Web searches about apocalyptic religions only come from disadvantaged regions

Researchers at the New York Times have found the most socially disadvantaged regions of America spend a lot of time thinking about religion and diets. The hardest places to live in America have the highest unemployment and obesity, and the lowest incomes and life expectancy. An analysis of ten years of Google searches in the regions show that health problems, weight-loss diets, guns, video games and religion are the most searched for topics. David Leonhart notes that the apocalyptic religions are searched for only in these regions:

The dark side of religion is of special interest: Antichrist has the second-highest correlation with the hardest places, and searches containing “hell” and “rapture” also make the top 10.

At the same time, the most well off areas of America show Google searches for jogging, cupcakes, baby strollers and consumer technology, all diversions that healthy, educated and affluent people can afford.

Sociologists have long argued that economic and social disadvantage is one factor that makes people cling to religion. Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman argued in 2007 that

Every single 1st world nation that is irreligious shares a set of distinctive attributes. These include handgun control, anti-corporal punishment and anti-bullying policies, rehabilitative rather than punitive incarceration, intensive sex education that emphasizes condom use, reduced socio-economic disparity via tax and welfare systems combined with comprehensive health care, increased leisure time that can be dedicated to family needs and stress reduction, and so forth... Not a single advanced democracy that enjoys benign, progressive socio-economic conditions retains a high level of popular religiosity

Zuckerman found that secular Europeans hardly think about the issue of God, not finding the concept relevant to their contented lives.

Commenting on the latest findings, Zuckerman noted:

I'm not surprised by the findings at all. The trend is very clear: in America, religion is strongest in those parts of the country where people are most likely to be overweight, most likely to be without health insurance, and most likely  to love guns. America's highest homicide rates, obesity rates, and gun ownership rates are the highest in the Bible Belt, where faith in God is the strongest.

The International Telecommunications Union estimates that by the end of 2014, over three billion people will use the internet, changing the way they relate to one another and research information. Zuckerman argues that the internet can potentially increase secularization in many ways:

1. People can look up their religion and suddenly see all kinds of skeptical, debunking, or critiquing there-of, which can affect the surety of their faith,
2. People can easily and readily connect with other people having doubts about their faith, or other budding atheists, or other secular folks, and this social networking can create a sense of support and thus decrease the loneliness and isolation a person might otherwise feel,
3. Use of the internet for research and leisure can may stimulate people's in a way that makes "religion less interesting, less compelling, less attractive; just as TV cut into books/ reading, the internet is yet another technology that may be cutting into and replacing previously popular forms of thought and association"

Further reading:

• Why the Gods are not Winning
• Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus
• Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions
• Why are Danes and Swedes so irreligious?
• Why Americans Hate Atheists
• What Does "Secular" Mean?

Heathen Comedy Show

Rather than a talk for the month of November, Sydney Atheists are proud to present a very special event for those who don't take gods seriously.

Join MC Chris Wainhouse* with his two partners in comedy, Gary Eck* and Mat Wakefield* as they show hilarious irreverence towards theism. 
*For information about our comedians, please go to http://www.meetup.com/sydneyatheists/events/200875652/.

The evening's entertainment will begin at 7.30 and finish at 9.30pm with a fifteen minute interval.

Bookings are essential for this event. Please book by paying into the following Sydney Atheists St George Bank account with your name attached: BSB 112 879 Account number 439 124 940

or alternatively book at Trybooking http://www.trybooking.com/FRBG

Entry is: Adults $25.00, Students and Pensioners $20.00. Please pay for your ticket when you submit your RSVP

Dinner will be available between 6.00pm and 7.30pm with meals starting from $10.00. After the Comedy Show begins no food will be served, so please get there early.

Location: 249 Castlereagh St, Sydney NSW

August Monthly Talk Report
Our guest speaker this August was career ambassador John McCarthy who discussed  "The influence of religion in the affairs of selected countries". John's talk was excellent, well received and enlightening. Sydney Atheists are very grateful for John delivering his talk. 

August Atheist Social Lounge
Our next big meeting will be the Atheist Social Lounge on the 28th of August. At this meeting we will have the usual social interlude from 6.00 until 7.30pm, but then  from 7.30 until about 9.00pm we will have a special open meeting to discuss the most appropriate slogans for potential campaigns. This is a meeting not to be missed.
Please RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/sydneyatheists/events/183652472/

September Talk
Sydney Atheists have some wonderful talent and expertise among our members. The September Talks will feature two of them. Sydney Atheists are proud to present Margaret-Ann Tait and Paula Baha for another very special evening. Our research and clinical psychologists will discuss psychological models of how religious belief is maintained in the face of rational evidence. The first segment will be titled Cognitive Dissonance, whilst the second will look at  Psychoanalytic views on religion. 

