I have children; and a religious wife and parents in law.

[Tefal]

Lost me...

All animals are inconsistent.

 

[413x]

I definitely couldn't date someone religious.
As someone else said I think they will be uld just be too many differences.

 

[GR63]

I think I'd have considered this issue and discussed with potential wife before she became actual wife. Check compatibility with views etc

Personally, I'd agree that you both present your views and allow them to decide.

 

[DanTheMan]

I never grew up with any sort of religion, except attending the occasional mass with my friend, whose mum was Catholic. My wife is christened and wanted the same for our daughter. I don't particularly care either way, I think it's far more important to raise kids to question things, irrespective of the religion they may have been raised around.

We actually ended up attending church quite frequently since my daughter was 2, as we moved house and the church plays quite a big part in a lot of the social events where we live. I can only speak for the Church of England services that we attend but it's certainly pretty light touch when it comes to forcing religion down your throat.

I actually have come to enjoy going to services from a spiritual perspective. No particular religious bias, its just nice to contemplate and reflect on your own life and existence in general for an hour a week. I think as long as religion is used primarily as moral guidance, there's no harm in it. As long as your in laws aren't trying to shove hardcore religious 'facts' down your kid's throat, it should be fine.

 

[Ross Thomson]

I am worried however. I want my children to grow up without indoctrination. I want them to be able to make an informed decision based on reality, not on stories. At the same time, I can't (and would never) try to prevent them from being with their grandparents. In fact the opposite; it's critically important that they have time with them.

They are not the proselitysing kind, but they also (and I include my wife in this) don't recognise that their stories are a form of indoctrination.

Am I over thinking this? Would be grateful to hear opinions from all angles.

Thanks

What kind of stories?

I'm guessing they don't go to church etc.

When your kids ask you questions tell them the truth. If someone dies then explain exactly what happens.

 

[Ross Thomson]

Scotland is part of the UK despite what the SNP would have you think. Religious education is little different in Scotland than it is in England and Wales mainly teaching awareness of different religions. Indoctrination doesn't come into it.

SNP don't make out Scotland not to be part of the UK. Its the complete opposite. Religious education in both England and Scotland optional. You as a parent can opt your child out of it. religious and moral education (RME) provides a wide cultural education. It does not say that god is real rather it describes the different religions.

 

[Ross Thomson]

I do find it patronising though to hear people talk about 'fairy stories'. They are part of someones faith and they deserve some respect as ways to impart values and behaviour, in the way that all religion does. Perhaps do ron ron needs to act on his own words and looo at what is really happening in Scottish education and religion rather than criticise.

If an adult believed in Santa Claus would you feel the same way? Religions are a bunch of fairy stories made up because of man's ignorance of science. A way to control and have power/money. The religion and god you have faith in is purely down to where you were born. There have been 3000+ "gods" since the dawn of man. With the invention of monotheism, we are one god closer to getting rid of religion for good. Values and morals have nothing to do with religion thankfully.

 

[do_ron_ron]

If an adult believed in Santa Claus would you feel the same way? Religions are a bunch of fairy stories made up because of man's ignorance of science. A way to control and have power/money. The religion and god you have faith in is purely down to where you were born. There have been 3000+ "gods" since the dawn of man. With the invention of monotheism, we are one god closer to getting rid of religion for good. Values and morals have nothing to do with religion thankfully.

It is also true that religions are stronger in countries with little/poor education.

 

[Mr C]

It is also true that religions are stronger in countries with little/poor education.

Except the US, in this regard they are an outlier. Outside of that particular example, the statement is correct.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2015/05/15/no-inspiration-from-above

MORE religious countries tend to be less innovative, according to a paper published last month by America’s National Bureau of Economic Research. In “Forbidden Fruits: The Political Economy of Science, Religion, and Growth”, Roland Benabou of Princeton and Davide Ticche and Andrea Vindigni of the IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca find a strong negative correlation between innovation, as measured by patents, and religiosity, measured by the share of a population that self-identifies as religious. “I am interested in how people form beliefs that are relevant to economics,” says Mr Benabou. “That thought takes you to belief with a capital B, and that’s religion.”

The authors do not claim to prove that religion causes an innovation deficit. However, they hypothesise that theocratic models of government, in which political leaders are strongly influenced by religious institutions, may provide a channel for anti-scientific views to influence public policy. As examples, they cite the banning of printing in the Ottoman Empire, and the controversial decision by the former American president George W. Bush to limit the federal government’s funding of stem-cell research. Even after taking into account these restrictions, the existence of the United States is still problematic for the theory: a fifth of the world’s GDP comes from a country that is both religious and innovative. And if religion does in fact depress innovation, that does not necessarily mean it is bad for economic growth. After all, faith could quite plausibly offer benefits, such as social cohesion, that outweigh its costs.

