Inductivist

The Left dislikes evangelicals as much as they dislike anybody, and one of the reasons they don't like them is because they tend to reject the theory of evolution--which is ironic since the Left rejects the implications of evolution for human nature. But what about Muslims? Don't they reject evolution as well? The Left is usually silent about Muslim fundamentalism.

How many American Muslims don't believe that humans descended from earlier species of animals? General Social Survey (GSS) respondents were asked this question. Here are the percent who answered no listed by religion (sample size = 6,353):

Percent who don't believe humans descended from animals

Muslims  65.6
Christians  65.5
Protestants  63.6
Catholics  36.2
Orthodox Christians  32.1
Jewish   20.1
No religion  19.8
Buddhists   4.5
Hindus   3.2

Muslims are at the top of the list. Compare them to Buddhists and Hindus. An enormous difference.

If fundamentalism is an impediment to a pro-science culture, why isn't it a problem when it's found among Muslims? For the Christian fundamentalists always you have with you, but inviting the growing Muslim world to move to the US is a choice.

UPDATE: My 12-year-old son informs me that Hindus naturally accept evolution because they believe in a God that is an elephant.

Troubling graph from a Pew report I just ran across projecting tremendous growth for the Muslim world over the next 3 or 4 decades, while the non-affiliated shrink as a share of the global population. Christians are expected to hold steady.

I'm looking at self-report and victim data (which I can't give details on) that shows that crimes of all types are much more common in the U.S. than Malaysia. Why such a huge difference? The sociologist would expect the poor country to be the criminogenic one, but he's an idiot so we'll leave him aside. The HBD-er might answer that Malaysia is an Asian country, and Asians are law-abiding.

I wanted to see if Islam and sharia might have something to do with it. I looked up the most recent homicide counts (WHO) for Malaysia and Thailand--a contiguous, non-Islamic Asian country--and calculated rates. The rate for Malaysia is .5 victims per 100,000 total population. For Thailand, it's 6.2--12 times the Malaysian rate. This is consistent with the view that crime levels are lower in societies with intense religious cultures.

UPDATE: The plot thickens: I see Wikipedia lists homicide rates. While its data shows that Thailand is worse than Malaysia, Indonesia has a high rate. Also--rates are below average in the the Near East/Middle East/SW Asian region.

GSS respondents were asked if a person who is against churches and religion should be allowed to speak in your community. Here are the percentages who answered yes listed by religious affiliation:

Agrees that anti-religionists should be allowed to speak (sample size = 33,069)

Protestants 65.6
Catholics 73.0*
Eastern Orthodox 91.9*
Christian 76.1*
Nondenominational 84.6*
Jews 83.4*
Muslim 59.3
Hindu 73.9
Buddist 84.7*
No religion 88.7*

A majority in each group, Muslims included, is in favor of free speech. Most groups support it at a higher level than Protestants.  Although not shown, Jews, Orthodox, and those with no religion have significantly higher levels than Muslims.

In results not shown, more religious people (i.e., those who attend services frequently) are less likely to favor allowing the person to speak. This was true of all religions except for Buddhists and Orthodox Christians (three cheers for the Orthodox). The link was by far the strongest for Muslims: religious Muslims are much more likely to favor censorship.

Data from the World Values Survey (2008) makes me nervous. Ninety-three percent of Egyptians say they are religious. Fifty-six percent attend religious services at least once a week. And the gender difference is huge, but not like you might expect: 87 percent of men but only 23 percent of women attend at least weekly (sample size = 3,039). 

FINALLY, a valid measure of prejudice. When liberal researchers want to measure the extent of prejudice in American society, they ask people if they are against affirmative action. They pose as scientists, but really they're conmen. If you want to ask somebody if they're prejudiced, ask if they're prejudiced. The researcher responds that nobody, not even a bigot, will admit it.  But we see here that 43 percent of Americans--a large number--admit to feeling at least a little prejudice toward Muslims.  

It's revealing that more Americans are prejudiced against Christians than Jews. The country is more anti-Christian than anti-Jewish.

Imam Rauf informs us that he does not plan to move the site for the Ground Zero Mosque because doing so would inflame the Muslim world and would put U.S. soldiers and citizens in danger. In other words, people will be murdered because some Muslims were pressured to build their mosque down the road a bit. Although he doesn't realize it, what Rauf is arguing is that the extremists of his faith truly are deranged. He sounds the same as a right-winger who contends that the actions of Islamic terrorists have no rational basis whatsover. Rauf's argument implies that the only solution is to exterminate every last one of them; such deranged people certainly cannot be reasoned with. 

After reading the comments in the last post, I wondered if Muslim women are less happy than the men.  I put together the table shown above from World Values Survey data. Looking at the six surveyed countries, women are just as happy. (The surveys were conducted at some point in the past 5 years which helps explain the lower happiness numbers in Iraq. As they say, war is hell).     

The World Values Survey asked respondents when prostitution is justified. Answers ranged from never (1) to always (10).

I combined the eight Muslim countries surveyed and calculated the mean: it is 1.7, indicating that people in these countries feel that selling sex for money is practically always wrong.

Next, I calculated the mean for the ten Western European countries in the sample. Their mean is a middle-of-the-road 4.1.

Finally, I found that the average for Americans who go to church at least weekly is 1.8, and for those who never go it's 4.3.

Social conservatives typically align themselves with the West against the Islamic world in the "clash of civilizations," but it needs to be recognized that in some respects we have more in common with Muslims than Europeans and many secular Americans. Our fight with liberal degenerates is not limited to the U.S. If Europe had any cultural conservatives, I'd happily team up with them, but I think they've gone the way of the dodo.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims, by contrast, are traditional. We need to work with them to fight against liberal cultural imperialism in their countries.  I wouldn't wish the humiliation of gay marriage on my worst enemy.