Please RSVP at http://www.meetup.com/sydneyatheists/events/179983212/

Dr Andrew Morrison - Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church

Dr Andrew Morrison (RFD) SC, who represented sex abuse survivor John Ellis in court, spoke to Sydney Atheists about the Catholic Church's use of the Ellis defence to avoid paying compensation claims to sex abuse victims.



Dr Morrison is a prominent member of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, and has assisted them in their submission to the Child Abuse Royal Commission, and has appeared in various media outlets such as the AM program. The report of the NSW Special Commission of Inquiry is available on the NSW Premier and Cabinet website.

July Talk

On behalf of Sydney Atheists, I would like to say a very big thank you to Dr Andrew Morrison .

Andrew's talk titled "Child abuse by religious institutions exposed and addressed" covered what religious institutions have done to avoid responsibility and liability for child abuse as well as the ongoing Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. The evening was a great success. The topic was a very melancholy and distressing one that questioned the morality of the Catholic Church in particular. Andrew's presentation of the topic was very informative, enlightening and thorough. For those that missed the evening, we expect to have it on our Youtube channel soon.

August Talk

Our August talk will be another blockbuster with John McCarthy OA, one of Australia's pre-eminent ambassadors whose topic will be "The influence of religion in the affairs of selected countries". John will discuss how religion, religious leaders and the religions of politicians affect the policy of government and the media in countries such as India, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand, Japan and the USA. John will also discuss the changes of belief in the various populations.

For more information and to RSVP for this talk, please go to:  http://www.meetup.com/sydneyatheists/events/180330642/

A Fracking Fortune Gets Political

Peter Montgomery looks at the role of political donors in funding the American Religious Right

Flickr/Ervins Strauhmanis

Televangelist James Robison recntly declared that he’s praying for a merger of the Tea Party and the religious right. Is he kidding? That merger is well underway. And it’s getting a hefty push from a couple of billionaire brothers.

No, not Charles and David Koch. Brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who reaped a fortune off the fracking gold rush and cashed in their Texas-based company a few years ago for more than $3 billion. In addition to buying up vast swaths of land in the West, they’re “using the riches that the Lord has blessed them with to back specific goals,” as Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody puts it.

What are those goals? They’ve embraced both the anti-government politics of the Koch brothers and the religious right’s anti-gay, anti-choice cultural warfare. The Wilks brothers belong to Pastors and Pews, an organization connected to Christian-nation extremist David Lane, who wants to make the Bible a primary public school textbook.

Dan Wilks told Brody that we need to “bring the Bible back into the school, and start teaching our kids at a younger age.” Adds brother Farris: “They’re being taught the other ideas, the gay agenda, every day out in the world so we have to stand up and explain to them that that’s not real, that’s not proper, it’s not right.”

The brothers and their wives have followed in the footsteps of other far-right funders and set up foundations. Together they’ve funded them to the tune of more than $200 million. In 2011 and 2012 they gave away millions, both to churches and to culture-war political groups. More than $5.5 million buttressed groups in the Koch brothers’ political networks.

Another $4 million or so funded leading organizations in the religious right political movement, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Another big chunk — more than $4 million — enriched anti-abortion groups. The brothers support a network of “pregnancy centers” that refuse to talk to single women about contraception and require married women to check with their husbands and pastors before discussing birth control.

The Wilks family also backs conservative politicians. They made a splash in Montana, where they own a lot of land and gave more to Republican legislative candidates than anyone else in 2012. In Texas, they’ve backed both Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican aiming to replace him. At the federal level, the brothers and their wives together contributed $125,000 to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.

The brothers’ worldview seems to draw heavily on the teachings of a church founded by their father, which combines Biblical literalism with a heavy emphasis on the Old Testament. According to church doctrine, abortion is “murder,” including when it ends pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. And homosexuality is “a serious crime — a very grievous sin.”

Farris is a pastor of the church. In his sermons, he decries “socialism” and argues that the Bible was grounded in the free market. He urges congregants not to vote for candidates who promise “free this, free that,” saying “Yahweh never intended for us as a people to be afraid and reliant on government.” He has suggested that the melting of the icecaps might be punishment for sin, and that President Barack Obama’s re-election may be a harbinger of the “end times.”

Since Obama’s election, conservative political strategists have made him a rallying point in their efforts to merge the energies of two wings of the conservative movement, the religious fundamentalist wing and the anti-government wing. Their success at bringing the Tea Party faithful and religious right movements together is embodied in funders like Farris and Dan Wilks as well as politicians like Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican elected in 2012.

The result is a more extreme, and more powerful, right-wing movement that threatens our nation’s well-being by seeking to undermine the separation of church and state, opposing equality under the law for all Americans, and limiting the ability of the federal government to regulate corporate behavior and promote the common good.

Peter Montgomery is a senior fellow at People For the American Way Foundation where he leads the organization’s research and writing on the Religious Right. This article was originally published at OtherWords.org