States - though the percentage figures you always see are
hardly reliable. In fact if you really care about accuracy, they aren't
reliable at all. According to one of the groups whose statistics are
often cited, Pew, there are some interesting "facts" about atheists, one of which is
8% of those who call themselves atheists also say they believe in
God or a universal spirit. Indeed, 2% say they are “absolutely certain”
about the existence of God or a universal spirit. Alternatively, there
are many people who fit the dictionary definition of “atheist” but do
not call themselves atheists. About three times as many Americans say
they do not believe in God or a universal spirit (9%) as say they are
atheists (3%).
I have seen other numbers from other organizations that lead me
to believe that the number of atheists is, to a large extent, a matter
of manipulation of survey questions. Looking at the methodology of some
of them would lead me to suspect that the actual number might be less
than one percent, some others, as high as six percent, though I think
both are as much a product of the manipulation of questioning, seeking a
result by those conducting the alleged research.
But, also, like all surveys of this type, any particular datum
you include in your data, is only as good as the understanding, the
competence, the honesty and the earnestness of the person who was asked
to provide it. There is no way to test the responses for their truth,
accuracy or understanding of the question, that is left to being a
matter of faith and what the analysis throws out in a way to rig the
results. All survey results will include data which will range from
totally unreliable to somewhat more reliable, perhaps.
And don't leave out that practice of just throwing out data you
don't like. What do you do about someone who claims to be an atheist
but who is "absolutely certain" about the existence of God or a
universal spirit" or about someone who doesn't believe in God but who
will not call themself an atheist? And if you just throw those
responses out you aren't clarifying anything about the actual composite
religious nature of the American People*. Claiming that someone who,
when given the chance, refuses to self-identify as an atheist is an
atheist would only add another layer to the dishonesty of the entire
enterprise of gathering such data, substituting the opinion of the
surveyors for that of the people whose honest reports they are allegedly
relying on.
I have written about the phony, ideologically created group
"Nones" as a means of confusing people into thinking there are more
atheists in the United States than there are, but it - against all logic
and all practice of accurate definition - tosses together any number of
dissimilar people, believers, non-believers, people who pretend to not
have made up their minds, etc. Believers, in the breakdowns of the
"Nones" tend to be far more in number than the non-believers or the
"agnostics" who call themselves that. Though I wouldn't trust the
surveyors who resort to that atheist propaganda dodge to have nearly
uniform means of generating their data or defining it or shoving them
into that category.
Religious groups which do keep track of membership at least can
tell you if someone has been a member of their church so at least those
numbers are probably somewhat more reliable. Some keep better records
than others.
In order to avoid having to continually use qualifiers because I
really don't believe their survey results, I'm going to state that I'll
pretend for what follows that those are reliable. Though I want to make
it clear that I don't buy them for a second.
Anyway, the fact is that 85% of the presumed 3.1% of American
Voters identified as atheists who are reported as voting for Hillary
Clinton, make up a far smaller number of people than the combined
members of religious denominations who voted for Hillary Clinton both in
total numbers, going from the religious denominations who gave her the
least percentage of their reported votes (just under one fifth of
Mormons) to the most (African Methodist Episcopalians, 92%) that number
of voters is certainly not a group which Democrats can afford to ignore,
not even to please such atheists as Duncan Black and Kevin Drum.
Advocating the position they did is absolutely sheer stupidity. Given
that the number of religious voters is about the largest sub-set of all
voters, it would make more sense in sheer term of trying to win an
election to leave one of the genders out of the discussion. It
certainly would make more sense to leave out those atheists and
agnostics who advocate such stupidity. And I do know for a fact that
they don't speak for all atheists. I doubt Barney Frank would say such a
stupid thing about politics and I know my former state legislator who
knew how to count votes wouldn't. If you think I've been hard on them,
he'd be likely to dope slap them. He's had to try to win election
instead of just tapping a keyboard about politics.
* Such composite entities don't really exist, they are a mythical creation of such pseudo-science as sociology is made of.
Update 2021: Reading through this, it occurs to me that the phenomeon of atheists who are "certain" that there is a god or universal spirit and non-atheists who are atheists by the dictionary definition of the word might prove that the insistence on creating such defined categories is, itself, the opposite of a scientific or mathematical exercise. People simply will not accept the category that even such scientists,** put them in to get the results they want for publication. The problem of that for all and any such science that relies on people reporting such stuff as unverifiable "facts" about themselves, their experience, their opinion and for putting such people in defined categories for publication is extremely serious and quite obvious. But there is no evidence I've seen that it is a problem for the allegedly scientific nature of what they do that has ever been honesty dealt with by such sciences as should be laughed out of honest consideration.
I have recently noted the dangers of judges and courts relying on such stuff, which can be as easily ideologically rigged for the fascist right as for the allegedly liberal alleged left. I don't think the dangers of the left depending on them are negligible either. Dishonest and mistaken science tends to carry its own dangers when decisions and policies and legal decisions are based on them. Look at Buck v Bell written by the insanely inapt hero of later "liberals" if you want a classic example.
** I would have formerly put the word "scientist" in quotes there because they don't follow the rules of science, however I have decided that is dishonest because scientists, the faculties of university and college science departments, the publishers of scientific journals are the ones who define who is a scientist, whether they adhere to the rules rigorously and scrupulously or if they violate them rigorously and unscrupulously. Scientists should clean up their acts but it will involve them telling the truth about psychology, evolutionary psychology and Sociobiology, sociology, anthropology, perhaps worst of all, ethology and other fields of publication and entrenched positions in universities and the public understanding of science which would be a huge shit show. It would also demonstrate that, especially since the rise of Darwinism, that science has pretty much been in violation of its own stated rules in many fields. Not all of them on the same basis of the fields named above and generally for ideological reasons, cosmology and contemporary physics is a whole other shit show for reasons of ideology.
Update To The Whole: If you want a good example of what a shit show ideology has driven contemporary physics into, and its only one possible such example, here's this recent post from Peter Woit's blog. Especially note his responses in the comments. I wouldn't accuse Woit of being non-ideological but he at least seems to take the requirements for honesty and following the agreed to rules more seriously than a lot of his colleagues do.
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