Religious Mysticism on the increase in the US

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

H. L. Mecken, 1949

Whether anything is moving anywhere would be up for debate. The link to the story you provided had a reference to another story and that story has a reference to another site... Yoikes!

The surveys were taken 5 years apart by 2 different groups asking different questions so using them to claim some correlation or movement would be a mistake.

Fishin,

You're right; very debatable.

I was a bit suspicious of the numbers myself. Given the education levels in the US, the basic principles of The Constitution regarding religion, and the ethnic mix, you would think that the general population would be less dogmatic. But I don't know.

On the flip side, I wouldn't be too shocked if dogmatic mysticism wasn't increasing just as the article suggests. There seems to be a strong puritanical streak built into the core of American consciousness.

It is no stretch to suggest that the author of the piece wishes the reader to believe this folderol, in the furtherance of an agenda.

AMEN!

But...my guess is we still are one of the most "religious" of the industrialized nations.

That is a sad thought for me to contemplate, but I suspect it to be the reality.

Setanta, that may be, but do you have evidence of the folderol?And what agenda are you inferring from the article?

My iconoclastic tendencies make any kind of collectivism verboten. Religious collectivism is just as damaging to the individual as any of the political forms -- just as dangerous is the collectivism of the right, which professes to support the individual (except individual rights, it seems). The individual they actually support has to be in the $100,000.00 plus a year income bracket. The humble part of religion has been lost in America -- I don't believe it is in their true nature in this society of consumption. It is mystifying but only if one doesn't see through the haze of overblown rhetoric.

No, i have no such evidence. However, it is not incumbent upon me to provide any evidence. Those who make claims are obliged to provide the evidence to support their contentions, no one who expresses scepticism is obliged to disprove such contentions. Please note the response above by Fishin' which questions the provenance of the data.

I'm not inferring an agenda, my statement was that one may be working behind the scenes. I do not know enough about the author to posit a specific agenda. What i offered was a speculation on the nature of the article, not a statement that that were the case. I am usually very careful about how i frame a statement, and that was the case here.

Hmmm.. Based on the numbers in the Pew research alone I'd disagree. An item Kristof didn't mention in his article is that there is a large generational rift that the Pew study identified on the necessity of God in Morality question.

When they broke down the results by generation the numbers of "believers" in the US is highly skewed toward those that are over age 65. The under 35 age group is closer to the European countries and Canada.

In Europe and Canada however, the under 35 age group was more likely to say that a belief in God was necessary to be moral than the over 65 age group.

If, and it's a big if, the numbers are accurate then it would seem the US would be poised for a plunge while Europe and Canada's number are likely to rise as the "over 65" generation passes into the night provided people maintain their beliefs throughout their lives.

(None of the other numbers he listed in his story came from the Pew study..)

The article is still making a valid case for those who believe in supersitious or mystical creation and those who believe in the science of evolution. The groups as fisin' points out who are over 65 are hardly going to start reading about evolution and understanding it (they don't really want to and their clergymen usually don't want them to either). They may be exposed to it, say, on a PBS or Discovery special but in my experience even many those who aren't devoutly religious still can't accept evolution because they lack education. It's ignorance, that's to be sure, and as we are still battling to get out educational system up to par with the rest of the world, I don't see much of a change in the next twenty or thirty years. It is a form of escapism to believe in a mystical creation and that when we die we don't just become inorganic matter. It's the concept of the soul living on, not the concept of whether we have one or not, that is comforting. It's also comforting to take a warm bath and I can actually feel the heat and the water surrounding me.