Month: November 2015

Becoming secular…without science

~ Dr. Juhem Navarro-Rivera ~ Leave a comment

The New Yorker recently published a piece profiling the deconversion of Megan Phelps-Roper. If the name rings a bell, it’s because she’s the grand-daughter of Fred Phelps, the late leader (and founder) of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church (WBC).

Phelps-Roper deconversion followed an interesting path. With access to the web, she joined Twitter and became the digital voice of the WBC. One of the features of Twitter is its ability of not only broadcasting a message, but also getting instant feedback. The WBC loves spreading their message, and this platform was well-suited for their usual trolling.

However, in Twitter Ms. Phelps-Roper also found a legion of detractors. Some of them later became friendly foes who engaged her as she spread the WBC’s message and planted the seeds of suspicion in her regarding the “truth” she had been taught. Ms. Phelps-Roper didn’t get interested in the theory of evolution, the Big Bang, or any other major scientific breakthrough that clashes with religious teachings. Her deconversion was a slow process emerging from a distrust of authority, a subject I recently-ish spoke about.

During one of my talks at the 2015 Center for Inquiry’s Leadership Conference I discussed the importance of non-scientific secularism. What I mean by this is that many people are becoming secular/non-religious not because they just got interested in biology or physics. Instead, people leave religion because they begin question its authority, and the authority of its leaders.

This is the case with Ms. Phelps-Roper. Her Twitter followers plated the seeds of distrust, but it was her analysis of how inconsistent and random the people in power at the WBC were with their new prophecies what led her to disbelieve what she had been taught.

It is also worth noting that one of the events that led to her leaving the WBC was the demotion of her mother as a major leader in the Church. Gender dynamics, where males took over absolute control of Church affairs, further fueled her questioning.

You should read the whole piece in the New Yorker. It gives great insights into the minds of young people leaving religion today. While Ms. Phelps-Roper case is an extreme one (in terms of the religious congregation she left), it is also an excellent example of how you don’t need science to distrust religion: its authority is dubious enough that people with critical thinking skills can see through the facade.

The Nones are Becoming More Honest

~ Dr. Juhem Navarro-Rivera ~ Leave a comment

The most recent Pew poll released last week shows that the nones (secular Americans, aka: the “unaffiliated”) are becoming more secular, at least according to their own headline. In my humble opinion, the nones have just become more honest in their answers about their religious practices.

The recent report based on the belief and behavior questions in Religious Landscape Survey highlights two main findings. The first, that the nones are increasingly secular, the second that American soceity as a whole is also becoming more secular. As the figure below shows, the nones have become more likely to say religion is not important, more likely to admit they rarely pray or go to church. But the most amazing finding is that the percent who say they don’t believe in God increased by 50 percent, from 22 percent in 2007 to one-third (33 percent) in 2014.

Source: Pew Research Center
Source: Pew Research Center

These numbers are the best evidence that being nonreligious is normalizing in American society. The trend is stronger among young people, who are more likely to know other nonreligious people. This may be because their friends in school or the neighborhood are not religious or because they are more technologically-minded and know other nonreligious thanks to the internet.

The other major finding of the report is that these measures of religious belief and behavior are declining among the population at large. However, the report is clear that there has been no major changes among religious Americans. This means that all of the change comes from the nones. This is very important because it means the nones are a group so large that they can now affect national trends by themselves. Hopefully we have not reached “peak secular” yet and more good news like these will continue to appear in future studies.