 

[Ross Thomson]

Except the US, in this regard they are an outlier. Outside of that particular example, the statement is correct.

I'd argue that they are not an outlier. The education system in the USA is atrocious with poor literacy and numeracy scores.

 

[Mr C]

I'd argue that they are not an outlier. The education system in the USA is atrocious with poor literacy and numeracy scores.

Relative to sub-Saharan Africa and the middle east?

https://www.economist.com/graphic-d...poor-pupil-in-a-rich-country-than-the-reverse

I think you'll find when the data is relative, they score very highly, maybe not compared to the wealthy Asian countries but that is more cultural rather than religious as the US isn't much worse than its European counterparts.

Cherry-picking scores from poor American families may push them further down the table but again that's an issue of poverty and not necessarily religion.

 

[Ross Thomson]

For how rich the USA is their education scores are shockingly bad.

 

[Mr C]

For how rich the USA is their education scores are shockingly bad.

You are going to need to provide evidence then, because based on the PISA study, which is the only collaborative global study on attainment across schools the US do not fare "shockingly bad". In fact if you use the 2018 results the US is one of the best large primarily English speaking countries in reading (2nd to NZ). We can compare them to the OECD averages in that report:

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-results_ENGLISH.png

US: Reading (505), Maths (478), Science (502)
OECD: Reading (487), Maths (487), Science (489)

The data doesn't really match up to your supposition that the USA scores are bad, they are well above OECD level in Reading and Science but do attain very badly at Maths (only, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Chile and Mexico score worse as OECD countries).

https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018_CN_USA.pdf

• Students in the United States performed above the OECD average in reading (505 score points) and science (502), and below the OECD average in mathematics (478). Their scores were similar to those of students in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom in at least two of these three subjects. The trend lines of United States’ mean performance in reading since 2000, mathematics since 2003 and science since 2006 are stable, with no significant improvement or decline. Nevertheless, in reading, the share of 15-year-old students who scored at Level 5 or 6 (top performers) increased by almost 4 percentage points – a statistically significant increase – between 2009 and 2018, to 13.5%.

As in many countries, socio-economically advantaged students in the United States outperformed disadvantaged students in reading, mathematics and science. In reading, the performance gap between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged students was 99 score points (OECD average: 89 score points). Some 27% of advantaged students in the United States, but only 4% of disadvantaged students (OECD averages: 17% and 3%, respectively), were top performers in reading, meaning that they attained one of the two highest proficiency levels. However, 10% of disadvantaged students in the United States were able to score amongst the top quarter of students in their country in reading.

The above goes back to the previous post I made, the US suffers from pretty hefty inequalities and that means there is a larger range in the test scores based on poverty (not religious) metrics as indicated by the larger than OECD average in the performance gap (99 vs 89).

Socio-economic status was a strong predictor of performance in mathematics and science in all PISA participating countries. It explained 16% of the variation in mathematics performance in PISA 2018 in the United States (compared to 14% on average across OECD countries), and 12% of the variation in science performance (compared to the OECD average of 13% of the variation).

 

[do_ron_ron]

A lot of American religion seems to be based around one figure, it is more a cult type 'religion' with a heavy salesman approach. Started with the likes of Billy Graham and mushroomed to even internet type religious cults.

 

[The Running Man]

It's fascinating that Trumps daughter and all of Joe Bidens children married into the Jewish faith.

Meet Joe Biden’s whole big Jewish mishpocha
All three of the president-elect's kids married into Jewish families -- which means he's the grandfather of some pretty adorable Jewish kids
By LIOR ZALTZMAN

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ti...ct-joe-bidens-whole-big-jewish-mishpocha/amp/

His daughter Ivanka Trump underwent an Orthodox conversion before her 2009 marriage to Jared Kushner, who was raised observant. Their three children — Trump’s grandchildren — are full Jews according to Jewish law. See? Could an anti-Semite have a Jewish daughter?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wa...tic-if-his-daughter-is-jewish/?outputType=amp


Maybe they know something we don't?

 

[Ross Thomson]

The data doesn't really match up to your supposition that the USA scores are bad, they are well above OECD level in Reading and Science but do attain very badly at Maths (only, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Chile and Mexico score worse as OECD countries).

.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), 21 percent of adults in the United States (about 43 million) fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category. That is a result of poor education.
TBF the UK isn't much better.

 

[efish]

It is also true that religions are stronger in countries with little/poor education.

The issue with much talk here is that scientists dabbling in history still follow the 19th century thesis of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, this is known as the 'conflict thesis' or popularly the 'cultural war' thesis.

It's not used by actual historians of science anymore as its nonsense, but most people read science history written by scientists rather than historians.

Simple the case that scientists hold a range of ideas that are utterly bonkers (from nutty political ideas/ religious lunacy/ belief in little green men/ to odd perspectives on the paranormal) and still manage to do top-notch science.

