Hi everyone,
Here is a report about atheists being less open minded than religious people.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/atheists-agnostic-religion-close-minded-tolerant-catholics-uk-france-spain-study-belgium-catholic-a7819221.html
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Religious people are more tolerant of different viewpoints than atheists, according to researchers at a Catholic university.
A study of 788 people in the UK, France and Spain concluded that atheists and agnostics think of themselves as more open-minded than those with faith, but are are actually less tolerant to differing opinions and ideas.
“Somewhat surprisingly, when it came to subtly measured inclination to integrate views that were diverging and contrary to one’s own perspectives, it was the religious who showed more openness."
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Cheers.
Sriram
I am in the somewhat fortunate position of being able to download the research paper in a couple of clicks, and so I have read it and would like to comment from that position.
First on the dismissal of the study simply on the basis that it is from the Catholic University of Louvain - this is a completely unreasonable, this university is very well regarded (ranked I think 4th in Belgium and in the top 150 in the world) and the 'Catholic' bit is somewhat of a misnomer, referring to its heritage rather than current status. Certainly you should not conclude that the researchers are catholic - that isn't necessarily the case. Also the study involves an author from Stanford too.
However the study itself is rather odd, in terms of its methodology and how that is used to develop its conclusions. So the measures of 'intolerance' are generated as follows:
Participants are presented with three statements and asked to indicate their agreement on an 8 point scale. The three statements are:
“Child adoption by homosexual couples is a positive advance for society”
“The meaning of life is something entirely personal”
“In a house, rooms must be painted with light colors”
Of those only the first is a clear ethical position statement - the second is very ambiguous and the third clearly a 'red herring' used for some control purposes.
But intolerance isn't judged on the basis of the agreement (or otherwise). Nope it is judged as follows. Participants are then asked to write as many arguments in favour and against each statement - then they are asked to rank their agreement with each statement. You are deemed intolerance if you are unable to think up many arguments against your earlier position on the statements and if you give a relatively low score to those statements against your position.
Now I don't see how that really measures tolerance at all. So lets try a variant question. Imagine the statement was:
"Society and the law should treat people the same regardless of their race"
Now I would have thought if I most strongly agreed with this statement that would indicate that I was more tolerant than someone who strongly disagreed. But that isn't what the study would find.
If I strongly agreed with the statement, struggled to find many arguments against it and thought those arguments to be weak I would be considered intolerant. Another person who strongly disagreed with the statement, but could generate more arguments in favour and considered they had some merit would be considered more tolerant that I would.
This seems non-sense.
