The Extinction of Religion; Predicted in Nine Nations

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Originally Posted by Nessus

I'm missing something; what is the purpose of any model but to describe the world within some accuracy parameters?

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To abstract away the main/general components of reality from the noisy/idiosyncratic ones.

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Originally Posted by wiggin

AFAIK there is no set of historical data that follows their model to steady-state conditions. Thus, making claims that the model does more that describe a potential reason for the observed dynamics in the unsteady case is unscientific. I'm not sure the paper's authors made that claim (though their analysis certainly is suggestive of it), but the article covering it most definitely did.

I love modeling; I think it's a very useful tool. Yet a too-simple model can have just as many flaws as an overly complex one. I feel that this model was far too simple to really understand what's happening with religious affiliation in parts of the world, and any extrapolations from there are extremely suspect.

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I think those are two separate issues. Even a good model doesn't really allow you to extrapolate into the future. At the very least, you'd need the predicted events to have been within the realm of the sample (i.e. religion would have to have been extinct before).

I just read the paper. The assumptions it makes are pretty problematic, and little attempt is made to justify them. One can obtain any conclusion one wants as long as one is willing to make certain assumptions.

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Originally Posted by Loki

To abstract away the main/general components of reality from the noisy/idiosyncratic ones.

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I have no idea what this means.

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Originally Posted by Nessus

I have no idea what this means.

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Any given event is caused by a combination of general causes and idiosyncratic factors. For example, a specific war might occur because a country was militaristic, was roughly as strong as its adversary, and had a history of conflict with said adversary (all general causes), while also being caused by a leader being upset by a divorce, being bi-polar, and acting in the wake of a war movie that made the public more receptive to violence (idiosyncratic causes). It's pointless trying to model the latter because A) it requires an unreasonable amount of time to gather the necessary data, and B) we have no reason to think these factors will be present in the same way or exert the same effect in a different situation. In the article in question, we could make the model more complex by including the average income and smoking preference of each individual, but that would hardly improve our ability to predict the growth (or lack thereof) of religiosity.

Informative! Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Loki

The only looked at countries where religiosity has been decreasing. It's like only looking at healthy people when trying to determine what causes good health.

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They looked at those countries which have asked the question historically. Which nations do you think should have been included but weren't?

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

They looked at those countries which have asked the question historically. Which nations do you think should have been included but weren't?

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Countries where religiosity is not decreasing, i.e. most of the world outside of Western Europe.

Such as?

Which nations have comparable data in their Census that got ignored?

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Originally Posted by RandBlade

Such as?

Which nations have comparable data in their Census that got ignored?

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The US certainly comes to mind.

Not that data availability is an excuse in this instance. It's one thing to not look at the entire population; it's quite another to only sample data at one extreme of that population (whether intentional or not). If you don't have the data to answer a question, you don't ask that question.

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Originally Posted by Loki

The US certainly comes to mind.

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Does the US ask that question in its Census? What's the trend been over the last Century though, somehow I doubt that the US is more religious now than a century ago?

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Not that data availability is an excuse in this instance. It's one thing to not look at the entire population; it's quite another to only sample data at one extreme of that population (whether intentional or not). If you don't have the data to answer a question, you don't ask that question.

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They specifically said in 9 nations and which ones, not globally, so that already answers your questions. The thread title specifically states it too. I'm just looking forward to you showing comparable data in a nation that's increased over the space of a century.

In America, the number of people following no religion has doubled since 1990. Now the 3rd largest group (behind baptists and catholics).

So Loki was wrong. :)

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http://www.theworldforgotten.com/cps...quote_icon.png Originally Posted by article
Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says

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Thank God for that...

:p