Odd screwy beliefs are very much part of its history and still are.

Historical illiteracy is also a thing.

In regard to literacy, the church introduced literacy to much of Western Europe and its drive to have a population that could read the bible in the early modern period, had far-reaching unintended consequences, a literate population that could read and evaluate data for themselves.

That situation altered everything.

 

[Rroff]

A church some of my relatives attend has some of the most educated people in the UK who are members including people high up in the government, architects, teachers and scientists, etc. though I'm not sure how many are believers and how many go because their family have always been part of the church and/or as a symbolic thing to make themselves look better, etc.

 

[Mr C]

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), 21 percent of adults in the United States (about 43 million) fall into the illiterate/functionally illiterate category. That is a result of poor education.
TBF the UK isn't much better.

What you have done here is used data for adults and conflated to literacy rates for children (or as a country wholly). Furthermore, we need to account for other externalities involved in such data, using the same point that you raised:

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179.pdf

In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills: 26.5 million at level 1 and 8.4 million below level 1, while 8.2 million could not participate in PIAAC’s background survey either because of a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed. These adults who were unable to participate are categorized as having low English literacy skills, as is done in international reports (OECD 2013), although no direct assessment of their skills is available.

Firstly, although it is comparative to include people unable to complete the assessment as failing to have literacy skills, this isn't a fair assessment, they may be completely literate in another language and merely immigrated to the US by being a parent or carer of an already resident American. This isn't uncommon among Hispanic and other immigrant communities so i don't believe this sub-section realistically contributes to the US having poor literacy over that immigrants who don't require it don't have it.

As the data there specifies 8.2m of the 43m didn't participate, their designation is actually unknown.

U.S.-born adults make up two-thirds of adults with low levels of English literacy skills in the United States. However, the non-U.S. born are over-represented among such low-skilled adults. Non U.S.-born adults comprise 34 percent of the population with low literacy skills, compared to 15 percent of the total population (figure 2). White and Hispanic adults make up the largest percentage of U.S. adults with low levels of English literacy, 35 percent and 34 percent respectively (figure 3). By race/ethnicity and nativity status, the largest percentage of those with low literacy skills are White U.S.-born adults, who represent one third of such low-skilled population. Hispanic adults born outside the United States make up about a quarter of such low-skilled adults in the United States (figure 3).

This pretty much sums up the above statistic, of the ones that did complete the assessment, 34% of these are non-US born, this isn't unusual in wealthy countries whereby there is lots of net immigration, this again will skew the overall data for adults with poor literacy as it is not essential for these people to have literacy.

One final contentious point is this data is from the survey conducted in 2013. That's very old data and potentially very unreliable when used as a measuring metric. Which is why I refer to the PISA test scores for a few reasons.

It is more recent and likely to be more relevant, it compares children, this is important as due to the aforementioned issue with immigrant adults having a proportionate influence on literacy skills, the same cannot be said for immigrant children who still participate in the national educational system. Their level of illiteracy is likely to be contributed to by a larger factor of a poor educational system rather than their background.

Although this may all be tangential, I think even without extended analysis we can see that the US is an outlier regarding the comparison of religiosity and national outcomes (GDP), something this specific podcast episode highlights:

The Pros and Cons of America’s (Extreme) Individualism (Ep. 470)

The spirit of competition — of what Michele Gelfand calls “vertical individualism” — seems to permeate every corner of American society. Joe Henrich points out that even our religions are competitive.

HENRICH: My favorite explanation for this — I think this has been put out most clearly by a sociologist named Rodney Stark — is that with freedom of religion, you get competition amongst religious organizations. So the U.S. produces the sort of Wal-Mart equivalent of religions: big churches giving the people what they want, high pageantry. Whereas if you have a state religion, it tends to get tired and old and boring. People get less interested.

According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Americans claim to believe in God, 55 percent pray at least daily, and 36 percent attend a religious service at least once a week. That level of religiosity is very high for a wealthy country.

HENRICH: We have a kind of religiosity equivalent to somewhere like Kuwait. If you plot the U.S. on G.D.P. on one axis and religiosity on the other axis, the U.S. is a clear and distinct outlier — with high G.D.P and high religion.

High religiosity coupled with high individualism reveals another feature of American culture. As it’s been said: “Everyone knows that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in American life.”

 

[Ross Thomson]

The issue with much talk here is that scientists dabbling in history still follow the 19th century thesis of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, this is known as the 'conflict thesis' or popularly the 'cultural war' thesis.

It's not used by actual historians of science anymore as its nonsense, but most people read science history written by scientists rather than historians.

Simple the case that scientists hold a range of ideas that are utterly bonkers (from nutty political ideas/ religious lunacy/ belief in little green men/ to odd perspectives on the paranormal) and still manage to do top-notch science.

Scientific knowledge is the history of science.