{"id":75609,"date":"2022-08-12T03:00:45","date_gmt":"2022-08-12T07:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=75609"},"modified":"2022-08-11T12:24:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T16:24:10","slug":"testing-the-old-saying-about-those-who-believe-in-nothing-will-believe-anything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/08\/12\/testing-the-old-saying-about-those-who-believe-in-nothing-will-believe-anything\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing the old saying about those who believe in nothing will believe anything"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <em>Astral Codex Ten<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/astralcodexten.substack.com\/p\/will-nonbelievers-really-believe\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scott Alexander<\/a> considers the old saying &mdash; often mis-attributed to G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There\u2019s a popular saying among religious apologists:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Big talk, although I notice that this is practically always attributed to one of GK Chesterton or CS Lewis, neither of whom actually said it. If you&#8217;re making strong claims about how everybody except you is gullible, you should at least bother to double-check the source of your quote.<\/p>\n<p>Still, it&#8217;s worth examining as a hypothesis. Are the irreligious really more likely to fall prey to woo and conspiracy theories?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/amasad\/status\/1515826931375116288\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-16-15-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"562\" height=\"221\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-75610\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-16-15-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything.png 562w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-16-15-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything-480x189.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-16-15-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything-150x59.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 562px) 100vw, 562px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/graphic-detail\/2021\/07\/27\/what-drives-belief-in-conspiracy-theories-a-lack-of-religion-or-too-much\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">This <em>Economist<\/em> article<\/a> examined the question and concluded the opposite. See especially this graph:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-18-25-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-18-25-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"474\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-75611\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-18-25-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything.png 800w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-18-25-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything-480x284.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-18-25-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything-150x89.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Screenshot-2022-08-12-at-12-18-25-Will-Nonbelievers-Really-Believe-Anything-768x455.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;White evangelicals&#8221; are more likely to believe most measured conspiracy theories, and churchgoers were more likely to believe in QAnon in particular.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an obvious confounder here: the authors are doing the usual trick where they cherry-pick right-wing examples of something bad, show that more right-wingers are in favor of them, then conclude that Science Has Proven Right-Wingers Are Bad. QAnon, illegal votes, and COVID microchips are inherently right wing conspiracy theories; vaccines\/autism has probably become right-coded post-COVID. Only the moon landing seems politically neutral, and it&#8217;s hard to tell if there&#8217;s a real difference on that one. So this just tells us that white evangelical church-goers are further right than other people, which we already know.<\/p>\n<p>These data still deflate some more extreme claims about religion being absolutely protective against conspiracy theories. But I was interested in seeing how people of different faiths related to politically neutral conspiracies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander considers the old saying &mdash; often mis-attributed to G.K. Chesterton or C.S. Lewis: There\u2019s a popular saying among religious apologists: Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything. Big talk, although I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,11,16,13],"tags":[447,360,127,39,289,139],"class_list":["post-75609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-religion","category-science","category-usa","tag-atheism","tag-christianity","tag-conspiracytheories","tag-junkscience","tag-polls","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jFv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75609"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75612,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75609\/revisions\/75612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}